John of The Damage Report tells us that the Repugs are in trouble as voters shift over the utterly failed policies of Don The Con (once more, Harry Enten of CNN leads off with some data painting a justifiably gloomy picture...a 27-point spread in the wrong direction, huh? Wonder if Dementia J. Trump is going to go on TV again and yell over that?)...John does a pretty good job IMO of listing all of the stuff from the ”party of Lincoln” that isn’t going to amount to squat when it comes to turning around our economy...and boy, do I share John’s exasperation at the end...
...and Chris Hayes speaks with Jason Johnson, a prof at Morgan State university, and Rolling Stone’s Nikki McCann Ramirez about the fact that DOGE was an utter failure (in terms of realizing any kind of savings, though it likely was a success as far as Project 2025 is concerned)...great point by Johnson that we really don’t know how King Elmo rigged the SSA and what data he harvested for God know whatever purpose...glad Hayes reminds us of the US AID shutdown, and just because there’s not much reporting on it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t catastrophic in destitute areas of the world that need that assistance...and boy, is Johnson in particular ever right about the Dems needing to have a plan to run on in the year that is coming up; if you just say “orange man bad” and then think things will be status quo, those people who you thought were going to be in your “blue wave” are just going to stay home on election day...
...and Tennessee Brando believes that MAGA truly thinks you’re this stupid (and I agree, about MAGA being stoo-pid that is), with “Human Capital Sock” Kevin Hassett, who definitely cherry picks data where he feels it’s con-vee-nient...he’s actually correct about 4.3% GDP growth as near as I can tell, but that “Biden increased mortgages by 14K” or whatever that mess was is definitely debatable, perhaps due to rising interest rates and home prices (which on balance is good)...Biden also signed a first-time home buyers credit of about $15K as noted here, which of course Hassett doesn’t want to mention (more context on how Cantaloupe Capons has screwed the metaphorical economic pooch is here and here)...the “golden age of the grift” indeed...mildly NSFW/H...
...and RIP Brigitte Bardot...not sure I should even try to do justice to her pictures with my feeble words (and kudos to her for supporting animal rights...she took the worldwide fame she garnered with her beauty and did something constructive with it...towards the end of her life, though, her politics took a lamentable rightward turn, though you can compare that a bit to people in this country also, including Frank Sinatra and Charlton Heston, along with The Sainted Ronnie R of course)...
...and since we’re in year-end mode a bit, I think it’s called for to remember some folks we lost over the year, and way up on that list for yours truly is Bill Moyers (who also departed at 91 along with Bardot)...this “Democracy Now” clip presents Moyers talking about a connection between corporate media and corporate power, and not in a good way, and infiltrating government also (“consensual seduction” is probably about right)...I’d actually forgotten about LBJ’s connection to public TV, and I’m glad Moyers reminds us of that here (re: the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967)...Moyers is right about funding PBS and NPR independently of the federal government (perhaps through a trust fund as he mentions), but good luck with that particularly in this day and age...
...and in the time we have left this year, I’d also like to recall some notable departures in music, starting with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys...
...along with Ozzy Osbourne...
...and Tom Lehrer.
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