That’s All Folks!

Once upon a time, in a nation (seemingly) far, far away, when someone uttered something either completely “off the wall” or an outright lie, folks might respond, “What’s he/she been smokin’?”

However, on August 24, 2026, a new Gallup poll (“U.S. Marijuana Smoking at Record High, Cigarettes at Low,” Gallup.com, Megan Brenan) reported “17% of U.S. adults smoke marijuana, 15% consume marijuana edibles.”

Now the odds are one-in-three that he or she has been smoking wacky tobacky, weed, ganja, dope, the devil’s lettuce, mary jane, or gummying. So, the ole question would probably date you – even if you’re living in The Villages of Central Florida. [EDITORS’ NOTE: We’re sorry about that last phrase, but the Devil made us write it.]

In lieu of the question that might date you, we’re suggesting “Is he jerious?”

For example, when, on July 22, 2026 during a speech at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, the Chief Executive of “the most powerful nation in the world” declared

“Mount Rushmore recently, I don’t know if anybody saw it, 
such a beautiful place. 
You know, the communists wants to take it down. 
They try taking Mount Rushmore down. 
They want to blow it up.”

you might ask “Is he jerious?”

Jerious – a portmanteau of “jesting” and “serious.” 

That’s more kind than “crarious.” – from “crazy” and “serious.” Nonetheless, you’re free to adopt “crarious” whenever it’s appropriate.

As the party currently controlling the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives faces an increasing risk of losing one or both bodies, their candidates and party leader are beginning to shout “communists” or “communism” as loudly and frequently as possible.

House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson took to X to post:

“The barbarians are inside the gate – and Democrats are WELCOMING THEM IN! Communism is no longer a far-fetched theory. It is here on our SHORES! This isn’t just Common Sense vs. Crazy anymore. It’s Common Sense vs. COMMUNISM.”

How ‘bout Texas Senator Ted Cruz, aka He-Who-Wants-So-Badly-To-Be-President-That-He-Grew-A-Beard:

"They're crazy enough, yes, they want to cancel Thanksgiving, they want to cancel Christmas. Look, these communists hate America. They hate capitalism. [Abdul] El-Sayed is also an Islamist, as is [Zorhand] Mamdani. You see the green-red convergence, where the communists and the Islamists, they want sharia law, they hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate capitalism, they hate America." (Senator Cruz speaking with Jesse Watters, Fox News Primetime, August 4, 2026)

In the weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, politicos will do their unique versions of a piranha feeding frenzy targeting Rochester Hills, Michigan born epidemiologist Dr. Abdulraham Mohamed El-Say and New York City’s Zohran Kwame Mandani, the Uganda-born son of Indian parents who came to the United States when he was seven years old and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. 

At Bronx Science high school, Mandani founded NYC’s first-ever public-school cricket team and during his senior year served as captain of the soccer team. During his senior year at Bloomfield Hills (Michigan) Andover High School, Abdul El-Sayed captained the football, wrestling and lacrosse teams. Ya just can’t get more “All-American teenage boy” than that!

[EDITORS’ QUESTION: Do those histories make Mandani and El-Sayed any less American than Croatia-born Georgia Bulldog halfback and 1942 Heisman Trophy winner Frank Sinkovic? (His Americanized surname was Sinkwich.) 

Frank Sinkwich

Or 

• Trinidad and Tobago-born Kerron Stephon Clement who won three Olympic medals for the United States (2008 - Beijing gold in 4 x 400 relay and silver in 400 meters; and gold in the 2026 Rio de Janeiro Olympics 400-meter hurdles,)

Kerron Clement

• Kenya-born Paul Chelimo who a silver medal in the 5,000 meter at the 2026 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and bronze at the 2020 Tokyo games in the 5,000 meter  

• Danell Leyva, who defected from Cuba and won a bronze medal in individual all-around gymnastics at the 2012 London Olympics and silver medals in parallel bars and horizontal bar at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics  

• Germany-born Steffen Peters who won a silver medal in team dressage at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro in team dressage, and bronze at the 1996 Atlanta games in team dressage.

• Australia-born Phillip Dutton, who won an Olympic team gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in dressage; team gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and individual bronze at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games in dressage.

• Poland-born Dagmara Wozniak, who was part of the bronze medal winning team in Saber Fencing at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics 

• Canada-born to Nigerian parents Foluke Akinradewo who won a team gold medal in indoor volleyball in the Tokyo 2020 games, team silver in London in 2012, and team bronze in Rio in 2016 

Foluke Akinradewo

How about the 2025-2026 National Basketball Association season that featured 135 international players – 23% of the league – including

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City Thunder, Canada)

• Nikola Jokic (Denver Nuggets, Serbia)

• Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks, Greece)

• Luka Doncic (Los Angeles Lakers, Slovenia)

• Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio Spurs, France)

Or the 125 Major League Baseball players (about 26% of the League) on Opening Day 2026 rosters who were not U.S. citizens. For those who forget that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, 14 MLB players are from that island territory. On Opening Day 93 players were from the Dominican Republic, 60 from Venezuela, 20 from Cuba, 19 from Canada, and 14 from Japan. 

”They want to cancel Christmas.”

Here’s a new idea for all the christian nationalists. [EDITORS’ NOTE: We can’t even continue moving our fingers across the keyboard without admitting this is “pure Chiroptera guano crazy.”]

Unlike Senator Cancun Ted with his Princeton bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Harvard, we’re just simple priests with Master of Divinity degrees and Master’s or doctoral degrees in counseling and psychology.

Yet even we know they can’t “outlaw” Christmas and Thanksgiving without majority votes in both houses of the Congress of the United States and the signature of the president. 

Someone, anyone please tell the senator and anyone who might mistake a senator’s declaration for dogma that those famous foreign invaders – the Puritans and Pilgrims – hated Christmas. They considered it unbiblical – there’s no mention of December 25 in the New Testament. In fact, Christmas was actually banned in the colonies in 1695 and caroling and carousing – holiday merry-making - was a crime punishable by a five-shilling fine. 

Historian Bruce C. Daniels, author of Puritans at Play, noted that in 1620, the Pilgrims first December 25 in the New World was spent working in the fields – “a contemptuous way of showing that Christmas meant nothing.”

In 1621, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford scolded some non-Pilgrim sailors who attempted a small holiday celebration “Your conscience may not let you work on Christmas, but my conscience cannot let you play while everybody else is out working.” Businesses and public schools were in sessions on Christmas for more than two centuries. Christmas was reestablished [EDITORS’ QUESTION: Can Christmas be disestablished and reestablished?] in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1681.

In the 1739 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin differed from stiff-necked Pilgrims and Puritans: “O blessed Season! Loved by Saints and Sinners / For long Devotions, or for longer Dinners.”

In 1921, the infamous antisemite Henry Ford wrote “The whole record of the Jewish opposition to Christmas… shows the venom and directness of [a Jewish] attack.” At the time, Jewish leaders in New York City and other American cities were objecting to in-school Christmas “celebrations” at which Jewish students were required to participate in singing Christmas carols honoring the Baby Jesus and referring to the Infant as “Savior.” [See: The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906: Antisemitism and the Battle over Christianity in the Public Schools, Scott D. Seligman, 2025]

A 1959 ultra-right wing John Birch Society pamphlet – “There Goes Christmas” -screamed “One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas.” 

Beginning in 1999, British-born Peter Brimelow, who was naturalized in 1994, began a campaign to spotlight anti-Christmas offenders by attacking the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because it hosted “A Celebration of Holiday traditions” event. The following year Brimelow, founder of the website VDARE, an anti-immigration site associated with white supremacy and white nationalism, attacked Amazon.com for assaulting customers with the more universal “Happy Holidays!” greeting. (In 2003, Brimelow and his VDare.com site were classified as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for providing a platform for white nationalist viewpoints.  [Ironically, now the SPLC is being attacked by the current administration and right-wing commentators for being too liberal and anti-American.]

Writing on Salon.com in 2005, Michelle Goldberg (“How the secular humanist grinch didn’t steal Christmas,” Salon.com, November 21, 2005) observed:

“There is no war on Santa. What there is, rather, is the burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, exaggerated anecdotes and increasingly organized hostility to the American Civil Liberties Union.” 

After a very long yawn, we’re announcing, “Folks, nobody’s taking away Thanksgiving or Christmas because, if you know anything about American Christmas history, you know that 

The first four congressionally designated federal holidays were created in 1870, when Congress granted paid time off to federal workers in the District of Columbia for New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. In 1880, George Washington’s Birthday was included. In 1885, Congress extended holiday coverage for some holidays to all federal employees. Although Thanksgiving Day was included in the first holiday bill of 1870, it was not until 1941 that Congress specifically designated the fourth Thursday of November as the official date. (“Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices,” Congressional Research Service, July 1, 2021)

Sponsored by Representative Burton Chauncey Cook of Illinois, H.R. 2224 was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on June 28, 1870 and made specific reference to “December 25th… commonly called Christmas Day.”

Dear Lord, if they can’t get it right about Christmas and Thanksgiving, why should we believe them about the dangers of all those unnamed and unidentified “communists” who are going to blow-up Mount Rushmore?

We’re left wondering: To whom are these politicians appealing with their fear-driving tactics. Here’s a possible answer:

Jason Selvc is half of the comedy duo The Good Liars, focusing on infiltrating conservative rallies and campaign events to interact with, interview, and troll politicians and their supporters. In a recent Instagram reel, Selvig asked a Donald Trump supporter, “What’s Donald Trump’s greatest accomplishment in his first year and a half?” Here’s the transcript (‘cause we can’t make this up) and the link: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1807004833991289

Selvic: What’s Donald Trump’s greatest accomplishment in his first year and a half?

Responder: Trump’s done a lot of things. Number One. A lot of people don’t realize: He got our country back, because we’ve been under the reign of Great Britain the last 125 years. They destroyed the evidence.

Selvic: What?  Wait. We’ve been under the reign of Great Britian for the last 125 years?

Responder: [King] Charles come here. He thought that he was going to manipulate Donald Trump. And Trump went along with him ‘cause that’s who he is. But that’s what the 250 years was all about. It’s true. It’s true… (Interrupted by Selvic to question)

Selvic: Wait a second. Sorry, so we’ve been under control for the last 125 years by Great Britain, even though we’ve got the strongest army in the world and all that stuff?

Responder: It’s true. The truth is…

Selvic: Where did you see this? Where did you see this? 

Responder: You’re just gonna to have to research just like I did. You’re gonna have to…

To quote the famous closing line of Looney Tunes cartoons, “That’s all, folks!”