Who are we? What are we doing?

Thanks to my friend, Daniel Skepple in Canada, for reminding me of this, from Stephen Colbert.

I’d forgotten it ... it was in Episode 6161 of The Colbert Report. December 09 2010.

That's the night Paul Simon sang the remarkable "Getting Ready for Christmas Day" [Feat. Rev J.M. Gates] from his remarkable, then new, album, So Beautiful or So What.

Getting Ready for Christmas Day . Paul Simon . YouTube

Getting Ready For Christmas Day« see all songs

Lyrics:

From early in November to the last week of December
I got money matters weighing me down
Oh the music may be merry, but it’s only temporary
I know Santa Claus is coming to town

In the days I work my day job, in the nights I work my night
But it all comes down to working man’s pay
Getting ready, I’m getting ready, ready for Christmas Day

Reverend Gates:
Getting ready for Christmas Day.
And let me tell you, namely, the undertaker, he’s getting ready for your body
Not only that, the jailer he’s getting ready for you.
Christmas Day. Hmm? And not only the jailer, but the lawyer, the police force
Now getting ready for Christmas Day, and I want you to bear it in mind.

I got a nephew in Iraq it’s his third time back
But it’s ending up the way it began
With the luck of a beginner he’ll be eating turkey dinner
On some mountain top in Pakistan 

Getting ready, oh we’re getting ready
For the power and the glory and the story of the
Christmas Day

Reverend Gates:
Getting ready, for Christmas Day. Done made it up in your mind that I’m going, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. I’m going, on a trip, getting ready, for Christmas Day. But when Christmas come, nobody knows where you’ll be. You might ask me. I may be layin’ in some lonesome grave, getting ready, for Christmas Day.

Getting ready oh we’re getting ready
For the power and the glory and the story of the
Christmas Day
Yes, we’re getting ready

Reverend Gates:
Getting ready, ready for your prayers, “I’m going and see my relatives in a distant land.”
Getting ready, getting ready for Christmas Day. 

If I could tell my Mom and Dad that the things we never had
Never mattered we were always okay
Getting ready, oh ready, ready for Christmas Day
Ready, getting ready
For the power and the glory and the story of the
Christmas Day

© 2010 Music by Paul Simon Words by Paul Simon and Rev. J. M. Gates

Who’s fighting human trafficking?

Wanna know who’s working effectively to end human trafficking?

I think it’s the International Justice Mission. 

Some people talk, and promote, and raise awareness; IJM does … and has  been doing for more than two decades in what may be the most persistent, far-reaching, and effective nongovernmental interventions against bonded enslavement and human trafficking ever. (I say "nongovernmental" because IJM is a nongovernmental organization ... But, to be clear, they submit evidence to law enforcement officials in the cases they investigate.)

And, when it comes to who’s fighting effectively to end human trafficking in the governmental sphere, the people working to end that obscenity are led by Volodomyr Zelenkskyy and Joseph R. Biden, and the leaders of more than 50 nations who put their money where their mouth is through the carefully considered strategies and tactics of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

Because Vladimir Putin, has stolen more than 20,000 Ukrainian children from their homes — probably many more — and moved them to Russia. 

That’s why it makes sense to tell my members of congress I want them to support Ukraine against Russia’s illegal war of aggression.

And it’s why it makes sense to send some money to support the work of International Justice Mission at the closing of the year. 

Because IJM, and Ukraine and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group of nations are doing the work to end human trafficking for good. 

International Justice Mission | End Modern Slavery for Good

Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova

Russia returns four Ukrainian children in Qatari deal

More Than 700,000 Ukrainian Children Taken To Russia Since Full-Scale War Started, Official Says

Tens of thousands of Ukraine’s children have been kidnapped — it’s time for action

Women Enter the Putin Regime’s Crosshairs

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

American Evangelicals Divide over Ukraine

Ukraine's Zelenskyy joins a meeting of global defense leaders to make a direct plea for military aid

Opinion | Joe Biden: The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas

Interpreting the Colorado court decision that seems to cut both against and for Donald Trump

Marcy Wheeler, on emptywheel, offers a useful and accessible summary and analysis of the November 17, 2023 Colorado District Court order by Judge Sarah Wallace. 

Dr. Wheeler finds a clear path through the Court's ruling that:

A. Donald Trump did engage in insurrection, and 

B. Judge Wallace does not use that finding of fact to exclude Donald Trump from the 2024 Colorado primary election ballot, electing instead to push the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court to the extent that the higher Court agrees to accept the case on appeal and rule on it's application. 

To that end, Judge Wallace writes:

The Court has endeavored to give the Colorado Supreme Court all the information it needs to resolve this matter fully and finally without the delay of returning it to this Court.

FWIW, I think the Final Order from Judge Wallace and Dr. Wheeler's analysis are both careful, clear reading for folks outside the legal professions.

To me, it doesn't seem like a close call

A year ago, heading into the 2022 US midterm elections, I posted:

With corporate profits at a 70-year high … and CEO’s pay rising about three times faster than everybody else … I don’t think it’s a freak coincidence that *Inflation* is at a 40-year high.

I’m thinking about that in this midterm election between the party that wants America’s corporate citizens to pay their fair share for the upkeep and advancement of the nation and the party that’s intent on supporting corporate free riders regardless of the drain on the real economy.

Oh, man, has that aged well politically....

On the business end, it's not clear that folks at the topmost corporate earning pyramids have yet rediscovered the concept of 'enough' ... but a lot of workers have made headway on wages in the real economy. Find a just and reasonable equilibrium in all that, and history demonstrates what common sense declares: that there is enough for everyone when we regard our neighbors as we regard ourselves.

On the political side, a vanishingly small minority of the US House majority took national and global security hostage last week — giving aid and comfort to enemies of democracy in general (looking at you, Russia) and the United States in particular. Why? Maybe they're on the take ... maybe they're neo-fascists ... maybe they suffer from peripheral vision loss *and* nearsightedness.... In any event, the net effect coddles wealthy individual and corporate free-riders and tax cheats by hobbling the good faith efforts of the Internal Revenue Service — and US law — to locate and collect taxes due to the US Treasury for the benefit of us all, as a people.

Now, one year out from a profoundly important election season, I am [still] paying attention to the differences between the party that insists on America’s corporate citizens paying their fair share for the upkeep and advancement of the nation and the party that protects the interests of already wealthy free-riders at the expense of everyone else.

To me, it doesn't seem like a close call.

who are the neo-nazis voting for?

Three years back, days ahead of the national elections in 2020, Ted Swartz reminded us of the company we keep.

The neo-nazis lost that election almost everywhere ... and many of the exceptions — in both 2020 and two years later in the midterms —were in places they apparently won because of gerrymandered voting districts that have since been, or are being, restructured under court order.

Which is to say that, had neo-nazi-adjacent Republican legislators not illegally and/or immorally suppressed the votes of folks they believed would vote for the other side ... which they seem to interpret — perhaps accurately — as votes against them ... the US House of Representatives would not be in the mess it's in, with a newly anointed Speaker who, this week, is prepared to hold our national security and our obligations to allies and to vulnerable and oppressed people in Ukraine, Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank hostage.

And the price Speaker Johnson and MAGA Republicans are demanding? They're demanding that Members of the House agree to go easy on wealthy tax cheats and free-riders by defunding the enforcement capacity of the Internal Revenue Service ... an enforcement capacity that recovers $12 for every one dollar spent on audits of the top 10 percent of earners. (https://cdn.policyimpacts.org/cms/Welfare_Audits_ad1284984d.pdf)

Not that it will be easy, but let’s finish the job. Let’s do the work necessary to elect Democrats to the US House and Senate until such time as Republicans return to — and hold each other accountable for — fidelity to the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the rule of law, and a good faith commitment to the ongoing formation of a more perfect union.