Year: 2010

The Real War on Christmas: Pilgrims Outlawed It; Congress Stayed in Session on Christmas Day until the 1850s

Jon Ponder

Culture warriors who are invested in the idea that there is a secular, anti-American “War on Christmas” should avoid watching the History Channel’s documentary, “Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas.” Exposure to the historical facts about the holiday could well make their heads explode.

And we wouldn’t want that. Not at Christmas.

As is widely known, it is unlikely Jesus was born in December, a time when it was usually too cold in the Holy Land for shepherds to be watching their sheep in the fields by night. In fact, the holiday wasn’t dedicated to Jesus’ birthday until centuries later — and only after early Christians had co-opted popular pagan mid-winter festivals from Roman and northern European traditions. Christmas primarily took the place of the Romans’ Saturnalia, which was a celebration of debauchery.

According to the History Channel’s overview of the documentary:

[…]

Verbatim

Buck Banks

The first thing a president’s going to have to do when he takes his hand off the Bible is start lobbying. He’s going to need to lobby Congress. He’s going to need to lobby the bureaucracy. He’s going to need to lobby the governors. He’s going to need to lobby our allies and our international competitors. And I’m a pretty good lobbyist.

— Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), telling the Weekly Standard why he doesn’t think his background as a highly paid Washington, D.C., lobbyist should disqualify him from running for president.

Fox Issues Nixonian Non-Denial Denial When Confronted with Evidence It Deliberately Deceives Viewers

Jon Ponder

In case you missed it in the pre-holiday bustle last week, the University of Maryland has released results of a study that found the Republican Party’s Fox propaganda channel deliberately deceives its viewers by presenting disinformation as “news.”

Even if you heard about the survey, what you may have missed is that, given an opportunity to debunk the findings, to provide a point by point refutation of the results, Fox’s point person chose instead to attack the University of Maryland as a “party school.”

First, here are the findings from the survey showing for each assertion both the anti-factual information Fox viewers believe to be true (with the share of Fox viewers versus non-viewers shown in parentheses) along with the reality-based fact:

[…]

Verbatim

Buck Banks

The one target for us in two years is no longer extending the upper income tax credit for millionaires and billionaires, and scaling back what we had to do to get the compromise.

— Vice President Joe Biden, in an interview on Meet the Press, renewing the Obama administration’s vow to end the Bush-era tax breaks for wealthy Americans.

Verbatim

Trish

The commandant of the United States Marine Corps says when your life hangs on the line, you don’t want anything distracting… I don’t want to permit that opportunity to happen and I’ll tell you why. You go up to Bethesda Naval Hospital, Marines are up there with no legs, none. You’ve got Marines at Walter Reed with no limbs.”

— Sen. John McCain, explaining his opposition to allowing gays to serve openly in the military by referencing Marines with no legs (none). How this figures in, or why allowing openly heterosexual men and women to serve is not also affected by Marines with no legs, was not clarified.

Verbatim

Trish

If John McCain gets any more hostile toward his Senate colleagues, they might consider having him go through the metal detector before he enters the Capitol.

— The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, summing up Sen. John McCain’s bizarre behavior during the debate over rescinding the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy. Milbank added that, “McCain’s statement on the floor was roughly one part argument, four parts tantrum.”