Giving Thanks, in a Time of Raining Ice

An editorial, at the National Post (Toronto):

Late Sunday night, in central Toronto, a team of hydro workers did something very un-Christmassy: They declined a gift. Specifically, a gift of a fine bottle of wine, offered by a homeowner (known to a member of this newspaper’s editorial board) whose electric power the hydro team had just restored.

“If we took a bottle from everyone who’d offered us one tonight, we’d have a truck full of them” a worker said, laughing. “We’re just doing our job.” He and his colleagues then drove off, to continue the tiring and dangerous job of sifting wires from branches, and getting southern Ontario back on the power grid after Saturday night’s ice storm.

Christmas is a time for giving thanks. And these men and women — many of whom are giving up their holidays in the effort to provide Ontarians with warm homes in which to celebrate their own family gatherings — certainly deserve our appreciation.

Canadian cities and provinces build drainage system for rains, and buy plows and trucks for snow. But sometimes, mother nature simply overwhelms us. Nothing can stop a river from overflowing its banks, as we saw in Alberta this past summer. Nothing can stop freezing drizzle from coating tree branches, and nothing can stop those overburdened branches from crashing into whatever lies below.

Of course Toronto’s situation pales in comparison with the Alberta floods, and the unbelievable damage inflicted by the 1998 ice storm in Quebec. But it is reassuring to see, time and again, that Canadians will always come together in the face of adversity...

Continue reading.

And see, "Five killed by carbon monoxide as 220000 face freezing eastern Canada winter without power."

Come Home, Edward Snowden

Once again, Charles Krauthammer delivers.



YESTERDAY: "Edward Snowden's Alternative Christmas Message."

Merry Christmas!

From Gisele, on Twitter.

Edward Snowden's Alternative Christmas Message

Folks know how I feel about this dolt, but here you go anyway.

At RT America, "Snowden's Christmas message: Privacy first."

And the Verge, "Edward Snowden delivers 'alternative Christmas message' on UK's Channel 4."

RELATED: At Washington Post, "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished."

How Impoverished is Our Discussion of Poverty?

Pretty impoverished, if you listen to Katrina vanden Heuvel, at the Washington Post, "During the holidays, remember our ‘least’."

But Josh Painter took exception after I tweeted this earlier.

.@KatrinaNation @AmPowerBlog Jesus said feed the hungry, clothe the poor, heal the sick. He never suggested that was Caesar's responsibility

— Josh Painter (I-TX) (@Josh_Painter) December 24, 2013

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly!

Holly Ericksson!

I was holding off until later for some additional Rule 5, but Wellywanger's posted some phenomenal Lucy Pinder by the Christmas tree, so here's some lovely Holly for you, via Twitter.

Brokeback Obama and #PajamaBoy — The Left's Homosexual Couple of the Year!

Hey, the country's first gay president shacking it up for the holidays with PajamaBoy!

That Ethan Krupp's so sweet even Rachel Maddow's jealous, lol!

And you know what, Glamour Magazine named gun-grabbers Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly as their Couple of the Year, so what better way to celebrate the year of teh gay than naming Barack "Brokeback" Obama and Ethan "PajamaBoy" Krupp the American Power Homosexual Couple of the Year!

Congratulations to the lucky barebackers!



Image Credit: Ivan Rose on Twitter.

Castrated Homosexuals? Now There's an Idea!

At Independent UK, "Alan Turing gets royal pardon for 'gross indecency' – 61 years after he poisoned himself."

And at CNN, "Alan Turing, British code-breaker castrated for homosexuality, receives pardon."

Well, there's still a lot of leftist "gross indecency" around these days, although not much homosexual castration, which is too bad. These people need to be reined in. Disease and social decay are out of control, thanks to the left.

More at Memeorandum.

Stores Make Frantic Attempts to Win Shoppers, Who Don't Seem Interested

My wife used to be an assistant manager at Kohls. I was telling her about this the other day, and she thought it was a bit much.

At the Washington Post, "Kohl’s offers round-the-clock shopping in dash to boost a tepid holiday season":

At 3 a.m., Christmas carols played through the loud speaker at the Kohl’s in Silver Spring. “Duck Dynasty” doormats were marked down 80 percent, and candles were discounted 50 percent. About a dozen employees stocked handbags and children’s clothing.

But there were no shoppers.

An hour passed in the wee hours of Sunday morning; still nobody. Meanwhile, the drive-through at the McDonald’s across the parking lot attracted a steady stream of cars.

In a holiday season marked by large-scale discounts, seemingly never-ending Black Friday deals and free overnight shipping, Kohl’s is taking its efforts to an extreme, keeping stores open around the clock Friday through Christmas Eve. Like many retailers, Kohl’s is battling sagging profits with a frantic attempt to draw in last-minute customers and avert a holiday disaster.

On Monday, retailers such as Nordstrom, Brookstone and Crate & Barrel were offering free overnight shipping. Bloomingdale’s, owned by Macy’s, was touting a new round of last-minute discounts — dubbed the “procrastinators have all the fun” sale — offering 15 percent off nearly all items through Christmas Eve.

Blizzard Entertainment, the video-game company, took its promotions a step further, extending Black Friday discounts through 2014. Even Target, which has seen relatively strong profits this year, amped up its deals before being hit by a credit card breach that affected up to 40 million shoppers. The retail giant was forced to go further to draw in potentially skeptical customers in the crucial days before Christmas, offering 10 percent off all in-store purchases.

Despite data showing that the economy is expanding at a surprisingly strong pace, it has been a tough year for many retailers, which rely on holiday spending for up to 40 percent of their annual sales. Wealthy consumers are propping up high-end retailers such as Tiffany’s and using cheap financing to make big-ticket purchases, including cars.

Shopping at 3:00am? I'll pass.

More at the link.

Obama's Misguided Obsession With Inequality

An excellent piece, from Robert Grady, at the Wall Street Journal:

Here is the bottom line: In periods of high economic growth, such as the 1980s and 1990s, the vast majority of Americans gain, and have the opportunity to gain. In periods of slow growth, such as the past four and a half years since the recession officially ended, poor people and the middle class are hurt the most, and opportunity is curbed.

Consider the Census Bureau data, which measure only money income. The data show that median family income adjusted for inflation has not been on a steady or stagnating path since the 1970s. It fell, in real terms, by 5.7% from 1974-1982, when slow growth and high inflation ravaged the average family. Tellingly, in this period, real income fell for the bottom four quintiles, but held steady for the top 20%.

From 1983 to 2007, however, median family income grew substantially—by 21.6% above inflation—and real income grew for all five quintiles. Then, beginning in 2008, real income plunged again, both for the median family and for all quintiles.

The point is this: If the goal is to deliver higher incomes and a better standard of living for the majority of Americans, then generating economic growth—not income inequality or the redistribution of wealth—is the defining challenge of our time.

RTWT.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, 1919-2013

The dude invented the weapon of choice for rebel "freedom fighters" the world over.

At the New York Times, "Mikhail Kalashnikov, Creator of AK-47, Dies at 94":

Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, the arms designer credited by the Soviet Union with creating the AK-47, the first in a series of rifles and machine guns that would indelibly associate his name with modern war and become the most abundant firearms ever made, died on Monday in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia, where he lived. He was 94.

Viktor Chulkov, a spokesman for the republic’s president, confirmed the death, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Born a peasant on the southern Siberian steppe, General Kalashnikov had little formal education and claimed to be a self-taught tinkerer who combined innate mechanical skills with the study of weapons to conceive of a rifle that achieved battlefield ubiquity.

His role in the rifle’s creation, and the attention showered on him by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, carried him from conscription in the Red Army to senior positions in the Soviet arms-manufacturing bureaucracy and ultimately to six terms on the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union’s legislative body.

Tens of millions of Kalashnikov rifles have been manufactured. Their short barrels, steep front-sight posts and curved magazines made them a marker of conflict that has endured for decades. The weapons also became both Soviet and revolutionary symbols and widespread instruments of terrorism, child-soldiering and crime.

The general, who sometimes lamented the weapons’ unchecked distribution but took pride in having invented them and in their reputation for reliability, weathered the collapse of the Soviet Union to assume a public role as a folk hero and unequivocal Russian patriot.

A Soviet nostalgist, he also served as the unofficial arms ambassador of the revived Russian state. He used public appearances to try to cast the AK-47’s checkered legacy in a positive way and to complain that knockoffs were being manufactured illegally by former Soviet allies and cutting into Russian sales.

The weapon, he said, was designed to protect his motherland, not to be used by terrorists or thugs. “This is a weapon of defense,” he said. “It is not a weapon for offense.”

General Kalashnikov’s public life resulted from a secret competition to develop the Soviet infantry rifle for the Cold War. The result was the AK-47 — an abbreviation for “the automatic by Kalashnikov” followed by the year the competition ended.

General Kalashnikov, a senior sergeant at the time who had been injured in battle against German tanks, was credited with leading the design bureau that produced the AK-47 prototype. The Soviet Union began issuing a mass-produced version in 1949.

More at the link.

Don't know if the insurgent genie is going back in the lamp, but this dude was a Soviet patriot whose life had tremendous implications for world history.

More from William Hartung and Rachel Stohl, at Foreign Affairs, "Hired Guns":

More people are killed per year on average as a result of wars fueled by small arms and light weapons (including the AK-47) than were killed in the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone, it is estimated that more than a million people have died in that country’s recent civil war, fought primarily with small arms. The inability of governments to take seriously the damage caused by small arms and light weapons is a failure of major proportions.

And from Mike Boyer, "Looking for a deal on AK-47s? Go to Africa":

In fact, the weapons are so ubiquitous in Africa that "Kalash," an abbreviation of Kalashnikov, has become a popular boy's name in some countries.

More, "From Russia With Blood: C.J. Chivers talks with Foreign Policy about the Kalashnikov, the world's real weapon of mass destruction."


PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Addicted to Obama!

Heh.

From S.E. Cupp.

Susan Rice Defends the Indefensible

At IBD, "Susan Rice Defends Lies From Herself and James Clapper on '60 Minutes'":

The diplomat who blamed four American deaths in Benghazi on a video claims the denials by the director of national intelligence of blanket surveillance of Americans were inadvertent false representations.

It might have been slightly more credible had Pajama Boy appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes" broadcast on Sunday instead of Susan Rice. The current national security adviser and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations participated in a puff piece that might have been an episode of, "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?"

For viewers, it was deja vu all over again.

Rice went on five Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, five days after an al-Qaida-linked terrorist attack killed four Americans — including the first U.S. ambassador to die on duty in three decades — to parrot the administration lie that it was a spontaneous demonstration provoked by a video. This time, she claimed she had no time to revisit a "false controversy" about talking points, or, as President Obama has described Benghazi, just one of many "phony scandals."

Rice did have time, though, to repeat the line that she subbed for Secretary Hillary Clinton that Sunday because Clinton "had just gone through an incredibly painful and stressful week" and "had to reach out to the families, had to greet the bodies upon their arrival at Andrews Air Force Base."

Part of that stressful week in September 2012 included Clinton repeating the video lie to Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, one of the four killed in Benghazi, in front of his son's casket.

"Her countenance was not good, and she made this statement to me . .. she said we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted," he told radio host Glenn Beck.

Continue reading.

Having STDs Is Feminist Badge of Honor!

Well, no thanks.

Skanky feminists, eww!

An early entry for Offend a Feminist Week, for sure (or Offensive Feminist Week, lol).



Via Heather Boulware.

Holiday Greetings from Victoria's Secret Angels

Via Theo Spark:

Body Painting Tryouts

Via Theo Spark.



That's a hot video. And the 2014 Swimsuit Edition should be coming out pretty quick now. More on that later.

5 Million Hits

I don't think I've celebrated traffic milestones for the last few millions.

See my previous announcements, "One Million Hits at American Power," and "Katy Perry Salutes the Troops — And 2,000,000 Hits at American Power!"

Not much to write except that so far I plan to keep on pluggin'.

And with that, I should post some thank-you linkage.

As always, the Other McCain deserves tremendous gratitude for showing the way on the million hits gig.

Also, Blazing Cat Fur is a reliable linker and a great blogger. Thanks for the hits! And not to mention iOWNTHEWORLD!

And congratulations to Doug Ross and his fabulous blogging aggregator, Bad Blue. (And see Doug's blog, Director Blue, which includes the essential daily Larwyn's Linx.)

Maggie's Farm also does a lot of link-arounds, and it's always an honor to be included. That goes for Proof Positive as well.

And in a tireless effort, William Teach does a reliably large Sunday link-around each week, and his "If All You See..." entries keep us coming back everyday.

For a long time Memeorandum provided reliable linkage, but for some reason their algorithm went haywire of late. It's just the last couple of days that I've been getting hits, but it's an old standby if you're just starting out. (Be sure to link Memeorandum often so as to get caught up in the reciprocal aggregations.)

It's been awhile since I've been Instalanched, but the prospect is always worth throwing the old professor some regular hits. He's awesome on Twitter as well.

And speaking of hits, Blackmailers Don't Shoot is giving Instapundit some competition! See, "Merry Monday Christmas Linkfest."

And frankly, Theo Spark is probably my biggest feeder blog at this point, although I'm a co-blogger there so it probably doesn't count, lol!

Also, 90 Miles From Tyranny throws some nice linkage over this way, and it's much appreciated.

That goes for Bob Belvedere as well, at Camp of the Saints. Thank you.

Dana Pico been a longtime friend of AmPower as well. Much appreciated. Added: Also Saberpoint!

Also the Astute Bloggers. God bless you, Reliapundit.

That's it for now.

If I'm missing anyone who provides regular FMRA action, let me know in the comments. I'll be glad to spread some hits around during my regular Rule 5 and Roundup of the Roundups roundups!

Thanks again and here's to the next 5 million!

Women Abandon #ObamaCare as Nosedive in Public Support Accelerates

I seriously don't know what going to happen. Certainly the White House is hanging on for dear life, and as I've said before, we probably won't have a chance at full repeal until 2016, with the possibility of a unified government under GOP control across the executive and legislative branches.

Until then, I guess conservatives can continue to say "I told you so."

Here's William Jacobson, "Women declare War on Obamacare."

And see Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "CNN poll: ObamaCare support cratering at 35/62" (via Memeorandum).

Lovely Lady in Lingerie

How's that for sexy, via Twitter.

BONUS: Sunday's Rule 5 roundup at the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Transfer Station Blue."

#SouthSudan Refugees Swell as Americans Are Evacuated

Robert Stacy McCain continues his reporting, "The Sudden #SouthSudan Crisis," and "#SouthSudan: It’s Civil War Now."

But see the front-page, above-the-fold report at today's Wall Street Journal, "Country the U.S. Helped Create Might Be Spiraling Toward Civil War":

NAIROBI, Kenya—The U.S. military on Sunday rushed to evacuate American citizens from a rebel-held town in South Sudan, the latest sign that a country the U.S. helped create might be spiraling toward civil war.

About 15 Americans were evacuated on Sunday from the town of Bor in helicopters, according to a State Department spokeswoman. The flights were part of a broader exodus of international workers and South Sudanese from fighting between factions of South Sudan's army. The U.S. has evacuated about 380 U.S. officials and private citizens, said the spokeswoman, Jen Psaki.

A political power struggle between former South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir ahead of 2015 elections appears to have set off the violence. It quickly descended into ethnic clashes that risk splitting the country of 10 million.

By Sunday, rebel factions allied with Mr. Machar, a member of the Nuer ethnic group, had solidified control of territory they seized in a week of gunbattles with government forces that have left 500 dead, according to figures provided by South Sudan's military, other officials and the U.N.

Mr. Kiir, from the largest ethnic group, the Dinka, said last week that his former deputy and rival for the presidency had attempted a coup and been beaten back. Mr. Machar denied an attempt to overthrow Mr. Kiir but then said it was time for Mr. Kiir to go.

The dispute quickly widened to Bor, the capital of South Sudan's largest state, on Wednesday, and two U.N. peacekeepers and 20 civilians were killed Thursday when armed men overran a U.N. camp in another part of Jonglei state.

The rebels allied with Mr. Machar have taken two state capitals and the area surrounding them, defying diplomatic attempts to broker a cease-fire and initiate peace talks. The U.N. has reported fighting in six of the country's 10 states.

The violence offered a cautionary lesson for foreign powers that attempted to forge a new African nation in a fractured region where alliances often are short-lived and ethnic divisions run deep.

The U.S. lobbied hard for the creation of South Sudan as part of a drive to help rebel groups get out from under the thumb of the government of Sudan, their erstwhile civil-war foe.

Continue reading.