No Christmas Spirit in Lake Wobegon
Garrison Keillor, self-appointed cultural representative of regular old Americans, ruffled some feathers yesterday with a mildly xenophobic rant about Christmas. After lambasting a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for “spiritual piracy and cultural elitism”—tweaking the lyrics of “Silent Night” for a singalong, in layman’s terms—he turned his ire in a different direction:
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write ‘Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday—if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.
Yet another example to prove that there is nobody more intolerant and narrow-minded than an tolerant and open-minded liberal. Yup, leftist are all for “diversity” as long as “those people” know, and keep, their place.
Friday B-Movie Pick: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Merry Christmas! Let us revisit this classic 1989 film starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and Randy Quaid in one of his best known roles.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Here is a glimpse of how members of Congress travel on your dime.
Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel’s fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms — stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties — cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.
While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the trip with a dinner at one of the region’s finest restaurants, paid for by the legislators, who got $118 daily stipends for meals and incidentals.
…
The tour provides a glimpse of the mixture of business and pleasure involved in legislators’ overseas trips, which are growing in number and mostly financed by the taxpayer. Lawmakers travel with military liaisons who carry luggage, help them through customs, escort them on sightseeing trips and stock their hotel rooms with food and liquor. Typically, spouses come along, flying free on jets operated by the Air Force. Legislative aides come too. On the ground, all travel in chauffeured vehicles.
…
The cost they reported for such travel abroad was $13 million in 2008, a 70% jump from 2005, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of travel records. Lawmakers don’t have to report the cost of domestic travel when the government pays. The $13 million didn’t include the expense of flying on Air Force planes, which lawmakers don’t have to disclose.
Oh there is more, much more. Go read the whole thing. There is no Recession in the democrat controlled Congress.
Ex Ted Kennedy Aide arrested on federal theft and fraud charges
The democrat‘s Culture of Corruption keeps marching on. The latest entry is Ngozi Pole, the former office manager for the late democrat Senator Ted Kennedy of the People’s Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Mr. Pole was arrested on six separate counts of federal fraud and theft. He illegally inflated his salary and submitting falsified records to the Senator’s Chief of Staff in order to hide his theft of tax payer money.
Monday Book Pick: His Majesty’s Dragon
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
An interesting bit of historical fantasy that reads like a cross between Horatio Hornblower and Jane Austen, with dragons. Yup, dragons, and the best dragons, of course, come from China. This is the first in series about a British Navy Officer who captures a dragon’s egg in a sea battle and ends up bonding with the beast when it hatches. Of course, it speaks English, and French. An interesting read. While I’m a mostly a hard core SciFi reader, I do enjoy good alternate history stories.
Is it time to revisit the Carter Doctorine?
The Washington Times‘ Inside the Ring column reports:
A report by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) states that Iran could use its naval forces to cut off oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, where almost a third of all the world’s oil supplies pass.
The report, “Iran’s Naval Forces: From Guerrilla Warfare to a Modern Naval Strategy,” stated that blocking ships from passing through the 90-mile Strait would cause Iran “tremendous economic damage” and that, thus, Tehran would not “undertake a closure lightly.”
“However, given the importance of the Strait, disrupting traffic flow or even threatening to do so may be an effective tool for Iran,” the report, dated fall 2009, said.
The report said Iran could use its Chinese-made C-801/802 anti-ship cruise missiles to “target any point within the Strait of Hormuz and much of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.”
That brings us to the Carter Doctrine:
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf region.
That’s right kiddies, “Blood for Oil” is the policy of liberal democrat President, and well known racist, James Earl Carter III. Given our Dear Leader‘s apparent desire to follow in the footsteps of the worst president in the past fifty years, he’ll probably get the US tied up in yet another Middle East quagmire.
For those of you who voted for Barack Hussein Obama thinking he was going to pull the US Military out of Iraq & Afghanistan Right Away, deal with the fact that he played you for a sucker. “Useful Idiot” would be the term his political idol would use to describe you.
Today’s Robert Heinlein Quote
I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand’s; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces with the other matters handled otherwise. I’m sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything now.
Robert A. Heinlein, as quoted by J. Neil Schulman in The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana
Shatner & Palin, together on stage…
William Shatner did another jazzy reading from Gov. Palin’s book on the tonight show. Another excellent Shatner performance, which was followed up by Gov. Sarah Palin
appearing to read from Shatner’s latest autobiography, in a similar fashion. Mocking and paying tribute at the same time.
Sarah Palin vs. William Shatner
This video shows what the political hit men on McCain’s campaign team (and senior democrat operatives) were afraid of. Gov. Palin is charismatic, smart and willing to take a risk.
Like Shatner’s character James T. Kirk, she beat the the Kobayashi Maru test.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Sukiyaki Western Django
This flick isn’t just wacked, it’s wiggity wacked! It’s a spaghetti Western filmed in Japan, with Japanese actors speaking English, with a strong Samurai influence, with a dash of Shakespeare thrown in plus Quentin Tarantino as the only non-Japanese member of the cast.
Lying Liars and ClimateGate
First up, AGW cultist prophet in chief, Al Gore.
Michelle Malkin points out that the ManBearPig is flat out lying about the ClimateGate email scandal.
He talked with Slate magazine’s John Dickerson and repeatedly pooh-poohed the scandalous ClimateGate e-mails as “more than 10 years old,” “over 10-year-old e-mails,” and “an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago.”
Er, the e-mails are from as recently as November 2009 — and as Anthony Watts documents and reminds folks on Planet Earth, “[a]nd there are dozens to hundreds more within the last month, the last year, and the last 10 years.”
Then there are those “1,700 scientists” who signed a “defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research.” Well, it seems that this was about as honest as the ClimateGate so called “research.”
By way of Ace, comes this news report on the matter:
Britain’s Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furor over leaked e-mails, referred to as “Climate-gate.”
More than 1,700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “professional integrity” of global warming research. They were responding to a round-robin request from the Met Office, which has spent four days collecting signatures. The initiative is a sign of how worried it is that e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fueling skepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions.
One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.
…
One scientist told The Times of London he felt pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.
So, is it about the science or the funding? As the man who wrote the screenplay said, “Follow the Money”