Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in the Once And Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it is Christmas. This pinup is by Ted Withers, with a wee bit of help.
What’s Happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? Not really sure today. It’s Christmas, so, perhaps I’ll do a full linking post later, if time permits. Otherwise, Merry Christmas to all!
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!
Hilariously, Youtube took down the version I uploaded in 2006, with 4.8 million views. I’m surprised the above has lasted 7 years
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…is a waterfall drying up from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on the eco-dictatorship coming your way.
Another babe below the fold, so, check out Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on parents traumatizing their own kids with a Grinch style Christmas prank
Read: If All You See… »
See, she has Reasons
Ocasio-Cortez only Democrat to vote ‘no’ on spending package
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) was the only House Democrat to vote against a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package on Friday, voting “no” on the measure because of increased funding for defense and federal agencies that oversee immigration.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Ocasio-Cortez said she was concerned about funding in the bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in addition to the $858 billion in defense spending.
“I campaigned on a promise to my constituents: to oppose additional expansion and funding for ICE and DHS — particularly in the absence of long-overdue immigration reform. For that reason, as well as the dramatic increase in defense spending which exceeds even President Biden’s request, I voted no on today’s omnibus bill,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The appropriations bill passed by Congress includes $8.42 billion for ICE, which is $161.1 million more than what was enacted in 2022 and $319.4 million more than what the president requested.
DHS received $86.5 billion in discretionary resources.
Ocasio-Cortez said the “dramatic increase” in spending for those two agencies “cut[s] against the promises our party has made to immigrant communities across the country,” adding that it is the case “especially in light of the lack of progress on DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], TPS [Temporary Protected Status], and expanding paths to citizenship.”
She’s complaining about what’s considered chump change in terms of Washington spending for ICE, which is something, ie, dealing with invasion, that’s actually mentioned in the Constitution. So is Defense, though, I’ll agree, that funding is bloated.
It’s also easy to Take A Stand when your no vote means absolutely nothing, because the bill was (sadly) going to pass no matter what. If she had any influence and wanted to do the actual job, she would have attempted to rally other House members to vote no. I mean, she couldn’t even work on the other Squad members?
The congresswoman touted provisions included in the omnibus that she helped craft — including an increase in the National Labor Relations Board and funding for community projects in her district — but said she could not vote for them because of her overarching concerns with the bill.
“These victories and many more – such as the inclusion of PUMP [Providing Urgent Maternal Protections] and PWFA [Pregnant Workers Fairness] Acts – are hard-fought wins that we proudly support and would proudly vote for. But tying these provisions to dramatic increases in surveillance, border patrol forces, and militarized spending after years of deeply disturbing misconduct and lack of any meaningful accountability is decision we find deeply objectionable,” she said.
In other words, she was present for the crafting of that stuff, but, come on, you know she was the person in the meeting adding nothing and asking if there are any more pastries. But, she did help stuff other things into the bill she voted against
(Fox News) The Democratic congresswoman then touted the spending provisions she added to the bill via earmarks that she ultimately voted against.
In the bill for the departments of labor, health and human services, education and related agencies, Ocasio-Cortez set aside $500,000 for “new immigrant community empowerment” in Jackson Heights, New York; $3 million for “clean energy workforce development and supportive services;” and $400,000 to progressive immigration nonprofit Make the Road New York, among other spending.
In the Department of Transportation bill, Ocasio-Cortez backed even more spending, including $1 million to Westchester Square Plaza for highway infrastructure, $1 million to the New York City Department of Transportation for “Astoria Boulevard safety improvements,” and $1 million to the New York Botanical Garden for a “worker’s operation center.”
Ocasio-Cortez also earmarked $2.4 million to the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of Queens for “Casa Neighborhood Housing Services of Queens.”
There is no website for Casa (which means house) Neighborhood Housing…, but, there is one without the Casa that is run by the state of NY and one without Casa that is privately run. Where’s that money going? $900k for illegal aliens. Really, though, she sure didn’t get a lot of pork like so many other Representatives, eh? And not much for her own constituents. Anyhow, it’s a nice bit of performance, so she can later say “I voted against ICE and the military” while also knowing her vote had zero meaning.
Read: Excitable AOC Only Democrat To Vote Against Massive Omnibus »
Apparently, cold weather is happening so often in Florida due to ‘climate change’ from you refusing to keep your heat at 62, that they are adapting
Look out for falling iguanas as temperatures drop
Watch out for falling iguanas in South Florida this Christmas. Seriously.
This week, a massive storm system is forecast to bring blizzard conditions, wind chills and Arctic cold to the Lower 48. Nearly 70 million people are under winter storm watches or warnings in the Midwest, Great Lakes and Appalachians, while 90 million are under wind chill alerts.
The frigid air is also expected to immobilize coldblooded animals. Iguanas sleeping in trees may lose their grip and drop to the ground. Sea turtles may stun and blow ashore from Texas to New England.
“You change the environment, and the organisms that are going to feel it first and hardest are the ectotherms [coldblooded animals] because their entire fitness is thermally dependent,” said Martha Muñoz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University.
What Martha means is that you should have moved into a tiny apartment in a Democratic Party run city, only taking the train, bus, and bikes.
But researchers and animal experts say the cold spells don’t seem to incapacitate the iguanas like they used to, suggesting that animals are adapting to the chilly weather. People may still see iguanas dropping during the upcoming cold blast, but not as many as two to three decades ago, said Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill.
“With each year when we get a cold streak, I see less and less of those iguanas falling out of trees and being cold-stunned … and it’s not because there are less and less iguanas,” Magill said. “It’s just indicative that these animals are, in fact, adapting. Less and less of them are succumbing to this type of temperature differential.”
So, the ones that survive the cold snaps are passing those genes on because it’s happening so often. Shouldn’t heat trapping gases make it warmer? Oh, right, heat trapping gases cause massive cold snaps.
Speaking of iguanas in Florida
(Daily Beast) After a brutal hurricane season, people across Florida have grown freshly accustomed to power outages. But at least four times in the last two months, Lake Worth Beach residents have been plunged into darkness thanks to a very different kind of culprit: iguanas.
“Some answer has to be devised to thwart these scaly chompers!” Susannah Amygdalitsis, one of the approximately 1,400 residents affected by an iguana-tripped power outage earlier this month, told The Daily Beast.
She noted it was the second time she dealt with a reptile-related blackout.
They’re getting into structures, including power boxes and substations.
This year alone, residents have been subjected to at least 16 outages triggered by the reptile—which is considered an invasive species in the state of Florida—according to city spokesperson Ben Kerr. That number actually represents a downtick from the recent past: in 2020, the city saw 28 outages caused by lizards. In 2021, Lake Worth saw 20 iguana-triggered blackouts.
Still, interviews with residents suggest the city is littered with the massive green reptiles, which grow up to six feet long with a row of spikes on their neck, back, and tail. And experts say climate change could help explain the surge–with disturbing implications for the fate of infrastructure in Florida and beyond.
Seriously, a piece on iguanas messing with the power supply, and by the 6th paragraph they have to jump to ‘climate change’.
Read: Bummer: Florida Iguanas Are Adapting To Cold Weather »
This isn’t just about an unhinged response from Democrats: it’s about The Hill and reporter Tobias Burns failing to do proper journalism 101 and challenging this narrative, failing to ask hard questions
Why Democrats released Trump’s tax returns
After years of fighting for Donald Trump’s tax returns, Democrats finally got a hold of them and released them to the public through two congressional reports published this week. But Democrats stress their decision was not about Trump himself but rather about oversight of the IRS and about the U.S. tax system more broadly — even though Trump was the first president since Watergate not to release his returns before assuming the presidency.
The report from the Democratic-led Ways and Means Committee found Trump wasn’t audited during his first two years in office. His first audit as president came only right when the IRS was asked directly by Congress to produce Trump’s tax returns.
That could be a violation of IRS policy, which states that “individual income tax returns for the President and Vice President will be subject to mandatory audit examination” and that they’ll receive “normal pipeline processing” and be subject to “regular filing and retention procedures.”
“The IRS has failed to administer its own mandatory audit program policies,” Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said Thursday in the House, introducing legislation that bumps the presidential audit program up from the level of IRS policy to the level of federal law.
So, because the IRS failed, they’re going to release the private, personal tax records of a person who is, at this time, a private citizen? Who just happens to be a thorn in their sides? I can think of many questions, starting with “are you Democrats putting us on? Are we supposed to believe this rationale?”
While Democrats have couched the release of the returns in a broader policy discussion, it’s just as much about politics and defeating a political rival.
Trump incensed Democrats during his presidency for the ways he broke presidential norms that extended beyond his refusal to release his tax returns. His prolific use of social media and his public castigation of judges and other public officials whom presidents usually don’t criticize changed the tone of political discourse in the country, much to the anger of the opposition party.
Good on Burns to write this, because, come on, that’s the entire reason. There is no other. But, he fails to ask Democrats questions, such as “well, will you release your tax records?” How about “how did Pelosi made over $100 million while serving in Congress?”
Anyhow
I hate to say it, but, Salon is sorta correct. But, his show is more like the one that just becomes cringy. The first few episodes of the final season of Haven, for instance. I've never finished it https://t.co/Wfo2BenWI7
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) December 23, 2022
Read: Dems Say Releasing Trump Taxes Wasn’t About Trump Or Something »
There’s a post way, way back in the archives, and, the gist of the Washington Post piece was about moonbat Bush haters waking up and trying to decide what type of hit piece they’d write about
In the angry life of Maryscott O’Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush. The sun has yet to rise and her family is asleep, but no matter; as soon as the realization kicks in, O’Connor, 37, is out of bed and heading toward her computer.
“WAKE THE [expletive] UP,” she writes next, and this time, instead of pausing, she keeps going, typing harder and harder on a keyboard that is surrounded by a pack of cigarettes, a dirty ashtray, a can of nonalcoholic beer, an album with photos of her dead father and a taped-up note — staring at her — on which she has scrawled “Why am I/you here?”
Can’t you see the climate cultists at this point?
The calendar flipped to winter this week and promptly ushered in what the National Weather Service is calling a “once-in-a-generation type event” that will hobble holiday travel by air and road on some of the busiest days of the year.
While it may seem contradictory, climate change may be contributing to more extreme winter weather. Snow, wind and bitter wind chills for the states that are used to them are not news. But the fact that these events persist even while Earth is warming is a baffling phenomenon that some scientists are linking mostly to increased precipitation in a warmer atmosphere.
I’m not going to bother with their Typical Cultist Reasons why a warming world due to you driving a fossil fueled vehicle is causing big cold snaps and snowstorms. Cults always have Reason why everything supports their cult beliefs. Polar vortex breaking down, blah blah blah, and so many other sites are aping this same line, that this is not normal, and it’s all the fault of tens of thousands taking fossil fueled trips to climate change conference your fault.
Read: Still Your Fault, But In Peppermint: This Christmas Weather Isn’t Typical »
…is an Evil wood burning fireplace, which kills trees, you might just be a Warmist
The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on the word “America” being struck from the Newspeak dictionary.
Read: If All You See… »
It’s so wonderful
I might as well have voted for Cal Cunningham in 2020 for all the squishy, Democrat garbage @ThomTillis @SenThomTillis is voting for https://t.co/lfmAR7K9jt
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) December 22, 2022
See, Tillis doesn’t have to worry about re-election till 2026, and he’s expecting North Carolinian’s to have forgotten stuff like this. I mean, where to even start? There’s so much insane in there, and so many perks for Democrats, almost nothing for Republicans. Let’s look at just one insane thing
Senate passes $1.7 trillion government funding bill that would overhaul U.S. election law
The Senate voted Thursday to pass a $1.7 trillion government funding bill, sending it to the House to avoid a holiday shutdown. (snip)
The bill also includes nearly $45 billion in aid to Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a joint meeting of Congress that U.S. support is “crucial” in helping it fend off Russian aggression. The package includes $9 billion for weapons and more than $15 billion in economic and humanitarian aid.
The war folks loved this. No Title 42 protection, a section that limits the operations of Custom And Border Patrol in regards to illegal aliens, $20 million for an abolish ICE group, and more dumb
The legislation also includes a rewrite of an 1887 federal election law to close loopholes that then-President Donald Trump and his team sought to exploit on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it harder for presidential candidates to steal elections. It would also grant extra funds to the Justice Department for Jan. 6 prosecutions. (a couple paragraphs of Trump being Trump)
Proponents of the changes say that the 1887 law is poorly written and that it was never intended to give the vice president such power — and that the new legislation would make that abundantly clear.
“It’s going to stop the kind of stuff we saw on Jan. 6, where a sitting president tried to take the election and become dictator of this country,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, a moderate Democrat, said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “It’s an important piece of legislation that was worked on in a bipartisan way.”
It’s just unhinged stuff that is unrelated to funding the government, because Democrats are deranged over J6. Right now it requires one each in the House and Senate to object. The update would require one-fifth of lawmakers from both chambers of Congress to disrupt the certification process. There’s just so much insane in this “funding” bill, little of which will actually help Americans. Except those private businesses given earmarks because they have a hookup in Congress.
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