Thoughts On A Sunday

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend winds to a close, and many holiday travelers are on their way home. The malls and outlets are jam packed, making it seem the economy may not be as bad as some have been reporting, at least not here in New Hampshire.

The holiday also heralds another yearly event: Beezlebub's assembly of the Christmas Village and the erection and decoration of the Official Weekend Pundit Artificial Christmas Tree. (I am of two minds about this. It seems too early to me to put up the Christmas decorations, far too early. But I also see BeezleBub's reasoning about it, trying to extend the holiday feelings.)

At least I don't have to worry about putting up outside decorations, something neither my or Deb's family ever really got into.

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WKRP in Cincinatti is back on the air. No, not the TV show, but the TV station!

(H/T Instapundit)

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You know criticism of the Indian police and their reluctance to open fire on the terrorists is valid when those critics start quoting Heinlein.

Indeed.

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In light of the events in Mumbai, neo-neocon gives us an important bit of advice when it comes to responding to terrorist attacks: If the Israelis give advice, take it.

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There's always one aspect of heating with wood that we conveniently forget...until the next heating season arrives: cleaning.

When we're running the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove it's necessary to vacuum and dust every other day, if not every day. We also have to sweep up around the wood box and stove at least once a day.

There are definitely advantages to just being able to turn up the thermostat when we want heat. Unless we go solar or geothermal, I doubt we'll see that here at The Manse any time soon.

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In contrast to this tragedy, Bogie reports her experience of shopping on Black Friday was relatively quiet, with crowds large yet well behaved.

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Now that we've gotten past the first blush euphoria of Obama's election to the highest office in the land, members of the MSM have started admitting they were completely in the tank for Obama. Some are even admitting to feeling shame, though not necessarily for themselves but for others in their profession.

Time magazine's Mark Halperin, one of the most respected political editors in America, said at a recent Politico.com conference that the media bias in favor of Obama was "the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war."

Big surprise there.

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Speaking of media spin for the Obamessiah, now the New York Times is trying to give him and the Democrats credit for the victory in Iraq.

Uh, weren't they the ones working very hard to make sure we failed in Iraq? This spin wipes out the last shred of credibility the Times may have had.

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The New England Patriots took on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Foxboro today. As I wrote this the Pats are ahead 7-3 in the first quarter.

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The snow started flying here at The Manse around 3PM. While we're not expecting to see much in the way of accumulation before it changes over to rain, it is a preview of what to expect over the next four months.

One thing both BeezleBub and I have pondered is if we will see a repeat of last winter's snowfall. We had over 150” of snow here at The Manse last winter, the storms coming so often and dumping so much snow we were exhausting ourselves trying to keep up with it. If we'd had just one more storm we would have been in trouble because we had no place to put it.

We know we'll be seeing a 'colder' than normal winter, normal being a relative term. (We blame global warming!)

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Bob Parks reminds the Electors of their duty and the need to make sure the candidate for which they are obligated to cast a ballot on December 15th is constitutionally qualified to be POTUS.

The question of Obama's birth certificate isn't going away despite claims by many on the Left it's a non-issue.

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Megan McArdle takes a brief break from packing for her move to quote and comment upon a piece by Yglesias about “first principles on markets, property rights, and air pollution.”

As Yglesias points out:

On one conceivable conception of property rights, the Sierra Club could buy up a field somewhere and then assert that its property rights over the field give it the right to exclude any form of air pollution from wafting into its field. On that definition of property rights, which is the one "the Greens" would favor if we really wanted Stone Age economic conditions, industrial production would swiftly become impossible. You couldn't so much as warm yourself with a fire before neighbors were accusing you of trespassing for depositing microscopic soot particles in their lawns.

So obviously we don't define the property rights that way.

But I wouldn't put it past “the Greens” to try something like that at some point, likely in California or Oregon. Then it would likely come down to a suit in court about property rights and eminent domain exercised by a private concern to force abutters to do the bidding of the so-called aggrieved party.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is flying, the ponds and lakes are freezing, and the woodstoves are keeping homes warm.