I wonder, what are the absolutely essential elements of any good Christmas parade? You have to have Santa, right? And I’m thinking you need some reindeer. Some red and green lights. Are elves mandatory? What else? A sleigh would be nice, especially sleighbells. How about some giant candy canes?
I don’t know what’s really essential. But I know you can go ahead and call it a ‘holdiay parade’ without it screwing anything up. Oh, and the baby Jesus is kind of an afterthought on this holiday. He got upstaged a long time ago. You don’t need the baby Jesus or a crucifix to have a swell Christmas parade. But I’m thinking the elves should be mandatory.
Happy shopping, folks.
Here ya go, Booman– a nice idea for your nice vacation. Fun for the whole family !
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06ark.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=noah
What’s so terribly delicious about this irony from Inhofe is that his state was the one picking on Muslims with their “Sharia law” vote.
Nothing pisses me off more than a white man belonging to the most powerful religion in the world, living in the most powerful country in the world (a country quite friendly to his religion), claiming to be persecuted.
Isn’t Jim Inhofe the Wanker of EVERY Day just by default?
except possibly the baby itself.
The tree is druidic.
The star is astrological.
The angels are certainly not Christian, which is supposedly a monotheistic religion. The angels are obviously minor deities.
The animals are again paganistic.
Joseph and Mary were at the time of the birth Jews. Since Jesus was their son, they probably did not worship him. They spent time toilet training Jesus, and its hard to worship a person for whom you cleaned up a lot of shit.
The “wise men from the east” have been said to be Persian magi (followers of Zoroaster).
And the cruelest change is when the Christian church changed “Follow me” to “Worship me” to “Believe in me” to “Just say this formula,…”
And what does Jim Inhofe know about “Peace on earth, good will toward men” anyway?
It’s a classic case of power wanting to capture the symbols of religion; worked for Constantine, didn’t it?
except possibly the baby itself.
EVEN the baby! At Winter Solstice, the Sun/Son is said to be reborn from the Womb of the Longest Night/Mother Earth, the Light returns from the Dark. ALL of the symbolism predates Jesus.
Especially the gift-giving which comes from the Roman custom during the Bacchanalia of showing off how rich you are by how much you can give away to the poor and/or your servants/slaves.
Of COURSE the Virgin Birth is the oldest thing in the world. The reincarnation of Jesus was stolen from the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, and Osiris is/was the Redeemer also.
All of religion is the same crap, over and over and over again. The Romans were smart. They allowed their subjects to worship as they pleased (stopping human sacrifice in Britain, of course), and requiring subjects to pay taxes.
Why do they choose to look at it so negatively when you could just as easily make something positive out it from their point of view (everyone celebrates Christmas now!)?
Language changes. There are fads and fashions.
Gov. Christie reads “Twas the night before Christmas”. I guess that makes him part of the “war on Christmas” now, doesn’t it.
And I thought Bill O’Reilly had milked this “War on Christmas” nonsense to death years ago. Poor Persecuted Christian Jim Inhofe. I doubt that anyone will miss him at the parade.
man, I just feel bad for you.
if the democrats and the president were doing anything good, you’d be trumpeting it. I’ve given up on the clowns: they make me angry, but that’s it.
You still have a shred of faith, and the last couple of days have really sucked. I can’t blame you for focusing on the war on christmas.
holy shit, what a total cave in.
I’m sorry man.
How is that a “total cave-in”? He just secured unemployment insurance for two million people and preserved the middle class tax cuts, gave us a 2% payroll tax cut, preserved the EITC, and protected the college loans break. What did you think a compromise was going to yield?
i didn’t want a compromise.
I’m tired of compromises. shoulda let the fucking things expire and called their bluff.
A few billion for the unemployed, hundreds of billions for the rich. one year of unemployment, two years of tax cuts for the wealthy.
i won’t argue with the 2% payroll tax cut. but goddamn.
and social security’s next.
I didn’t want to get shellacked in the midterms. I don’t want a lot of things.
It’s not a compromise. It’s a fucking total capitulation.
It’s another loser move by Obama. I won’t vote for that piece of shit again. He is without honor. He has never seen a DEMOCRATIC policy he did not want to betray.
So fuck him. WE NEED A PRIMARY CHALLENGE.
And a primary challenge is going to help the country how?
White progressives are kidding themselves if they think they are the base of the Democratic Party. And the reason is that they have not done the hard grassroots work to create a progressive electorate; they have expected a President a la Reagan or a President and Congress a la Bushco to impose that from above.
No Democratic governor and no Democratic member of Congress is likely to be a primary candidate.
Progressives better start sweating what to do if Obama decides not to run again in order to cool some of the overt racial animosity that is building up steam in the country with each reasonable thing he does. It is very strange to watch. The more he capitulates to Republican policies (and he definitely has done that), the more unhinged the Republican base becomes, whipped up by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
What candidate would Democrats put up in a LBJ-decides-not-to-run scenario?
Show me the list.
Until progressives get a grassroots, movemental base, we are screwed.
Your best hope is the appearance of a leftwing third-party candidate who can move labor to the left of Obama. But that candidate would have to appear on the horizon in the next three months, and they likely would not come from the AFL-CIO or the Teamsters leadership. They would be critical of the results of the professional labor leaders.
Hey, whatever, dude.
I’m not voting for this asshole again, and that may require a Green vote. I won’t vote for this turd again.
I suggest that you review the name of Ted Kennedy. He primaried Carter. Same situation. Carter was the same failed bullshit bad leader that Obama is. Don’t misunderstand me – Carter is and was a good human being and has made the ex-Presidency into a power. But he was a crappy president. Obama is the same. He is an incompetent, and has not grown or understood the office.
He is a bad President, and he is a one-termer.
Umm, correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t this time of year been referred to as the Holiday Season? Said season usually includes Christmas, New Years, Hanukah and Kwanzaa. Naming the parade for the holiday season makes things a bit more inclusive while not taking the predominant focus from Christmas. This is fodder for the base, nothing more.
Isn’t Christmas supposed to be about peace on Earth and goodwill toward men? Aren’t conservatives dogmatically opposed to both? Seems like somebody would mention that sometime.
Are you ashamed of the President? You rarely write about Obama anymore.
I can’t imagine how he could have been a greater squanderer of opportunity. We are well and truly fucked with this Quisling in the White House.