Merry Christmas and happy New Year, may peace and prosperity be with you all.

Posted by: Harry | Dec 24 2014 11:55 utc | 4

Thanks for all the time you devote to this blog, b. And sincere best wishes to you and your family and friends for the Festive Season and 2015.
Good cheer to the bar flies, blessings to Russia & Vlad.
And a pox on the dumbass Yankees and their Eurotrash bootlickers, including Tony Abbott.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 24 2014 13:07 utc | 6

Thanks b, for your fine work over the years. Happiness and health to all:)

Posted by: ben | Dec 24 2014 14:47 utc | 8

cheers b & all
hope won’t get much done – given the recent historical trajectory, plan for the worst scenarios, utilize all opportunity for unending the status quo

Posted by: b real | Dec 24 2014 16:02 utc | 10

upending… damn auto spellcheckers

Posted by: b real | Dec 24 2014 16:03 utc | 12

Excuse me if I take your well-wishes with a grain of salt. You’ve pretty much made it clear that you would like to see me and my children dead and gone, so I’m thinking you’re not wishing me and my family peace and hope, and yet you don’t even know me except your assumption that I’m an American and a troll. Not to mention, how could anyone feel hopeful about peace after reading this blog and the nasty comments from the sadists who comment here? Well-wishes don’t fit or match the sentiment of this blog. Finally, there is no hope, and especially no hope for peace, if people aren’t empowered — and presenting a biased and partial analysis as most everyone here does, including you b, precludes, nay obliterates, empowerment.
That being said, I’ve updated my latest blog post with an addendum, and for the record I’m not wishing anyone well. It’s a bullshit gesture.
Say Goodnight To The Bad Guy

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Dec 24 2014 17:49 utc | 14

Merry Christmas to everyone, and thanks to b, as usual, for all the efforts he puts in. I never cease to be amazed by the breadth of his reading and knowledge.

Posted by: Laguerre | Dec 24 2014 18:15 utc | 16

Merry Christmas everyone!
And thanks to b for this holiday thread. As for hope, we are living in what one could say is the gravest period of global crisis since WW II. The US is engaged in simultaneous wars against all nations which are not willing to be its vassal. So I’m afraid that things are going to get worse before they get better.

Posted by: Demian | Dec 24 2014 19:31 utc | 18

Especially to Lizard but of course to all moon bats here:
when the inner heart
recognizes itself
in another’s heart
or when essence of mind
is known to be shared
in another’s faith
then all our faces
changed by the ancestry
of time, and sun and wind
become recognizable
as the face of the divine
within us all
perhaps then the cry arising
from the many hues
of the rainbow race
saying,”enough!,
let there be peace!”
perhaps then this cry
will be heeded
Bunky
Many thanks b, and a huge ongoing appreciation

Posted by: juannie | Dec 24 2014 20:24 utc | 20

Thankyou b for you tireless endeavours.
Wishes for a safe and Happy Xmas to one and all Barflies.
Peace. Salaam. Shalom.

Posted by: Outraged | Dec 24 2014 22:08 utc | 22

@CNH Feeling upended, having a bad time?
Have some cheers. Read the comments of your fellow countrymen at TMZ video. No hope for the USofA.

Posted by: Oui | Dec 24 2014 22:39 utc | 24

Religious feelings here and here.
Twenty years ago there were peace initiatives and think-tanks funded how to secure peace. Even political parties had it written in their party platform. All are gone and replaced by right-wing, neocon/warmongering ngo’s funded by corporations and oligarchs. MSM following suit.

Posted by: Oui | Dec 24 2014 22:59 utc | 26

Thanks b and thanks everyone for hanging in there. I gave up years ago.

Posted by: pb | Dec 25 2014 5:12 utc | 28

Thank you b, you are one beacon of hope. And Happy Holidays to all the barflies.
Things will get better, it’s a matter of when, there’s your hope for ya.

Posted by: fairleft | Dec 25 2014 6:39 utc | 30

D@31
Why are you making such a crusade of this trifle? This is supposed to be a time of peace and reflection not war making especially among friends. Maybe this is a lesson about how religion and intolerance are bound.
Happy Festivus, for the rest of us.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 25 2014 15:30 utc | 32

in re 31 —
You sound like Barry Choom now, let’s just reach out and dialogue with the Tea Partiers. They’re men and women of good will, right? I’ll spare everyone the link to “Kumbayah.”
It may trite, but true — the “Keep Christ in Christmas” crowd is not looking to celebrate Deism. They wish to turn this country into a fundamentalist theocracy. You down with that? Not me.
Off-shoring, militarism, reaction, austerity, punishment — what else do the Republicans offer? I hesitate to call them conservatives. They ironically seek social stability and “traditional values,” but their economic policies undermine them.
As the Irish say, “Saints preserve us from devout people.”

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 25 2014 16:11 utc | 34

@34 Something of a sweeping statement there rufus. I have no problem with Christmas and I’m a devout agnostic.

Posted by: dh | Dec 25 2014 16:29 utc | 36

But are the so-called American conservatives never right about anything?
Yes, they are never right about anything just as so-called American liberals are never right about anything.
Irish heritage intelligence pricks make sure to say Merry Christmas (versus Happy Holidays), and to them I say a merry and happy FU, which is quite a few of you here. Carrying on the tradition of Wild Bill Donovan more than a half a century later — what stamina and resolve — you resemble mold for which there is no remedy — not even bleach will remove it/you. Youse guys are so obvious.
Thousands Join Anti-Islam Protest In Germany

DRESDEN, Germany (AP) — Thousands of people have gathered in the eastern German city of Dresden for the latest in a series of anti-Islam demonstrations that have alarmed the country’s politicians.
Police estimated that some 17,500 people attended Monday’s rally by the group calling itself Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA — organized this week as a carol-singing gathering in front of the Semperoper opera house.
More at link

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Dec 25 2014 17:17 utc | 38

b now we all know what your doing today;)
http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Swimmers-brave-cold-for-Berlin-Christmas-swim-5978719.php

Posted by: jo6pac | Dec 25 2014 17:50 utc | 40

I think the sentiments of Jesus of Nazareth are quite fine and noble, “Do unto others…,” e.g. Though I don’t think him the son of the Deity, I do believe he lived and preached a message something like we see in the Gospels. It’s too bad our present Pharisees don’t act in that spirit.
If I might return this thread to the spirit of the season. Mrs. M & I were visiting family and friends in New England a no. of years ago, and our travels took us near Frost’s home in New Hampshire. The first line popped into my head, and we then fleshed it out. My in-laws found it most amusing, I hope y’all do too.
A Contemporary Reading of
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
With apologies to Robert Frost.
Having been written a number of years ago, some of the references in this seasonal classic may be unfamiliar to younger readers. As a public service, we have updated it to make it more readily appreciated and understood.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
It is a corporation, though;
It will not see me stopping here
To watch its woods fill up with snow.
The rental car must think it queer
To stop without a strip mall near
Between the woods and McMansions fake
The darkest evening of the year.
It gives its GPS a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of blow-hard wind and right-wing flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

And in the spirit of the season, a musical offering, Jethro Tull’s Christmas Song

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 25 2014 18:10 utc | 42

A very merry Christmas to all and a happy New Year
and a heartfelt thank You for letting the homeless stargazer with his sybolistic donkey find a place in the barnstable and a little drink – I don’t know why.
Here the christmas-week in earths heaven:
http://astromundanediary.blogspot.de/2014/12/22.html

Posted by: mundanomaniac | Dec 25 2014 20:36 utc | 44

Hope…yeah
Anti-homeless cages installed around benches in French city on Christmas Eve
http://rt.com/news/217679-france-homeless-bench-cages/
Folks, this is what democracies do apparently. Disgusting.

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 25 2014 21:50 utc | 46

the sort of thing Pussy Riot would do….feminists make a political statement and themselves popular by kidnapping baby jesus! will FEMEN get an audience with Obama?
RT ‏@RT_com 3h3 hours ago
Topless FEMEN activist ‘kidnaps’ Baby Jesus from Vatican nativity scene http://on.rt.com/vvk563

Posted by: brian | Dec 26 2014 0:34 utc | 48

Inkan1969 @ 47
Well said, tx.
H’whisperer @ 49
You be tearin’ ’em up; amoral Eurotrash cranks works for me.
And don’t forget — keep the Saturn in Saturnalia!

Posted by: rufus magister | Dec 26 2014 4:05 utc | 50

H@49
The Bum Spikes in England were removed by a conservative mayor so this is not necessarily a left-right issue.
I think you have to separate the Drunk Bum problem from the general homeless population who can usually sleep in shelters where drunks are not allowed.
Neither the Right or the Left in Europe or the US are doing anything about the root causes of homelessness or the mental health issues of street drunks.

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 26 2014 16:27 utc | 52

Posted by: Wayoutwest | Dec 26, 2014 11:27:23 AM | 52
I don’t do ‘left’ and ‘right’.
There are lots of Right-wing cranks in politics but (imo) the so-called ‘left’ is a bin in which the R-w Cranks keep a list of the names of people who oppose them but aren’t terribly bright and can’t sustain a coherent argument/debate. The cranks just pretend that people who oppose them, AND CAN argue/debate, don’t exist (bc R-w Cranks HATE losing an argument in public).
The park bench debacle raised by Anonymous isn’t a left/right issue. It’s about a careless disregard for the principles of Good Taste, Good Judgement and a willingness to demonstrate Empathy – or not.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 27 2014 4:56 utc | 54