UPDATE: Fox has determined that it was Santifa.

The Fox News Christmas tree in NYC burned to the ground last night.

Oh, guys, this is a damn hoot

Congressduffus Devin Nunes is resigning from Congress to become chief executive of former President Donald Trump’s fledgling social media company next month.

Hell, like he wasn’t working for Trump the past five years.

But here’s what I don’t understand: what on God’s green earth makes Nunes think that Trump is ever going to pay him? Trump doesn’t pay anybody. The only reason he owns his own restaurants is because he’s been banned from all the rest for walking his tab.

Nunes running a social media company with the same intellectual capacity of Sponge Bob Squarepants?

Although Trump claims to have a billion dollars to open his competition to Twitter, it has not started well.

Truth Social had an inauspicious debut when hackers quickly manipulated the site, created a fake Donald Trump account, and posted images of defecating pigs.

It ran into another snag when the developer of the open-source software being used for Truth Social warned the operation last month that it was violating the software license.

He’s missed deadlines, has violated software license, and keeps promising a health care plan next month.

Ya know, it could be that Nunes is the only person on the planet willing to take this job.

Nobody goes to Washington completely selfless. Oh sure, everyone loves to talk about how they want to be a service to the people. Some will put on the humble pie act. Others will speak longingly about how they want to do the people’s business and make the lives of their constituents better. I’m sure a large part of them actually believes that.

At some point, they realize they have to gain more power to do the things they want to do. There are multiple ways to do this. The less ambitious bide their time. They actually work day to day for their constituents. They figure it will get them reelected and with every passing election they will gain more power. Such thoughts are so quaint.

A second kind comes in with big ideas. They gain notoriety quickly with those big ideas and it can be somewhat difficult to distinguish them from the glory hounds. Obviously, most people immediately think of AOC, but Bernie Sanders fits under that category as well. They usually don’t get what they want but they help steer the conversation in a productive way.

Then, there are the Thomas Massie’s of the world. John Pavlovitz already covered serious ground on the picture above. I’ve enjoyed his writing for some time, but I suspect he knows he has been used in this instance. Underneath the picture read the caption, “Santa, please bring ammo.” I suppose Massie could love his guns that much, but I suspect that John knows perfectly well that a love of guns wasn’t the point of this Christmas card.

This picture was about performative politics. It was about the fact that Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert are getting all the headlines. How do you get yourself in there? Well, you take a picture days after a school shooting with timing so crass you can’t help but get your fifteen minutes of fame. Or should we say infamy? As Martin Short’s character in the Three Amigos said, “infamous means more than famous.” Well, Massie certainly qualifies. Except he’s bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. Greene, Gaetz, and Boebert are pros at this. They’ve made a living of getting people to know who they are without actually accomplishing anything.

That’s the difference between performative politics and what people like AOC do. They become famous and powerful and yet no one can name a single thing they’ve actually done or actually proposed. The idea is to own the liberals. Massie certainly won this round. He’s provoked outrage. He’s inspired a number of writers to condemn his stupidity. He’s dumb, but he’s not so dumb.

Okay, the US Department of Justice has entered the fight over redistricting in Texas.

The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing its weight into the legal fight over Texas’ newly drawn maps for Congress and the state House, filing a lawsuit Monday that claims Texas lawmakers discriminated against voters of color by denying Latino and Black voters equal opportunities to participate in the voting process and elect their preferred candidates.

That makes it less likely that we will have a March primary while this thing winds its way through the courts.

If they uphold it, and Texas flips, which it eventually will, payback is gonna be hell.

Sorry, I’ve got to rush off – I’ll have more tomorrow.

UPDATE:  There’s really not much to add.  We’ll just keep our eye on it and see if it will be fought seriously.

Sidney Powell, who at one point was one of Trump’s lawyers for about three weeks trying to overturn the election results for Trump, which eventually got her in some trouble with reality, the state bar association, Donald Trump, and the nine other lawyers fighting for Trump.

Powell got her start defending Enron against federal investigators, claiming the whole thing was a giant conspiracy hoax.  She defended Ted Stephens in his trial, which she claimed was also a giant conspiracy. She’s spoken at Qanon conventions and even jumped on Louie Gohmert’s bandwagon for a while.  Honey, her wikipedia page has more conspiracies than Bayer has little white pills.

Well, come to find out, just getting thrown off Trump’s team doesn’t stop crazy people from throwing money at you.

Records reviewed by The Washington Post show that Defending the Republic raised more than $14 million, a sum that reveals the reach and resonance of one of the most visible efforts to fundraise using baseless claims about the 2020 election. Previously unreported records also detail acrimony between Powell and her top lieutenants over how the money — now a focus of inquiries by federal prosecutors and Congress — was being handled.

I’m certain it’s all just a conspiracy involving George Soros, Hillary Clinton, a couple of movie stars, Dr, Fauci, and probably you.

Y’all, we went into the wrong damn business.

I was reading an article last night that talked about family estrangement. The whole idea of estrangement has always been foreign to me. Certainly, there are some family members that you talk to more than others. Obviously, there is a natural dividing line between family we would consider to be close and family that is extended beyond what is reasonable to expect a regular connection with. The folks talking about family estrangement aren’t really talking about that.

In particular, the article I read was focused more on the relationship between adult children and their parents. According to one article, as many as one and four Americans and one in five Europeans reports they are estranged from at least one family member. Again, I’m not sure how that is defined. The focus of the articles seemed to be on parent/child relationships but even that figure in Europe seems high much less the U.S. figure.

Estrangement is a unique thing. It means ties are severed forever. They become persona non grata and that just seems like an extreme measure. Yet, it is not difficult to see why it is on the rise. The politics of the last five or so years have gone from bad to downright frightening. I can’t relate in my own family and yet my wife is estranged from some of her extended family. It has always been the case as long as I’ve known her and as far as I know it isn’t political in nature.

Everyone likes to put this at the door of one man and I suppose that seems natural enough. Yet, that cannot account for the fact that this is happening in Europe as well. I have no idea if it is happening on other continents as well. I suppose that research would be easy enough. There has always been tension between the generations. Go back far enough and you will see quotes about how the new generation just doesn’t get it. They’ve become soft. They’ve become entitled. They’ve become fill in the blank. At any point in history they could have been talking about our own generation.

So, it isn’t that either. Our daughter honestly feels like things will get better when her generation takes over. They weren’t the ones to muck it up. I had to point out that Generation X says that about the Baby Boomers. Yet, enough of us (Generation X) are in positions of power that we now get to own whatever it is that has gone wrong. I also had to point out that the people in her classes that she calls idiots, jackasses, and whatever else will some day be in charge.

Again, that’s all natural and has always been there. This is something else entirely. This is finding out that someone in your family has become so vile and so toxic that we cannot associate with them anymore. I suppose we could say they’ve become that which we loathe, but chances are they always were that and we didn’t notice. Chances are we even saw it and told ourselves we could live with it before. It’s just another brick in the walls that divide us and goodness knows if those walls will ever be torn down.