Merry Christmas

(or Happy Hanukkah or Kwanza, or what ever holiday you observe)

Not a nice way to start Christmas morning but perhaps on par for this miserable year.

Of course, #45 gave the country a nasty gift when he vetoed the defense bill and threatened to do the same to the Covid/appropriations bill threatening a government shut down, ending of unemployment for millions and the termination of programs a lot of people depend on right now. He tried to justify his actions by claiming he REALLY wanted more money for individuals and objected to "wasteful" spending included in the bill. That is just self-serving crap as he doesn't really care about the plight of the little people and had wanted those "wasteful" provisions in other funding bills. All yesterday news pundits and commentators tried to understand his motives. None of them mentioned a factor I have been thinking for the last week or so: he is a vindictive sack of shit and this gave him an opportunity to screw with most of the groups he feels particularly aggrieved by: Republican politicians who aren't sufficiently "loyal" or differential, Mitch McConnell and others who have already acknowledged Biden's win and who are telling some of their caucus not to try to interfere with the certification of the Electoral College results, and the 80+ millions of us who didn't vote for him. What is assured now is that, unless he decides to be decent and signs the last bill, the government will be shut down for at least one or maybe two days (because the funding runs out Sunday and the Senate  and House won't be back in session before Tuesday). For more on the impact of the situation see what The Washington Post had to say.

Most of the bloggers I have been reading have the same kind of blahs we do here. It just doesn't feel much like the season of "good cheer" this year. Normally we would be having dinner with my brother and his side of the family but that isn't wise this year. Brother said his son and one of his grandsons had a mild cases of the virus and one of his late wife's family had a more serious case. That is coming way too close. He said their own celebrations are much scaled back with church and a small family dinner.