And a Merry Christmas to you all
Reply
Monthly Archives: December 2013
Christmas tradition
Not exactly your traditional Christmas but I think I see the point. Why Eating Chinese Food on Christmas is a Sacred Tradition for American Jews. And this is what’s on the menu:
Titled a ‘traditional Jewish Christmas,’ the prix fixe—served to two seatings on Christmas Eve and four on Christmas Day and made right in the kitchen—will start with wonton eggdrop soup, continue to roast duck with smoked-meat fried rice and Chinese broccoli, and end with fortune cookies and orange wedges. It’s your traditional Chinese meal, made hip, and—with that crucial addition of smoked meat—brushed gently with Mile End’s idiosyncrasy.
Nigella preferred KFC
But of course:
Late night raids on the fridge? Nigella would prefer to order KFC
On her television shows, she is often seen launching a late-night fridge raid for dishes she has lovingly prepared earlier.
But in reality, Nigella Lawson binged on junk food including Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s and Domino’s pizza, her former aides claimed yesterday.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Castro on entrepreneurship
Cuba is one of my favourite tests to see if someone is an economic or political moron. If you do not think that Cuba is one of the low points on the planet, you qualify. So a bit of news worth repeating:
President Raul Castro issued a stern warning to entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of Cuba’s economic reform, telling parliament on Saturday that ‘those pressuring us to move faster are moving us toward failure.’
Castro has legalized small-scale, private businesses in nearly 200 fields since 2010, but has issued tighter regulations on businesses seen as going too far or competing excessively with state enterprises. In recent months, the government has banned the resale of imported hardware and clothing and cracked down on unlicensed private videogame and movie salons.
It’s not as if everyone on the island is unaware of how much they have to endure. But for anyone in the rest of the world who thinks of Cuba as anything other than a sewer, they are as cruel in their political beliefs as anyone who has ever walked the earth.
Dutch treat
When you’ve run out of other people’s money, things begin to change, specially when those other people are running out of money themselves. This is the new mood of welfare reform in Holland:
The Dutch have just announced a massive reform of their welfare system, designed to reduce dependency and put a new emphasis on work. For example, welfare applicants will now be required to prove that they spent at least 4 weeks actively searching for a job before they become eligible for any assistance. And once they begin to receive benefits they will either have to work or perform volunteer community service. Dutch welfare recipients would be required to take available jobs even if they had to move or commute up to three hours per day. . . .
Other reforms would reduce benefits by treating families as a single unit, rather than as separate individuals. For instance a mother with two children would receive a single payment rather than three separate payments. The combined payment would be less, based on the assumption of ‘shared expense.’
According to the Dutch government, the reforms will ensure that welfare is seen as ‘a safety net, rather than a right.’
He’s depressed. Well he should be and why should anyone care?
What are we to make of this, from Fox even: Greta van Susteren blasts Obama’s press conference: ‘You just want to slit your throat almost, it was so depressing’. This is how the story starts:
Fox News host Greta van Susteren expressed dismay Sunday over President Barack Obama’s performance at a Friday press conference, calling it ‘pathetic.’
‘You just want to slit your throat almost, because it was so depressing,’ she declared.
Susteren visited ABC’s ‘This Week’ to comment on the White House’s latest Obamacare rule change released earlier this week. But what started as a conversation on the healthcare law’s prospects soon turned into an attack on Obama’s messaging.
President Screwup is finding that people don’t like what he’s done. I am astonished that the disgust with him and his party has gotten through to him but if it has then that’s something. But if you are looking for pathetic, try this on for size:
‘The president’s most powerful weapon as president is his ability to inspire — that’s his greatest strength,’ Susteren began. ‘And then he comes out last Friday in the press conference. He was depressing, he was pathetic, he sucked the oxygen out of the room. The media beat up on him, the media had bad questions, they kept punching him. I mean, he ends the year where you just want to slit your throat almost, because it was so depressing. He’s completely lost his ability to inspire.’
The president’s most powerful weapon as president is his ability to get various measures enacted into law and to take other actions as needs be. Obama’s problems is that as an executive and leader he is as bad as anyone has ever been, totally unfit for the job he has. Susteren’s comments are so stupid that this woman should be shown the door and sent to work for the ABC.
UPDATE: You might wish to supplement the above with the views of Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit who wrote about Obama’s Average Year. The averaging comes from an old Soviet joke which he quotes:
Ivan: So how was your day?
Boris: Average.
Ivan: What do you mean, average?
Boris: Worse than yesterday, better than tomorrow. So, average.
Which side are you on?
It’s a weird world when the ideal male is the one displayed in the Obamacare ads. The head of the dynasty was already a TV personality back in Louisiana doing a hunting and fishing show when he and his family were tapped to star in the Duck Dynasty series. The Obamacare chap was a left wing political activist.
Compare and contrast. And for what it’s worth, the following is a straight up ad for Obamacare which is discussed here.
UPDATE: This is from Mark Steyn in a brief but clearly angry post that should be read in full. His title is Re-Education Camp and directs his aim at the editor of National Review:
I am sorry my editor at NR does not grasp the stakes. Indeed, he seems inclined to ‘normalize’ what GLAAD is doing. But, if he truly finds my ‘derogatory language’ offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point — that a society where lives are ruined over an aside because some identity-group don decides it must be so is ugly and profoundly illiberal. As to his kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some ‘derogatory’ or ‘puerile’ expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you?
And so it begins
This is in the UK. Hundreds of businesses to be paid to switch off to prevent blackouts.
Hundreds of businesses could be paid to switch off their power between 4pm and 8pm on winter weekdays as soon as next winter to prevent blackouts, under plans approved by regulator Ofgem.
Mothballed old gas-fired power stations will also be paid to come back to stand-by so they can be fired up to prevent the lights going out when demand is high.
There must be people who think that electric power is a form of magic that just comes through the wires and will always be there no matter what. But even this is just for now, “Ofgem said the margin of electricity supply capacity over demand could narrow to between 2pc and 5pc by 2015 and 2016.” And after that it will get better all by itself.
You didn’t know when you were well off . . .
. . . so you are now far less well off and it will only get worse before it gets better.
Law of Markets 