Has everyone recovered from Festivus celebrations? Just like Seinfeld, Festivus is about little more than the everyday lives of ordinary people. Festivus is an alternative to the pressures of the Christmas holiday season and a time to air grievances. Some people celebrate with Festivus dinner, the aluminum pole, and note Festivus miracles. It all happens on December 23. I’m a day late this year but I wanted to mention a couple of things.

Senator Rand Paul celebrates Festivus each year by spotlighting government waste. This is his tenth year of celebrating with an online tribute to the federal government wasting your tax dollars. One area of taxpayer abuse that particularly angers me is the wasteful government animal experiments first exposed by White Coat Waste Project (WCW). We have written about White Coat Waste Project here at Hot Air many times because the non-profit conducts oversight over the NIH’s animal research projects, many of which sound horrifying to those of us who love animals. For example, I wrote about kittens being tested each year for toxoplasmosis and then killed because they are deemed unadoptable. It’s 100 kittens, to be specific and they are forced to eat toxoplasma-infected raw meat by the Department of Agriculture.

This year there is $689,222 to study romance between parrots. What? There is $3M for NIH to watch hamsters fight on steroids. White Coat Waste Project once again is the first to expose federal waste in animal testing, such as $2.3M wasted by NIH to inject beagle puppies with cocaine, and $1.1M wasted by NIH to train mice to binge drink alcohol in the dark at a lab in Chile. Also funded is studying ants’ social life, and using mice to study racial aggression. In a speech on the Senate floor this week, Sen. Paul criticized the NIH’s puppy cocaine tests.

Senator Paul has worked with WCW for years, holding bureaucrats accountable for wasteful spending on animal experiments at home and abroad, including Fauci’s beagle tests in the US and Tunisia. Sen. Paul is working with WCW to defund the Wuhan lab and dangerous gain-of-function experiments. The organization awarded him with recognition as a Waste Warrior awardee in 2017 and 2021.

A statement was released from Jennifer Imhoff, Communications Associate, White Coat Waste Project.

“Whether its injecting beagles with cocaine, getting mice drunk in foreign labs, staging hamster fight clubs, or addicting fish to nicotine, Senator Rand Paul’s annual Festivus Report provides a reliable roadmap of reckless government spending. A growing majority of taxpayers—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike—oppose Uncle Sam’s wasteful animal experiments and don’t want to be forced to pay for them. From #BeagleGate to the Wuhan lab, we’re proud to work with Sen. Paul on our bipartisan efforts to find, expose and defund $20 billion in wasteful taxpayer-funded animal experiments in the U.S. and in hundreds of labs abroad. Stop the money. Stop the madness!”

I’m there with Senator Paul in his disgust with the government waste on animal experiments. He’s to be commended for criticizing outrageous government spending on behalf of the American taxpayers. If only more senators were concerned about better uses of taxpayer money…

You’ve can probably tell from last week – I’ve got a LOT OF PROBLEMS with Washington, politics, and the one-party system that wants to keep us in endless wars and bankrupt us. pic.twitter.com/OgkwTdMIpV

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 23, 2022

You can read the whole thread on his Twitter account.

My grievance this Festivus was about Joe Biden’s end-of-the-year speech to the American people. His holiday message was heavy on unity and putting “poison[ous]” politics aside. What a joke. Joe Biden, as much if not more, than anyone else has played a part in the divisive discourse in our country. When he campaigned for his current job, he trashed his opponent, Trump, as you would expect and he slammed Trump voters. Since taking office, he has gone to the gutter many times in trashing Republicans and Republican voters. He said he hopes the holidays will “drain the poison that has infected our politics and set us against one another.” He went on to say he hopes everyone realizes the unifying attributes of being an American.

What he did was to put the holiday season into political terms. Most American families and their celebrations are not centered around politics. No one is thinking about what unites us as Americans. We’re celebrating being with loved ones and enjoying time together.

The irony is strong with Biden’s phony-baloney message. What about when he launched his “mega MAGA Republicans” attack, a term he made up and proudly took credit for against Republicans? What about when he campaigned in Georgia and called that state’s election law reforms Jim Crow 2.0? He was inciting racial discord with that little gem. Lots of Democrats started using that talking point against the Republican-led state. More than once Joe Biden has claimed that mega MAGA Republicans are semi-fascists and destroying democracy.

Joe Biden devoted a whole speech to criticizing Republicans and specifically, “MAGA Republicans.” Remember the dramatic red-colored backdrop and the use of Marines in formal uniforms in the background? It was a dark speech and was shown on television with much hype from the networks. It was ridiculous.

Sleepy Joe is a lifelong politician who is a hyper-partisan president. He likes to make speeches about unity and healing the nation, yet he has done the opposite. Listen to his words but watch his actions. I used to think Barack Obama was the most divisive president in my lifetime but no, it’s Joe Biden. No one should fall for his rhetoric about unity, especially during the holidays. It’s a slap in the face to Republicans.