'Tis the season

"How *dare* you say 'Happy Holidays!' to me, you ungrateful little heathen!"

This is what I imagine happening all over Trump's America™ in the coming days.

(Special pretzels to those of you who recognize the fantastic Constance Ford as Ada Davis McGowan Hobson, et al., from the late, lamented Another World. The show was canceled nearly 20 years ago and yet, je me souviens.)

He voted

Vladimir Putin voted. Did you?

Smack my Trump up

By the Tangerine Nightmare's own admission, he's a bitch--or at the very least like a bitch.

Which is pretty much the same thing.

Look out below!

This week, Not My President-Elect Donald Trump claimed that he won the Electoral College in a landslide--and would have the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

I have no idea what that statement means. Any of it.

Granted, Trump won the Electoral College, that ineffective vestige of the Founding Fathers hedging their bets on popular democracy. (Wasn't it designed to prevent check and balance stuff like this from happening? Or was it really just another opportunity for the Southern States to show their butt to the rest of the country?) Trump won by 74 votes--significant, I agree, but hardly the Reagan-Mondale blowout of yore. (For those keeping score, it was Reagan 525, Mondale 13.)

In fact, Trump's Electoral College victory ranks only 44th (scroll down to the entry for November 29, 2016)--and there have been 58 presidential elections since the founding of the United States.

Currently, Hillary Clinton leads by at least 2.5 million votes--and yet is still not the winner of the presidential election in the crazy clusterfuck that is the American electoral system. Can we have a candidate win the popular vote and still be declared the loser? Check. Can we have a winner even when all votes have yet to be counted nearly a month later? Double check.

It's not as though Trump is the only one claiming he won a landslide. There's word from America's Next Top Enabler, Kellyanne Conway, that Trump won in a "landslide" of some sort.

I am also trying to find a video or report read earlier this evening in which Cool Theocrat Mike Pence claimed Trump won a landslide victory.

Yet in a way I have to agree. This was a landslide victory--if we use the original meaning of landslide as our guide:

landslide ‎(plural landslides)

1. A natural disaster that involves the breakup and downhill flow of rock, mud, water and anything caught in the path.

So it's a landslide only in the sense that once it starts barreling downhill, it's likely to suffocate, destroy, and kill everything that lies below.

Nonetheless, let's not get too worked up over the latest bit of worse living through technology. It's early days still. We're all gonna need to pace our outrage. There are four long years ahead of us--barring any sort of miracle such as an actual, physical landslide or "those 2nd Amendment people" taking matters into their own hands.

And ol' Leather Rot hasn't even started the job yet.

The war on Christmas

Voice of America News: Scott Bobb reports from Aleppo, Syria.
"Free Syrian Army soldier walking among rubble in Aleppo
during the Syrian civil war." 6 October 2012. Public Domain.

As soon as your local mall starts resembling modern-day Aleppo, then you can claim there's a "war" on Christmas.

Until that day arrives--and I seriously doubt it will even under a President Trump--then please do us all a favor: Be quiet and think about how good you have it when your big outrage is whether a store clerk says "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas" to you.

* * *

Regrettably, I couldn't find many public domain or shareable photos of what Aleppo looks like today. It is far worse than this image shows. I will keep trying because we all need to be aware of what's going on and has been going on for ages and yet have done all too little to help.