Now that’s resistance:

Protests began to break out across Iran Thursday, beginning in small cities with a few hundred protestors and eventually ending up in the capital city of Tehran.

Not that you would know it by looking at American media outlets, who largely yawned and continued to cover fluffy, end-of-year feature stories even as it was reported that Iranian police had decided they could no longer arrest uncovered women, which some assumed was because too many had thrown off the hijab.

Do not blame our mainstreamers. They are so busy also with trumped-up Trump-Russia stories. They can’t do everything, you know.

State and local, that is.

Because of high property and sales taxes here, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation routinely ranks Illinois as imposing among the highest total state and local tax burdens nationwide. (The rankings always lag, but in the most recent, fiscal 2012, Illinois was fifth-highest.)

And the next politician who proposes raising taxes here will get an earful from taxpayers who realize that they alone will be stuck with the full impact. If they’re already paying $10,000 in property and income taxes, no politician can win their approval with that sweet promise of a fat federal deduction.

Which is because the new U.S. tax code says don’t even think about deducting those state and local taxes (SALT) above $10G — such as the Oak Park homeowner couple with a $22G annual bill on their house.,

No more fobbing that off on the other 49 states, as the Trib says, and quite a bit more heat on Illinois pols. Which some of us consider a very good thing.

. . . whose speech predicting his resignation was all about his being a defender of women, some senators are rethinking their support of his resignation. Not Sen. Gillibrand, however, who told a colleague he was entitled to due process but not her silence.

However, comments James Freeman:

It appears that the only ones entitled to Ms. Gillibrand’s silence were Bill and Hillary Clinton, who enjoyed Ms. Gillibrand’s enthusiastic support for more than a decade while they were politically useful. To stay, it seems that Mr. Franken will need to show how he too can be useful to the New York senator.

Come on. Can’t a girl pick and choose in these matters?

He’s a market maker in a sense.

Trump, that is, plus of course the tax bill hovering and considered about to land. Happy days here again?

Claims paid, claims a-coming?

Knew him for big mouth, never had him for a molester.

Less than a year since Trump took oath to as he put it make America great again. He was not kidding.

. . . if Trump fires extra-special prosecutor.

Good. Removes mask of supposed professionalism. Was a very thin mask anyway. Eric is bold fellow, right?

As an authoritarian, Trump is a flop. Authoritarians don’t reduce gummint control, they increase it.

They remember things.

Cardinal Bergoglio . . .  became Argentina’s most prominent churchman, and there is no shortage of accounts of him as he was seen inside and outside the Church.

Perhaps the most penetrating study of his personality was the one that was published by Omar Bello, El Verdadero Francisco (“ The Real Francis”), within a few months of his election as Pope.

It is worth mentioning that this book vanished from the book-shops with unaccountable speed and is now unobtainable, a fate suffered by some other publications that were not favourable to Pope Francis.

Omar Bello was a public-relations executive who in 2005 was engaged to launch a new Church television channel which President Menem had gifted to the archdiocese of Buenos Aires, and over eight years he was to work for the Archbishop and get to know him.

As a professional in the field himself, Bello was quick to detect in Cardinal Bergoglio an accomplished self-promoter, disguised behind an image of simplicity and austerity. Bello moved in the circles of the archiepiscopal staff and got to hear the many stories that circulated about their enigmatic superior.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 467-475). Kindle Edition.

Devious.

Probably the best-known of these is the one of Félix Bottazzi, an employee whom the Archbishop decided one day to dispense with, and he arranged his dismissal without showing his hand33.

Once he was out of the Curia, Mr Bottazzi sought an interview with Cardinal Bergoglio, who received him with friendly confusion: “But I knew nothing about it, my son. You surprise me …. What did they sack you for? Who did it?”

Mr Bottazzi did not get his job back, but Bergoglio presented him with a new car, and he went away convinced that the Cardinal was a saint, pushed by forces beyond his control and dominated by a circle of malicious subordinates.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 476-481). Kindle Edition.

What happened?

From Bello’s description, this way of dealing with people may have been as much temperamental as political; he quotes the account of a priest who worked for Bergoglio and thought him his friend: “He manipulated me for years …. The guy manipulates you with the affections. You think he’s your daddy and he strings you along.” 34 In this case there was no apparent practical purpose in the treatment dispensed.

Colonna, Marcantonio. The Dictator Pope (Kindle Locations 481-485). Kindle Edition.

Tricky fellow.