The War on Christmas, like the 'Black Friday' sales, began early this year. Faced with the growing difficulty of explaining how paying the Bush Administrations bills makes Obama a spendthrift and how asking for a smaller stimulus package makes him more reckless than Bush while all the time being a communist, Mau-Mau, Fascist, do-nothing tyrant, the need for ever more idiotic distraction generates the need to elevate even more mole-hills to Himalayan proportions. So this year, it's no longer about how that Muslim Obama and those damned Jews and atheists are at war with Christmas, it's about how that damned tax-tyrant Obama is making us pay more for it ( and costing us jobs. ) Welcome to the new act in the Republican circus: the Christmas Tree Tax.
The Christmas Tree Promotion, Research and Information Order, which was first proposed during the administration of President George W. Bush in response to the yapping of agricultural lobbyist Christmas Tree Promotion Now, gave the President authority to add a 15 cent charge to every tree to be used to advertise and promote Christmas trees. The government will not use these funds, the Christmas tree growers will use the money collected from retailers to promote further sales with the intention, or excuse that increased sales will more than offset the cost. It's kind of a capitalist idea, Republican style -- you know, like the $80 million-a-year beef promotion order imposed during the Reagan administration, or the $8 million-a-year peanut promotion order imposed during the Bush administration. But we're not talking about St Ronald or St George, we're talking about that anti-colonial Kenyan/Indonesian killer of African Christians who hates Christmas and white people.
It's a TAX! scream the headlines and the banshee bloggers. How can we expect anyone to hear the whisper of "it's capitalism" from the rational rest of us? Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax, howls the headline at The Foundry, the blustery blog of the Heritage Foundation hammering out their daily dumps of hammered, beaten, twisted and red hot baloney. Will there be another headline informing us that the President reconsidered the Bush program and cancelled it?
Yeah, I debunked this nonsense last week. The Hill helped flog this with its completely inaccurate and misleading headline and lede.
ReplyDeleteAt least we know which right wing talking point factory is the source of The Hill's "scoops."
Meh. Another distraction so the GOP doesn't have to admit that they have no plans other than coming into the Capital every morning and planking for the entire day (every third morning on average, this upcoming year: god, I wish I could get that work schedule...)
ReplyDeleteReally, though, let's look at this... rationally (heh - I made a funny... I'm never going to be able to use that word again....)
What is up with this habit of cutting down millions of young pines every year, sticking them in houses to increase the chance of fire. Bad for the environment, wasteful, generally stupid.
And who's really getting this money, anyway? All the Christmas tree vendors I've met are pretty broke, and I've known two guys in my life with a side business as a Christmas tree farm - it's not how you make buckets of money. (But I'm always suspicious of new cash flows, and wonder who's going to be on the other end of the spigot)
LOL! Obama as the Grinch is the perfect illustration for this post. I see a marketing idea for a line of Christmas cards to be sold on right wing websites. Perhaps you could add a Scrooge Obama line as well. Of course, if Obama cancels Christmas there won't be any need for any cards.
ReplyDeleteThe comfort that I take out of this nonsense is that as long as they are focused on get Obama at all costs, it means that none of the GOP presidential candidates are campaigning on any meaningful issues. The faithful will still adore them but perhaps some of the not so convinced will see that none of the emperors, nor the lone empress, have any clothes on.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteWell, it's just what we've come to expect from that soshulist O'Bummer. Of course he hates Christmas! Why, at this very minute he's probably holding an atheist-moozlum-fascist black mass in the white house basement where Nixon used to get in his bowling practice.
Sheria,
Diversions indeed. I find it grimly hilarious that the Mittster never seems to make it past the upper-twenties in the GOP polls. Whenever he hits that level, some new darling is ushered in to rival him, only to be found either nuts or shamefully incompetent, or both. Anybody but Governor GoodLooks, it would appear. I can't imagine that bodes well for him if he is, as I expect, the eventual nominee.
Frankly, all that pretend winter stuff is bewilderingly idiotic in the land of eternal summer and I don't know why more people don't notice that they're celebrating an old Norse holiday cross dressed as a Mesopotamian solstice festival. Yep, throw another Yule log on the fire and open the windows because it's too damned hot outside.
ReplyDeleteFake icicles, illuminated statues of a Russian Saint, Arctic ruminants on the lawn. . . while the orchids are blooming , bananas and oranges ripening on the trees. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.