Perfect analogy by Reuters columnist James Pethokoukis on the statist health care monstrosity passed by the Senate (bold is mine):

Basically, the government is taking money out of Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (MHI) trust fund, replacing it with IOUs and then spending it. But the CBO doesn’t score such intra-governmental transfers as the same sort of debt as when a Treasury bond is issued. But it is an obligation just the same. If not for this accounting quirk, the Senate health bill seemingly would be scored as increasing the budget deficit by $170 billion or so over the next decade (itself a funny number since taxes come first, then benefits) instead of cutting the deficit by $130 billion. This is a similar shell game played by the government when it uses Social Security surpluses to mask the true depth of the budget deficit.

And, as has happened with Social Security during much of the past year (last item at link), when the time comes that related tax revenues are less than benefits paid out, there will be no real money available to pay benefits, because the MHI trust fund’s supposed balance will be a bogus as Social Security’s currently is. Benefits will have to come from current taxes or new debt, assuming it can even be issued.

Update: I critiqued a related pathetic report by the AP’s Charles Babington at this later post.

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CPAC — “Consciously Providing Ammo to Critics.” Given that the organization has treated Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney as a headliner during past several years, I think the first word should be “Continually.”

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These items are a couple of weeks old, but conditions have not materially changed. David Goldman has “Dave’s Top 10 Reasons To Dismiss Last Friday’s Unemployment Report” (HT Pethokoukis, who himself has 12). They’re all good, though if they looked at the government’s actuals (i.e., the not seasonally adjusted figures), they could come up with even more.

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Redefining “aiming low” –

North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has said that the Senate legislation would postpone the Medicare trust fund’s projected 2017 insolvency by several years.

So you see, this is only the beginning of the problem, not the end.

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From the “This Country is in the Best of Hands” file – “Kerry Floats Plan to Visit Tehran; White House Wouldn’t Oppose Trip, First by Top U.S. Official in 30 Years, to Chagrin of Iran’s Opposition” (HT Hot Air).

In contrast to Ronald Reagan, who cut Poland and its Soviet-backed controllers no slack in December 1981, the Obama administration, especially if it designates Kerry as its “official representative” if/when he goes, will be legitimizing the current regime and demoralizing its opposition.

Poland ultimately became free. Does Obama want Iran to be free? Maybe someone should ask him.

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Some context in Ford’s buyout offer to all of its U.S. hourly UAW workers:

• Even after breaking its promise not to lay off any more hourly employees, GM has 48,000 of them, plus including 6,000 – 7,000 on indefinite layoff collecting “sub pay.”
• Chrysler plays things a lot closer to the vest, even though taxpayers own a substantial percentage of it. Its hourly headcount appears to be something like 23,000. It was reported as 26,000 in late April.
• Ford’s sales in most recent months, including November, have been running at about 80% of GM’s and are getting pretty close to doubling Chrysler’s.
• Looking at those results proportionally and taking into account GM outsourcing of more comparatively more components to facilities in other countries, Ford’s 41,000 hourly headcount with only 634 on layoff is probably too many, but not by a lot, especially if (very, very, big if) the company’s early-December plans to significantly increase production are still in place.

I see the buyout a way for Ford to get a bit leaner and to build up a cash reserve in case the car business as a whole doesn’t recover as expected, to hedge against adverse statist actions designed to protect the government’s two wards, and to get ready for negotiations two years from now that result in no new labor concessions. Such concessions might not be necessary if the company can balance its headcount against its sales. What’s more, Chrysler and GM’s contracts are as I understand it basically locked in until 2015.

From St. Paul, Minnesota:

Dec 20, 2009 / 02:29 pm

Tim O’Meara, 50, heartily shook Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Most Rev. John Nienstedt’s hand and grinned broadly, his excitement transparent. He had been anticipating the archbishop’s visit for a while, he said. O’Meara is one of about 990 men who are currently in the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Rush City. Arch bishop Nienstedt celebrated Mass and visited with inmates Dec. 15. The visit coincided with Gaudete Sunday — the Sunday of Advent that calls people to rejoice in the Lord.

In his homily, Archbishop Nienstedt spoke about God’s gift of joy and the faithful’s need to rejoice. He also spoke of conversion, which is at the heart of St. John the Baptist’s message in the Gospel.

“These Scriptures speak to everyone in the church, no matter what condition he or she finds themselves,” he said. “Even in this situation of being incarcerated, there can be real joy in the realization that God is here in your midst, calling you to a change of heart. . . .”

“The past is what it is,” he continued. “The future lies open to what you want to make of it.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

The Associated Press and CBS News (with AP contributing) are reported that the passenger on a flight into Detroit who allegedly attempted to detonate explosives shortly before it landed said he was acting on behalf of Al-Qaida (AP’s spelling)/Al Qaeda (CBS’s).

Here are the first few paragraphs of the AP’s story by Larry Margasak and Lara Jakes as of 7:28 p.m. (saved here at web host):

AP sources: Al-Qaida link in failed plane attack

A Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria, who said he was acting on al-Qaida’s instructions, tried to blow up the plane Friday as it was landing in Detroit, law enforcement and national security officials said.

Passengers subdued the man and may have prevented him from detonating the explosives, the officials said.

“We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official said.

Federal officials imposed stricter screening measures after the incident.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit. There were 278 passengers aboard the Airbus 330.

There was nothing out of the ordinary until the flight was on final approach to Detroit, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory. That is when the pilot declared an emergency and landed without incident shortly thereafter, Cory said in an e-mail message. The plane landed at 11:51 a.m. EST (later corrected to 12:51 EST).

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

The passenger was being questioned Friday evening. An intelligence source said the Nigerian passenger was being held and treated in an Ann Arbor, Mich., hospital.

…. One law enforcement source said the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil.

The official said an official determination of a terrorist act would have to come from the attorney general.

…. Passenger Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said the incident occurred during the plane’s descent. Jafri said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and said he saw a glow, and noticed a smoke smell. Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”

“Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic,” he said.

It’s more than a little odd that Congressman King is the one being quoted about who the alleged terrorist is.

It will be interesting to see how this news develops. I have saved the AP report to see what the wire service does to update it in the coming hours.

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UPDATE: From ABC (bold is mine) –

Federal officials and police are interviewing a Nigerian man, who allegedly tried to “explode” a powdery substance aboard a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, injuring himself and two other passengers, law enforcement officials said.

The man said he was directed by al Qaeda to explode a small device in flight, over U.S. soil, ABC News has learned. Authorities have no corroboration of that information, and the credibility of the suspect’s statements are being questioned, officials said.

The suspect was identified as Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, who according to federal documents is an engineering student at University College of London.

…. “The subject is claiming to have extremist affiliation and that the device was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used,” a federal situational awareness bulletin stated.

…. An in-flight emergency was declared when a fire indicator light when on in the cockpit, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The pilot asked for airport rescue and firefighting services, and for law enforcement to meet the flight at gate, the TSA said.

It is unclear how powerful the explosive could have been and what the man’s intentions were. Initial reports were that fireworks or firecrackers had gone off on the plane.

The man suffered second-degree burns, which is consistent with a small fireworks device, police sources said.

UPDATE 2: Via Bloomberg –

President Barack Obama ordered heightened security after authorities detained a passenger who may have tried to blow up a flight bound for Detroit from Amsterdam with 278 passengers.

The passenger was trying to destroy Northwest Airlines Flight 253, and an explosive device failed, the Associated Press reported, citing U.S. intelligence officials it didn’t name.

UPDATE 3: NBC with AP help — “Two people noticed the attempted attack, and a third person jumped on the man and subdued him, an airline official told NBC News. The man was being treated at the burn unit of the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, officials said.”

The MSNBC.com headline is “Officials: Possible terror attack on Northwest jet.” The first sentence of the report says “A Nigerian man claiming ties to al-Qaida tried to light a powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed Friday in Detroit in what senior U.S. officials called an attempted act of terrorism.”

UPDATE 4: The earliest FreeRepublic entry at about 3 p.m. linked to a CNN report (long since updated) called “Fireworks set off aboard airliner.” In CNN’s defense, that’s apparently how Delta Airlines was characterizing it.

UPDATE 5: From CBS’s 8:27 p.m. update —

Mudallad reportedly ignited powder attached to his leg and was severely burned in the incident.

Rather than having its intended effect on other passengers, however, the small fire only caused a commotion and some minor injuries.

Mudallad was on a terror watchlist, King said. The White House is calling the incident an attempted terrorist attack. The FBI is investigating, and stricter security measures were being implemented.

A U.S. security official says the explosive device was a mixture of powder and liquid.

Given that he was apparently trying to take down the plane, I don’t think he was really worrying about “the intended effect on passengers.”

UPDATE 6: Related? –

(Dec. 24) Yemen warplanes may have killed two al-Qaeda leaders and a Muslim extremist religious leader connected with the U.S. Army major accused of killing Army personnel in Fort Hood, Texas last month, a Yemeni government spokeswoman said today.

U.S. government officials said they were aware of the report of today’s raid, while declining to confirm any details.

“The president supports the government of Yemen and their efforts to take out terrorist elements in their country, and we’ll continue to support those efforts,” White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama and his family to a Christmas vacation in Hawaii.

The attacks in question actually occurred on December 17.

UPDATE 6A: A tidbit from Examiner.com — “Mudallad reportedly told investigators he is a member of al-Qaeda and received support from terrorists in Yemen.”

UPDATE 7: At the Washington Post —

White House: Failed plane attack an attempted act of terrorism

A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism. The FBI is investigating and President Obama, celebrating Christmas in Hawaii, was told of the incident about three hours after the plane landed, officials said.

Obama has told White House officials that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel, a spokesman said.

UPDATE 8: From AP’s 8:55 p.m. revision —

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. Others had slightly different spellings.

I’ll say. It’s “Mutallab” here, “Mudallad” in Update 5, and “Abdulmutallab” in the first update.

UPDATE 9: AP”s 9:54 p.m. revision, with the beginnings of a walkback —

Flight 253 with 278 passengers aboard was 20 minutes from the airport when it sounded like a firecracker had exploded, witnesses said. One passenger jumped over others and tried to subdue the man. Shortly afterward, the suspect was taken to a front row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned.

The White House said it believed it was an attempted act of terrorism and stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel, but were not specified.

UPDATE 9A: AP at 11:04 p.m., with a whiff of an indication that we shouldn’t take the AQ link seriously –

In 2003, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden purportedly marked Nigeria for liberation in a recording posted on the Internet, calling on Muslims in the oil-rich country to rise up against one of the “regimes who are slaves of America.” But links to al-Qaida remained rare, though security forces claimed to break up such a linked terror cell in November 2007.

UPDATE 9B: It took all of two minutes to call BS on the AP’s “links to Al-Qaida remained rare” claim —

Islamic “Education Is Sin” group returns, declares total jihad

“We support Osama bin Laden, we shall carry out his command in Nigeria until the country is totally Islamised which is according to the wish of Allah.”

…. That the Boko Haram is an Islamic Revolution which impact is not limited to Northern Nigeria, in fact, we are spread across all the 36 states in Nigeria, and Boko Haram is just a version of the Al Qaeda which we align with and respect.

And there’s this from Reuters in mid-August (HT Jihad Watch):

Police in the western Nigerian state of Niger have raided an Islamic community and detained hundreds of its members, weeks after an uprising by a radical sect killed almost 800 in the remote northeast.

…. Police and immigration officers were screening about 600 members of the sect who had been detained and taken to a nearby school for questioning, police spokesman Richard Oguche said.

Some of them were believed to have crossed into Nigeria to join Darul Islam from Chad, Cameroon and the country of Niger.

Local journalists said as many as 3,000 people were believed to live in the community.

…. Clashes three weeks ago between the security forces and members of a radical Islamic sect called Boko Haram killed close to 800 people in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, more than 800 km (500 miles) away from Niger state.

While the two groups are not known to be directly linked, the authorities suspect they share similar beliefs.

UPDATE 9C, Dec. 26: Well, an early morning AP revision on the Nigerian relevance is an improvement, and a backslide —

If the Nigerian arrested Friday attempted a terrorist bombing, the FBI would be focused on trying to determine if he acted alone or had training from Al Qaeda or another network. There will be great interest also in the nature and destructive capacity of the explosive device involved and how it got past airport security screeners.

Nigerians have not figured in many cases involving Al Qaeda, but the rise of violent Islamic extremism in that country, and in sub-Saharan Africa overall, concerns Western antiterror officials.

The backslide is that the word “Muslim” no longer appears.

UPDATE 10: From the Wall Street Journal, not time-stamped —

Stephanie van Herk, a passenger from the Netherlands who was in seat 18B, said the plane had lowered its landing gear when she heard a loud bang. At first she thought the plane might have blown a tire, she said, but then she saw flame leap from the lap of a man in the row behind her in the window seat 19A. “It was higher than the seat,” said Ms. van Herk, 22 years old.

“Then everyone started screaming,” she said. “It was panic.” Flight attendants shouted “What are you doing? What are you doing?” They called for water, and the man began pulling down his burning pants, said Ms. van Herk. She and other passengers got water from the galley and the man was doused. Then a Dutch man jumped him.

…. A few passengers applauded the man who was identified as having helped subdue the alleged attacker, Michelle said.

I’m not seeing any record of the name of that man, which for his safety is probably a good thing.

UPDATE 11: This is it for the night — A dot-com web site called the Nigerian News Service reports that “He traveled from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit. He was traveling one way — no return ticket.” That would be consistent with ABC’s report that his entry visa was good until June 12, 2010. But it’s not consistent with his claim on that entry visa “that he was flying from Nigeria to the United States for a religious seminar.” A “seminar” is usually considered to be or short duration. Why were his plans of such an indefinite length that he didn’t book a return flight?

This post, published in the Wall Street Journal on Christmas Eve in 2007, is a new Christmas evening BizzyBlog tradition. It will be truncated as long as the Journal keeps it available.

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Washington’s Gift

There is a Christmas story at the birth of this country that very few Americans know. It involves a single act by George Washington — his refusal to take absolute power — that affirms our own deepest beliefs about self-government, and still has profound meaning in today’s world. To appreciate its significance, however, we must revisit a dark period at the end of America’s eight-year struggle for independence.

The story begins with Gen. Washington’s arrival in Annapolis, Md., on Dec. 19, 1783. The country was finally at peace — just a few weeks earlier the last British army on American soil had sailed out of New York harbor. But the previous eight months had been a time of terrible turmoil and anguish for Gen. Washington, outwardly always so composed. His army had been discharged and sent home, unpaid, by a bankrupt Congress — without a victory parade or even a statement of thanks for their years of sacrifices and sufferings.

Instead, not a few congressmen and their allies in the press had waged a vitriolic smear campaign against the soldiers — especially the officers, because they supposedly demanded too much money for back pay and pensions. Washington had done his utmost to persuade Congress to pay them, yet failed, in this failure losing the admiration of many of the younger officers. Some sneeringly called him “The Great Illustrissimo” — a mocking reference to his world-wide fame. When he said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York early in December, he had wept at the sight of anger and resentment on many faces.

Congressman Alexander Hamilton, once Washington’s most gifted aide, had told him in a morose letter that there was a “principle of hostility to an army” loose in the country and too many congressmen shared it. Bitterly, Hamilton added that he had “an indifferent opinion of the honesty” of the United States of America.

Soon Hamilton was spreading an even lower opinion of Congress. Its members had fled Philadelphia when a few hundred unpaid soldiers in the city’s garrison surrounded the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), demanding back pay. Congressman Hamilton called the affair “weak and disgusting to the last degree” and soon resigned his seat.

The rest of the country agreed. There were hoots of derision and contempt for Congress in newspapers from Boston to Savannah. The politicians took refuge in the village of Princeton, N.J., where they rejected Washington’s advice to fund a small postwar regular army, then wandered to Annapolis.

In Amsterdam, where brokers were trying to sell shares in an American loan negotiated by John Adams, sales plummeted. Even America’s best friend in Europe, the Marquis de Lafayette, wondered aloud if the United States was about to collapse. A deeply discouraged Washington admitted he saw “one head turning into thirteen.”

Was there anyone who could rescue the situation? Many people thought only George Washington could work this miracle.
(more…)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

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This post is a BizzyBlog Christmas tradition.

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What If Christmas Never Happened?
by D. James Kennedy (1930-2007)

“I want to live again! I want to live again!” George Bailey cried as he stood on a snow-covered iron bridge, the dark swirling river below. With help from Angel Second Class Clarence Oddbody, George had just discovered, to his horror, what life would be like had he never been born.

Anyone who has watched the Christmas film classic It’s a Wonderful Life knows Bedford Falls had become Pottersville. Its main street a red-light district with loud music and garish, flesh-peddling neon signs — a transformation from Currier and Ives to Sodom and Gomorrah. All because George had never been born.

One person can make an enormous difference in the lives of others — in a community or an entire culture. But what if Jesus had never been born? What difference would it have made in history or in our daily lives if a Bethlehem stable had not served as a makeshift delivery room (over 2,000) years ago?

A great deal.

Jesus, the greatest man who ever lived, has changed virtually every aspect of human life — and most people don’t know it. The greatest tragedy of the Christmas holiday each year is not so much its commercialization, but its trivialization. People have forgotten Him to whom they owe so very much.

Much of what we take for granted finds its roots in Christ and His teachings. And yet Christianity is ridiculed as an impediment to progress, a bane, and remains today the one safe target of contempt and prejudice.

And while the church has strayed badly at times from Christ’s teaching — for example, during the Crusades, the Inquisition and the blight of anti-Semitism — the overwhelming impact of Christ on earth has been for good. Consider Christ’s profound influence in five areas: respect for life, the status of women, the family, science and education.

Women and children

In classical Rome or Greece, it was dangerous to conceive a baby. Abortion was rampant and abandonment of infants commonplace. Infirm or unwanted babies were often taken out into the forest or the mountainside and left to be consumed by wild animals or to starve or for others to pick them up for their own perverted ends.

Then Jesus came. He did not disdain His conception in a virgin’s womb but humbled himself to be found in fashion as a baby. Since that time, and because of Jesus’ care for the poor and the infirm, Christians have cherished life as sacred, even the life of the unborn. In ancient Rome, Christians saved many abandoned babies and brought them up in the faith. Other believers started foundling homes, orphanages and nurseries. These new practices, based on this higher view of life, created a foundation for Western civilization’s ethic of human life — although it is under severe attack.

Women, too, have immensely benefited from Christ’s influence. In ancient cultures, the wife was the property of her husband. In India, China, Rome and Greece, men believed that women were not able or competent to be independent.

Prior to Christian influences in India, widows were voluntarily or involuntarily burned on their husbands’ funeral pyres. And female infanticide was common. These centuries-old practices ended in the early 19th century through missionary intervention with the British authorities.

Charles Spurgeon told of a Hindu woman who said to a missionary: “Surely your Bible was written by a woman.”

“Why?”

“Because it says so many kind things for women. Our pundits never refer to us but in reproach.”

Family and science

…. As Christians grew in number, they introduced family values to a world riddled with sexual immorality. In A.D. 125, Aristides, an Athenian philosopher, wrote a defense of the Christian faith to Emperor Hadrian. Regarding sexual matters he said:

They do not commit adultery or immorality. . . . Their wives, O king, are as pure as virgins, and their daughters are modest. Their men abstain from all unlawful sexual contact and from impurity, in the hopes of recompense that is to come in another world.

Christianity has helped preserve the family as the basic unit of society. It has protected millions of people from sexually transmitted diseases.

Science, too, is a consequence of Christianity. Our gadget-filled, comfortable existence would not be possible except for Christ. The late Francis Schaeffer points out in his book How Then Should We Live? that both Alfred North Whitehead and American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian worldview. Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher, said that Christianity gave birth to science because of “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.”

Some of the greatest pioneers of science were Christians. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) coined the phrase “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” for his study of nature. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) not only made innovations in mathematics and probability science and helped pave the way for the computer, but was also a devout Christian. And Isaac Newton (1642-1727), though sometimes classified as a Unitarian, professed to believe in Christ and in the message of salvation. “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets,” he wrote, “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

Education, the root

Finally, education for the masses has its origin in Christianity. The roots of education for the masses go back to the Reformation — especially to John Calvin. The Reformers believed that the only way the Protestant Reformation would hold would be if lay people could read the Bible for themselves. Christ himself encouraged learning. He was an avid student as a young boy and teacher as an adult.

The greatest universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes. Indeed, most of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States have Christian origins. Engraved in stone by the entrance of Harvard are these words:

After God had carried us safe to New England and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear’d convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civill government: One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.

Had Jesus never been born, man would yet remain in the darkness of sin and ignorance. The message of Jesus brought transformation and incalculable benefits to our temporal existence. He is, indeed, the Light of the World.

But as wonderful as Christ’s profound impact on this world is, it is His transforming power in the lives of countless individuals down through time that is far greater still. The benefits of the Christian faith are far outweighed by the wonder of what He has done in providing eternal salvation to all who, by grace, place their faith in Him. Truly, Jesus Christ is a Savior to be celebrated in both time and eternity.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

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This post is a BizzyBlog Christmas Eve tradition.

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‘Twas the Night Before Christmas
by Clement Clarke Moore

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
gave the lustre of midday to objects below,
when, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

“Now Dasher! Now Dancer!
Now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid!
On, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch!
To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away!
Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky
so up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
the prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes–how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

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This post is a BizzyBlog Christmas Eve tradition.

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The malls and the Main Streets will soon fall silent. The ringing cash registers, the happy cries of children, the hearty greetings of a thousand fraudulent Santas will soon be ghostly echoes in shuttered shops and across silent streets.

But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago yet lives. The story of Christmas continues to quicken the hearts of sinners and transform the lives of the wicked, and nothing illustrates the redeeming power of the authentic message of Christmas with greater clarity than the story of a wastrel English slaver named John Newton.

Newton was born 300 years ago into a seafaring family in England. His mother was a godly woman whose faith gave her life meaning, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer. She died when John was 7.

His father soon married again, and John left school four years later to go to sea with him. He easily adopted the vulgar life of common seamen, though the memory of his mother’s faith remained. “I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell,” he would recall many years later, “but I loved sin.”

On shore leave, he was kidnaped by a press gang and taken aboard HMS Harwich. Life grew coarser. He ran away, was captured and taken back to the Harwich and put in chains, stripped before the mast, and flogged. “The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness,” he recalled. “I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience.”

The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard wretched cargo. “At this period of my life,” he later reflected, “I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went.” John’s new captain favored him, however, and invited him to his island plantation off the African coast, where he had taken as his wife a beautiful but cruel African princess. She grew jealous of John, and was pleased when it was time for them to sail. But John fell ill and was left in the care of the captain’s wife.

The ship was hardly over the horizon when she ordered him from her house and thrown into a pigsty. She gave him a board for a bed and a log for a pillow. He was left in delirium to die. Miraculously, he did not die. He was blinded, kept in chains in a cage like an animal, and fed swill from her table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to taunt him. They threw limes and stones at him, mocking his misery. He would have starved if other slaves, waiting for a ship to take them to the Americas, had not shared their meager scraps of food. Five years passed, and the captain returned. When John told him how he had been treated, he branded John a thief and a liar. When they sailed again, John was treated ever more harshly.

“The voyage quite broke my constitution,” he would recall, “and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin.”

Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. He was shipwrecked in a storm, and despaired that God had mercy left for him after his life of hostile indifference to the Gospel. “During the time I was engaged in the slave trade, I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness.” Yet the wanton sinner, the arrogant blasphemer, the mocker of the faith of others, was finally driven to his knees: “My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear.”

Rescued, he made his way back to England, to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life. He fell under the influence of George Whitefield and John Wesley, and was wondrously born again into a new life in Jesus Christ. He spent the rest of his life preaching of God’s mercies.

Two days short of Christmas 1807, he died at the age of 82, and left a dazzling testimony to the amazing grace of the Christmas story. “I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from that state on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me.” Set to music, his testimony became the most beloved hymn of Christendom.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come.
‘Tis grace hat h brought me safe thus far
and grace will lead me home.

Note: This has been carried to the top because of its importance.

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Posted by kmunchausen at YouTube (also at his National Institute of Prevarication), narrated by a gentleman I know, and whom in the short time since I’ve met him I’ve come to greatly admire:

Full text:

The embers glowed softly and in their dim light,
I gazed ’round the room and I cherished the sight.

My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
transforming the yard to a wintry delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree, I believe,
completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment or so it would seem,
So I slumbered. Perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near.
But it opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know.
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood his faith weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some 20 years old.
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and he smiled,
Standing watch over me and wife and my child.

“What are you doing?” I asked without fear.
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve.”

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.
To the window that danced with the warm fire’s light.
Then he sighed and he said, “It’s really all right.”

“I’m out here by choice, I’m here every night,
It’s my duty to stand in the front of the line
That separates you from the darkest of times.”

“No one had to ask or beg or implore me.
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My gramps died at Pearl on then day in December.
Then sighed, “That’s a Christmas gra’m always remembers.”

“My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam.
And now it’s my turn. And so here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while.
But my wife send me pictures. He’s sure got her smile.”

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white and blue, the American flag.

“I can live through the cold and being alone,
Away from my family, my house, and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet.
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother,
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.”

“So go back inside,” he said. “Harbor no fright.
Your family is waiting, and I’ll be all right.”

“But isn’t there something I can do?
At the least give you money?” I asked.
“Or prepare you a feast.
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done.
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret.
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget
To fight for your rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch no matter how long.”

“And when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled
Is payment enough. And with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

*********

Since the founding of our country, brave soldiers have always left their homes and families to fight and to protect the freedom that we enjoy.

All too many have willingly given their very lives to ensure that their families and their posterity will be able to enjoy peace and prosperity.

Wherever our soldiers have fought, they have established freedom. No lands were conquered, no people subjugated. After every conflict, each soldier quietly returned home, leaving behind only freedom in place of the conflict which cost so many of their lives.

Wherever there is freedom, it has always won by the shedding of blood.

Can we at home do any less than fight for our freedom? Can we stand idly by as our Constitution is being trampled on by those who seek power over us?

We owe it to our Founding Fathers to stand up, take notice, and take action. We must ensure that our rights and freedom are preserved for future generations.

To arms, to arms! The war cry sounds again. Now is the time for each of us to do our part.

It is time for a new generation to rise, to recognize the gifts of freedom, and to fight for freedom now at home.

FT.com — “Climate change alliance crumbling.” Not nearly as much as the entire premise of man-made global warming has crumbled in the wake of ClimateGate.

______________________________________________________

Oh, I guess that makes it OK — “Schumer Says Every State Got Special Treatment in Health Bill.”

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From the Weekly Standard (HT RightBias e-mail)

CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that’s not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those “10-year costs” would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

I would suppose that the $2.5 tril is before adding up all of the “special treatments” Chuckie Schumer extolled in the previous item.

Related: Democrats have apparently been “double counting the savings from Medicare as a means to pay for the Senate health care bill.”

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Don’t tell Keith Olbermann – At Time (“Domestic Terror Incidents Hit a Peak in 2009″; HT Gateway Pundit), Rand Corporation expert Brian Jenkins says that “more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. during 2009 than in any year since 2001.”

The list of terror-related “events” that follows includes the Ft. Hood killings. Time put “events” in quotes, which I suppose is acceptable, given that the list is a mix of attacks, thwarted plots, and an attempt to join enemy forces.

MSNBC’s Olbermann, who obsessively criticizes anyone who dares to describe the Ft. Hood killings as a terrorist attack, will apparently have to call out reporter Bobby Ghosh and his lefty layers of editors and other bosses at Time.

Update: I expanded on this a bit at NewsBusters.

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Contrast Ronald Reagan’s aggressive effort to keep Polish repression visible in 1981 and beyond with the passivity and virtual silence of Barack Obama and his administration on the treatment of Iranian dissidents. The latest outrage that will be ignored — “A semiofficial Iranian news agency says a former government spokesman who became an opposition supporter has been sentenced to six years in prison.”

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Contacted by National Review, Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak says “you don’t buy me off,” and that he’s disappointed that Democratic leaders have offered him legislative favors in exchange for supporting ObamaCare.

I’ll be disappointed if Stupak eventually caves, but given the disgraceful conduct in the Senate by Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and others, I won’t be surprised.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Saturday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

__________________________________________________

Intolerance Update, from Illinois – A sign “put up by the Freedom from Religion Foundation” in the Illinois State Capitol building “placed next to a Christmas tree and also near a nativity scene,” reads as follows –

At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Perhaps someone should place a sign next to this POS (Piece of Stupidity) that reads, “This typifies the confused muddle of mental slavery that takes place when people turn away from God and spirituality.”

I certainly didn’t appreciate the importance of this speech at the time. In fact, I recall ridiculing my late father for following Reagan’s suggestion to light a candle to show solidarity with the Polish people and taking it seriously. It seemed an empty gesture.

I was wrong, Dad.

Here’s a YouTube of part of the speech:

Important background is at this American Spectator item from December 2006 by Paul Kengor.

Full text of nationally broadcast radio/TV speech given on December 23, 1981 at 9 p.m. from the Oval Office at the White House:

Good evening.

At Christmas time, every home takes on a special beauty, a special warmth, and that’s certainly true of the White House, where so many famous Americans have spent their Christmases over the years. This fine old home, the people’s house, has seen so much, been so much a part of all our lives and history. It’s been humbling and inspiring for Nancy and me to be spending our first Christmas in this place.

We’ve lived here as your tenants for almost a year now, and what a year it’s been. As a people we’ve been through quite a lot — moments of joy, of tragedy, and of real achievement — moments that I believe have brought us all closer together. G. K. Chesterton once said that the world would never starve for wonders, but only for the want of wonder.

At this special time of year, we all renew our sense of wonder in recalling the story of the first Christmas in Bethlehem, nearly 2,000 year ago.

Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that he was and is the promised Prince of Peace. Yes, we’ve questioned why he who could perform miracles chose to come among us as a helpless babe, but maybe that was his first miracle, his first great lesson that we should learn to care for one another.

Tonight, in millions of American homes, the glow of the Christmas tree is a reflection of the love Jesus taught us. Like the shepherds and wise men of that first Christmas, we Americans have always tried to follow a higher light, a star, if you will. At lonely campfire vigils along the frontier, in the darkest days of the Great Depression, through war and peace, the twin beacons of faith and freedom have brightened the American sky. At times our footsteps may have faltered, but trusting in God’s help, we’ve never lost our way.

Just across the way from the White House stand the two great emblems of the holiday season: a Menorah, symbolizing the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, and the National Christmas Tree, a beautiful towering blue spruce from Pennsylvania. Like the National Christmas Tree, our country is a living, growing thing planted in rich American soil. Only our devoted care can bring it to full flower. So, let this holiday season be for us a time of rededication.

Even as we rejoice, however, let us remember that for some Americans, this will not be as happy a Christmas as it should be. I know a little of what they feel. I remember one Christmas Eve during the Great Depression, my father opening what he thought was a Christmas greeting. It was a notice that he no longer had a job.

Over the past year, we’ve begun the long, hard work of economic recovery. Our goal is an America in which every citizen who needs and wants a job can get a job. Our program for recovery has only been in place for 12 weeks now, but it is beginning to work. With your help and prayers, it will succeed. We’re winning the battle against inflation, runaway government spending and taxation, and that victory will mean more economic growth, more jobs, and more opportunity for all Americans.

A few months before he took up residence in this house, one of my predecessors, John Kennedy, tried to sum up the temper of the times with a quote from an author closely tied to Christmas, Charles Dickens. We were living, he said, in the best of times and the worst of times. Well, in some ways that’s even more true today. The world is full of peril, as well as promise. Too many of its people, even now, live in the shadow of want and tyranny.

As I speak to you tonight, the fate of a proud and ancient nation hangs in the balance. For a thousand years, Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.

The men who rule them and their totalitarian allies fear the very freedom that the Polish people cherish. They have answered the stirrings of liberty with brute force, killings, mass arrests, and the setting up of concentration camps. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders are imprisoned, their fate unknown. Factories, mines, universities, and homes have been assaulted.

The Polish Government has trampled underfoot solemn commitments to the UN Charter and the Helsinki accords. It has even broken the Gdansk agreement of August 1980, by which the Polish Government recognized the basic right of its people to form free trade unions and to strike.

The tragic events now occurring in Poland, almost 2 years to the day after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, have been precipitated by public and secret pressure from the Soviet Union. It is no coincidence that Soviet Marshal Kulikov, chief of the Warsaw Pact forces, and other senior Red Army officers were in Poland while these outrages were being initiated. And it is no coincidence that the martial law proclamations imposed in December by the Polish Government were being printed in the Soviet Union in September.

The target of this depression [repression] is the Solidarity Movement, but in attacking Solidarity its enemies attack an entire people. Ten million of Poland’s 36 million citizens are members of Solidarity. Taken together with their families, they account for the overwhelming majority of the Polish nation. By persecuting Solidarity the Polish Government wages war against its own people.

I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics.

Poland needs cooperation between its government and its people, not military oppression. If the Polish Government will honor the commitments it has made to human rights in documents like the Gdansk agreement, we in America will gladly do our share to help the shattered Polish economy, just as we helped the countries of Europe after both World Wars.

It’s ironic that we offered, and Poland expressed interest in accepting, our help after World War II. The Soviet Union intervened then and refused to allow such help to Poland. But if the forces of tyranny in Poland, and those who incite them from without, do not relent, they should prepare themselves for serious consequences. Already, throughout the Free World, citizens have publicly demonstrated their support for the Polish people. Our government, and those of our allies, have expressed moral revulsion at the police state tactics of Poland’s oppressors. The Church has also spoken out, in spite of threats and intimidation. But our reaction cannot stop there.

I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct “business as usual” with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection.

We have been measured and deliberate in our reaction to the tragic events in Poland. We have not acted in haste, and the steps I will outline tonight and others we may take in the days ahead are firm, just, and reasonable.

In order to aid the suffering Polish people during this critical period, we will continue the shipment of food through private humanitarian channels, but only so long as we know that the Polish people themselves receive the food. The neighboring country of Austria has opened her doors to refugees from Poland. I have therefore directed that American assistance, including supplies of basic foodstuffs, be offered to aid the Austrians in providing for these refugees.

But to underscore our fundamental opposition to the repressive actions taken by the Polish Government against its own people, the administration has suspended all government-sponsored shipments of agricultural and dairy products to the Polish Government. This suspension will remain in force until absolute assurances are received that distribution of these products is monitored and guaranteed by independent agencies. We must be sure that every bit of food provided by America goes to the Polish people, not to their oppressors.

The United States is taking immediate action to suspend major elements of our economic relationships with the Polish Government. We have halted the renewal of the Export-Import Bank’s line of export credit insurance to the Polish Government. We will suspend Polish civil aviation privileges in the United States. We are suspending the right of Poland’s fishing fleet to operate in American waters. And we’re proposing to our allies the further restriction of high technology exports to Poland.

These actions are not directed against the Polish people. They are a warning to the Government of Poland that free men cannot and will not stand idly by in the face of brutal repression. To underscore this point, I’ve written a letter to General Jaruzelski, head of the Polish Government. In it, I outlined the steps we’re taking and warned of the serious consequences if the Polish Government continues to use violence against its populace. I’ve urged him to free those in arbitrary detention, to lift martial law, and to restore the internationally recognized rights of the Polish people to free speech and association.

The Soviet Union, through its threats and pressures, deserves a major share of blame for the developments in Poland. So, I have also sent a letter to President Brezhnev urging him to permit the restoration of basic human rights in Poland provided for in the Helsinki Final Act. In it, I informed him that if this repression continues, the United States will have no choice but to take further concrete political and economic measures affecting our relationship.

When 19th century Polish patriots rose against foreign oppressors, their rallying cry was, “For our freedom and yours.” Well, that motto still rings true in our time. There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere. In factories, farms, and schools, in cities and towns around the globe, we the people of the Free World stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters. Their cause is ours, and our prayers and hopes go out to them this Christmas.

Yesterday, I met in this very room with Romuald Spasowski, the distinguished former Polish Ambassador who has sought asylum in our country in protest of the suppression of his native land. He told me that one of the ways the Polish people have demonstrated their solidarity in the face of martial law is by placing lighted candles in their windows to show that the light of liberty still glows in their hearts.

Ambassador Spasowski requested that on Christmas Eve a lighted candle will burn in the White House window as a small but certain beacon of our solidarity with the Polish people. I urge all of you to do the same tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, as a personal statement of your commitment to the steps we’re taking to support the brave people of Poland in their time of troubles.

Once, earlier in this century, an evil influence threatened that the lights were going out all over the world. Let the light of millions of candles in American homes give notice that the light of freedom is not going to be extinguished. We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world, whose future will be shaped by the way we live our lives today.

Christmas means so much because of one special child. But Christmas also reminds us that all children are special, that they are gifts from God, gifts beyond price that mean more than any presents money can buy. In their love and laughter, in our hopes for their future lies the true meaning of Christmas.

So, in a spirit of gratitude for what we’ve been able to achieve together over the past year and looking forward to all that we hope to achieve together in the years ahead, Nancy and I want to wish you all the best of holiday seasons. As Charles Dickens, whom I quoted a few moments ago, said so well in “A Christmas Carol,” “God bless us, every one.”

Good night.

On December 8, Susan Gustafson at MLive.com proclaimed that “GM’s announcement of no more layoffs is good news after years of hemorrhaging jobs”:

General Motors’ announcement this morning that it plans no further layoffs in the immediate future is huge news for both the automaker and Michigan as a whole after years of steady erosion in the ranks of hourly and salaried workers.

…. the company doesn’t expect the numbers of hourly workers on indefinite layoff to increase.

That same day, Robert Snell at the Detroit News reported the same thing:

General Motors Co. does not plan any job cuts in the immediate future, the company’s new president of North America said this morning.

Eight days later, GM laid off additional workers indefinitely in Bowling Green, Kentucky:

As 75 more workers were indefinitely laid off from General Motors’ Corvette assembly plant in this western Kentucky city, those who remain say 2009 has been one tough year.

No one has asked how this move doesn’t break the company’s promise made eight days earlier. Does it not count because it’s “only” 75? Or because it’s “only” in Kentucky?

Though their relevance to the accuracy of the company’s promise is less clear, about 100 more GM workers lost their jobs last week:

TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB) ….. As of Friday, December 18th, the GM Plant in Tonawanda rolled out its last V-8 engine. Workers were told the engine line was coming to an end back in June.

…. the company’s plan was to lay off 150 employees, but it turns out some of them will continue working.

Local 774 Chairman Bob Coleman explained, “We absorbed a lot of people in the other lines. We’d seen where the need was for the bodies probably about 50 people.”

Well, GM said that the number of people on indefinite layoff would not increase on December 8, but it obviously has in both Bowling Green and Tonawanda.

According to NPR on the day of the “no more layoffs” announcement, recently fired CEO Fritz Henderson had previously said that further layoffs might be necessary:

The (no more layoff) news is a turnaround from comments made last month by former President and CEO Fritz Henderson who said GM still had too many hourly workers and could slash some of the 6,000 to 7,000 workers currently on layoff.

It turns out that Fritz Henderson was right. Perhaps saying so contributed to why he was fired.

It look like GM, which was not exactly a model of corporate clarity before it went bankrupt and became a government- and union-controlled entity, has learned a lot about government-speak in a very short time.

It also looks like the press has learned not to look for contradictions or falsehoods in anything Government Motors says or does.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.