Fifty years ago..........................

Louis Armstrong.........................Almost an hour's worth.  Enjoy

Re-cap.........................

via

For kids of all ages....................

Thank you......................................

9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 

10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 

11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

-Matthew 2:9-11
The Holy Bible
New International Version

Wishing you a Merry and a Happy..........

Trans-Siberian Orchestra....................Christmas Eve/Sarajevo

Peace, good will.......................

14  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
-Luke 2:14
The Holy Bible
King James Version

Well, okay...............................

Are we really talking about the...............

..................................tax code on Christmas Eve?   Yep.

John Cochrane talks common-sense governing.   Wishing the attempt all the luck in the world.  Post here.   Excerpt here:

We need to move from the equilibrium of, I have my subsidy/deduction/credit/special deal, so I won't complain about yours, to the equilibrium of, I gave up my subsidy/deduction/credit special deal, so I'll make darn sure you give up yours too.

this post was really just an excuse to post my favorite hugh macleod cartoon.

4 Stages..................................

Fifty years ago..........................................

Maurice Chevalier..............................................Silent Night

Ho-ho-ho..............................

thanks doug

Saul Alinsky.............................

..........................would probably approve.  John Kay suggests "the characteristics of organisational failure are timeless" and then he sets out the field manual.   A wee excerpt:

 "The wide exercise of power without responsibility, often in the name of democracy or participation, is at best a recipe for organisational paralysis and at worst a mechanism for actual sabotage, as is the substitution of procedural rules for individual judgment."

Timeless.............................

...............Michael Wade posts 21 Things I Wish I Knew In My Twenties.  Some of us sixty-somethings still have a lot of work to do.  Thanks Michael.

Game changers.............................

................here are 14 events that have dramatically altered the way us humans live.  You might notice that the pace of these events is quickening.  Apparently these 14 were culled from this broader picture.  Pondering using The Wonder That Is Amazon to acquire it,  if only to see if Amazon made the cut.  Surely it must have.

Sing in exultation.................................

Martina McBride.................................O Come All Ye Faithful

Ah.....................................the fine print

...................or, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Fun with Federal Omnibus bills: Part One.  Story here.

thanks craig

Ah, science. We hardly knew you.........

...........................................................or, fuddling with the data.

I, like any clever scienticist, could fuddle with the data till my eyes crossed, then shrug and postulate various “events within the event” — weaves, turns, sprints, wrinkles, leaps, bobbles — plus an unknown number of additional “whatevers.” But I wouldn’t go on television until I’d found hard evidence of my purely speculative play-by-play. Smoking guns are all very well, but a coroner requires a one-to-one pairing between bullets and wounds.

-David Warren, as excerpted from this post

Artistry...............................

.......................or, painting pictures with words:

      She was cool, superior, and slightly snotty.  A male friend, if she had time for one, would have a hard body, a great tan, a gold chain, a two-seater Mercedes-Benz, and no sense of humor.  A commoner had little chance of peeling off her shorts.  Should it happen, she'd do it purely for the experience, like shopping at Kmart or sniffing glue.
     She knew what I was thinking, of course.  And she knew she was reaching me, with her information, money, and long athletic legs.  All management tools, properly deployed, well under control.  It was mildly irritating.
     Letting it percolate for a moment, I looked down at the battered, grass-green fiberglass hull of my boat, the brilliant white D'Arches paper, the black handles of the watercolor brushes.  It was all I really wanted to do;  I didn't want to fool with some rich guy's computers.   But a bigger boat would be nice, and money would buy more time to paint.  And New Orleans is a pleasurable place.
      "It sounds illegal," I said after a while.

-John Sandford, as excerpted from The Fool's Run

Fifty years ago...........................................

The Sonics..........................................................Santa Claus



lyrics here

"May I buy your groceries?"...............

I was one of those people who made fun of the “people of Walmart”.  And I’m an idiot.  I don’t know anyone’s story, their background, their pain or their journey in this world.  I judge the badly dressed, the overweight, the sloppy, the ignorant, the ill-mannered.  The same ones, yesterday, who cried when someone offered them a small kindness.  The ones who, when they figured out what my husband and I were doing hiding in the jewelry section across from the check-out lanes, came running over, looked us right in the eye, thanked us and complimented on our wonderful girls.  There’s MY gift, right there.  I haven’t gotten anything as precious as that. 
-Walmart as a Holy Land.  The full tale is told here 
thanks Glenn