After you've ordered your Trumpy Bear, be sure to pick up the Build the Wall set of MAGA Blocks. This 101-piece block set will have your kids turning away desperate refugees in no time. Comes with a President Trump mini-figure wearing a MAGA hard hat!

This fun for the whole family comes from the folks at KeepAndBear.com, which offers a staggering array of unlicensed Trump garbage including CNN toilet paper and Trump Sends Hillary to Prison action figures.

Sigh.

(via KeepandBear) Read the rest

Amid a growing number of lethal anti-Jewish hate attacks, including a gun massacre at a synagogue that left 13 dead, a man shouts “Heil Trump” in a crowded theater. Audience members told a reporter they believed they were about to die in a mass shooting. Read the rest

Smithfield is a Chinese-owned pork producer based in the USA that exports a lot of pork back to China; when Trump touched off a trade-war with China, he committed to compensating US-based companies that faced retaliatory sanctions at the Chinese border. Read the rest

The U.S. Justice Department told reporters today that a man in South Florida is in custody in connection with mailing of pipe bombs to political opponents of Donald Trump. Read the rest

The FBI is treating the serial bomber who sent explosives to critics of Donald Trump as domestic terrorism. There are a lot of bomb-making HOWTOs on the internet, and instructions for how to make improvised explosive devices have long been available online. Now, a federal agent says the perpetrator behind the 10 “suspicious packages” used bomb-making instructions that are “widely available” online. Read the rest

Kids today. They understand a racist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, symbol when they see one.

Via CBS News:

A Union Mine High School student is facing battery charges after an altercation in her classroom over a Donald Trump "Make America Great Again" campaign hat, reports CBS Sacramento. In cellphone video, a teacher is seen trying to subdue fired-up 17-year-old senior Jo-Ann Butler after she became enraged at a classmate for wearing the MAGA hat.

She grabbed the hat off his head.

"That's a racist and hateful symbol," Butler said.

She is now facing two counts of battery, one on her classmate and one on her teacher, who deputies say she slapped as he escorted her from the room.

Butler says she made the scene to express her political feelings.

"Maybe just wake people up in some type of way, because it's not cool, the environment our classroom is in," Butler said.

Her father says he doesn't approve of the way she behaved in class. "Wasn't handled the way I'd like it," Chris Butler said.

Now he's faced with the legal impact of his daughter's alleged criminal act.

All centered around the political divide across the country.

"I don't agree with grabbing someone's hat and verbally talking to them in that way," Chris Butler said. "But as far as the issue being brought up, maybe this is something that needs to be brought up."

The El Dorado Union High School District's clothing policy allows students to wear political symbols.

The context is Kanye West's long-expected but nonetheless startling MAGA turn.

Nation Suddenly Concerned About Black Man's Opinion [The Onion] Read the rest

Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Ralph Shortey has resigned after pleading guilty to trafficking a teenaged boy for sex; when Shortey was serving as Trump's Oklahoma campaign manager, he introduced an anti-sanctuary cities bill, claiming that immigrants trafficked their children for sex. Read the rest

Paul Ryan ally Rep. Mike Conaway [R-TX, @ConawayTX11, +1 (202) 225-3605] is the proud owner of $30,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth, who stand to benefit enormously from Rep Conaway's efforts to destroy Obamacare and replace it with a system that allows insurers to charge more and kick more than 22,000,000 Americans off their insurance. Read the rest

"What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust."

The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, with one of the best essay openings of the year, examines the posthumous memoir of Xu Hongci, a Chinese revolutionary and true believer of Mao Zedong, later imprisoned. Read the rest

Yesterday they drew hands on the mitten thumbs to spread good cheer. Today they poked a hole in the cup to release a tubful of holiday joy. Read the rest

As news of the CIA's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election spreads, top Hillary Clinton adviser and likely Russian hacking victim John Podesta today publicly voiced support for a push by some members of the Electoral College to receive an intelligence briefing ahead of their formal vote next week. Read the rest

Continuing in his totally consistent and predictable pattern of wacky authoritarian behavior, President-elect Donald Trump said today he'll postpone telling America how he plans to deal with a wide array of conflicts of interest until after he is sworn in as President in January, 2017. That's one month away. Read the rest

Every year, the Religious Liberty Project puts Festivus poles on the lawns of public buildings that sport Christian religious holiday symbols; this year, RLP's Chaz Stevens put a "Distrestivus" pole adjacent to a nativity scene on Deerfield Beach, Florida public land. Read the rest