Maggie's Farm

A few points:  First, no links from the NJ for a few days. Someone reminded me that Christmas is coming soon, so I should start to focus. Second, photo is Rockefeller Center, of course. I will be in NYC tomorrow through Christmas, I am happy to say, and out of the dark, pagan, socialist MA woods for a change. Third, we are still getting additions to the Family Holiday Game #1. Feel free to add some more equally lame offerings. Fourth, a Merry and Blessed Christmas from your very own, mostly-reliable, unpaid, and devoted News Junkie. I will pre-post a nice card for y'all to see tomorrow.

Top Ten Reasons American Women Suck.  And Rightly So. You may not agree.

Department of Unintended Consequences: How govt destroyed the family farm. Captain Ed

Why won't gun criminals get with the program and be a little more progressive?

What defeat in Iraq would mean. Lib. Leanings

This is cool - the 90-second history of world religions

About those "jobs American's won't do" Patterico

If it were not a few days before Christmas, one of us would comment on this piece by Volokh: Adolf Hitler on Federalism. Good piece. I agree.

And if were not a few days..., one of us might be more likely to comment on this very interesting piece about Michael Gersen and the Republican party, highlighted at Flares from Darkness. Maybe someone will find the time to do so.

No tengo futoro, says Jeb Bush. Very sad.

Michelle labels 2006 as The Year of Perpetual Outrage, and summarizes the silliness.

The Nokia Internet Tablet. A gift idea. Looks like a handy gizmo.

Ralph Peters asks "What if they don't want what we want?" Indeed. We recently asked the same question. Dino

Another idea: One-cup Mellitta coffee maker

Women overcommunicate! Am Thinker. Yes! Sometimes a guy does not want to be a receptacle for your entire inner life. "Inner" means inner. Keep it with yours, or we will say "Shut up!!!"

Marriage and Caste in America. View from 1776 highlights a review of the book of that name by Kay Hymowitz. A quote from the book:

“Why would women working for a pittance at supermarket cash registers decide to have children without getting married while women writing briefs at Debevoise & Plimpton, who could easily afford to go it alone, insist on finding husbands before they start families?”

The answer, in Ms. Hymowitz’s view, is that many among the urban poor have lost the “life script” for future-oriented child-rearing. Policy makers may assume that the problem is a shortage of employed, marriageable men. But the problem is more existential, a loss of a sense that marriage and children are connected. "

As reform stalls, things in Latin America looking worse. Quote from a good review at TCS:

Even more disturbing than Latin America's tepid economic growth is the fact that its stuttering and half-hearted attempt at economic market reform over the past two decades has barely made a dent at reducing the region's mass poverty and chronic income inequality. In fact, various academic and multilateral bank studies suggest that Latin America still has the worst income distribution in the world and that there is more poverty in Latin America today than there was in the early 1980s when economic reform programs were being initiated.

Bush targeting Pacific Coast indians. Like he did with Katrina, only worse.

Woops. It turns out real vegetarians are less smart: Big Lizards

Four drinks per day: Instapundit. I'm sure they do not mean four Grey Goose martinis.

Official dhimmitude at University of Leeds. View from the Right

The New Zimbabwe diet. From piece by Right Thinking:

There’s a great picture of fried rats on the linked page.  It just goes to show, though, how an abundance of resources doesn’t mean jack shit if you don’t have a democratic capitalist political system to make good use of them.  And as Hong Kong shows us, if you’ve got the democratic capitalist political system you don’t even need any resources.

My God how I love the market.

Chavez brings back slavery. Publius. Hey - he means well. Right?

A good howl against economic ignorance, by Coyote

Babes in Toyland. Yikes. Kirsten Powers. This is sick. Can I have one?

Corrupt Dems just can't get the press. Michelle

Lobbying Reform? This has an ominous sound. Flares into Darkness. Every American is a one-person lobbyist for something.

The booming Iraq economy, via Newsweek. Miller. The news you will not hear.

Europhobia on Rise in Europe! Truthiness at Crittenden

The German Church defines limits for tolerance. Gates of V.

Kofi's illegal apartment in NYC? NYSun

A nice intro to Mexican food: RWN. I salivated.

Did you see Hawkins' Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2006?

Ahmadinejad takes a political hit. We should not misunderestimate the sense of the Iranian people, despite their recent leadership. Rick has a good discussion.

1984 at Michigan State. Creepy.

Disney tells J D Worley (photo) he cannot go to Disney World looking like that. He must shave, because Santa is a Disney character!  Moonbattery. My opinion? This guy should be busy with his elves in the North Pole two weeks before Christmas, and not hanging out with all of the fat Americans at Tinsley World. (Image borrowed from Moonbattery)

What happened to the bird flu scare? An update. (h/t, Junk Science)

Update on the unraveling of the Episcopalians. Is this really all about homosexuality? I doubt it. NYT. I suspect that was just the final straw.

YouTube and copyright laws. It all sounds fuzzy, but one probably shouldn't post copyrighted stuff on YouTube.

This year's war on Christmas. From a piece by Steyn:

Seattle Airport could certainly put up a menorah. And maybe a commemoration of Eid, and Kwanzaa, and something for solstice worshippers, and perhaps something for litigious atheists. But to do that is to turn society into a kind of greater airport departure lounge -- to say it's no more than an assemblage of whoever happens to be in it at any particular time. Successful societies (unlike plastic trees) have deep roots: Nobody should be obliged to believe Jesus is the son of God, but likewise nobody should take such umbrage at trees and tinsel and instrumental versions of "Silent Night" that he would deny the reality of the land he lives in to the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Because the logic of that leads not to a diverse secular society but to an atomized ersatz non-society. And, as those other touchy types the Islamists well understand, once you put reality up for grabs, all kinds of pathologies suddenly become viable.

On which note, God rest ye merry. It's tougher than you'd think.

From a piece by Fjordman on Alexander Boot's book, How the West was Lost:

Is Islam compatible with democracy? This is a question I address elsewhere. We also have to ask ourselves, however, whether the conditions needed for a properly functioning democratic system are currently present even in the West. I’m not always sure about that. In a functioning democratic state, the state passes laws in accordance with the wishes of the people, and also strives to uphold these laws. In Western Europe in particular, the state does neither, as most laws are passed by unelected EU bureaucrats and not elected national parliaments, and as the streets are increasingly ruled by gangs and criminals.

Image of healthy, low-fat, low carb breakfast from Mr. Free Market

The aurora? We had too much fog and cloud cover here.

BB King goes to the White House. It's about time. NY Sun

Does light rail accomplish anything? The Commons. Sadly, no. 

Yoga = $. Col. Journalism Review

Jamie Oliver will take on road kill cooking.

PJ O'Rourke studied The Wealth of Nations, so you won't have to. His new book.

Private schools are more integrated than public schools, and generally, the private tend to do lots of thing better. From a quote from a piece by Coulson at TCS:

...the most significant educational benefits to private schooling tend to be enjoyed by African American students, both in achievement and graduation rates. Economist Derek Neal has found that African American students attending urban Catholic schools are vastly more likely to complete high school, be accepted to college, and complete college than similar students who attend public schools. And a review by Harvard University researcher Paul Peterson and others finds that the academic achievement gains to students attending private schools under voucher programs are greatest among black students.

Labor markets, and helping the poor, made simple. From a piece by Clayton Cramer:

Teachers may not want to believe this, but there's a reason that plumbers get paid better than teachers. Teachers don't climb around under houses, in the dark, fighting with spiders, loosening and tightening the pipes coming out of your toilet. I've done just enough of this work when I was young that if I had the choice of being a plumber, a teacher, a software engineer, or a lifeguard, all for the same pay--well, let's just say that not many people would be lining up to be a plumber. The line to be a lifeguard or a teacher would run all the way around the block and perhaps into the next county.

Labor rates are a way of adjusting supply and demand to reflect fluctuating needs. If plumbers are in short supply, in a free market, wages will rise to reflect that scarcity. If the wages get high enough, people will become plumbers. If the supply of plumbers start to exceed the number of jobs, wages will drop, and send those who aren't keen on spiders and sewage into other jobs.

All of Mozart, online. Wow. Chequerboard

Baby-killing for stem cells. S. Mom

Finally, an answer to the flying imam mystery. Captain Ed. You have seen the video already, right?

Pigouvian taxation. Read it and learn something about Pigou and externalities. Big Lizards

Call US Air - urge them not to cave to the Flying Imam's demands. RWHowler tells you how.

China's coal mine fires are killing Gaia. Blair

Rent-A-Rector. The Dems are all doing it, and now Hillary too. Michelle. Is this more cynical than eating pizza and bagels and tacos? I think it is. Maybe related to the Third Commandment?

The willy that can be seen from space!

The Baker-Hamilton Report of 1943. Greenberg at TownHall. A quote:

With only some exceptions, our allies falter and retreat. In contrast to early and overly optimistic reports from the boisterous General Geo. S. Patton, enemy forces under the command of a seasoned and daring strategist, Field Marshal Erwin J.E. Rommel, aka The Desert Fox, continue to inflict heavy damage and threaten the progress of our arms.

We are richer than we think. NY Sun

Brit cops want to take DNA from babies, to solve future crimes. My advice: Just put 'em all in jail at birth. Everybody's guilty of something, eventually. But, come to think of it, how different from jail is a nanny state with snooping cameras everywhere?

Good piece on the lack of conservative ideas in the academy, at Chronicle of Higher Ed. It's a plea for scrutiny and debate, not a diatribe. One quote:

...the conservative tradition remains a vital resource of ideas and theories, a heritage that claims world triumphs. To gain it the full measure it warrants — and to bring it to bear wisely on the issues we confront — we need more than conservative pundits on television or in the blogosphere, more than conservative publishers or think tanks. We need to subject it to the full analysis — critical and appreciative — of the academy, to bring conservative works into the classroom and onto the syllabus. It would be healthy for everyone if the academic curriculum broadened its scope, if the lineage of conservatism were consolidated into a respectable course of study — that is, if Hayek won one-tenth the attention that Foucault receives.

Obama insulted me. SISU. Indeed he did.

Little black dress update.

I thought that the flying imams were doing a probe or a test, but now it looks like it might have been a planned extortion. Michelle

Organic chicken update. Right Wing Nation. Avoid them.

Blame the Jews. That's what Annan is expected to say today. NY Sun

Perfect example of why the EU is a bad idea. Blue Crab

Oral tolerance. How food allergies occur. Am. Scientist

A Taliban ministate in N Pakistan. Nice. (via Lucianne). And apparently the Taliban army wants Pakistan back - TCS. Another civil war.

Dept of Intolerance: Moonbattery has two examples. "Tolerance" has become a euphemism for submitting to other people's intolerance.

Department of Ignorant Politicians: RWNH 

UN backing off on global warming. Am. Thinker

Reconsider your end of year donation to MADD. Synthstuff

Darfur update: CSM. And Ralph Peters slams the world for weeping over Darfur, and doing nothing. A quote:

Darfur deserves more than self-satisfied words. As does Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Zimbabwe. And Burma/Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and so many other "sovereign states."

But if we're ever going to stop the killing, we first have to stop the lying. Especially the lie we tell ourselves about the universal desire for peace: Try telling that one to the Janjaweed militaman raping your wife, burning your house, taking your children into slavery - and cutting your throat.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese government laughs at all of us. Khartoum is so confident that the world doesn't give a damn about black Africans that it's recently moved to destabilize neighboring Chad.

The hypocrisy of the intelligentsia, here and in Europe, stinks to the throne of God. No campus seminar ever provoked a cease-fire, and no demonstration ever halted a massacre. Those who are unwilling to fight injustice will ultimately face injustice and a fight.

No More Christian Nice Guy: A book review. A quote:

Fortunately, Coughlin’s testosterone-filled text promotes Christ’s masculine qualities, presenting them in a way that gives a feel for what must disturb Green Anglican Marxists: a kind of taking off of the eco-socialist rainbow robes we’ve tried to dress Jesus up in for decades.

The most publicized lie, of course, is that Jesus was a non-judgmental prophet, a contradiction in terms, but a seductive myth nonetheless. Coughlin agrees. “As Mark Twain mused, Jesus said to pray for your enemies; he never said you couldn’t have any.”

Saw The Nativity Story today. It's about Joseph. Well-done. No surprises in the story!

Deval Patrick. Fooled ya again, MA. Massbackwards. Suckers.

Union political dues.  A national scam and a quiet, chronic scandal. Betsy. How can this be legal?

Remembering Dacca. Superb blog piece: plain good writing. Jules C

Good news for Medical Savings Plans. Only way to go. Good news for oil drilling too. You don't like it? Ride a bike.

Can we bring back trollop and strumpet? Humbug. Methinks these words are not outdated.

Dinesh D'Souza: "Thank God my grandaddy got on that boat." SDA. Anyone in America, of any color and from anywhere, should say the same.

What makes raindrops? Turbulence.

Olabelle. A Dr Bob recommendation. With Larry Campbell and Amy - Levon Helms' daughter.

Fats and Freedom. Need I mention that Nanny-Fascists bug the hell out of me? It bothers Gandelman too. Would somebody please tell Mayor Bloomberg that he is not my Jewish mother? Next, he'll make a law to make me wear my rubbers - or try to re-do Prohibition. Yo, Mayor! I am not Jewish, and you are not my Mom. I do not want your worries about me! Get off my case.

Pelosi likes campaign finance reform. As long as it doesn't apply to her. Nyhan. How about if a Repub Speaker tried that little trick? Can you see the NYT editorial?

Spoil sports. Moslems do not like greased pigs. MVRWC. Too damn bad. Show some tolerance: "When in Rome..."

If you are a Repub, what kind are you. A dumb quiz, via Bainbridge, here.

The great Steyn, on video, on Iraq, here.

Today, in 1914, a great naval victory.

"What should we do? We're single parents." Volokh. You could grow up, for starters.

Do you want govt to "fix" the best health care in the world? Dem Project

25 years in jail? This is insane. Poor fellow hurt no-one. Coyote. The guy should be given a good spanking, and be sent home and back to work. It's time to bring back the olde village stocks: it would not cost the taxpayer $60,000 per year to lock 'em up - for what purpose? A day or two in the stocks is enough humiliation.

Seriously dirty FL politics. Gateway

Jeane Kirkpatrick, American. RWNH. Ditto.

Webb: An officer but no gentleman. Kim. A gentleman does not insult his host. It's quite basic to treat all with respect, regardless of one's feelings. Unless drunk, of course.

Bush supports and signs one billion for autism research. Ex-Donk. Good intentions, but there is no cure for bad wiring. We are all mis-wired, but it's a matter of degree.

Natural sons and daughters. Haha. Linknzona

A Pagan Yule, via VA schools. There's a good idea. Witches. Don't they already own Halloween? Now they want Christmas? Greedy witches. They need to chill.

A good scam, quoted from Overlawyered:

"Lawyers familiar with [wheelchair user David Allen] Gunther’s activities estimate he’s taken more than $400,000 in the last 36 months, mostly from mom-and-pop shops in Garden Grove, Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Orange, Tustin, Buena Park, Stanton, Seal Beach, Santa Ana, Dana Point, Huntington Beach and Los Angeles. If true, that’s quite a haul for a man who has spent most of his adult life unemployed, according to records obtained by the Weekly."

The venerable Mount Washington Hotel featured in NY Sun. Photo above. Cool place. Their website here. I have a friend who climbed Mt. Washington in January, off-trail. Impressive. Stayed at the MWH, of course.

D.C. attacks Second Amendment in Fed. Appeals Court. Newsmax. Why don't those darn evil guns just relax and sit on the shelf, and quit shooting people?

Scalia and Breyer debate world views. Slate

How many Bibles are there for sale? How many of them do you own? Op. Journal. Am I slightly old-fashioned to prefer the song and sound of the King James?

Ebola virus wiping out gorillas. Not good.

What is sin? S,C&A

How genetically close are humans to sea urchins? Very. That is humbling.

First Things looks at The Nativity Story, and Apocalypto, here

Star swallowed by a black hole. What a mess. Alphecca. It's a very strange universe. Makes you wonder what the other ones are like.

How the media builds "consensus". Quote via YARGB:

'In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

Google search engines. Noticed that we had visitors to the blog searching for "lesbian experiences" last night, and "nude farm slaves," along with the regular "farm porn" searches. It's about time we did another "farm porn" post: it's usually a really nice, sexy, antique Farmall tractor, and sometimes it is turtles in love. But who knows how the lesbian experiences ended up here....not that there's anything wrong with it...

America is the most charitable nation in the world. RWN

Funniest Nativity scene I've ever seen. Come 'n get it, ACLU!

Breast-feeding saved those kids' lives.

Heather MacDonald goes after the race hustlers. A quote:

Since 1993, 11,353 people have been murdered in New York City. The large majority of victims and perpetrators have been black. Not a single one of those black-on-black killings has prompted protest or demonstrations from the city’s black advocates. Sharpton, Barron, et al. are happy to let thousands of black victims get mowed down by thugs without so much as a whispered call for “peace” or “justice”; it’s only when a police officer, trying to protect the public, makes a good faith mistake in a moment of intense pressure that they rise as vindicators of black life. (As for caring about slain police officers, forget about it. Sixteen cops—including several black policemen—have been killed since 1999, not one of whom elicited a public demonstration of condolence from the race hustlers.)

LaShawn: "Regardless of the findings, what could justify government-mandated racial discrimination, for crying out loud???" Piece here. LaShawn, we love ya, but you don't get it. It's not about skin color - it's about racial politics, pure and simple. I call it "plantation politics," regardless of the "community" involved.

Be careful what you wish for. If we cripple "big pharma," we hurt ourselves. The entire world depends on us for these pills. Who's gonna develop new meds - the Post office?

Why is Santa happy and tired? Because of his elves (T-rated). Yes, Rum and Coke - it's basic - and all-organic.

World's best dad. With a splendid and tear-jerking YouTube. It's about Dick Hoyt

Daniel Gross gets it wrong, on medical care. Dem Project. By the way, I am still demanding free legal care, free car insurance, free dental - and free beer. Oh - almost forgot - did I mention free happiness?

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has a new book. Interview at TCS

I have heard of Britney Spears (current winner in the Firecrotch Derby), Bill Clinton (runner-up? Was he some politician or something?), Gwyneth Paltrow, Sean Penn, Al Gore, etc. But who is Norman Borlaug? A genuine celeb.

Liked Bird Dog's Advent post, but it received not a single comment. Too corny, or what? I kinda thought it captured the idea.

Save the House Mouse! Classical Values. Found one drowned, but well-preserved, in an uncapped bottle of extra-virgin olive oil in my cabinet recently. These mice are Euro-weenies, and do not belong in the USA. If you catch one, mail it back to France. But they make good toys for cats, if you can stand cats. Yes, being the finicky sort, I tossed out the bottle of oil.