Due to increased used of carbon by humanity, the much warmer world of 2010 has suffered a catastrophic blast of cold and snow. This is just the logical outgrowth of a warmer world – cold, wet weather. If the world had been cooling, people in New York would be forced to wear shorts and tank tops in December because we all know that the result of a gradually cooling earth would be warm winters.

Always keep in mind that if any doubts about this logic creep in, you should repeat to yourself – over and over again – that whatever is happening which causes you to doubt global warming is just “weather” while anything which tends to confirm global warming is “climate” (please note that you no longer have to assert that its “settled science” or “consensus”; you only have to believe that its happening and then go about comparing climate change deniers to Nazis, or some such).

So, how much snow has global warming produced in your neck of the woods? We in Nevada got our blast of wet weather last week – two inches or so of rain; I know this doesn’t sound like much, but for a place that gets about 6 inches a year, two inches in three days was rather astounding. Apparently we’re in for rain and cold weather for later this weeks, so you guys in the east should get hit again in the first week of January.

From the Daily Mail:

For someone who mangled words on a regular basis, it’s an impressive feat.

Former U.S. President George W Bush’s memoir has sold an astonishing two million copies since it was released in early November – and it’s not even in paperback yet.

‘Decision Points’, published both in hardcover and e-book form, is flying off the shelves, the Crown Publishing Group says.

By contrast, former president Bill Clinton’s memoir, ‘My Life’, has logged sales of 2.2million copies since it was first published in 2004…

I got a copy for Christmas from the Mrs…only just started to read it; a crisp, business-like book from a man who just wants to say what is on his mind. I always say look at what people do rather than what they say…while a lot of insult has been hurled at Bush, the fact that his book sold as much in a month as Clinton’s did in 6 years indicates the depth of love and respect the American people still hold for this man.

Flawed? You bet he was (and is). Made mistakes? Of course. Could have done a thousand things differently? You know it. But, in the end, he did what he did…and he’s right in saying that a true judgment of his Presidency won’t be possible until 50 years from now, when passions have cooled, the principals are dead and historians can see the long-term effects of the policies.

I said back in 2008 that we’d miss President Bush – and we do; not that he’d have found a sure-fire way out of the mess we’re in (there is, in fact, no easy way out), but we sure do miss a man who can make a decision and stick with it. We’re going to keep on missing him until we get his equal or better in office.

Just terrible news – from Lisa Graas:

My compatriots at Jihad Watch have the news about Islamist violence against Christians in Nigeria on Christmas Eve.

Nigeria: At least 31 dead in Christmas Eve bombings – Posted by Marisol on December 25, 2010 8:30 AM

Jihad attacks threatened against “the unbeliever and Christian countries celebrating Christmas” – Posted by Robert Spencer on December 25, 2010 1:04 PM…

…Nigeria: Pastor killed in front of his church, other churches targeted in arson rampage — Posted by Marisol on December 26, 2010 12:04 AM

I can find no condemnations of this violence from Muslims, but at least one Muslim blogger, at The Islamic Standard, believes this killing of Christians is justified, saying:

The Believers everywhere are rightly enraged against the policies of America and the secularist and nationalist governments that were left in control of their lands by the retreating colonialists after WWII...

I don’t put too much stock in that last statement. To be sure, its standard fare for radical Islam…but my view is that radical Islam isn’t a religious movement so much as a economic and political con job. Some people in Islam want quite a lot of power and wealth for themselves but they don’t want to earn it by working, nor do they wish to obtain it by doing well for the people and thus being rewarded with power…such paths to wealth and power are difficult; much easier, if you can do it, to just use insane violence to obtain your ends.

Unless and until we take the sternest measures possible – without paying the least attention to the softer versions of the scam (those con artists too squeamish to get their hands bloody but who yet wish to gain power and wealth without earning it – you know, groups like CAIR) – against the purveyors of this wicked violence, we won’t get anywhere. The con artist keeps at it until someone forces him to stop…its really just as simple as that (though, of course, the actual process of stopping these criminals will be long, bloody and difficult).

We can keep dancing around the issue and keep having people being killed – or we can act like men and women, and American men and women, and take care of the problem once and for all. The choice is ours.

From the Boston Globe:

…the threat of a primary challenge from conservatives — as well as the potential that national Tea Party groups will withhold financial support — appears to have grown, according to the movement’s activists. Brown’s votes in the past week follow his crucial support for the overhaul of financial regulations, which remains a particular sore point with conservatives.

“I think that there will be a primary challenge,’’ said Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party. “There’s enough of an underground movement in the Tea Party movement as seeing him as not being conservative enough. There probably will be multiple people who attempt to run against him.’’…

At issue is Brown’s votes for the mis-begotten financial “reform” bill, as well as the absurd START treaty. The theory is that Brown may draw a primary challenger – who would probably lose, but would also weaken Brown for the general election. Additionally, even if a primary challenger fails to materialize there may be a drop off in monetary support and voter enthusiasm – things which will be crucial for Brown in heavily Democrat Massachusetts.

As for me, I’m not too concerned about this – we pretty much knew what we were getting when we backed Brown. He’s a Massachusetts Republican – and that means he’s going to be generally to the left of the GOP main stream. He’s made no votes that surprised me, other than backing START…and that I put down to him likely being over-awed by the military brass’ insistence that it was needed. One foolish vote, however, doesn’t get me writing people off…and I believe that holds true for most conservative voters.

The crucial time for Brown is coming – as the GOP takes over the House, it will be up to the Senate GOP to stand firm and force Reid to bring up House bills for a vote on the Senate floor. Naturally, Reid will try to corral enough Republicans to gain cloture on Democrat counter-proposals which will then be sent to the House, forcing the GOP to vote on Democrat issues. If Brown wants to both refurbish his center/right credentials and avoid a primary challenge, then his best option is to stand firm against what will be an orchestrated effort by Obama and Reid to force through items on the liberal agenda.

If Brown stands firm, he’ll be fine – if be cuts the GOP off at the knees, he’ll be primary toast. We’ll see how it comes out.

Neatly displayed in a biased ABC News report – from Life News:

ABC’s Dan Harris gave a slanted report on Wednesday’s GMA about the Catholic bishop of Phoenix, Arizona stripping a hospital there of its Catholic status: “This is a story that involves a nun, described as saintly; a Catholic bishop; a world-class hospital; and a controversy now being discussed across the country.”…

What happened here is that the former nun in question excommunicated herself by participating in an elective abortion – ultimately, the Bishop of Phoenix decided to de-certify the hospital where the abortion was performed…it is no longer a hospital which can call itself Catholic.

That is really all there is to it – Catholics are prohibited from participating in elective abortion and by so doing, a person automatically excommunicates themselves. The Church doesn’t “do” it – you do it to yourself, if you choose that course of action. Secondly, the Catholic Church isn’t stopping the hospital from operating nor prohibiting Catholics from working or being treated there – the Church is just stating that the hospital is not Catholic (what this really boils down to is that Mass will no longer be offered within the hospital, plus a couple of other things which can only be done at a Catholic place).

Naturally, all of this has outraged the left and its cheer leaders in the MSM. How dare Catholics be Catholic? Don’t we know that our proper place is to do whatever the left tells us to do? And so ABC put out a report calling the former nun “saintly”, dragged in the sex abuse scandal (though it had nothing to do with this case) and essentially reported that we dumb, wicked Catholics are being all nasty about things. This does get rather tiresome.

No one has to be Catholic. No one has to be Christian. If you want to believing that butchering unborn life is ok, then by all means go ahead and do so. But don’t expect to be called Christian or Catholic if you do so – whatever the circumstances, it can never be justified to execute the unborn child in response to the problem. The left and the MSM can’t stand this – mostly because by standing firm for life we adhere to the position that each human person, as an individual, is important. Important individuals can’t be used as blocks of wood in liberal social experiments…and so valued human beings must be made to not exist. Killing unborn children is a very effective way to do this as not only do you get a dead human, you also erode the very concept that human life is valuable.

More than anything else, abortion has become central to liberalism. You can stray a bit form liberal orthodoxy in most cases and still be considered a good liberal…but you dare not do anything against abortion. As soon as you cross that line and assert that innocent people must not be killed, the larger left will turn on you in fury. Even quixotic candidates such as Dennis Kucinich were forced to abandon a life-time’s pro-life position in order to run for President. No one is allowed to dissent – for liberals it is death now and death forever. Any attempt to respect life is out of bounds. In the Church of Liberalism, abortion is the sacrament.

And that is really rather sad – killing babies as the most important thing you believe in! Moloch would be pleased…

Iowahawk strikes again.

Huh? What is “margin debt”? Well, let Zero Hedge explain:

It is not just the stock market that is at the highest levels since Lehman. Probably just as importantly, NYSE margin debt has surged to $269 billion, an increase of $13 billion from the prior month, and the highest since September 2008 when it was at $299 billion, and subsequently tumbled as investors rushed to get out of all margined positions…

This is a sign of optimism – but also a sign of “all in”. In other words, everything that can get in there to push stock prices higher is already in there. Trouble is, for stocks to keep rising there has to be a continual increase in buying. If everyone who has a mind to be in stocks is already there, and buying on margin as much as they can, then we’re at a peak. Where to from here? Flat or down – with down being the more likely of the two. But not necessarily right away…there is still some wiggle room for a bit more increase in margin debt and thus a bit more run-up in stock prices…and then, once we’re really maxed out, it might still be a while before everyone understands its time to bail out.

We’ll have to see what and when on the event which will trigger a sell off – sovereign default in Europe, further monetary tightening in China as they try (in vain, it will prove) to reign in inflation; further rise in US unemployment as the holiday sales bloom fades; further rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies as house values continue to drop (and they are continuing to drop). Lots of things can happen – the thing to remember is that there is no really good way out of this. No matter how it happens, bad events will come. Some can be worse than others, but none will be comfortable for an already weak US economy. I hope for the softest landing possible, but I fear we’re really in for it thanks to massive spending by Treasury and massive printing by the Federal Reserve. Fake money and government debt are never good things…

More of that good, old Bernanke-created, Obama-backed economic policy:

Proving that Ben Bernanke can even screw up the economics of Christmas, the price of a lump of coal has increased more than 63 percent in the last year and a half…

Bunch of morons running things in DC…it won’t get better until we get rid of them.

Record crowds:

Bethlehem hosted a record number of pilgrims this Christmas, Palestinian officials said Saturday as tens of thousands flocked to celebrate in the birthplace of Jesus.

With thousands still heading to the West Bank city on Christmas Day, officials said the numbers may have even surpassed the 90,000 predicted by the Palestinian Authority ahead of the Holy Day.

“This is the first year that Bethlehem has hosted so many people,” Bethlehem city official George Saade told AFP. However, he said they did not yet have exact figures…

Let those who try to defend Hamas in Gaza compare and contrast…90,000 people easily made their way to Bethlehem and celebrated a non-Moslem event and no acts of violence or repression were recorded…and no trouble from the Israeli authorities at this large and risky moving of people through areas once known to be rife with terrorists. The people of the West Bank, having finally got some native leadership willing to be even partially reasonable, are reaping the reward: normal life. The people of Gaza, living under an exceptionally insane version of radical Islam are suffering terribly…and only a few miles away from peace and prosperity.

This event clearly shows that the Palestinian’s problem is not primarily Israel – that, in fact, the Israelis only care about Palestinian doings to the extent that those doings put Israel at risk. If you don’t want your town bombarded by Israeli war planes, then you best option is to not fire rockets at Israel. Additionally, if you want free and easy access from Israel to your territory, then you might want to look in to stopping suicide bombers from leaving your territory to kill Israelis.

All of the Islamist and allied global leftist propaganda is shown up as nonsense just in the fact of what happened in Bethlehem this Christmas. The problem is not Israel; the problem is not US support for Israel (plenty of Americans went to Bethlehem and none of them were in any way molested); the problem is the leadership of the Moslem side. When it is insane, it provokes a reasonable and very harsh response…when it is sane, it provokes an equally reasonable and soft response.

Let me here no more talk of curbing Israel or demanding of concessions until all of the leadership of the Moslem world is as least as sane as the leadership of the West Bank.

A blessed Christmas to all:

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus

that the whole world should be enrolled.

This was the first enrollment,

when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.

And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth

to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem,

because he was of the house and family of David,

to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

While they were there,

the time came for her to have her child,

and she gave birth to her firstborn son.

She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,

because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields

and keeping the night watch over their flock.

The angel of the Lord appeared to them

and the glory of the Lord shone around them,

and they were struck with great fear.

The angel said to them,

“Do not be afraid;

for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy

that will be for all the people.

For today in the city of David

a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.

And this will be a sign for you:

you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes

and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,

praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest

and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” – Luke 2:1-14