Just a day after Newt Gingrich went on The Daily Show and straight up lied to Jon Stewart and said that Richard Reid was an American citizen, Christopher "Kit" Bond came on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown and struggled to defend his talking points on Miranding the Christmas underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. All I can say is thank goodness this relic isn't running for re-election, but he's obviously not done embarrassing Missouri yet.

Kit Bond Tangles With Savannah Guthrie On GOP Hypocrisy On Terrorism:

Administration's handling of Christmas bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Bush's similar handling of shoe-bomber Richard Reid in an appearance on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown."

On Tuesday, Bond had called for Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan's resignation after an increasingly politicized debate on how the administration has handled the Abdulmutallab case.

During the MSNBC interview, anchor Savannah Guthrie asked Senator Bond to make a distinction between the mirandizing of previous terror suspects and Abdulmutallab.

"When Richard Reid was mirandized, treated in the civilian court system, same as Zacarius Moussaoui, the 9/11 co-conspirator, did you call for anyone's resignation because of that?" Guthrie asked.

"It's a lot different time," Bond responded. "We now have military commissions...It turns out that mirandizing Richard Reid and trying him in the civilian courts was a bad idea."

"He is serving a life sentence right now, he will never get out. How is that a failure?" Guthrie shot back. Read on...

Thomas Frank writes an excellent article about the possible rise of the teabaggers. Paul Ryan, the man who takes more money than anybody from big business is trying to be their golden boy and he's using an ideology that is based on crony corporatism embedded with language that actually opposes the fundamental root of their philosophy.

They paint themselves as anti-corporatists and want to destroy the government for the benefit of the corporations they are supposed to hate. And if that doesn't work, then kill more government and give more tax breaks to the rich and make sure you hate brown people enough. It's all this twisted logic, but they make it work because of the influence of the right-wing media machine led by FOX News and have been making it work since the '80s in one form or another. Just ask Grover Norquist since he's an orchestrator of the K-Street project.

Thomas Frank:

It's easy to underestimate conservatism's chances in these dark days. Over the last year, the Republican Party has appeared to be either a gang of obstructionists or a confused relic of some prehistoric past; its thinkers seemed to do little more than repeat catch-phrases you've heard dozens of times before; even its most earnest activists sometimes appeared to be the pawns of lobbying organizations.

But the movement might stage a comeback yet. According to the demented logic of American politics, the world began anew with the Obama presidency, and so it is the Democrats who will have to go before the public this fall and defend the bailout of Wall Street. Similarly, it might be the Republicans who seize the opportunity to capture public outrage this time around, denouncing concentrated economic power, insisting on holding big business accountable, and promising to settle scores with the nation's erstwhile financial rulers. Given the GOP's doings over the past 30 years, such a reversal may strike you as implausible, if not downright ridiculous...read on

Read the whole article, because Frank knows as much about movement conservatism as anyone alive.

Digby has a great analysis of the article, and writes:

He goes on to explain that this is actually an old argument about how free markets keep business from gaming government and forming cartels. Indeed, according to this concept deregulation is the only way to control corporations. Isn't that convenient?

As Frank points out, that cracked notion is "twisted and counterintuitive" and you'd think that after three decades of a mass experiment in government deregulation, privatization and "free" market ideology people would realize how cracked it really is. But Frank rightly understands that to the Republican base, it will all ring true: the problem with big business is big government.He goes on to say that for the disaffected Independent voters (the new electoral Holy Grail) the logic is less important than the sincerity of the emotion. I actually don't think sincerity is necessary at all and that the reason it will have salience is because all these DIVs will hear the comforting old saws about Big Gummint being the enemy and will breathe a great big sigh of relief that "somebody is finally talking some sense."

Frank predicts the future and I agree:

That's why we may be heading for the greatest burst of fake populism since those TV commercials 10 years ago that showed a mob breaking down the doors of a stock exchange—not because the revolution was on but because they wanted to trade like the pros, which the sponsor promised to let them do.

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(A Christmas Sing With Bing - 1958. Guilty pleasure)

For those of you (and I guess there are a lot) who despise Christmas, this particular post ain't for you.

But since this is a blog dealing with aspects of our popular culture, present and past, you can't really let the season go without a nod to what was, for a very long time, an American Institution - Bing Crosby.

Every Christmas eve, like clockwork, CBS radio would blare out their annual "Christmas Sing With Bing" all throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, when TV took over with their Christmas extravaganzas and radio was promptly abandoned.

This Christmas Sing With Bing from 1958 was typical of the tradition with a heavy emphasis on the religious aspect of Christmas, not so much the consumer part. There is also a nod to the events of the past year, with a piece on the Nautilus and our newest state Alaska. The first "Sing With Bing" in 1955 was issued on lp by Decca (now Universal), and became a staple of their Christmas catalogue well into the CD era.

Crosby died in 1977 and with him went this tradition. He's pretty much relegated now to annual marathons of "White Christmas" and "Holiday Inn", but I thought you might enjoy a one hour dose of what the season used to be like fifty years ago. If you've never heard this before, I'd be curious to know your impressions. To you it may seem odd and quaint, a relic of a distant past. It was part of my culture of growing up and sometimes those impressions can be muddled. I took it for granted and never thought it would be any different.

We live in such interesting times. But nonetheless, it's Christmas Eve and we're almost at the close of another decade. And as with everything in life, it constantly changes and never remains the same.

Enjoy the holidays and thanks for all your support this first year of Newstalgia.

Oh yeah . . .and that too . .(click on the donate button if you can)

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(The Berlin Wall - so after 28 years of grief, death and terror, it's over in a few minutes.)

With the relaxation on travel restrictions between East and West Germany, it was only a matter of time before the wall dividing the two Berlins became impractical and a relic of the Cold War. But the speed with which the change occurred took the rest of the world by surprise. As the day wore on and as reports came in as fast as they happened, it was slowly becoming apparent to the rest of the world that the Iron Curtain indeed was evaporating.

Mike Pulsiver (CBS News): "Witnesses are quoted as saying they have seen East German soldiers dismantling a section of the Berlin Wall as an incredible story keeps unfolding at breakneck speed."

The irony was, after so many years of a seemingly impregnable wall dividing the city and the endless attempts to escape to the West and the loss of life that happened during those attempts, the fact that the wall came down so quickly seemed ironic and in some ways strange. But the people of Berlin seized the moment and it became one huge party. The past was gone and there was no turning back.

As a bonus for our German friends, or those of you who want to brush up on your German, I've included a several news reports from German Radio from November 9-11, 1989. They are separated by a few seconds of silence between cuts.

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The clips go as follows:

1. Press Conference with Gunter Schabowski, DDR
2. Radio report
3. Radio DDR – 3 am news
4. Berlin Radio
5. SFB Radio – 8 am news
6. Comments by Walter Momper from Bonn
7. Jugenradio DT 64 – News 5pm.
8. Willy Brandt address
9. Address by Egon Krenz