We’re not “scrooge” after all

I have long felt bad about the injury Jews have inflicted on Christmas by leading the charge to limit public celebration of this great religious holiday. Here we are, living in a country whose Christians have treated us with unprecedented kindness, tolerance, and fellowship, and we show our thanks by forcing them to remove the most meaningful aspects of their most important holiday from the public square.

This year, however, I was able to find solace in Garrison Keillor’s rant about how Jews have injured Christmas by writing “trashy” Christmas songs. I had not focused, until I read Keillor’s bizarre column and Scott’s response, on the fact that Jews have contributed songs like “White Christmas”,” Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and other staples of this “most wonderful time of the year.” These songs may annoy Keillor, but they have pleased millions of American Christians of all ages. Thus, we Jews have contributed more to Christmas than ugly litigation.

Since this is the time of year when we should make a special effort to be charitable, I will speculate that Keillor’s rant against “Jew” Christmas songs represents displaced anger over the successful efforts to drive the holiday’s religious content out of the public square. If so, I feel his pain.

To conclude, although it’s been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you.

Best cat video ever

Stolen Borrowed from Amanda.

Joy to the world

I’m not a practicing member of any congregation, but I’ve never entertained a single atheist thought. [...] Read the rest »

Jesus Was Not A Socialist

In a world where the secular left’s War on Christmas has spawned such websites as StandForChristmas.com — which tracks customer ratings for popular retailers for their “Christmas-Friendliness” — it is intriguing that President Obama can, without a flinch, use the baby Jesus as a hook to justify his nanny-state political philosophy. As Cal Thomas observed today, Dear Leader dared to ask a Northeast Washington DC Boys & Girls Club “why we celebrate Christmas” and got the stunning answer “the birth of baby Jesus.” (Ah, from the mouths of babes.) Dear Leader then proceeded to discuss what Jesus symbolizes to people around the world: “the possibility of peace and people treating each other with respect” and “doing something for other people.”

Even the “three wise men” were invoked to support the president’s idea of wealth redistribution: “These guys … have all this money, they’ve got all this wealth and power, and they took a long trip to a manger just to see a little baby.”

…which segued into:

“…it just shows you that because you’re powerful or you’re wealthy, that’s not what’s important. What’s important is … the kind of spirit you have.”

Indeed, and Jesus taught often of the supreme worthiness of the poor and outcast: the poor man Lazarus who was carried by angels to Abraham’s side while the heartless rich man suffered in hell (Luke 16:19-31); the widow whose offering of only two copper coins was the far richer treasure (Luke 21:1-4). Many Christians believe that these parables served primarily as a means of condemning the powerful hypocrites and the inhuman nature of the class system in general. However, since class warfare is actually embraced as a key weapon of the statist, the story of Jesus Christ is all too often usurped for completely different purposes by socialist liberals. Cal Thomas continues:

To the president, that means the spirit of government taking from the productive and giving to the nonproductive. To him, Jesus was a socialist or perhaps an early Robin Hood. Any first-year seminarian (if the seminary is a good one) could destroy this flawed exegesis.

Jesus of Nazareth was not a symbol. Neither was He just a good teacher, as some who do not fully accept His teachings about Himself like to claim. As Paul the Apostle put it, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15).

The call of Scripture is to do for other people as we would like to have done unto us, but that call is personal, not corporate. That’s because only people can be compassionate. A government check too often brings dependence and a sense of entitlement. A personal touch builds relationships horizontally with others and vertically with God.

What those “wise men” brought were symbols – gold, frankincense and myrrh. What they symbolized was the grandeur of the baby who would become a man and who, in the words of John the Baptist, would “take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

It’s a little more than infuriating that the left at once strives to both drive the Christ-the-Savior story out of Christmas, and contrive a Jesus-as-Community-Organizer story for their own progressive devices. Jesus was not about politics. Jesus was about salvation.

Merry Christmas To All!

Video: Get your nomination in for the Sammies!

The Sam Adams Alliance wants to encourage a wide range of activism, and there’s no better way to do that than to establish awards for those who contribute the most in various ways. [...] Read the rest »

My Christmas Eve project

Mrs Pico was insisting that we not spend much on each other’s Christmas presents this year. She tried to get me to promise not to spend more than $20 on her; I told her that what I had in mind would probably run about $40. As it happens, the materials came in at $56.

I had planned on doing this last Christmas, but renewed my membership in the Procrastinator’s Club, and didn’t do it. Now, it’s getting done on Christmas Eve!

I have an antique mirror, with beveled glass, that has been sitting in the basement for three years. Since my darling bride (of 30 years, 7 months and 5 days) doesn’t want me to spend much money on her, I can spend effort instead. This is the beginning of the frame for the mirror, on the finishing table, waiting for a coat of Red Mahogany stain.

Nice, tight corner. I cut off the tongues — it was tongue-and-groove material — sanded and gave the wood one coat of stain last night. This morning I routed in a couple of decorative grooves, and made my cuts. I fastened two rails and a stile together, but the fourth stile cannot be attached until the mirror is set in the grooves; I’m mounting the mirror in the grooves like you would do with a floating raised wood panel.

The side stile stained again, with stain in the grooves as well, while the rail awaits staining.

The rail with stain, waiting for me to wipe off the excess.

Everything is stained, waiting for it to dry.

Michelle: ObamaCare is the tipping point in the Dems’ culture of corruption

Two clips on the theme du jour, one from last night’s Steyn-tastic “Hannity” and the other from this a.m.’s “Fox & Friends.” [...] Read the rest »

Classic TEMS: Adam Baldwin, Jim Geraghty, Sean Duffy

Today, the Ed Morrissey Show will have a day off for Christmas Eve, but I thought I’d offer this great program from last week. [...] Read the rest »

The FairTax Game is Almost Ready for Delivery

New Huckabee Holiday Book

Pick Your Favorite FairTax Ads

Copper thief gets business end of 69,000 volts

Read this post »

House Dem: The Senate didn’t pass a “reform” at all

While the Senate Democratic caucus pats itself on the back for its “historic” vote this morning, their counterparts in the House have decided to aim somewhat lower.  Rep. [...] Read the rest »

Obamanomics on Display in Venezuela

You don’t need a crystal ball to see our government-run future — just a ticket to Venezuela, where Obama prototype Hugo Chavez is several years ahead of us in replacing the free market with coercive moonbattery. His latest misadventure is a new series of stores:

President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday announced a new chain of government-run, cut-rate retail stores that will sell everything from food to cars to clothing from places such as China, Argentina and Bolivia.

“We’re creating Comerso, meaning Socialist Corporation of Markets,” Chavez said at the opening of a “socialist” fast-food location for traditional Venezuelan arepas (cornbread).

“They’ll see what’s good. We’ll show them what a real market is all about, not those speculative, money-grubbing markets, but a market for the people,” said Chavez in his drive to change Venezuela from a market-based economy to a socialist one.

“Money-grubbing” refers to the phenomenon of supply and demand, which allows the market to spontaneously supply a sufficient quantity of what people actually want. But of course, our socialist rulers know what we ought to want, which is much more important.

Another aspect of economics loathed by leftists is free trade, which increases the wealth for everyone, thus making people less dependent on Big Government. Here’s how Chavez battles it:

In his effort to break Venezuela’s dependency on foreign goods, Chavez in May launched the Movilnet cell phone company that makes the “Vergatario,” a locally made [from Chinese parts] mobile that sells for 13.95 dollars but that few stores have in stock.

More on the Vergatario, from last May:

It is perhaps the world’s cheapest mobile phone. It is the latest offering from Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution. And its name is derived from a slang word for penis. Behold the Vergatorio. …

Priced just $15 (nearly £10), the phone has a camera, WAP internet access, FM radio and MP3 and MP4 players for music and videos.

Wow, what a deal. It’s the magic of moonbat economics in action.

A government subsidy which cut the retail price to a quarter of the manufacturing cost is likely to make the Vergatario an immediate hit.

If you understand why few stores have any in stock, you are officially too intelligent to qualify as a liberal.

On tips from Lyle.

THE WORST PIECE OF LEGISLATION IN MY LIFETIME

I must confess that the more I read of the health care reform bill that just passed the senate this morning, the more it grows on me.
Unfortunately, that growth is a cancerous tumor, one that will be impossible to excise once this God-awful monstrosity becomes law.
If the Democrats had stuck to their original intent – [...]