A Week Late: Dave Barry’s Gift Guide for your belated shopping

By Dave Barry in the Miami Herald  "The holidays are a wonderful time of year, but too often, in all the excitement and craziness, we forget the real “reason for the season.” The holidays are not about parties, or decorations, or Frosty the Snowperson.
Those things are fun, but they are not the true purpose of the holidays.
The true purpose of the holidays is to purchase consumer electronics."
....
Turkey Leg Air Freshener  "If you’ve ever been to Walt Disney World, you’ve probably seen large people lumbering around gnawing on turkey legs the size of yule logs and getting turkey grease all over themselves. No doubt your reaction, like that of most people, was: “I wish there was a way to make my car smell like those people!' ”....
....
Doorbell for Dogs   "The dog doorbell is mounted low enough for dogs to use it, which means it would also be a great gift for anybody who sometimes parties a little too hard and arrives home unable to walk erect."

 

Necktie Flask   "It’s perfect for work, but it’s also great for funerals, ballet recitals, jury duty, congressional hearings — any situation where you find yourself thinking: “I could sure go for 8 ounces of liquid.” And the beauty of it is, nobody will suspect a thing until you pass out facedown in a pool of your own fluids."

Chicken Diapers  "Our diapers fit comfortably and allow you to enjoy your birds in the house or car without worry!"
Next, Same thing; different name:

Chicken Brassiere  "A question that we have all asked ourselves is: "Does my chicken need a brassiere?" To answer that question, let's refer to the website of the company that sells the Birdy Bra:" ...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778627/chicken-brassiere.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778623/chicken-diapers.html#storylink=cpy

 

Cat Lady Action Figure  "Here’s a fun gift for that special child on your holiday list (we are using “special” in the sense of “strange”)."

 

Face Slimmer Mouthpiece  (Right) "This is the perfect holiday gift to give when you want to send the message: "Your face is fat." This Face Slimmer Exercise
Mouthpiece is made in Japan, a nation famous for being totally non-weird." ...

Hoodie Pillow Case  "How many times have you exclaimed: "Why do I have to purchase a hoodie and a pillowcase as two separate items? Why is there no product that combines these two things into one convenient package?' " ...

Perfect Polly   ... "These commercials feature people smiling radiantly and laughing with delight as the amazingly fake-looking Perfect Polly performs her repertoire: making a vaguely birdlike electronic sound; moving her head; moving her tail; moving her head again; moving her tail again; moving her head again; and just generally providing hours of fascinating entertainment to anybody — young or old — who has the IQ of kelp."

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778615/perfect-polly.html#storylink=cpy

Neck Air Cushion (Right) "We don't know about you, but when we have a medical problem, we do not "take chances" with our treatment. We go straight to one of the nation's best-known authorities on healthcare: the Harriet Carter mail-order gift catalog..."

Brain Games for Dogs.  ..."This book is a tremendous training tool. You give your dog a command — any command — and if it fails to obey immediately, you simply strike it with this book.
"No! That was a joke! Please do not write angry letters containing misspelled words to the editor." ...

Glace Luxury Ice  "Guess how much it costs, for a box of 10 cubes.
"Seventy-five dollars.
"That's right: SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. For ICE. So obviously this is a product aimed at real connoisseurs, with "connoisseur" defined as "a person with even less intelligence than the morons who buy Perfect Polly.' "

 Pet Monument  ... "This is a pet grave marker made of a scientific material
called "polyresin" that has been colored to look exactly like fake stone. It will stand over your deceased pet's final resting place, so that you will have a place to pay your respects, and other neighborhood pets will have a place upon which to make weewee." ...

Prism Glasses  ..."This means that when you put these glasses on, instead of seeing what's in front of you, you're actually looking straight down. This means you can watch television while lying flat on your back, which can be very handy." ...Or, better yet...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778680/prism-glasses.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778679/pet-monument.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/24/3778628/glace-luxury-ice.html#storylink=cpy

The sickness of MSNBC

Thomas Lifson: A deep sickness on race on MSNBC and CNN   "It used to be unacceptable for national news shows to broadcast race hatred as commentary. No longer. So extreme is the loathing of white Republicans that black commentators on two cable news channels have uttered patently ridiculous and shameful comments on a Romney family photo that shows the former presidential candidate with his black adoptive grandson on his knee. "

Lifson concludes: "Keiran Romney is a symbol of human love, but to these race mongers, he is nothing but a symbol of a racial divide that can never be breached, a child who deserves mockery because of who adopted him.
"They are sick and shameless.

MSNBC: “Conservatives Hate A Lot Of Women”…  "Dems love women, just ask Sarah Palin."
... "For nothing. They paid her nothing, and look what she got in exchange. They said, “We’re going to use your photo on some of the rollout.” I bet you under their hushed breath, they were like, “You’re going to be on the home page.” ...

MSNBC Panel Mocks Romney's Adopted Black Grandchild; Apologies Follow
"News One concluded: "Though Glenn’s apology is without a doubt sincere, the incident probably won’t die down until Harris-Perry addresses it on the air.' " ....
"A few minutes before this outburst, panelist Jamie Kilstein of “Citizen Radio” offered the typical take on MSNBC that all Republicans for all of American history have been racists:

“Can I just say, my newest pet peeve with the Republicans, I was watching MSNBC, – I’m practicing selling out, I have no money – I  was watching and they brought on, you know,  a white racist Republican, and Republicans ...Their like, biggest name-dropping thing, they always try to name drop Abraham Lincoln. They're like, ‘tell me why Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. It's like, Yo! If that's the last dude you have that wasn’t racist, from the Civil War, the one with the top hat who was also kind of racist, you are in a terrible position.”

Well said and, like, articulate.

Obama Nominates Racist Supporter of Cop-Killer to Head DOJ Civil Rights

Frontpage Magazine

 

"Obama’s nominee process involves finding the worst person on earth for that job or any job. It’s a process that never fails. In this case, he came up with Debo Adegbilem cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal’s lawyer and a supporter of discriminating against white students for reasons of race."

"President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division led the group that represents convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

....

"For a post-racial leader, Obama does seem to spend a lot of time catering to racists like Al Sharpton and employing racists like Debo Adegbile.
"Meanwhile here’s a little reminder of what Mumia Abu-Jamal, Debo Adegbile’s client, did."

Sarah Palin: MSNBC ‘despicable’

Lest you call Fox News the right's equivalent to the leftist MSNBC, I have never seen anything remotely like this episode on the former. Certainly, Harris-Perry apologized unequivocally for this segment, but her default position was to mock conservatives coarsely. TD

MSNBC uses Romney grandson in comedy segment

 

Politico   "Sarah Palin says MSNBC should ashamed of a “despicable” segment in which they mocked Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson. " “Leftist media hounds are not expressing an opinion with this attack; they are expressing a prejudice that would never be accepted if it came from anyone else but the lib[eral] media,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page in a post accompanying the photo of the Romney family. “This latest attack from the Left is despicable.”

Harris-Perry's apology tweets. Whatever happened to a face-to-face apology to go with the requisite public apology?

 

Breitbart is much less forgiving MSNBC Panelist Obeidallah Offers Self-Serving Apology to Romney Family    "While most of the Daily Beast piece comes off as Obeidallah using the controversy as a way to up his profile and pose as a defiant martyr against "wing nuts" (Breitbart News is mentioned) -- eventually, after 12 paragraphs of self-serving sanctimony, he writes:"....

Tom Coburn: The Year Washington Fled Reality

" 'Message discipline' can win elections but is not a healthy way to run a country."

Wall Street Journal, with a hat tip to We The People
"The past year may go down not only as the least productive ever in Washington but as one of the worst for the republic.
"In both the executive branch and Congress, Americans witnessed an unwinding of the country's founding principles and of their government's most basic responsibilities. The rule of law gave way to the rule of rulers. And the rule of reality—in which politicians are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan liked to say—gave way to some politicians' belief that they were entitled to both their own opinions and their own facts. It's no wonder the institutions of government barely function."
Full article here. 

Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2013 was a zombie of a year

Dave Barry  ... "But getting back to the zombies: It wasn’t just people who came back alarmingly in 2013. The Cold War with Russia came back. Al-Qaida came back. Turmoil in the Middle East came back. The debt ceiling came back. The Major League Baseball drug scandal came back. Dennis Rodman came back and went on humanitarian missions to North Korea (or maybe we just hallucinated that). The Endlessly Looming Government Shutdown came back. People lining up to buy iPhones to replace iPhones that they bought only minutes earlier came back. And for approximately the 250th time, the Obama administration pivoted back to the economy, which has somehow been recovering for years now without actually getting any better. Unfortunately, before they could get the darned thing fixed, the administration had to pivot back to yet another zombie issue, healthcare, because it turned out that Obamacare, despite all the massive brainpower behind it, had some “glitches,” in the same sense that the universe has some “atoms.' ” ...

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/static/media/projects/2013/year-in-review/#dave-barry-year-in-review#storylink=cpy

On the NY Times report about Benghazi

Video: NYT editor defiant on Benghazi report amid lawmaker criticism

From Lucianne:
The New York Times Whitewashes Benghazi   "While much in Kirkpatrick’s report is not new, the piece is receiving a considerable amount of attention because of this sweeping conclusion: “Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.' ”
'Completely false': Sources on ground in Benghazi challenge NYT report    "Fox News has learned that the attack on the consulate started with fighters assembling to conduct an assault.
" 'Guys were coming into the compound, moving left, moving right…and using IMT (individual movement techniques). … That’s not a spontaneous attack,” one special operator said.
" 'One guy was shooting, one guy was running. There are guys watching the gates. … The bosses on the ground were pointing, commanding and coordinating -- that is a direct action planned attack.' "

From NRO:
Missing the Lessons of Benghazi   "The scary thing is that there are still many in the Obama/Clinton/Kerry foreign-policy regime who believe that negotiating with terrorists will lead to positive outcomes. The story of Benghazi is exactly the opposite. Those who hate us will exploit any and every perceived weakness. Benghazi is a sad testament to a failed U.S. foreign policy throughout the Middle East and North Africa" ...

Krauthammer’s Take: Times Benghazi Story Written to Defend the Democrats  

 

... "Krauthammer responded saying that Rosenthal’s defensiveness shows that the reason the Times invested so much time in to the story and put it on the front page was “to protect the Democrats, to deflect the issue, and to protect Hillary who is exposed on this issue.”

“ 'It is obviously a political move,” Krauthammer said."

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Pathetic of the New York Times’ Benghazi Report   ... "What’s most pathetic of all? That 65 years after Arab armies launched their first war of extermination against Israel, 34 years after the hostage crisis, and twelve years after 9/11, we still don’t understand our enemy, and we still blame ourselves for their reckless hate.

From The Weekly Standard:
Times Ignores Evidence of Al Qaeda Link to Benghazi; Contradicts previous reporting from the New York TImes  "Muhammad Jamal, is not mentioned in the Times’s latest piece. Why not? The Times had previously reported the involvement of his network. When Mohammad Jamal was arrested in Egypt in December of 2012, two months after the Times article that mentioned him, the Wall Street Journal reported on his extensive ties to al Qaeda and its senior leadership, as well as his alleged involvement in the Benghazi attacks." STEPHEN F. HAYES

Politico Jumps in the Benghazi Debate  "In the end, Hounshell’s discussion of Benghazi is a welcome sign. It shows that some are still willing to weigh and discuss the actual evidence about what happened in Benghazi – not just the politics of its aftermath.

"Hounshell says that “there will always be some who wonder if we simply haven’t looked hard enough” for evidence of al Qaeda’s ties to the Benghazi attack."

 

From PJ Media:

Andrew Klavan: What Difference Does It Make?

 "The woman who had lost her promised shot at the presidency to a dishonest neophyte Chicago radical had disgraced herself and betrayed our founding values by promising the father of a heroic SEAL killed in the attack that she would bring justice, not to those who had done the killing, but to the schmuck who’d made the obscure video ridiculing the small-minded, bigoted followers of an ideology currently responsible for a majority of the armed conflicts on earth."

Issa: Evidence Still Proves Benghazi Was a ‘Planned Attack That Came Quickly’   "House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) stood by his committee’s investigation that found an al-Qaeda link to the Benghazi attack, and disputed any assertion that the New York Times story on the attack undercuts that finding."

Global warming scientists trapped in a sea of irony

"Antarctica"

Icebreaker Efforts Fail, Research Vessel Still Trapped in Antarctica  "According to the Guardian, the passengers consist of about 25 professors and graduate students, 20 tourists and 22 Russian crew members.  As of now all passengers are safe, but that could change suddenly with the encroachment of an iceberg in the direction of the stuck ship." ...

 

MSM Glosses Over Irony of Global Warming Scientists Trapped in Antarctic Ice   
... "Finally, National Geographic bluntly states the mission purpose:

...The current crop of explorers are hoping to document some of the same data and compare them to Mawson's numbers, "using the twist of modern technology," Turney told National Geographic earlier this month.
As may be expected, global warming might play a role in this, he suggests, particularly with respect to melted ice in the East Antarctic.

"Ah, so now we see why the MSM reluctance to flat out state why the scientists are in the Antarctic. Anything to avoid an inconvenient (but accurate) headline like this:

GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTISTS TRAPPED IN ANTARCTIC ICE

 

Meanwhile, the Gorebot cartoonists keep cranking out 'toons like this:

Alan Caruba: Another Grim Year with Obama

Warning Signs

 

"The fifth year in the political marriage between Barack Obama and the rest of America has the look of a divorce in which a lot of Americans are wondering how we can rid ourselves of the worst President in the history of the nation. That’s not just my opinion.

"As 2013 comes to a close it is abundantly clear that even the starry-eyed journalists and political pundits who thought Obama was as close to the Second Coming as American politics had ever known were having, not just doubts, but serious regrets. The White House press corps is now in a state of rebellion." ...

....

Liberal cheerleader Maurine Dowd had this to say about her hero:

“Unfortunately, he still has not learned how to govern” wrote Dowd, adding “No one on Capitol Hill [is] scared of him.” Obama had devoted so much time to fund-raising and non-stop campaigning, that governing was obviously not a priority, but that is exactly why Presidents are elected.

....

Mr. Caruba sums it all up with this thought: "To say that 2013 has been a bad year for Obama is also to say it has been a bad year for over three hundred million Americans. As Obamacare kicks in, 2014 will be a year its hidden taxes take effect. In November, voters will have the midterm elections to begin ending the a record of failed domestic and foreign affairs." 

Should Unsolicited “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Be Prosecuted As a Hate Crime?

Voice of Lillpop   ... "Which brings us to the disputed War on Christmas, a war that liberals dismiss as folly, mere figments of right-wing hysteria as they (liberals) deliberately use every ploy in the book to keep nativity scenes, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, and anything even remotely resembling endorsement of Christ, from the public consciousness.

"Regrettably, the secularization of Christmas has worked as more and more businesses are reverting to “Happy Holiday” rather than Merry Christmas to avoid offending." ...
 

Female Marines Not Required To Do 1 Pull-Up

Bloviating Zeppelin

"Now that’s the way to assure the survival of females in combat — since females can now serve in combat positions within the US military services. "From CNSNews.com:

 

...Women in the Marine Corps will be allowed into ground combat in 2016. The delay in meeting men’s physical standards has raised questions about “whether women have the physical strength to handle ground combat,” reported NPR.
“‘If you can’t pull yourself up, have the decency to pull yourself out,’  Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer and military historian, told Time.com. “‘The military, despite all the post-modern technology, is still essentially physical.’”

..."With that in mind, I recommend the exchange between Time Magazine and retired Army Lt Col Robert Maginnis in reference to his book “Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women into Combat.”  It turns out he is completely correct in his fears:

...Pentagon brass are kowtowing to their political masters and radical feminists to remove exemptions for women in ground combat in defiance of overwhelming scientific evidence and combat experience. This craven behavior is terribly dangerous for our armed forces, our national security, and especially the young women who will be placed in harm’s way  ...

How can the anti-military liberals make rules for our combat units if they have not been through this?
 

An Open Letter From a Terror Victim to St. James Church, Piccadilly, England

Algemeiner.com  via Allyson’s Geo-Political Inspections

"I have given much thought to the events of that terrible day, that culminated in my near murder and the execution of my friend."

The "Bethlehem Unwrapped" festival at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly.

"A true story…..

And it came to pass that in December 2010, two Palestinian shepherds left their little town near Bethlehem and set out to walk ten miles across the Judean Hills. There in the forest, they kept watch by night. The following day, at about the 6th hour (3pm) the shepherds saw two women walking along the Israel National Trail. With great fervour they took out their knives and attacked the women ...

...."The Palestinian terrorists were indeed victims, victims of a radical and primitive Islamist regime that force feeds them a morally malnourished diet of hatred of Jews and hatred of any life – including their own. They were also deprived: deprived of an education that cherishes culture, history, literature, art, and the dignity of difference. Their impoverished morality coupled with ignorant generalizations is what enabled two men to butcher defenseless women without so much as blinking an eye.
"The “wall” that has been erected outside St. James’ Church is hopefully just a result of your own ignorance and generalisations concerning the complex situation here in the Middle East. Nevertheless, like all walls, it serves as a facade and a barrier." ...