A Dave Barry Two-fer: Where to Christmas Shop and What to Shop For

Dave Barry on where to shop; Christmas Shopping; a Survivor's Guide  "These days, people say "Season's Greetings," which, when you think about it, means nothing. It's like walking up to somebody and saying "Appropriate Remark" in a loud, cheerful voice. But "Season's Greetings" is safer, because it does not refer to any actual religion. Some day, I imagine, even "Season's Greetings" will be considered too religious, and we'll celebrate the Holiday Season by saying "Have a nice day." "

And when you get into the mall, this will tell you what to buy. Or maybe not: Dave Barry’s Gift Guide   "But my point is, if you’re just getting started now on your holiday shopping, you have already missed the mall bargains. That’s the bad news. The good news is, you’re still in time for our annual Holiday Gift Guide, which features a collection of unique gift items that you are not going to find at the mall, because not even holiday mall shoppers are desperate enough to buy these items."

Let's begin, shall we?

‘ON THE GO’ CHARACTER INFLATABLE POTTY SEAT  "...you can simply inflate this potty seat, using your mouth, then put it on the toilet seat for your child to sit on. Then you simply deflate the potty seat and burn it, because you’re not going to want to keep it around, let alone reinflate it."

‘THE WOOFER’ WEARABLE SOUND SYSTEM FOR DOGS  "If there’s one thing that everybody agrees on, it’s that dogs do not make enough noise."...
NFL PRO TOASTER "But if you want to be a REAL fan, you need to show your support in the most meaningful way of all: with toast."
MEGA PLUMBER ACTION HERO "...we’re sure he’ll provide hours of quality entertainment for any child who enjoys fantasizing — and what child does not? — about unclogging drains."
POTATO-CHIP-GRABBING HAND "Is there anything worse than getting your hands greasy from using them to manually pick up potato chips?"....
ARTIFICIAL GRASS FLIP-FLOPS  "These are the official flip-flops of the United States Supreme Court."

TRAILER-HITCH-MOUNTED STRIPPER POLE "The big problem with conventional stripper poles is that they are attached to strip clubs, which are large heavy buildings and therefore difficult to transport."

 

SQUIRREL AND CHICKEN MASKS  "So you appear to be an attentive, interested, meeting-attending squirrel or chicken, no matter what you are actually doing with your face in there."

TOILET TATTOOS  "If you’re like most people, it has been a long time since you remarked: “That is certainly a visually interesting toilet seat!”"

INFLATABLE UNICORN HORNS FOR CATS  "Do you have cat lovers on your holiday list? If so, here’s a gift that is sure to make them say: “What?” "

EMERGENCY UNDERPANTS DISPENSER "This year, give the precious gift of peace of mind. Give emergency underpants"

We wish you a blessed Christmas, full of all the meaning it was meant to have

What is "Peace on earth, good will toward men"?  "On earth peace - That is, the gospel will bring peace. The Saviour was predicted as the Prince of peace, Isaiah 9:6. The world is at war with God; sinners are at enmity against their Maker and against each other. There is no peace to the wicked. But Jesus came to make peace; and this he did,

1. By reconciling the world to God by His atonement.
2. By bringing the sinner to a state of peace with his Maker; inducing him to lay down the weapons of rebellion and to submit his soul to God, thus giving him the peace which passeth all understanding.
3. By diffusing in the heart universal good-will to people - "disposing," people to lay aside their differences, to love one another, to seek each other's welfare, and to banish envy, malice, pride, lust, passion, and covetousness - in all ages the most fruitful causes of difference among people. And....

Acclamations of the Birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-20)

Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men?  "It was to be His sacrificial death and resurrection from the dead that would restore fellowship between man with their Creator and establish an EVERLASTING peace between the two parties."

A very special wish goes out to those who have suffered devastating loss recently, such as families of soldiers killed in battle and  those who feel the loss of our children in the Newtown school murders.
From Probe Ministries; Is Christmas Necessary?
"There is a historical/theological necessity that cannot be altered. If God had not become flesh, there would be no hope for mankind. There would be no birth of Christ, no death on our behalf, and no resurrection from death to life. Praise God He did humble Himself and become as a man!"

The Newtown murderer is, to me, a modern-day Herod.

British hospital apologizes to familes for appallingly negligent care

The UK; our role model for government-run healthcare:
Rick Moran  "It apparently got so bad at this hospital that doctors began to prescribe water because the staff was forgetting to give patients enough to keep them hydrated.
"It's not lack of compassion but rather simple incompetence that is the problem at this hospital. It runs from top to bottom; an obvious lack of supervision all the way to ignorant, lazy nurses.
"Is this what we have to look forward to with Obamacare? Eventually, I'm afraid that there are going to be similar cases in this country after government health care really gets rolling."

DREAMING OF A GREEN CHRISTMAS

http://terrellaftermath.com/

The Pencil: a lesson in economics and market forces

Heritage  "How does a pencil represent what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand” of the free market? A new film by the Competitive Enterprise Institute has adapted Leonard Read’s famous essay, “I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read,” to answer this very question."

"I, Pencil: The Movie shows that “if we can leave these creative energies uninhibited, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.”
"To see I, Pencil: The Movie with extended commentary, click here. 

That anti-fracking movie, "Promised Land", Financed by Arab oil country

Matt Damon fracking film backed by big OPEC member  "Critics contend the UAE is trying to drum up opposition to more U.S. oil production, which could compete with its crude exports.

...."Either way, the revelation could be a setback for a film on an important U.S. energy topic, and will only give ammunition to critics who say the movie was biased from the get-go."
So just WHAT is fracking?

WSJ; Jenkins: Good Will Fracking Hollywood wimps out and makes a formula film.
"After a decade of war and half-century of costly military involvement in the Middle East, the United States stands on the brink of "energy independence." Then a shadowy Canadian billionaire coupled with Mideast oil interests sponsor a Hollywood propaganda movie aimed at luring Americans into throwing away the instrument of their deliverance: shale energy.
"They co-opt a name-brand Hollywood movie star to be the useful idiot of their nefarious plot. The movie is released a few days after Christmas, just in time for Oscar nominations in a diabolical scheme to influence a national debate over fracking.
"...typically stupid Hollywood plot, one that doubles down on the conventional "evil oil company" stereotype."
...."Which is very much like what ideological critics are saying about Mr. Damon's "Promised Land"—that the film's backers are an unholy alliance of green money and oil sheiks out to abort America's fracking windfall."     Emphasis added.

Useful Idiot Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Movie Financed by Oil-Rich Arab Nation
"A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/strips/pc/prickly_city.php3

From Business Insider; Movie That Blasts Fracking Was Partly Funded By The Government Of Abu Dhabi  "The Abu Dhabi and the UAE economies have been driven by profits from their respective oil reserves for decades. Hydraulic fracking, a relatively new process, involves drilling about a mile below the surface of the earth in order to release natural gas from rocks within the "fractures" created by the drills (here is a more in-depth look to how it works). More gas derived from fracking means that the United States might need to purchase less oil from OPEC states like the UAE — which produces 2.7 million barrels of oil a day."

"Another source of controversy surrounding Image Nation's funding of "Promised Land" has been the fact that the chairman of the board of Abu Dhabi Media, His Excellency Mohamed Mubarak Al Mazrouei, is also the undersecretary to the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince's Court. His boss, his highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, serves on the Supreme Petroleum Council of the Abu Dhabi National oil company, which is "the highest authority responsible for the petroleum affairs in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi." "

From Newsbusters:  (Emphasis mine, TD)

"As an OPEC nation with huge oil reserves, it is in UAE's best interest to do whatever it can to reduce the oil supply of its competitors ESPECIALLY America which just so happens to also be the world's largest energy consumer.

"An end to hydraulic fracturing in the United States would help accomplish this.  "Beyond this, as fracking promises to produce significant amounts of natural gas for the U.S., this will act to decrease the demand for petroleum products domestically and worldwide.
"For UAE, this would be doubly bad news as it is also the world's seventh largest producer of natural gas.
"As such, attempting to kill fracking in America by financing Damon's propaganda seems just what the doctor ordered."

Do not take all this lightly because, as we saw in the 2012 election, a steady diet of one-sided propaganda does make a big difference in the American electorate, as we can see here:

timesunion.com

Keep all this in mind about John Kerry for Secretary of State

canadafreepress

Ken Blackwell; Question John Kerry Long and Hard!  "Sen. John Kerry has a long and dubious record in foreign policy.
"In the 1970's, he testified against his fellow Vietnam War veterans before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He charged that they were violating the Geneva Conventions every day in Vietnam. Some POWs were outraged at Kerry's disloyal statements. They said they had been tortured by their Communist captors trying to force them to make such untrue statements.
"Worse, Kerry went to Paris in 1971. There, he met with North Vietnamese Communists. We need to see all his notes from those meetings. Any negotiation between a private U.S. citizen and a foreign power is illegal. It violates the Logan Act of 1798. Did Kerry demand of the North Vietnamese Communists that they abide by the Geneva Convention? Or is that only a demand he made of his fellow Americans?"....
No big deal; so far you've just described today's Democrat. It's what they are like.

From Freedom Outpost; Are Swift Boat Veterans Giving John Kerry A Pass On Secretary Nomination?  "I wrote previously about Swift Boat Veterans Founder John O’Neill’s claim that should Senator John Kerry received the nomination from Barack Obama that the group would resurface and protest his nomination. However, it appears from reports that there will not be an organized effort by the group to challenge Kerry’s nomination.
"Back in 2004 the group took on Kerry’s campaign for the White House and many believe it was effective enough to keep the Senator from gaining the chair of the Oval Office."
Hat tip to Tom Williams at Oregon Military Veterans, Family and Supporters

http://markhumphrys.com/election.04.kerry.html

Grotesque Obama eulogy for Sen. Inouye

It was all about Obama and little about the departed Senator
American Thinker    "Signs are accumulating that re-election has aggravated an already serious ego problem for Barack Obama. His eulogy for Senator Daniel Inouye yesterday shocked even some people favorably inclined toward the president, for its focus not on the departed, but on Barack Obama himself. Emily Yoffe of Slate - far from a conservative outlet -- wrote with disgust:

Someone needs to tell Barack Obama-it must get particularly confusing this time of year-that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who served in Congress for half a century representing Obama's birth state of Hawaii.

The Slate article quoted: Today We Are Gathered … To Hear More About Me  "President Obama was supposed to eulogize the memory of Sen. Daniel Inouye. Instead he told us about his favorite summer vacation."

Tax the Rich, The Critique

On Dec 6th, Tunnel Wall posted this article about a video narrated by Ed Asner: Calif. Teachers Union Releases Cartoon Video Featuring ‘The Rich’ Urinating on the Poor. Accompanying it was text that included these words by Prof. William Jacobsen , who blogs at Legal Insurrection :

When Soviet-style propaganda comes to America, it will be published by the California Federation of Teachers and narrated by Ed Asner
"The video is reminiscent of Soviet anti-capitalist propaganda cartoons, with gross caricatures of voracious rich people feeding off the poor:"

Now we have a critique of this video with point-by-point refutation of Mr. Asner's claims.
"Lee Doren presents a scene by scene critique of the controversial cartoon ‘Tax the Rich’ which was paid for by a California Teachers Union."

Spaghetti with Regulation Sauce; Restaurant owners work overtime to figure out Obamacare.

As usual, wondering fearfully what our government will do to us next.
Weekly Standard "One common misconception about the health care law is that employers could avoid the mandate entirely by replacing their full-time employees with a greater number of part-time employees. That’s not going to work. They would still face a mandate, although it would only apply to their full-time employees.

floppingaces.net/

"There’s a reason the law refers not to full-time employees but full-time equivalents. Under Obamacare full-time employees are those who work more than 120 hours per month. Two part-time employees who each work 60 hours in a month would be counted as an additional full-time worker in determining whether the business falls over or under the 50-employee divide. So an employer must sum all the hours his part-timers work over the course of a month and divide that total by 120 to determine how many “full-time equivalent” employees he has. The only real way to avoid the mandate, then, is to keep your business small."
...."If you’re a business close to the 50 full-time equivalent mark, a heavy summer season or a holiday rush could put you over the top.
"The mandate takes effect in 2014 but will be based on the prior 12 months. So starting in January 2013, owners will need to keep a close watch on their employees’ hours. At the end of the year, they’ll know their situation better."

http://obamacartoon.blogspot.com/2010/09/obamacare.html

But wait! There's more! Domino’s Founder Files Lawsuit Challenging HHS Mandate  "Monaghan’s plight is a dramatic illustration of the coercive “incentives” built into Obamacare, which has concentrated broad powers in the hands of the federal government. This gross government overreach even extends to commandeering religious employers into directly paying for drugs and services that violate their faith despite conscientious objections."

I kinda like this sign...

Hey, it works in Israel.

Sometimes You Just Have To Do Something…

"In the meantime, I sympathize with liberals who say we need to do something right now…something like banning random types of firearms, for no particular reason. No, seriously–I get the fact that sometimes we need to do something, just to make a statement…to show that we care…even if what we do is only symbolic. I agree that this is such a time. So this morning, I joined the NRA."

From Power Line

New Study Finds Democrats Fully to Blame for Subprime Mortgage Crisis that Caused 2008 Financial Disaster

The Gateway Pundit  "In his early activist days, Barack Obama the community organizer sued banks to ease lending practices.

"State Sen. Barack Obama and Fr. Michael Pfleger led a protest against the payday loan industry demanding the State of Illinois to regulate loan businesses in January 2000. During his time as a community organizer Barack Obama led several protests against banks to make loans to high risk individuals."

Democrats and the media insist the Community Reinvestment Act, the anti-redlining law beefed up by President Clinton, had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis and recession.
But a new study by the respected National Bureau of Economic Research finds, “Yes, it did. We find that adherence to that act led to riskier lending by banks.”....More...

Hat tip to The Infidel Bloggers Alliance

For you low-information voters who re-elected Obama, here is a summary of this story:  Obama and other Democrats applied pressure on the mortgage industry. I believe charges of "racism" were leveled and the industry buckled, giving loans to people who went in knowing they could not pay for these.
 In spite of warnings from the Bush Administration, the housing industry collapsed, causing the US economy to fall into what is called "the Great Recession" at the end of the Bush Administration. This led to the mess that Obama has repeatedly said he "inherited". Obama has pushed this "inherited" excuse for over four years (accurately enough, save for who caused it), blaming it on President Bush, unfairly.
All this has been absorbed by the low-information electorate (watchers of The View,Oprah, People Magazine readers, Obamaphone recipients,and all TV shows into the late evening,  et al) who number about fifty million.
I'm not sure news people on the networks, CNN and MSNBC could be classified as "low-information", but as collaborators. Rather than being "low-information" people themselves, they helped create those low-information voters.
I believe it is accurate to say that President Bush inherited this economic mess from Barack Obama. Obama is now doubling down on these actions, making them even more draconian, so we can expect the next administration to inherit a big mess from all this. TD