Year: 2007
War on Xmas: That’s What We’re Talkin’ About
Photo by Larry Steagall of the Kitsap SunWe at Pensito Review applaud the wit and toast the resourcefulness of Art Conrad, Bremerton, Wash. His Xmas display makes him a defacto commander in the War on Xmas.
Art Conrad, who owns the home and put up the display, said the commercialization angle is the number one impetus for the display, but he’s also making a statement about political correctness. That he finds Santa on a cross a hilarious juxtaposition fits in the list of motives, too.
He got the idea a few years ago when he read a story about Japanese merchants mistakenly mixing up symbols in preparing for Christmas, putting Santa on the cross.
…Conrad thought the story was funny and decided that one day he’d have to put up a similar display. He created it by stuffing a Santa suit and borrowing the head off a motion-activated Santa that dances and sings Christmas carols.
The headless dancing Santa now carries a knife and sings and dances on Conrad’s front porch.
Conrad photographed the crucified Santa and created his own Christmas cards, one with the message, “Santa died for your MasterCard.”
“Santa has been perverted from who he started out to be,” Conrad said. “Now he’s the person being used by corporations to get us to buy more stuff.”
We get it, Art. You the man.
Rove’s Book Sold for Half of What He Expected – And Buyer Was Mary Matalin
Karl Rove put his book project up for auction among the big publishing houses in New York in mid-November. According to Crain’s New York Business on Dec. 17, a month passed with no offers:
It would be comforting to think the marquee imprints refused to do business with Rove because he betrayed a secret government operation tracking the black market for terror weapons.
The auction for Karl Rove’s memoir drags on a month after the Republican strategist made the rounds of publishers with Washington power lawyer Robert Barnett at his side.
“It’s very, very slow,” says an executive at one of the few houses left in the bidding. Early reports had predicted a $3 million sale, but some insiders are wondering if Mr. Barnett has had trouble getting to that number. He declined to comment.
On Friday, a deal was finally announced, but there’s an interesting twist — the buyer is Rove’s former White House colleague, conservative strategist Mary Matalin:
GOP strategist Karl Rove has agreed to write about his years as an adviser to President Bush in a deal worth over $1.5 million with former colleague Mary Matalin’s conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, officials said Friday.
Rove … signed the deal with Threshold Editions, the imprint’s publisher and executive vice president Louise Burke said.
“All of us at Threshold are thrilled to publish the book from the man who had the president’s ear for two terms,” Burke said.
Rove’s agent, attorney Robert Barnett, said Threshold was chosen over eight other bidding publishers. Threshold didn’t say how much Rove would be paid, but the bidding reached at least $1.5 million, two publishing officials familiar with the bidding told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, a standard industry practice.
On Nov. 21, not long after the auction had begun, Rove went on Charlie Rose’s show to promote the book, and made this outrageous claim:
ROVE: One of the untold stories about the war is why did the United States Congress, the United States Senate vote on the war resolution in the fall of 2002?
CHARLIE ROSE, HOST: Why?
ROVE: This administration was opposed to it. I‘m going to talk about that in my book … The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002 … [because] we didn‘t think it belonged within the confines of the election. There was an election coming up in a matter of weeks. We thought it made it too political. We wanted it outside the confines of it. It seemed to make things move too fast. There were things that needed to be done to bring along allies and potential allies abroad.
It would be comforting to think that this ham-fisted, too easily refuted lie depressed the auction price of the book — or even better that book publishers refused to do business with a traitor who betrayed a secret CIA operation in 2003 that monitored the terror weapons black market.
It’s more likely the marquee publishing houses passed because sales projections looked weak — which gives reason for hope, too.
Is Hillary Clinton Inevitable — Genetically?
The Last Six Presidents Have Been Blue-Eyed
– But Will the Trend Continue in ’08?
Every president since Nixon — Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II — has had blue eyes. Why? One theory has it that our presidents’ eyes turned blue around the same time that color televisions became ubiquitous.
Among this years’ candidates, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Fred Thompson have blue eyes.
Thompson doesn’t have a chance. Edwards has no money. So…
H/t: VRW
McCain Surges in New Hampshire and Iowa
More signs that Republicans are giving a pass to Rudy and Mitt and reverting to the GOP primogenitor status quo, which means it may be John McCain’s turn, after all. In New Hampshire, where McCain beat George Bush by 20 points in 2000, American Research Group‘s tied with Romney:
Losing New Hampshire to McCain would be big blow for Romney, who was governor of neighboring Massachusetts.
McCain rebounded from a 25 percentage point deficit three weeks ago to tie Romney in American Research Group’s latest New Hampshire poll with 26 percent apiece. McCain also gained on Romney in a statewide Gallup Poll for USA Today, pulling within 7 percentage points of Romney. Romney led McCain 34 to 27 percent in that survey.
Losing New Hampshire to McCain would be big blow for Romney, who was governor of neighboring Massachusetts and so is familiar to the locals — whereas by a weird political calculus, all McCain has to do is come in second to “win” there.
In Iowa, McCain is running second to Huckabee, who has 28 percent support to McCain’s 20 percent. Romney is third with 17 percent, and Guiliani has 13 percent. (Eleven percent are still undecided.) McCain could “win” Iowa too if he comes in second.
McCain needs to come in second in South Carolina behind Huckabee, too, in order to winnow Romney out of the pack. But he’s in fourth place there now with 11 percent, according to a CBS poll released Thursday. Ahead of him are Huckabee with 28 percent, Romney 20 percent and Giuliani 12 percent.
Poll: Republican Approval of Bush’s Handling of the Economy Plummets
Republicans’ approval of Pres. Bush’s handling of the economy dropped 20 percentage points in the last month, according to American Research Group:
It suggests a wave of financial insecurity among Republican voters and could be a portentous sign of weakness inside Bush’s base.
45 percent of Republicans disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy. In November, 25 percent of Republicans disapproved of Bush’s handling of the economy.
That’s quite a drop in a key indicator. It suggests a wave of financial insecurity among Republican voters and could be a portentous sign of weakness inside Bush’s base.
Among all voters, 71 percent disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy, while 28 percent approve.
Overall, 32 percent approved of Bush’s job performance versus 66 percent who disapproved.
Quote du Jour
“Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer…? If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!”
— Charles Dickens (1786-1851) author of A Christmas Carol
Put the Electoral College Out on the Curb With the Other Moldy Stuff
We love your comments, especially when you agree with us. When you don’t…not so much.
But we really love it when you agree with us and turn us on to cool things. Thanks to joreko, whose comment on a post about the Iowa caucuses and the Electoral College did both.
Here we are, nearly eight years later, with an institution whose expiration date passed long ago still sitting at the front of the refrigerator, in our way every time we try to grab a beer, and producing a loathsome stench
If the partisan divide in a state is not initially closer than about 46%-54%, no amount of campaigning during a brief presidential campaign is realistically going to reverse the outcome in the state. As a result, presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the concerns in voters of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Instead, candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground†states. As a result, 88% of the money and visits (and attention) is focused on just 9 states. Fully 99% of the money goes to just 16 states.
I remember being dead sure that no matter what the Supreme Court decided in the final weeks of 2000, at least the Electoral College would be abolished before 2004. And yet here we are, nearly eight years later, with an institution whose expiration date passed long ago still sitting at the front of the refrigerator, in our way every time we try to grab a beer, and producing a loathsome stench.
joreko directed us for a remedy to NationalPopularVote.com, the site for an organization that is trying to dump the Electoral College.
It’s bad enough that we worry that our voter’s registration will be yanked, that blue-haired poll workers will refuse us admission, and that voting machines will toss out our vote if we actually get to cast it. We also have to worry that if the other candidate gets more votes than ours, our vote will be flipped because of the Electoral College.
Get rid of it! Go to NationalPopularVote to help.
Poll: Oprah Driving Women Away from Obama
Talk about your unintended consequences. A new poll shows that Oprah Winfrey’s public efforts on behalf of Barack Obama are turning off both younger and older women.
A Lifetime/Zogby poll of women shows that of those 18 to 29, almost a third said they were less likely to support the Illinois senator because of the Oprah support. Older women, over 65, also showed they were ruffled by Ms. Winfrey stepping “out of her pew,” as the daytime diva herself described it. About 17 percent of older women said the endorsement made them less likely to support Mr. Obama.
Boomer-aged women, however, were more open to Oprah’s guidance.
Among other age groups, those who disliked the endorsement were offset by an equal amount who said they were more inclined to look more favorably at Mr. Obama because of it.
Kerrey Latest to Carry Clinton’s Sewer Water
Here we go again. Another Clinton supporter is zinging first and apologizing later. As Hillary’s competition grows stronger, it’s getting to be a daily occurrence.
This time the zinger is former presidential candidate and former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey. The zingee, once again, is Barak Obama.
Load your words much, Bob? “I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim”
“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim,” said Kerrey, a former governor and the current president of the New School in New York City. “There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”
Well gee, thanks Bob. Aside from the fact that Obama is a Christian and his father left home when Barack was 2, isn’t it generous of you to point out it’s a “big deal” that Obama is related to Muslims?
The “Whoops, my bad,” followed after just enough time to let the zing sink in and the boos start, as all of Clinton’s passive-aggressive attacks have.
“What I found myself getting into in Iowa – and it was my own fault – it was the wrong moment to do it and it was insulting,” Kerrey told the AP.
“I meant no disrespect at all.”
None taken, I’m sure, Bob.
Kerrey’s remarks do confirm one thing. Between Romney claiming his religion is a non-issue, Huckabee claiming his religion is the foundation of his campaign, and Kerrey claiming Obama’s religion-by-relation should be taken under advisement, it looks like the War on Secularism is being won by the wrong side.
