
Merry Christmas, all! A few others

Thou shalt have no other gods before me, nor bow down to any carved images
No faith in fossil fuels? Why some religious leaders are speaking out on climate change
Anglican Deacon Michael Van Dusen typically has plans for the Christmas season that do not involve a Toronto courthouse.
Perhaps he would be preparing his Christmas Day sermon or visiting with family. But on Tuesday, he stood beside a painted banner that read “no faith in fossil fuels” and spoke to a small crowd, including some of his parishioners, about what had brought him before a judge — and not of the divine variety.
For the first time in his life, the 80-year-old was arrested and charged with trespassing last year during a sit-in at a Royal Bank of Canada branch in protest of the bank’s fossil-fuel financing.
Canadian banks, he said, were choosing to ignore climate science to profit from the destruction of the planet, and he felt a moral obligation, affirmed by his baptismal covenant, to take a stand.
The golden calf of Climastrology
Van Dusen, a co-chair of the spiritually minded Toronto group Faith and Climate Action, is among the faith leaders who are speaking out, and even facing arrest, for their climate activism. At his court date Tuesday were a handful of other people in the group, including a 78-year-old Catholic sister who had been arrested at two recent bank sit-in demonstrations.
I could agree with them if they were standing up for real environmental concerns, but, perhaps this is the wrong time of the year, and they should focus on the birth of Jesus
Meanwhile, the share of Canadians who consider the environment to be a top issue has cratered in recent years, down to below 20 per cent from as high as 42 per cent in 2019, according to recent polling from the Angus Reid Institute. A strong majority of Canadians say they think climate change poses a serious or very serious threat to the planet, but the number has declined and is now about the same as it was a decade ago.
It’s easy to demand we Do Something about ‘climate change’ when things are going well, but, since the recovery from COVID still goes on, people do not feel the same. Anyway, it’s a very long piece, let’s skip to near the end
When his name was called, the prosecutor indicated the arresting officer had not produced their notes about what happened at the bank. Van Dusen, who stood silently before the judge, was free to go.
As he returned to the street, Van Dusen lingered and turned his thoughts to the future. Toronto would inevitably see more wildfire smoke, floods, and extreme heat in the coming months. So, too, would it see more direct action from him and his partners, he said.
I wonder if he will turn to doing his job as a preacher for Christmas, or just do cult stuff?
Read: LOL: Climate Cult Preacher Working More On Going To The Courthouse »
Every Christmas, once everyone is up, Christmas greetings were made, hugs were exchanged, the presents were opened, and breakfast was being made, I would read this first in the paper (ye olde parental units get an actual paper, and they live in NJ). It is a Christmas classic that has always touched my soul. While some people outside of the Tri-State area have heard of it, rarely do papers outside of the NY-NJ-Conn area see it in print, and I always direct them to read it online. Especially since we keep getting news pieces as to whether or not we should be telling kids the truth about Santa (we shouldn’t. Let them be kids). I humbly bring it to you, and hope it touches you as much as it touches me:
Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, If you see it in The Sun, it’s so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!
And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.
If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
I find it wild that I was one of the first to upload this to the old MSN videos when it was competing with Youtube, and to Youtube (2/23/06, 1:52 long), and a lot of these are copied from my upload, but, Youtube wacked my upload :). Oh, well, at least it is out there for people to see, and that’s what really matters.
Hey, maybe it was a bad idea to let all these jihadis into the UK?
Two men found guilty of UK plot to kill hundreds of Jews as IS fears grow
Two men were found guilty on Tuesday of plotting to kill hundreds in an Islamic State-inspired gun rampage against the Jewish community in England, a planned attack investigators say demonstrates the resurgent risk posed by the militant group.
Police and prosecutors said Walid Saadaoui, 38, and Amar Hussein, 52, who went on ?trial a week after an unrelated deadly attack on a synagogue in the nearby northwest city of Manchester in October, were Islamic extremists who wanted to use automatic firearms to kill as ?many Jews as they could.
Had their plans come to fruition, it would have resulted in “one of, if not the, deadliest terrorist attack in UK history”, said Assistant Chief Constable Robert Potts, in charge of Counter-Terrorism Policing in northwest England. (snip)
While not posing the same threat of a decade ago when Islamic State controlled vast areas of Iraq and Syria, European security officials caution that IS and affiliated al Qaeda groups are once again looking to export violence abroad, radicalising would-be attackers online.
“You can see signs of some of those terrorism threats starting to grow again and starting to escalate,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said last week.
The UK consistently lets in unvetted Islamists, and has for decades, even after the 7/7 bombing
Ken McCallum, head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, said in October that his service and the police had thwarted 19 late-stage attack plots since the start of 2020, ?and intervened to counter many hundreds of other terrorism threats.
But, will the government do anything at all, or, continue to arrest British citizens for mean tweets and flying the Union Jack?
…is a rising sea encroaching on the land which is turning to desert, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on stricter net zero targets for the UK.
Read: If All You See… »
I had something else I was going to post, then ran across this
This is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. A major Credentialed Media outlet’s reporter, Tara Suter, spent 9 paragraphs on this, and editor let it be published, when it deserves zero. And ends with
The Hill has reached out to Paramount for comment.
If Paramount was going to reply it would probably be along the lines of “who? Why do we give a shit?” Of course, reaching out these days means sending a tweet or a quick email, not actual journalistic work. Not that this deserved work. This is The Hill on TDS.
Read: Important News: Excitable Adam Kinzinger Cancelled His Paramount Plus »
For being so against fossil fuels St. Greta sure does travel around a lot
Greta Thunberg Arrested in London While Supporting Palestine Action Terror Group
Professional protester Greta Thunberg was arrested Tuesday in Central London while part of a mass gathering backing the Palestine Action terrorist group.
The 22-year-old Swede was detained as she expressed support for the proscribed organization.
In a video shared by the Prisoners for Palestine protest group, Thunberg can be seen holding a sign reading “I support the Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide” at the demonstration outside the central London offices of Aspen Insurance.
Two activists sprayed red paint over the front of the building before police arrived and made arrests.
Prisoners for Palestine said its protest had targeted the offices of Aspen Insurance because the company provided services to Israeli-linked defence firm Elbit Systems UK.
The climate cult basically embraced a Jew hater
Thunberg also joined a pro-Palestinian protest in central London last night where she was seen shouting “we support the hunger strikers.”
She said in a video posted on her Instagram: “We are witnessing with pure and utter disgust how the UK government is handling this situation.”
Why is this her business? She’s not a British citizen, yet, she took what had to be a fossil fueled trip to the UK.
Maybe it was a bad idea for the UK to continue to bring jihadis into the UK, particularly after the 7/7 attack, turning the nation into a hotbed of Islamic extremism
Read: St. Greta Arrested For Hanging With Terror Group In The UK »
America has always been generous. Should we be taking in every 3rd worlder who refuses to assimilate, lives off government programs, and demands America change for them?
Immigrants now have fewer legal options to stay in the U.S. under Trump
More than 1.6 million immigrants have lost their legal status in the first 11 months of President Trump’s presidency. The staggering number includes people who applied for and were accepted to come to the country on a wide variety of immigration parole, visa, asylum and temporary protected status programs. That number exceeds Philadelphia’s entire population.
This is the largest effort to take away deportation protections for migrants who are in the country legally. Immigration advocates say it’s very likely an undercount.
“These were legal pathways. People did the thing the government asked them to do, and this government went and preemptively revoked that status,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization that has been tracking the efforts to delegalize immigrants.
Yeah, they falsely claimed asylum. Here on TEMPORARY status. Visa holders calling for the eradication of Israel and Jews.
Many of the immigrants who lost legal status have been in the country for years. Now, they fear what could happen should their immigration cases not process quickly enough. The administration has encouraged immigrants to leave the country as it gets rid of their legal authorization.
Mostly illegals for whom previous admins unlawfully gave them parole, or just ignored them being here illegally.
“The Trump administration has done more to limit migration, both illegal and legal, than any administration in history,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said during a press conference this fall. She touted all the ways the administration has cut off these avenues, including by pausing and revoking visas.
“Having a visa in the United States is not a right. It is a privilege and the secretary of state — if you are deemed contrary to our country’s foreign national interests — has the right to revoke that privilege.”
Exactly, so, keep crying, NPR
Read: Bummer: “Immigrants” Have Fewer Legal Options To Not Get Repatriated »
There is, of a course, a climate scam component, but, this is really about telling those citizens of Ireland to simply accept the people from 3rd world shitholes and jihadis who are erasing Irish culture
President Connolly calls for kindness in first Christmas message
President of Ireland Catherine Connolly has used her first Christmas message to encourage people to reflect “on the values that truly matter: kindness, tolerance, respect for each other’s differences, and to reflect on how we may nurture our shared humanity”.
In an address delivered in both Irish and English, the President said Christmas was a time of goodwill and hope, as well as an opportunity to look ahead to a new year filled with possibility.
Referring to the winter solstice, she noted that while this period marks the darkest days of the year, it also signals the gradual return of light – a reminder, she said, that better days lie ahead even in difficult times.
“Christmas invites us to reflect on the values that truly matter; kindness, tolerance, respect for each other’s differences, and to reflect on how we may nurture our shared humanity,” she said.
She said her thoughts were with the millions of people around the world affected by climate change, war, conflict and displacement, with particular mention of those suffering in Palestine, Ukraine and Sudan.
How about her thoughts being with the citizens of Ireland who have to deal with the immigrants/refugees/fake asylum seekers, who rape Irish lasses, create no go zones and crime, who fly their own flags and want the Irish flags taken down? Do they count? How about all the money being spent to support the invaders?