Joe Doakes from Como Park emails to urge us to “pretend”:

Pretend for a minute that President Obama doesn’t believe the United States ought to be a superpower, that it ought to be equal with other nations (not a big stretch – that belief motivated the Atom Spies to give nuclear secrets to the Russians and no doubt is shared by billions of people worldwide, today). How would he go about bringing America down to second or even third-world levels following the model of, say, Argentina?

• Alienate traditional allies. Check.
• Weaken military power, numbers and morale. Check.
• Nationalize major industry. Check.
• Weaken domestic energy independence, increase foreign dependence. Check.
• Widen wealth gap. Check.
• Reduce earners, increase idlers. Check.
• Use government employees to intimidate political opponents. Check.
• Crush middle class with regulations and taxes. In progress.
• Debase the currency by printing money. In progress.
• Debase the citizenry by flinging open borders. In progress.

So what’s next on the agenda? What will it take to bring the USA down to the economic, military, social and political level of, say, Spain?

Joe Doakes

About the only thing he hasn’t done is enlist Visigoths and Vandals into the military as auxiliaries.

Surly opens its new brew pub near Dinkytown today…

…as the craft beer world finally starts to ask “do we need to apply hops to beer the way William Westmoreland applied napalm and Agent Orange to the Viet Cong?”

We wait a full year for the Shooties – my annual award ceremony for all that is awful about Twin Cities blogging and alternative media.

And yet it’s always so very, totally worth it.

So let’s start making the sausage, shall we?

The Sominex Award:  This year, this award goes to the leftyblog that bored me completely stiff.

And this year, the award goes to:  The Entire Twin Cities Leftyblogosphere!

Look – Twin Cities leftyblogs are almost always dumb.  Most of the smart ones – and there have been a few – have moved on to greener pastures.  And what’s left?

When Sally Jo Sorenson is the cream of the remaining crop, you know you’ve got a problem.

The “Oceania Has Always Thought Eastasia Acted Perfectly Normal” Award:  For the fifth straight year, the Twin Cities media – the so-called “fifth estate” that ostensibly keeps an eye on government – asked not a single question about the physical or mental health of a governor who disappeared for weeks, and seemed to barely be in the office when he was in the office.

The “Fonzie Is Up On His Skis” Award:  The entire political “fact-check” genre jumped the proverbial shark long ago, lost in a welter of bald-faced left-wing biased capstoned by “Polifact”, the putative flagship of the genre, flagging a “Lie of the Year” that turned out to be as true as mom’s apple pie in 2012.

But MPR’s “Poligraph” feature broke new, er, ground this past year – “fact-checking” one of Jeff Johnson’s purely-subjective statements about the governor’s race.

The “That Bludgeoned Feeling You Get” Award:  There was a national wave for Republicans – one of the biggest in history.  It was a wave that largely vindicated the Tea Party – the fiscally-conservative, socially-libertarian asymmetric grass roots movement that rocked official Washington in both parties back on its heels in 2010, and got pushed back after a massive nationwide campaign of demonization in the mainstream and left alt-medias (pardon the redundancy).

And the wave conquered the Minnesota House – at least in Greater Minnesota.  The DFL Machine held most of the Twin Cities metro, but for a stubborn seat in Burnsville that finally fell to Roz Peterson.

And yet the Minnesota GOP didn’t get even one solitary statewide office.  Not even the Secretary of State, which polls in the weeks before the election showed as a likely pickup for the MNGOP’s Dan Severson.

Let’s reiterate this:  in the midst of a nationwide wave of revulsion for the Obama Administration, where Republicans took the governors offices in Maryland and Illinois, to say nothing of decisively taking hold of the US Senate, the MNGOP laid an egg statewide.

It’s enough to try the patience of even a Saint Paul republican.

The “Nothing Here But Us Davids!” Award:  This one goes to the entire Minnesota Second Amendment movement.

After being humiliated by the shooters in the 2013 session, the gun-grabbers came back with hundreds of thousands of dollars of Michael Bloomberg’s money, hiring a platoon of top-flight lobbyists to supplant the hapless Heather Martens and the demented Jane Kay at the Capitol.

And even though the entire Legislature was controlled by the DFL, with a DFL governor, the antis got absolutely nothing.  Michael Bloomberg’s money was as wasted as John Bonham, Keith Moon and Ronnie Van Zant in a Motel Six in Houston with an unlimited bar tab.

The Back To The Future Award:  The Star/Tribune, in an effort to buff up its online presence, added some new blogs.

And when I say “new”, I mean “pretty much exactly the ones that anyone who is deeply cynical about the Strib’s relentless editorial left-wing slang would expect them to hire”.

You’ve got Mark Andrew, former state DFL chair Minneapolis mayor candidate and self-appointed giver of scarlet letters.  You’ve got Molly Priesmeyer, a woman whom the Twin Cities leftymedia takes inexplicably seriously (even though we surely do not).  There’s the perfectly capable Aaron Brown – one of a very short list of Minnesota liberal bloggers who don’t deserve to be under police surveillance.  And there’s my old friend and former NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb.  Michael’s a good writer and great reporter, but let’s be honest; before he started straying from the GOP line, the Strib wouldn’t have collectively urinated on him if he had been  on fire.  Now that he’s a little more, I think it’s fair to say, unattached?  Suddenly the Strib bites.

I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.

The Benito Mussolini Award:  In 2014, the Met Council opened its second light rail line, drilled straight down the middle of University Avenue, at a cost of $1.4 Billion.  As has been noted in this space in the past, it was the wrong kind of train in the wrong place (“light rail” is supposed to jet along at 55MPH along routes with stops roughly every mile, like the “Blue Line” does; if you’re going to go down the middle of a busy urban street, you should build a trolley).

So last June, the Green Line, connecting the downtowns, opened with suffocating fanfare and cloying adulation…

…and, as it happens, not much speed.   It took over an hour to go from downtown to downtown – about the same as the limited-stop 50 Bus that the train replaced (which did the route in about an hour), not much  faster than the local 16 bus (about 90 minutes), and much, much slower than the 94 Express, which did the route with very limited stops in about 25 minutes.  (The Met Council responded by eliminating the 94 Express outside rush hour).

So bad was it that even the transit fans at MPR, who had been cheerleading the Green Line since its inception (except for the part where it went past the MPR studios), were unamused to the point of taking the car.

I rode the Green Line once and once only – on its debut night.  I rode from Hamline down to the Union Depot; it took about an hour and fifteen minutes, counting walking down to University and waiting for the train.  That compared to about 40 minutes if I took the 67 bus (25 minutes) and walked from Cedar down to Union Depot, or 30 minutes if I biked it, or maybe fifteen by car, counting finding a parking spot.

I calculated that if they get the “Southwest Light Rail” built, it’ll mean someone can go from Union Depot to Eden Prairie Center in three hours.

The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

Townsend’s statements sum up the arrogance of the professional bureaucrat, the institutional utopian, the Masters of the Universe who believe they were sent here to keep us peasants from crapping in our beds.

And the winner this year?  The entire Democrat “Farmer” Labor Party, as well as the entire machine that supports it in this state – Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota,  Take Action Minnesota, the Star-Tribune and other left-leaning non-profits – who, after two years of blatantly carrying the DFL’s water on their signature pledge in the 2012 election (“We’ll lower property taxes for the middle class!”), promptly…

…presided over massive increases in property taxes for the middle class.

Which somehow got less media coverage than Teddy Bridgewater’s choice of sneakers.

OK, that’ll do it for this year!  See you in 2015!

In 1981, Ronald Reagan had to deal with a fairly sharp, intense recession, with some fairly intense “negative growth”:

1981 Q04: -4.5895

1982 Q01: -6.5220

1982 Q02: 2.1923

1982 Q03: -1.4300

For those of you who weren’t around back then?  It was a nasty little downturn, especially coming on the heels of the sluggish, stagflation-addled seventies.

1982 Q04:  0.3890

1983 Q01:  5.3465

1983 Q02:  9.4443

1983 Q03:  8.0625

1983 Q04:  8.5095

1984 Q01:  8.1868

1984 Q02:  7.2118

Long before he started stretching the Constitution out of shape, Obama broke one other, less formal rule – really more of a truism:  as a very broad rule, sharp recessions, left on their own, tend to have sharp recoveries.  Reagan’s recession was a sharp, intense one, accompanied by the worst unemployment since the Great Depression (only tied in late 2009 by Obama’s recession).

And Reagan got out of the way, and let the market heal the economy (except of course the defense sector – but then, that’s never part of the “free market”) heal itself.

And it came roaring back much bigger and better than ever.

Obama, of course, took office in the midst of another sharp, intense downturn.

And six years later, he’s doing the end-zone happy dance as he claims a 5% growth in GDP.

Now, let’s presume for a moment that that 5% “growth rate” is organic (although it most assuredly is not).

It’s six years into a sharp recession.   Left to its own devices – without “Quantitative Easing”, without “Too Big To Fail” and skyrocketing energy prices, without Obamacare – we should have been seeing much better growth than this…

…in 2010 or 2011.

But during the Obama Recession, like the Great Depression, the economy was left to pretty much the opposite of “its own devices”.

 Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Since it’s all fake government stimulus money anyway, what does it matter when we count it? We count it when it helps Democrats most, duh.

Joe Doakes

Of course, the “increase in personal consumption” that drove the supposed growth was almost entirely…

…spending on Obamacare!

Today’s Democrat Party represents an unbroken line of “urban policy” thought in majority-black areas – from urban Chicago to rural Mississippi – stretching back 50 years. It’s a school of thought that says if we throw enough money at poverty, at bad education, and at crime, they’ll magically get better.

And yet after 50 years of unfettered Democrat power in places ranging from Newark to rural Alabama, from Compton to North Minneapolis, poverty in the Black community has only grown, the achievement gap between black and white students has skyrocketed, black literacy has fallen, and crime in black neighborhoods in Democrat cities has defied the national drop in violent and property crimes; in the meantime, the black family continues to fragment, with a majority of African-American children born out of wedlock and growing up in single-family homes.

And in response, what does the Democrat Party bring to its Black voters? Big words and protests and emotional catharsis over an issue like black men being shot by the police – which is certainly a terrifying and frustrating issue – and not a word about the fact that unemployment among blacks has increased more than any other demographic since 2007, that literacy has fallen as the achievement gap has ballooned, and that for all of the Black community’s loyalty to the Democrats, poverty hasn’t budged.

One can’t blame Black America for protesting – but you have to wonder, after fifty years, if the protests aren’t being ginned up to give people something to protest about other than achievement gaps, black-on-black crime and poverty.  

The GOP joins with the Black community in seeking an end to the senseless waste of young black lives, while calling for an *honest* conversation with the community and the Democrat party on the abject failure of their policies to make life even one iota better for Black Americans over the past two generations.

(Drop mic).

In 1992, I left the broadcasting industry.  There a lot of reasons; the culture of the industry was a holdover from the “Mad Men” legend in many, many ways; the radio industry in the 1980s and 1990s was an amazing throwback to a much more depraved era.  The culture of the industry…

…oh, who am I kidding?  I left radio because I was making $7/hour, was married,and had two kids and another one on the way.  I needed to make some money.

And after I left, not a single academic launched a single study.  Because there was a time that people entered, and left, industries because the change made sense to them; because the money was better; because their goals in life had changed since college; because they discovered engineering didn’t enthrall them like cooking did; just because they felt like a change in their lives.

That was then.

Notwithstanding the fact that technical studies majors – engineering, computer science and the like – are among the few academic areas where men still outnumber women in college, the LATimes is wondering why there are fewer women in the world of technology.

I’m not going to bother with a pullquote; the writer, a woman who went from the CBC to Wikimedia, cites the usual reasons; misogynistic men, pay gaps, lack of female role models in management, and so on.

The article misses two points, I think.

For starters?  Everyone leaves technology, eventually. And by “everyone”, I mean that eventually, some people decide that the romance has left the idea of sitting up and grinding out code for thirty hours at a shot; that they don’t get the same thrill out of slaving for months on a solution that gets vetoed by some marketing dweeb with a degree in political science; or they just decide that the things that excited them when they were 20 don’t have the same effect now.

Is it different for women?  I’d imagine so – as individuals.

But if women are leaving technology in droves for any reason different than men are, the LATimes article doesn’t explain it…

Federal spending (as a percentage of US GDP) drops close to the historical average…

The federal budget is shrinking as a percentage of gross domestic product, falling just below 20 percent in the third quarter of 2014. That’s down four points from its peak of 24 percent in 2011, according to market analysis firm Strategas’ survey of recent Treasury Department data.

 

“That’s a pretty large drop in government spending,” said Daniel Clifton, head of policy research for Strategas.

 

The drop puts current federal spending close to the norm for the last half-century. While the budget has grown in absolute numbers — the omnibus spending bill passed earlier this month totaled more than $1 trillion — federal spending has averaged just over 19 percent of GDP since 1963.

 

The decline is due to a combination of factors, the main one being the restraints that were put on federal spending in 2011 as a result of the debt ceiling standoff in Congress

…for the past half-century.  Which, to be fair, is about when the Fed started its orgy of spending like a crack whore with a stolen gold card in peacetime.

Who’d have thought we’d be talking about the Johnson years as a positive baseline?

At any rate, it’s an incremental step in the right direction – thanks, in its entirety, to the Tea Party.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Rush Limbaugh said, about President Obama: “I hope he fails.”

Naturally, he was ripped for it by every liberal and by every mushy RINO trying to make nice with the press.

Read the linked transcript.  It’s surprisingly prescient.  Looking back on what Obama has wrought these past six years, my question is: was Rush right?  Should we hope President Obama fails in his effort to completely destroy the America that I grew up in?

Joe Doakes

Politically-correct or not, I certainly have been.

To: Bremer Bank
From: Mitch Berg, Ornwry Peasant
Re: Your Wish Is My Command

Dear Bremer,

Couldn’t help but notice this photo:

It’s one of your banks, apparently newly posted with a sign declaring the bank a safe place for criminals.

Oh, I know – what it really says is Bremer Bank doesn’t want people to bring guns into their branch. Of course, all the sign really does is tell the law-abiding gun owner – the ones who will actually obey the signs – that your bank would prefer that we remain disarmed while on your property, notwithstanding the fact that the criminals, being criminals, will not.
Now, I don’t have any money in your bank, and you won’t be losing much by my saying “I never will”.

But we law-abiding shooters talk. And I have a hunch we’re gonna be talking about this sign.

Think about it.

That is all.

There are some things in this world you can just plain count on.

Every 5-6 years, the Bears will need to go through a demoralizing re-building era.

Mark Dayton will shunt responsibility for everything – including things that are legitimately his job – off on others.

And when the world needs a short, sharp lesson on how big-state “progressivism” doesn’t and can’t ever work, the Greeks will come along and provide it.

Again.

And again.

A regular reader writes:

It’s a long read. But it’s deadly funny. As usual Dave Barry correctly assesses most every news story.

Comedy is just about the only way to analyze most of what’s going on in this country today…

California high school basketball players will be allowed to wear “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts while warming up before games:

With backing from school officials, the athletic director at Fort Bragg High School, previously told the boys and girls teams from Mendocino High School they could not play in the three-day event if they wore the shirts inspired by the last words of a New York man who died after an officer put him in a chokehold.

Karen Boyd, a First Amendment lawyer who represents one of the players, said the reversal by the Fort Bragg School District came just moments before she intended to file a federal court motion arguing that barring the shirts violated the free speech rights of student athletes.

The agreement will stand as long as the shirts do not cause any serious problems at the tournament. It also allows spectators to wear the shirts, which several did as the tournament got underway Monday at Fort Bragg High School, Boyd said.

“This is always my preference, if we can get things worked out without a lot of court stuff,” she said.

Well, that’s great!

I’m wondering if the school district – not far from San Francisco – would extend the same courtesy to students who chose one chance to California’s racist gun control laws by wearing pro Second Amendment T-shirts?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My secretary put red and green Hershey’s Kisses in the candy dish with a note “Happy Holidays, Take One.”

Do you suppose the EEO office will make us fill the dish with Dark Chocolate kisses for Martin Luther King day?

Or will they find that offering Kisses constitutes unwelcome sexual advances and send us all to diversity training for the whole month?

Joe Doakes

All I know is that someone takes out all the orange M&Ms during Saint Patricks’ Day…

I’m not sure which was greater; my degree of un-shock that Gary Trudeau bought the University of Virginia Gang-Rape hoax hook, line and sinker…

…or shock that Trudeau and Doonsbury are respectively still alive and being published.

Just under four weeks from today – January 28 – will be the first annual MInnesota Gun Owners Lobby Day (MNGOLD).

It’ll start with a rally in front of the Capitol.

After that, we – you, me, all of us – will do something that normally only highly-paid union stooges get to do; lobby the legislature. We’ll go inside, and politely, fairly and civilly meet with every single legislator, and let them know face to face that we’re watching, and that we vote.

Arrange your time off now! I am!

More details from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (Web, Facebook, Twitter) and the MN Gun Owners Political Action Committee (Web, Facebook, Twitter).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Russians fear a run on banks, the ruble is collapsing.

Morons. The solution is for the government to give the banks free money. That’s what Obama has been doing to the average tune of $60 BILLION EVERY MONTH. Look how well it worked for us.

Joe Doakes

Key distinction; Putin’s goal is to make Russia bigger, better and greater. He may not accomplish it, but it certainly is his goal.

Kind of the opposite of Obama’s goal…

I, for one, and for the record, have suspected all along that the “North Korea hacked Sony” story has been dog-wagging BS from the beginning.

And while I’d prefer to be backed up by a better source than the Mail, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I was right.

Think about it – why would North Korea want to screw with Sony (The Interview notwithstanding)?  They have the same goal…

According to Big Gun Control, the reason that the two policemen in New York City – a city that is historically among the most hostile to the law-abiding gun owner, a place that is doing its passive-aggressive best to scupper the spirit of Heller and McDonald, while more or less living up to their letter, a place that still is mired in the stone-age in terms of the attitudes of the political class toward the law-abiding gun owner…

…is that it’s too easy to get guns in New York.

Since the victims were Asian and Latino, I guess they couldn’t blame race…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on from 1-3PM today!

I’m on assignment today.  King Banaian will fill in for me.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and tomorrow, Andy Richter of “Community Solutions” will be filling in for Brad Carlson of “The Closer” edition from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Walmart stores in 21 states are taking money away from salaries normally paid to higher skilled workers – including those who work their way up from minimum-wage – to pay for minimum wage hikes:

The new laws have prompted Wal-Mart to adjust the minimum premium paid to its higher-skilled employees and combine its lowest three pay grades, Reuters reported Wednesday

Sapping initiative to pay for feel good social canoodling?

All is proceeding according to plan.

When gun grabbers compare crime rates between the US and Europe, if you ever noticed that they focus entirely on lethal shootings?

There’s a reason for that:

“There are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe. Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland. By comparison America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000.” The Guardian
So hey, Europe, how ’bout you shut the f*** up about gun control?

The left’s duplicity about the real comparison in crime rates between the US and Europe is verging on Berg’s law territory.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Six months ago, as South Korea exported steel to the US at prices below what union steelworkers could produce it here, Liberals decried “dumping” and imposed import taxes to level the playing field, thereby protecting American jobs and prosperity.

Now that the Saudis are actively trying to kill the North Dakota oil industry by dumping crude oil at below-cost-of-production prices, Liberals are conspicuously silent.

It’s almost as if Liberals WANT to destroy America’s energy industry, to KEEP us dependent on foreign oil, to RAISE gas prices to $5 per gallon.

Joe Doakes

to the left, and economically crippled US is the right US.

The legendary “Christmas Truce” was 100 years ago, obviously, this morning.

The event was commemorated by an ad by a British supermarket chain last month:

It was an ad that received some criticism – and some articulate defense. 

It was also not nearly as rare as one might have thought.

As the war ground from its grisly summer – the Battle of the Frontier, Mons, the Marne and First Ypres – and the front lines stabilized, the war shifted from a war of mobility slowly ground down into the positional, stalemated war of attrition that we associate with the war today.   Troops started by digging foxholes for cover, when the war of movement stalled out.  Then troops connected their foxholes with their neighbors.  These trenches quickly connected squads, then platoons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, field armies, and finally the entire front, from the Belgian town of Niewport on the North Sea all the way to the Swiss border. 

And they were famously miserable places, especially in rain-sodden Flanders.  Stories emerged of trenches becoming completely flooded near Ypres in 1914, and the rival British and German troops reaching a tacit agreement not to shoot at each other as they climbed out of their holes and dried off and waited for the water to recede.

And as the war dried out but froze over in the winter of 1914, soldiers of both sides – homesick, exhausted, and tired of the war – started staging little mini-truces.

The first one was on December 11, 1914; two companies of the 2nd Battalion of the Essex Regiment made tentative contact with German soldiers of the 181st Regiment of the 19th Saxon Corps.

A letter to the editor described the December 11 incident:

Amusing trench incident. “Tommy” [slang for any British soldier, much like the much-later “GI”, only much more prevalent as slang] and “Fritz” exchange presents. One of the oddities of the war in the Western battlefields at all events (says the Daily Chronicle) is the close proximity of the opposing forces in the trenches, thus giving opportunities for conversation. But the record must surely be made by an incident described in a letter from Private H Scrutton, Essex Regiment, to relatives at Wood Green, Norwich. He writes:- As I told you before our trenches are only 30 or 40 yards away from the Germans. This led to an exciting incident the other day. Our fellows have been in the habit of shouting across to the enemy and we used to get answers from them. We were told to get into conversation with them and this is what happened:- From out trenches: “Good morning Fritz.” (No answer). “Good morning Fritz.” (Still no answer). “GOOD MORNING FRITZ.” From German trenches: “Good morning.” From our trench: “How are you?” “All right.” “Come over here, Fritz.” “No. If I come I get shot.” “No you won’t. Come on.” “No fear.” “Come and get some fags, Fritz.” “No. You come half way and I meet you.” “All right.” One of our fellows thereupon stuffed his pocket with fags and got over the trench. The German got over his trench, and right enough they met half way and shook hands, Fitz taking the fags and giving cheese in exchange. It was good to see the Germans standing on top of their trenches and the English also, with caps waving in the air, all cheering. About 18 of our men went half way and met about the same number of Germans. This lasted about half an hour when each side returned to their trenches to shoot at each other again. What I have written is the truth but don’t think we got chums as two of our fellows were killed the same night, and I don’t know how many (sic) of them.

As many as 100,000 troops may have participated in spontaneous truces between various opposing units on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Historians disagree on the details – some claim that while soccer games broke out, they were mostly among troops on the same side.  Others point to 3-4 Brit-vs.-German matches along the trench line, altogether. 

Fraternization was, of course, not part of the plan for those whose job it was to try to bring the war to an end by conquering the enemy.  Measures were taken to prevent further such truces; higher command rotated troops among different trench areas, to prevent units becoming too  familiar with one another.  They scheduled artillery bombardments for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, to make fraternizing dangerous.  And over the course of the war, the go-along-to-get-along attitude of the first winter was replaced by a lot of survivors’ emnnity. 

Ian Tuttle, writing in National Review, responded to criticism of the video above – and touches on a much deeper point:

“If only it were all so simple!” wrote the great Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

[Guardian columnist and ad critic Iain] Fogg wishes “to retain those [soldiers’] deaths with respect and a degree of reverence.” But to try to do that by denying to the Great War all beauty — especially the beauty of gratuitous, unjustifiable human compassion — would strip those honored dead of the very reason they deserve respect and reverence: because they were human, because the line dividing good and evil cut through their hearts, too. And while it occasioned much carnage and misery, it also spurred acts of compassion, generosity, and more, which generated beauty even in the midst of desolation. Why would one seek to bury that fact?

America today is divided by trenches much less violent than the ones that divided Europe 100 years ago.

And so whatever side you’re on, Merry Christmas.  Or Fröhliche Weinachten.

… Although not as much in Chicago, where over three quarters of this years almost 400 murder victims have been African-American.

Check out the link for all sorts of other, frankly depressing, crime information from yet another bloody year in Chicago.