Merry Christmas from POWIP
Two takes on the nativity (Click to enlarge)
I’d like to be among the first to wish all the POWIP readers and my fellow authors a Merry Christmas. I sincerely hope that all enjoy basking in the warm light of family, friends, good cheer, and maybe a few drinks, hallmarks that are the real highlights of the holiday season. And regardless of your religious disposition, whether you realize it or not, in coming together in love and fellowship all are practicing one of the most important maxims of the man who’s name is imbedded in this holiday; to love others as you would love yourself.
Looks cozy, eh? (Click to enlarge)
Regardless of any material things you may soon recieve, always remember that the most important gifts are all of the skills, talents, and abilities that each of us have been graced with; as well as the opportunities we have to use them to serve others and enhance the world.
God bless you all this Christmas. May He grace with the love each of you so deserve, regardless of the conduit He may use. May He grant you the opportunity to be a blessing to someone, just as He will send folks into each of our lives who will be a blessing to us. May He watch over all who are traveling, and especially those in far flung, and possibly hostile places, who are unable to travel to share this holiday with their loved ones. And, may He continue to bless the United States of America.
God Bless us, everyone! (click to enlarge)
Now, what are you doing reading this anyway?!? Turn off the computer and spend some time in the bosom of your loving families, enjoying the warmth of good times and tidings with those you love...
Many thanks to Dan and Enoch for their fellowship and for allowing me to join them here at POWIP. And my most heartfelt good wishes and a hearty Merry Christmas to all!
Open Invitation to Thor
to write a post on the benefits of the historic, unprecedented health care legislation, and any other successes of the Obama administration.
(via SarahW)
This is the legislative equivalent of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
How Climate Fascists Silenced the Heretics
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
The Medieval Warm Period disappeared, as did criticism of the global warming orthodoxy. With the release of the Climategate Emails, the disappearing trick has been exposed. The glorious Medieval Warm Period will remain in the history books, perhaps with an asterisk to describe how a band of zealots once tried to make it disappear.
Meanwhile, a New York musician is persecuted for running his own Cap & Trade scheme:
The East Village resident, who is a member of the Doo-Wop band called "The Cadillacs," is scheduled to be arraigned today on second-degree grand larceny charges that could put him behind bars for 15 years, according to the tabloid. "Nobody looked to see that the receipts came from a liquor store," said DA Robert Morgenthau.
And One More Thing: I Got A Pink Slip, Daddy
When 2010 rolls around, and it's time to clean the Congressional stables (Phase I), if you should have any twinges of misplaced compassion, please keep this episode in mind: on December 23, Kenneth Gladney's brother Keith is fired from his position as an Animal Control Officer in St. Louis.
3rd quarter GDP numbers revised downward again
Not surprisingly, so too were Mr. Obama's poll numbers!
At the end of October, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that third quarter GDP had grown at an annualized rate of 3.5%. Of course, the Obama administration hailed the news as a clear cut sign that the recession was over, and that happy days were here again. One month later, when the numbers were revised down to 2.8%, they still heralded the sign of prosperity to come, even in the face of criticisms over how they could possible have missed the mark so much. Today came the stunning news of another downward revision, based on a third pass of the data, to an annualized growth rate of 2.2%. The overall figure was driven lower in just about every sector analyzed, but was significantly effected by revision in business investment and inventory liquidation. Even the oracles at Goldman Sachs didn't expect to see it revised this much lower.
Marla Singer and some of the other folks over at Zero Hedge, people that know infinitely more than any erstwhile financial geniuses in our audience,  point out that, on it's face, revisions this large should remind us of 3 important things:
1.) The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the United States Department of Commerce has ceased to be (if it ever was) a reliable outlet for economic data. (Be this the result of misfeasance or malfeasance depends on the reader's propensity to credit conspiracy theory).
2.) That what passes for the professional prognosticator class these days is pathologically incapable of realistic appraisal.
3.) That the largest single expression of a Keynesian "injection" in the history of Keynesians or injections (or the planet) struggled to create even the most anemic growth. Net the double counting of stimulus funds it seems difficult to imagine even a remotely encouraging (or positive) "growth" figure could be tortured out of the economic realities that would be so plain if one but looked out the window to forecast them.
If it isn't clear to everyone by this time that the United States remains firmly in the grips of a massive "shadow recession," then we can only credit this ignorance with some unshakable and deeply rooted form of denial or a seriously reckless case of willful blindness. Either way, we would like to commend the current powers that be for their tour de force performance in establishing themselves firmly both as the most masterful of bullshit artists to occupy the beltway (and that's saying something) and simply the most economically inept (and expensive) team ever to hold national office. The risk adjusted returns on this particular ruling clique would make the pre-dollarization Zimbabwe carry trade look attractive.
[emphasis-ed.]
Wow. That's pretty strong stuff, but justified I'd have to say. Cap'n Ed Morrisey over at Hot Air thinks that Congress should look into this:
The third-quarter growth looks a lot more anemic than advertised by the Obama administration, especially when one considers the gimmicks that temporarily boosted its performance. Most troubling is Commerce’s poor performance in analyzing economic conditions. If they’re so incompetent as to miss this figure by 37% (1.3 from 3.5 is slightly over 37%), then clearly they need some fresh talent. If they got pressured into stating overly cheerful numbers, it’s something else entirely. That would be something Congress should investigate … if we had an independent Congress at all.
Yeah, if they weren't doing important stuff like...Investigating the BCS, or trying to ram Obamacare down the throats of a nation that clearly doesn't want to take that medicine. Maybe they're just intellectually incurious !
Originally, the cash-for-clunkers and first time homebuyers program was estimated to have counted for half of the GDP increase, around 1.75%.   Considering that the increases in consumer spending, a metric driven largely by the two government programs mentioned previously,  was only reduced by one-tenth of one percent, from 2.9 to 2.8 %, it is safe to accept the estimate that 1.5% of the GDP increase can be attributed to the two incentive programs. And, so it's also probably safe to say that minus any government stimulus, the economy would be flat-at best. Wouldn't it have been better then to not have saddled ourselves with the additional trillion dollars, principle and interest, that the stimulus cost? And isn't it even more ridiculous then to be actually talking seriously about a second stimulus?
Remember when actual growth numbers under Boooooooooosh! were disparaged as a "jobless recovery"? Do you think there could be any more of a jobless recovery than we have now? Do you think that will get any better as the winter sets in? Or as the taxes associated with Obamacare commence (God forbid)? Now that he's taken ownership of the economy, you'd think the President would be more concerned with employment rising than the sea levels rising...
And that brings us to the latest update from the department of hope-n-change. It seems that between the public percieving the administrations determination to ram Obamacare down their throats, regardless of their wishes, the astronomical increase in government spending, Obama's recent and risible "I'm a defecit hawk, yo" pablum, and his foreign policy follies that his public approval ranking are also revising sharply downward. Rasmussen marks Obama's Presidential approval rating at a staggering -21. And, perhaps more importantly, the same poll also provides the inconvenient truth that for the first time more Americans strongly disapprove of the Presidents performance than those who at least somewhat approve. As Ace snarks, this certainly must translate into a solid B+ ...
Sounds to me like he's on the next train to Boooooooosh!-ville. Or as the old blues singers exclaim, he's "Goin' down".
Who knew that so many Americans could suddenly become such horrible RAAAAAAAAAACISTS!
(Image courtesy of olbroad.com )
Obamacare Senate vote “incentives”: benevolence or bribery
A Trio of Trifling Twits
Virtuous or vogorish? I'll let you make the call, but any fair assessment will have to wait until Lord Reid allows us plebeians, and his fellow Senators to, you know, actually see the bill being voted on.Â
Still, some of the details of the compromises payoffs are out there already, and Cap'n Ed features a list of them:
Recall the moments in 2008 when Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama campaigned on the platform of — must … control … gag … reflex — “Honest Leadership, Open Government� This picture should jog your memories, and your own gag reflexes, especially that sanctimonious pose by Reid. The trio have managed to make themselves either satirists of the highest order or influence peddlers of the lowest while struggling to pass the second item on their legislative agenda.
It seems to me that if ObamaCare really reformed the process, we wouldn’t need all of these exceptions to its rules. After all, it’s supposed to “bend the cost curve downward†for everyone. If it does that, then why does Hawaii need a DSH extension? Why does Connecticut need exemptions for its hospitals and a $100 million grant, if we’re leveling the playing field?
Â
Cap'n Ed makes a great point in that last paragraph. Make sure you read the entire piece to get an idea of the magnitude of coin dropped on select members of the most ethical party-EVAR!,  enough that it caused them to see Obamacare in a whole new light. I won't invoke the old joke about prostitutes and prices, but it seems that the Senators detailed have revealed how much their individual ethoses (ethoi, ethe?) are worth.
Â
Some though, like Tom Harkin, are more up-front about it. He didn't need a bribe, because the way he sees it he's part of a putsch that is creating a whole new category of rights in America:
Harkin dismissed deals dubbed vote-buying by GOP senators as "small stuff" that distracted Americans from the primary focus of the overhaul bill. "We have to keep our eyes on what we're trying to do here. We're trying to cross a demarcation line," Harkin told "Early Show" co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. "On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we'll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans."
Imagine if you can...Creating a whole new class of constitutional "rights",but without all of the messy business of actually amending the constitution. What progress! And all it took was a few bucks inserted in the correct vest pockets. At ACE's site Slublog points out Harkin's particular flavor of hypocrisy by quoting him chastizing Boooooooosh! in 2004:
"The President must stop gambling with taxpayers' money and get the country back on the path of fiscal sanity."
Â
I wonder what's changed since then. Oh, that's right, one of his guys is the President now. Now that's integrity my friends...
Â
But, it's Christmas after all and I should be more charitable, and less suspicious. So, I'll just characterize this instead as the cost to fall on their sword, so to speak, in the next election; because according to Quinnipiac and Rasmussen the majority of the public oppose this abomination of a bill-and oppose the public funding of abortion by a 3 to 1 ratio! In fact, according to Scotty Ras', just 34% believe that passing this bill would be better than doing NOTHING! The President and the congressional Democrats are counting on the public having a short memory at the polls next year, a phenomenon they generally count on. It's up to all of us to keep the presure on our Representatives and Senators, call them today and every day until the Obamacare vote is actually taken. Tell them to vote NO!; and if you want, remind them that your vote, ergo-their job, depends on how they vote on this bill. Help to bring OPERATION WATERLOO to a successful conclusion.
In any case, during the coming election season prior to the 2010 vote, you need to remind everyone you talk with to hold these people accountable. Remember all the grand promises they made, and how they violated them all to drag Obamacare across the finish line; that they traded all of their principles for a political victory. Those who feel that they have the latitude to impose what they feel is "best for us", as opposed to executing our will, must be treated like the unprincipled hacks that they are and fired-by rejecting them at the ballot box next year if they impose this legislation, that is opposed by the majority of the public, on to all. Remember their 2008 mantra, and make them pay for resorting to disingenuous sloganeering.
Ethics!, Leadership!,Judgement!,Transparency!
O!
(H/T Cap'n Ed)
The Silence of the Yams
Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl. Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.
....It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive. Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.
There’s a saint for that…
For one of the Catholic co-bloggers, my Catholic content has been woefully low [mea culpa, mea maxima culpa].
Watching my daughter's Latin lesson this morning [we were reciting the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabbaoth...], and fretting over that rough beast slouching towards the Senate to be born, I remembered that of course we have a saint to appeal to in our time of need.
St. Jude, Hope of the Hopeless, pray for us.
Yes, there are ways to undo the damage without heavenly recourse, but I figure it couldn't hurt. Also, remembering what happened to actual martyrs is quite helpful in perspective adjustment. Yes, we may find that we can't get the medical treatment we desire due to rationing and bureaucracy, but at least it's not being put to death by saw.
This Is Why I Decided To Keep It As An Avocation . . .
Ex-husband claims porn star didn't care for sex.
Most tautological study ever: Having Children Makes You More Like Your Parents
I think Michael Steele just lost his job.
Scott at Power Line on aging liberal misanthrope Garrison Kvetcher
Please do not get me anything for Christmas.
Congresscritters & Mr. President:
I, Enoch_Root, hereby relieve you of any ounce of obligation you may feel to get me anything this year for Christmas. In fact, I beseech all of you in the most emphatic manner possible not to get me anything for Christmas.
Now, in regard to Goodwill Toward Men and all - for who could question your motives when they are surely as pure as the driven snow? - you may feel somewhat obligated to get me something. Even a little something. But I do not need for anything you can gift me.
So, once again, I implore you not to get me - or for that matter any of my family - anything at all.
I hope you can respect the fact that we are of modest means. Simple people. And I fear that should you deliver another of your most generous gifts to our front door that we will be reminded more acutely of that which we really long for... that precious commodity in such short supply today.
Please - should your most generous and purest of hearts think to prevail over reason this year - I hereby beg of you... beg of you... to show some modicum of respect for my wishes. Please do not get anything for us this year.
I know it will be very difficult for you, oh most generous gods among men, to refrain from doing so. Especially given the season. But I know you can do it. I know you can!
No?
Ok, then. If I cannot appeal to you emotionally, as a head of household... man to man, so to speak... if you cannot abide my simple request out of hand, then I should have to appeal to your sense of practicality.
I really don't want to come off as an ingrate. So, please take this in the manner it is intended:
The last gift you gave us earlier this year was incredibly, incredibly expensive. A little over the top, some might say. And while it might have seemed like a very generous thing to do for us Little People, like me and mine, it has really sort of caused a wee bit of consternation. For one thing, we now feel obligated to reciprocate. This will be a difficult thing for us to do. For another thing, it has arrived in pieces. And while it pains me to say so (as it is a bit embarrassing mentioning this to the seat of such benevolence) I think you should know that it came without any discernible instructions. The few pages that did come in the 4th and 15th boxes, respectively, seem to be written in what appears to this ignorant and poorly-educated sinner as Chinese (Mandarin?). Additionally, try as we might, neither me nor my son (who is a Lego Maniac), nor any of my less-than astute neighbors has been able to make ends meet (so to speak). The diagrams, where there are diagrams, must have been created by a committee of some sort, in that they refer to pieces that we do not have at present. We neither know what a "dikfer" or a "henway" is, for example. And the bits that are to accompany the larger pieces (which btw we are unable to conjoin - for the tubing seems to be of myriad, incompatible diameters) seem also to be largely missing. And given that we don't even know what it is we are building... again, all due respect to you and yours, we are ignorant peasants... we are sure that when we figure out what goes where and the rest of the pieces and boxes arrive - or when all of the boxes arrive (btw, how many should we expect? also, are they all coming COD?) and we figure out what parts go where - we are sure at this time it will be amazingly large and no doubt glorious to behold - of a scale heretofore never known by Man! But as of yet, this previous gift so benevolently issued us remains strewn, sad to say, all across our neighborhood. We just ran out of space in our garages... and our lawns are crowded with bubble wrap... and so the neighborhood home association has been very stimulated of late. We even have a joke about the Stimulus Package that I shouldn't mention here - as it would be ungracious of me to do so. Let's just say we are all excited to have this thing put together and completely assembled so we can return to our little lives knowing we have executed your will and lived up to all of your expectations.
So, please, please, please... do not feel obligated to get us anything for Christmas. I promise, we won't think less of you! Plus, with how amazingly generous you have been it is likely whatever you are thinking of getting us won't fit under the Christmas Tree (much less through the front door)! LOL!!!
Merry Christmas,
Enoch and Family.
ps. I have to ask... what kind of credit line do you have up there? I mean, really, it's like you robbed a bank or something! :)Â I guess that's the benefit of living in the big city! Shucks, out here in the hinterlands we can't even imagine the Milk and Honey out East!
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