Nightly Ramble:Christmas,Hillary Clinton to State; More

Greetings, and welcome to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.

• December the second, already. That means only 22 shopping days left until Christmas. Always assuming the war on Christmas doesn’t succeed. I’ll get to that.
• I note with interest that by a fluke of the calendar, our gift buying season is remarkably shorter than in most years.  Not many people making mention of how the season is doing, saes-wise, make mention of that point.  On the other hand, we have two other factors; Most people are nearly half-done with their gift buying, already. More of them are doing so online. Oh, and we’re already about 3% to 10% over last year’s numbers, depending on who is doing the estimating.
• And who is doing the estimating seems a point not many want to address. An example of how the baises of the estimators can alter the narrative, comes in the form of a post from Ed Driscoll. Ed looks, today, at the deal at a WalMart out on Long Island, and the reaction of the New York Times to that incident.  Says Ed:?
  

  Responding to the incident on Black Friday when one of their employees died when the doors were opened to allow the first mob of shoppers into the Long Island store at 5:00 AM, a New York Times went out with the following absurd headline: “A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment.”Evidently, New York Times economics reporter Peter Goodman (or perhaps his editor, depending upon who wrote the headline) fancies himself as the next Picasso. So who are the Nazis in his mind? The management at Wal-Mart who, somewhat like Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium 30 years ago failed to have adequate security and preparations for the onslaught of a crowd, or the shoppers who crushed the unfortunate sales clerk? The article, found via Newsbusters doesn’t say….

  …if the New York Times and its writers and editors can’t see the difference between an unfortunate shopping incident and the Spanish Civil War, one wonders what what value the newspaper has as an information source to be trusted by their readers.

  Well, yeah, there is that.  Of course, now, that’s ALWAYS been the question with them, hasn’t it?… and I mean regardless of topic….  their overtly skewed perspective? They’re simply not trustworthy. I’m convinced that the story wouldn’t have been nearly so loud had it happened at a Macy’s or Lord and Taylor or Belk, or something. (Belk? Yes, that’s a name that’s come up in my searches, recently for other reasons.)  In any event; Can anyone deny that there has been, and continues to be, an anti-Wal-Mart bias in the liberal press? Granted that it’s a bit less pronounced than in previous years. But then again, at the moment, it’s starting to look like most of the Christmas shopping money is going there… and with the spectre of an Obama presidency, the liberal press can’t be seen as talking down the economy as they did while Bush occupied the WH. And trust me, that’s the difference in their reactions.

• An Honorable Mention at OTB’s Caption Contest
• With HIllary Clinton going to State… assuming the constitutional hurdles are crossed… there comes the question of who gets her Senate Seat here in NY.  Bubba’s name has been mentioned. I gather Elliot Spitzer is free. (And worth every dime of it)
• One really does have to pause and question what the bleep Obama is thinking with this appointment. I suppose having her on the team tends to limit her ability to be publicly critical. Or at least it would if she wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Still, Powell shows us how damaging to a foreign policy and the overall perception of a presdient, a rouge secretary of state can be. And let’s also keep in mind the lifers in that particular cesspool, may of whom have views that are even more leftist than Obama’s.  And what was Hillary Clinton thinking, for that matter? There wasn’t a Secretary of State that was elected presdient all through the last century. Not exactly priming her power pump, seems to me. So, it seems fairly safe to say there was a lot of negotiation behind the scenes, here… and the Clintons you may recall have a tendency to ignore agreements once they’re no longer beneficial to their political power. We’ll find out in about three years. Sooner, if he proves to be the screwup I think him to be.
• Oil’s at under $50/BBL Since the economy is energy based, I can’t help but think that this will be the real stimulus package. At the same time, though I can’t help but wonder if  our economic troubles weren’t intentionally made much worse by the price spiking… Soros, anyone?
• Venice is flooding. No, really.
• The reality of the New Deal. And remember, gang, we now have both houses of congress and the WH occupied by people who think the New Deal saved us.
• I see Fred Thompson is still writing to Fredpac.Com, which makes me wonder if we’re not going to see him running again in four years.
• Yeah, I’d like to see it happen… taxes go away for a few months to get the economy going. … But see also, Snowball,Hell. Still the numbers Boortz put up here, tell a story:
  

  Gohmert proposes a two-month tax holiday where the federal government would not collect any taxes from individual Americans.  No income taxes.  No payroll taxes.  You would keep all the money that you earn for two months.

  Now this is a statistic that should shock you … Americans pay over $101 billion in income taxes and $66 billion in FICA taxes every single month.  That means that if Gohmert’s plan went into effect, there would be over $330 billion in American pockets.  That is money that you have earned and money that you can decide where it is spent or saved.  You pick the economic winners and losers with your money – the government doesn’t get to do the choosing for you.  The government can’t use it to pay executive salaries for failing companies or subsidize failing UAW contracts.  The government won’t spend $50 million just to send every American a letter saying that their pithy “stimulus” check is on the way.  That’s it … you just stop all federal taxes for two months.

  Will it cost us anything?  Well, no more than has already been pledged in the bailout bill.  There’s $350 billion left there … this would eat up most of it. 

  Do you begin to understand the burden the taxpayers have imposed on them? Worse, we’re not paying on all they’re spending.  Still, what is proposed here would lose us less money that the bailouts would… and likely far less. So what would be lost with such a plan?  Government power only. Which is why the Democrats would never go for it. That alone should tell you something.

• That’s right enough, Billy, as I said yesterday.   The thing is so flippin’ obvious it’s a wonder they’ve been able to argue against it for as long as they have. And what would we lose with an armed citizenry, over what we’re losing now?  Again, the answer is government power, only. Which, given the lack of response from the police there, they’re going to lose, anyway.
•  The War on Christmas continues apace.  I see Toby Keith has got a song up about this one. And via Hume, we learn:
  

  Visitors to the Washington State capitol this month will be greeted with an extra piece of seasonal flare in addition to what they call the “holiday tree” and a Nativity scene. The Freedom From Religion Foundation was given permission to erect a 4.5 foot-tall sign declaring there is no God and “religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”The foundation’s co-president says the sign is a reminder of the “real reason for the season, the winter solstice.”The Spokesman Review newspaper reports that because of past lawsuits over holiday displays, Washington state officials now say they will honor virtually any request for a religious or political display at their Capitol building.

  You’ll want to check this out, too.  You really have to wonder just what it is those attacking Christmas, are afraid of. What drives this fxation? Certainly, a spirit of self-justification for starters, but I can’t help but think that there’s a creeping fear that they might just be wrong about God, that leaks into the ferocity of their battle against Public displays of religion …even ones not government funded.  I see Goldberg dabbling here.

• I’m starting to collect pictures of local Christmas displays that I’ll be sharing with you between now and New Years as I can.  Call it part of my speaking out for Christmas, and rubbing it in the face of those who would remove it from our society, and our world. Sure… It’s a small thing, but avalanches, as I gather it, are usually started by small happenings.