Just makin’ pies and rolls and all manner of good things . . . counting our blessings that are more plentiful than we deserve.

Merry Christmas from the ol’ Okie!

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“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Merry Christmas

I guess if you are a New Hampshire Democrat, expressing your belief in God at a political event is now a crime? Here’s the truly, awful event.

Makes one wonder what’s in the water up there in good ol’ NH. I liked his statement, “The Republican Party is not our savior.” There’s some truth for ya.

This country was founded by men that believed in God, the Creator, and they wrote that this belief would be necessary for Liberty to survive. For, if our rights are not given to us by God, and they come from man, then Man can deprive us of them at any time.

This is what has distinguished our country from all those before is founding and all those since.

May God continue to bless America . . . but that isn’t gonna go on forever if we continue to turn our collective face away from Him.

Should have known it wasn’t going to be just another dog walk. As we came up on Saint Monica the little white paper bags with lighted tea candles places out on the sidewalk and a much larger-than-normal crowd going to Mass was a first clue. The general peace and quiet, after the wailing Gerber ambulance had passed of course, was another. After having bee very cold here for days, today it was sunny, relatively warm and the winds were dead still — clue three.

I sometimes dread this early-AM Sunday walk, as there is no throw-away paper to pick up for the wife so I don’t trod up to tony Montana Avenue where those paper-boxes are, instead we, Missy da Schnoodle and I, walk a few extra blocks longer on California, past St. Monica and down to Wilshire Boulevard. The dread comes from all the usual derelicts and other homeless that hang out there, the scariest being the psychotics. Not unusual to meet several of them within a couple of blocks. For some reason today, there were none of those, and few of the others.

As I walked by I looked into the papered-up-from-the-inside windows of vacant stores, and saw what for all intent and purposes was a homeless guy with a little gray dog with a Christmas bandanna looking back at me. I really gotta do somethin’ about my before-coffee dog-walk wardrobe — Oh, ya betcha!

As I came upon the local Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf I saw this little guy walking out of their patio and down the small flight of steps nursing his coffee and then turning in my direction. He was short, couldn’t tell if he was Hispanic, but was of some kind of nationality. The oddest thing was that he was wearing what looked like plaid pajamas all wrapped up on his head like an odd, turban-shaped hat. I was expecting a plea for money and was dreading that as I had nothing on me but ID and a phone.

As I walked by I glanced at him with my peripheral vision and heard him softly say, “Pray for me . . .”

Not missing a beat or a step I simply said, “OK, I will.”

“Thank you,” was the reply, now coming from behind me.

Immediately I bowed my head slightly and asked the Lord for intervention for this poor fellow, to provide for him what he is needing, to take away his pain, to be there for him in whatever sorrow he is feeling. And, I kept walking . . .

My eyes were welling up with tears to go along with the constant juicing of my recently acquired allergies. I realized that for the first time since the passing of my wife’s mother over two years ago I was beginning to feel some Christmas spirit again.

Guess it’s me that should be thanking him . . .

I guess that holding the U.N. conference on man-made climate change (AKA the Global Warming Summit) in Cancun this time of year was at least good odds on having some nice beach-type weather, especially with all that anthropogenic warming of the Earth happening. Looks like ol’ Mother Gaia isn’t amused by their hubris.

The irony: As negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Cancun to strategize ways to keep the planet from getting hotter, the temperature in the seaside Mexican city plunged to a 100-year record low of 54° F. Climate-change skeptics are gleefully calling Cancun’s weather the latest example of the “Gore Effect” — a plunge in temperature they say occurs wherever former Vice President Al Gore, now a Nobel Prize-winning environmental activist, makes a speech about the climate.

Of course one cold winter doesn’t make a trend, and the Climate change advocates keep insisting that the Earth’s temp is still on the rise . . . although it sure looks like maybe a small move toward a new Little Ice Age to this ol’ Okie instead of workin’ our way to bein’ the next Venus. Time will tell I suppose, and before anything bad will happen either temp direction I’ll be pushin’ up some fine daises somewhere.

That fact that these folks believe that we (mankind) have the power to have put the planet’s weather patterns into crisis mind boggles me. That they believe that we are mere years away from the tipping point and we can solve all this via a Carbon Credit Exchange is ridiculous. To insist that the world turn away from modernization and go back to a 1700s-1800s agrarian world economy is insanity made manifest.

The loopy Social-Progressives in the Western world might be crazy enough to buy into that one, but try to force the billions of Chinese and Indians to walk away from their leap from the farm to the post-information-age boom they are working on and voila! — you got yourself a white-hot World War III comin’ at ya. But hey, what’s a couple o’ hundred nukes launched off among friends?

Ya! That’s the ticket. Nuclear Winter to combat all that man-made Global Warming, with some population control thrown in to boot.

A Progressive’s wet dream right there. Oh, ya betcha!

Here’s a headline that I really didn’t want to ever read: Iran Placing Medium-Range Missiles in Venezuela; Can Reach the U.S.

Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources[1], according to an article in the German daily, Die Welt, of November 25, 2010. According to the article, an agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit o Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles.

At a moment when NATO members found an agreement, in the recent Lisbon summit (19-20 November 2010), to develop a Missile Defence capability to protect NATO’s populations and territories in Europe against ballistic missile attacks from the East (namely, Iran), Iran’s counter-move consists in establishing a strategic base in the South American continent – in the United States’s soft underbelly.

The Mullahs of Iran have their scientists working overtime to get that first nuclear warhead developed, and if a related move a day or so ago announced that they now had the capability to make their own yellowcake, so now they don’t have to work around international sanctions for that critical ingredient.

The Stuxnet worm can’t stave them off forever on their nuclear development. I would like to see a threat map of what part of the U.S. their missiles could hit launched from Venezuela. If it’s just the south (GOP strongholds) and southern CA (La La Land) will the administration care? Maybe if D.C. is in the zone someone will wake up. Wonder if the Obama/Chavez love fest is still goin’ on?

Guess they could always call on ol’ Slick Willy to come in and run that war . . .