Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR READERS AND SUBSCRIBERS.  IF I GET ARRESTED FOR SAYING THAT, PLEASE START A GO-FUND-ME PAGE.

DECEMBER 24,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Christmas message to the world, delivered while on a trip to Washington in 1941, just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: 

"I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

"This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.

"Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

"And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."

December 24, 2021       Permalink

WHAT IT'S COME TO – OVERNIGHT:  As the great, sane majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, the less stable among us continue their brave work of chasing phantoms and gremlins.  Try to understand them.  From Legal Insurrection: 

This is just ridiculous. This apparently started years ago.  But can we get through Christmas without the left trashing some classic element of it?

The Rochester Beacon reports:

Jingle all the way? Maybe not.

“Jingle Bells” is one of the most performed and well-known secular holiday songs ever written, not only in the United States, but around the world. It’s the first song to have been broadcast from space—by Gemini 6 astronauts nine days before Christmas in 1965. It’s regularly been sung at the White House—most recently by President Barack Obama and his family upon lighting the National Christmas Tree in 2016.

But “Jingle Bells” isn’t being sung anymore at Brighton’s Council Rock Primary School.
“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

“Jingle Bells” offensive? How so?

Tappon and other staff confirmed by email that the decision to remove the song was based in part on information in a 2017 article written by professor Kyna Hamill, director of Boston University’s Core Curriculum. Hamill’s article is a deep dive (nearly 12,000 words including appendices and footnotes) into the origin of “Jingle Bells,” the life of its composer, James L. Pierpont, and the popularity of sleigh songs in the mid-1800s. She found documents showing that the song’s first public performance may have occurred in 1857 at a Boston minstrel show. Minstrelsy was a then-popular form of entertainment in which white actors performed in blackface.

But when told that Council Rock has removed ‘Jingle Bells” based partly on her research, Hamill responded in an email: “I am actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire. … I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children.”

She continued:

"My article tried to tell the story of the first performance of the song, I do not connect this to the popular Christmas tradition of singing the song now.

"The very fact of (“Jingle Bells’”) popularity has to do (with) the very catchy melody of the song, and not to be only understood in terms of its origins in the minstrel tradition. … I would say it should very much be sung and enjoyed, and perhaps discussed."

COMMENT:  Let's have the singing.  The discussion can wait.

December 24, 2021       Permalink

DECEMBER 23,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THE BACKLASH BUILDS – FROM HOTAIR.COM:  As you may have heard, shootings and murders are up around the country. That’s especially true in Philadelphia which had already recorded more murders this year than either New York City or Los Angeles. Progressive DA Larry Krasner’s response to that spike in violence has been denial. “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” Krasner said earlier this month.  Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports Krasner’s office is in chaos after 261 attorneys have decided they’d had enough of working there and quit. That’s out of an office of about 340 lawyers.  Don't look for any headlines about this at CNN or The New York Times.

THE INEVITABLE EXCUSE – FROM FOX:   Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly expressing discontent with the news coverage surrounding her performance as the nation's second-highest office holder, citing her race and gender.  According to a piece by The New York Times, Harris has been privately complaining to her allies that the media's coverage of her would be better if she were any of her 48 White male predecessors, and has reportedly confided in them about the difficulties she's facing with her assigned portfolio from the White House.  The Times's piece, which focused on Harris's struggle to "define herself" within the Biden White House, noted that she held no "headlining role" when it came to some of the administration's most difficult decisions and that she was caught between criticism that she wasn't performing the job well and resentment from supporters that she was being "undercut" by the West Wing.  Yes, we recall how warmly the press dealt with Vice President Richard Nixon .

December 23, 2021       Permalink

SUMMERS PREDICTS A WINTRY ECONOMY – OVERNIGHT:  Larry Summers, smart economist and former president of Harvard, doesn't have a warm greeting for economic conditions.  From Fox Business: 

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Thursday warned the U.S. economy could slide into a recession as the Federal Reserve takes what he described as long-delayed action to cool the hottest inflation in nearly four decades.

Summers, during an interview on a Bloomberg Economics podcast, said the U.S. central bank has been late to spot the dangers of inflation, and that steps it takes now to mitigate soaring prices risk tipping the economy into a slump.

"If I thought we could sustainably run the economy in a red-hot way, that would be a wonderful thing, but the consequence – and this is the excruciating lesson we learned in the 1970s – of an overheating economy is not merely elevated inflation, but constantly rising inflation," Summers said. "That’s why my fear is that we are already reaching a point where it will be challenging to reduce inflation without giving rise to recession."

Summers, a Harvard University professor who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, has repeatedly sounded the alarm over rising inflation and has spent much of 2021 arguing that the Biden team, as well as Fed policymakers, have underestimated the risk of soaring consumer prices. 

He has warned that putting off tackling inflation will only require more severe action down the road that could undermine the economy's recovery from the pandemic.

"We’ve got a fairly serious inflationary situation," Summers said. 

Soaring inflation that has shown no signs of slowing down has forced the central bank and the White House to shift closer to Summers' stance. The government reported earlier this month that prices jumped 6.8% in November from the previous year, the fastest pace since June 1982, when inflation hit 6.1%. 

COMMENT:  Clearly, the economy is building as a key issue, maybe the key issue of the upcoming 2022 midterms.  But don't take that as gospel.  The economy is almost always at the top of the issue list, but I wouldn't be shocked if, next year, culture, and especially the culture of our schools, is at the top as well.  Remember what happened just last month in Virginia, where a parents' revolt played a key role in putting a Republican in the governor's chair.

December 23, 2021       Permalink