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

From EconForecast

Just in time for Christmas, On Wednesday, Dec. 22, U.S. gasoline prices hit an average $3 a gallon for the first time in more than two years, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report…

We’ve been over $3 a gallon here in Las Vegas for couple weeks now. $3.09 is the worst I’ve seen, so far, but the prices seem to go up every couple of days. While the MSM is putting out reports that its the cold weather causing the rise in prices, the reality is that the massive printing by the Federal Reserve has made our money worth less and thus the oil suppliers are demanding more dollars for oil. As the linked article notes, the price of oil is 71% of the price of a gallon of gasoline – so, while cold weather might be playing a role, it is the fact of $90 a barrel oil which is really driving things.

This is a massive tax upon business, the poor and the middle class – a gigantic loss of purchasing power because everyone now has to spend more on fuel and thus has less to spend on everything else. You might recall the actual triggering event for our current economic crisis – $4 a gallon gas in 2007. That hit to our economy ensured that the housing bubble would pop. Now, our economy is in even shakier condition than back in 2007 and here in December – usually a time of low gas prices due to reduced demand – we’ve now got prices for gas we shouldn’t see until July. What will the price be in July? $4? $5? What do you think that will do to all the rosy predictions coming out of the banksters and bureaucrats about the 2011 economy? If we’re lucky, that 2 percentage point reduction in the payroll tax will cover our increased cost of living…

I don’t see a way out of this which is pleasant or easy…if the Federal Reserve finally turns off the presses, the financial system collapses and that kills the economy; if the Federal Reserve keeps the presses running, prices rise for the basics of life, thus killing the economy. Rock and a hard place, my friends.

HAT TIP: Zero Hedge

Byron York over in the Washington Examiner:

…With a significantly smaller, 53-seat majority in the Senate, Democrats will no longer be able to pass contentious legislation all by themselves or with just one or two Republican votes. On the other side, Republicans, with 47 votes, will no longer have to achieve perfect unity to sustain a filibuster and stop objectionable legislation. They’ll be able to lose three, four, five, even six members of the GOP caucus and still stop a bill.

That’s why you’re hearing confidence from the likes of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and deficit hawk Sen. Tom Coburn. “There aren’t going to be any big spending bills,” Coburn told ABC recently when asked to assess prospects for legislation next year.

It’s also why you’re hearing new rumbling about what many Democrats consider the ultimate fix for the Washington-is-broken problem: eliminating the filibuster…

York goes on to note that Democrats have all got on board a rules change to make killing a filibuster a lot easier…after all, if they can’t get rid of the filibuster, it will be almost impossible to pass big spending legislation through the Senate. Also, any contentious judges or Administration nominations will be held up! The horror of horrors!

Until, that is, January of 2013…as Democrats are almost certain to lose the Senate in the 2012 election (holding 23 seats up for election, the GOP needs to win only 4 of them to gain the majority), you just watch: once back in minority status, all of a sudden the filibuster will be a sacred thing no one may tamper with lest America die!

Hypocrites – plain and simple; power-mad, corrupt, political hacks. That is all the Democrat party is made up of these days.

But, have a holly, jolly…

From Pajamas Media:

…Among the two most alarming revelations is the already completed sale and delivery, to Venezuela by Russia, of nearly 2,000 advanced, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting aircraft as high as 19,000 feet. Equally and perhaps more alarming is an October agreement between Iran and Venezuela. The agreement establishes a joint ground-to-ground missile base on Venezuelan soil and calls for the sharing of missile technology and the training of technicians and officers. In addition, Venezuela may use the missiles as it chooses for “national needs” and in case of “emergency.” Several types of missiles will be deployed, giving Venezuela the ability to strike targets throughout South and Central America and throughout the U.S…

We’ve already discussed the Russian anti-aircraft missiles, but this Iranian connection adds a whole, new dimension to this: with such missiles, Venezuela will become a nation capable of directly attacking the United States – and this means that the government of Venezuela must be counted, absolutely, as an enemy regime.

But, of course, the Obama Administration will do little or nothing about this – to them, American national security is whatever the UN says it is. We’ll have to wait for a change in Administrations before we can do anything to break up this new threat – and by then, the threat will be larger and harder to deal with. Obama is going to leave us with a legacy of woe – and this makes it doubly important to beat him in 2012: we’ll be in a bad enough mess come January 20th, 2013…we daren’t allow ourselves the geo-strategic nightmare Obama will leave us by 2017.

Arms deals with dying Russia – silence about Iranian missiles to Venezuela. That is all one need know about Obama – he’s completely incompetent.

Once again, a busy day – and so:

The American Catholic lists the top 5 Christmas movies. What are yours? I tend to dislike most Christmas movies because they tend towards a “spirit of Christmas” message without mentioning Jesus…you know, the reason for the season. But, that’s just me and I tend to get cranky about some things.

Little Fockers gets a really, really bad review. I saw it – not as good as the first two (and the second in the series was, in my view, by far the best), but its worth going to see. But, then again, I’m tending towards a taste for entirely harmless entertainment in my movies…no obscenity, no nudity, no violence; guess I’m getting rather fuddy duddy as time goes on.

Middle class squeeze: as home values drop, property taxes go up. Thanks, big government!

From the New York Times:

Mayor Carlos Alvarez of Miami-Dade County faces a recall after opponents gathered enough signatures to force an election. The drive came after the county raised the property-tax rate to balance its budget. The county commission must call an election in 45 to 90 days, Harvey Ruvin, clerk of courts, said Tuesday. Recalls are also being sought in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Omaha after proposed tax increases.

People are in no mood to pay higher prices for corrupt, incompetent and bloated government. The only way a government can possibly get people to agree to a tax hike is by first demonstrating that real cuts in spending have been made – government is not trusted and so when a government says they can’t cut and must raise revenues to balance the budget, the government is simply presumed to be lying. And that, in 99.9% of the cases, is true…there is a huge amount which can be cut from all local, State and federal budgets without any impact on the day to day lives of Americans.

Naturally, people in government don’t want to face the cuts – after all, if government is cut, it is government people who feel the brunt of such cuts. But the patience of the people has run out – and now the Mayor of Miami will find out just how dumb a tax increase can be.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

Erick Erickson over at Red State thinks that may be the game:

There has been a lot of speculation this week about why the GOP rolled over in the Senate on virtually every issue. From Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’s repeal to START to you name it — the GOP became the party of capitulation. So much so that even Lindsey Graham is blasting the Senate GOP “for a ‘capitulation … of dramatic proportions’ to Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the lame-duck Congress.”

In his statement about why the GOP folded like a cheap suit, Graham gives away the game. He says, “I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans; I can’t understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans.”…

In other words, with Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and other genuine Republicans about to take office, this was the last chance for our RINOs to really cut conservatism off at the knees. This was their last chance to be the first to surrender to Democrats. Their last chance for favorable MSM write-ups due to their willingness to betray everything they say they stand for.

It will be much harder in 2011 for Harry Reid to find enough RINOs for cloture – very much harder, that is, to ram through liberal policies. Come January, it will be the conservative GOP which will hold the balance of power – especially because about a dozen Senate Democrats will have to routinely vote against Obama and the Democrat leadership in order to have a chance of surviving in 2012.

So, don’t take things like the START ratification too badly – sure, its a stupid policy which makes no sense, at all…but it is also the last gasp of a dying form of politics.

Tired of all the out-sourcing? Wonder why all our stuff is made in China? Well, Jeff Pope over at Pajamas Media brings up the real reason our manufacturing base is being crushed – and it applies equally well to our mining and agricultural industries:

* Companies used to have personnel clerks whose primary function was to make sure employees were paid accurately, vacation time was accounted for, and payroll tax deductions were made. They have been replaced by multitudes of advanced-degreed and six-figure paid HR professionals. We have diversity audits, sensitivity training, gender awareness programs, and all manner of support and grievance processes. As a result, every employee must be treated as a potential minefield of liability — an artificially generated risk managed at great expense to meet the mandates dictated by government at state and federal levels, and all with reams of accompanying reporting.

* Health insurance that used to focus primarily on illness and injury now, by state and federal mandate, covers all manner of other costs such as smoking cessation, obesity counseling, gender counseling, drug abuse treatment, depression, mental health, etc. These costs are added on top of the already ballooning cost of basic care by politicians who run to a microphone to announce that they have provided help for your smoking habit — and without raising taxes!

* Environmental regulations that are so extreme that spilling a can of paint thinner becomes an “end of life as we know it” event. Common sense good stewardship long ago lost out to very, very expensive measures frequently unrelated to a real threat. Try breaking a CFL in the middle of an environmentally compliant facility or getting all the permits needed to build a facility that will in any way use chemicals.

* Corporate legal departments used to be primarily involved in contracts and tax preparation. Now add to that whole staffs to either manage litigation or stifle any activity that could lead to liability in the fertile imagination of a tort lawyer. If a stock drops, a label falls off, a risky abuse of the product can conceived of, or any of a thousand other real or imagined risks, a company lawyer is called in to advise. Tort lawyers increasingly attempt to construe personal liability of corporate management in order to pressure them to settle claims, all without constraint from the government or the courts. Protection is expensive, and non-productive.

We’ve tied down the wealth-creating part of our economy with a maze of red tape, lawsuits and political correctness. Our economy is buried under a blizzard of paper. One must realize that we can make a hammer here in the United States just as well as the hammer can be made in China – but they are made in China because once you add up all the costs of doing business in the United States it simply makes more sense to make it in China. In order to revive manufacturing, farming and mining in the United States, we simply must cut out all these additional costs.

We need to go through the entire federal register of regulations and review each one to determine if they really are helpful, or if they’re just mindless bureaucratic mandates put in place to make someone feel good, or allow a politician to claim they did something regarding the political fad of the moment. The safety of the workers must be assured, the quality of the products must be kept high – but we really must get a handle on this or our economy will continue to die.

We also need to go after the lawyers – we’re suing ourselves in to economic oblivion. Every time a lawyer manages to extract money from a company it makes all other companies go in to defensive mode – gumming up the works and making it ever more costly to produce. After a while, this also adds to the incentive of getting out of the United States and shipping the factory over seas.

“Congress shall make no law” should be our watchword for a decade as we reform our economy. We need a Special Assistant to the President for Repeal Affairs; someone who will go through the laws and regulations determining which have to go. Congress should hold hearings bringing the regulators in to testify as to why each and every regulation is vital…and if something isn’t vital, it should be legislated out of existence. The regulators, themselves, should receive statutory instruction that their primary job is to ensure the smooth transaction of business – that, when it doubt, they should let the practice continue until Congress and the President decide otherwise.

If we will free up our economy the growth we’ll see will be phenomenal. And it will be real growth – meaning a real increase in national wealth, year by year, as factories, farms and mines are opened and expanded. There will be jobs for the middle class, again; pressure will be taken off the illegal immigration issue as we once again start to have labor shortages; our national defense will be more secure as we become less dependent upon foreign sources and more capable of producing what we need here at home. There is no downside to this – and only economic death if we keep going as we are.