Christmas – Page 3 – The Burning Platform

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL & TO ALL A GOODNIGHT

An invading horde of relatives, friends and neighbors will be descending upon the Quinn household in another hour or so. We’ve been making the house presentable over the last few days and I picked up the roast beast, meatballs, tomato pie, hoagie tray, Philly soft pretzels and calzones from Corpolese bakery this morning. The cases of beer are on ice. It’s time for the festivities to begin. The first arrivals will be around 3:00 pm and the last departures will probably be around 2:00 am. I should hang this party banner, but they wouldn’t heed the plea anyway.

My son and his girlfriend flew in from Colorado last night and I got to pick them up at 2:00 am, so I already need a nap before the party gets going. I might be a little on edge, so nobody better make me mad.

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It’s been a historic year for TBP, with our visitor count up 30% over 2015 and many new regular contributors to the site. The plethora of original material separates TBP from many of the other alt-media sites. The MSM has been discredited and many people now come to places like TBP to seek the truth. My biggest disappointment was not making the list of fake news sites published by the Washington Post. It’s a badge of honor when the lowlife MSM tries to discredit you.

I’d like to thank all the regular contributors, regular commenters, lurkers, and donors for all you do to keep this site interesting and vibrant. I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 2016 was a doozy. I think 2017 could be even crazier. I gave my wife one of her presents early. Let’s Make America Great Again.

I’ll be pretty much out of touch for the next day, as we’ll be headed to my sister’s tomorrow for Christmas dinner. Have fun and be safe.

The Greatest Gift For All

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the Bush and Obama regimes are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

Continue reading “The Greatest Gift For All”

A LOCKED DOWN MERRY TRUMP CHRISTMAS IN NYC

We had a quick two day jaunt to NYC to see a concert this week. NYC at Christmas time is usually entertaining, with all the over the top decorations and throngs of shoppers in this mecca of materialism. We drove to the Hamilton Train Station, but by 10:00 am the parking garage was full. We had to go back to lovely Trenton and catch a NJT train there into Penn Station. Nothing like immediately being swarmed upon by a grifter selling a sob story about just being released from the hospital, blah, blah, blah. His well rehearsed show didn’t work on me. I told him to beat it and proceeded to position himself for the next sucker.

The train ride was uneventful and on time. We departed Penn Station and got a cab. The 15 block ride resulted in at least 5 near accidents, dozens of honked horns, and a feeling of relief when we arrived in one piece. After dropping our bags off at the hotel – no room ready, we proceeded to find a place for lunch and then see the usual Christmas sites. NYC survives strictly on tourism and Wall Street criminal banks. Every block has at least six restaurants or bars. How they survive, with what must be huge rents, is beyond me. The truth is, most don’t survive and are replaced every year or so.

Continue reading “A LOCKED DOWN MERRY TRUMP CHRISTMAS IN NYC”

FED EX F**KS UP

I ordered a gift from Kohl’s on December 12. It still hasn’t arrived. According to the tracking info, it went to Fed Ex on December 14. It went from Durham NC to Kernersville NC to Lewisberry PA to Allentown PA over the next week. It appears that on the 22nd Fed Ex threw in the towel and gave the package to the US Postal Service. The delivery date is still pending. Fed Ex is fucked up.

Via The Daily Mail

‘The worst delivery service ever’: FedEx admits it has missed THOUSANDS of Christmas deliveries to the outrage of parents across America

FedEx will not deliver thousands of presents on time for Christmas Day
It blamed too many last-minute orders and bad weather for the delays
Furious parents blasted FedEx for spoiling their children’s Christmas
Some late deliveries will take place in limited areas on December 25

Millions of children across America will rush down their stairs on Christmas morning to find a pile of presents waiting for them under their trees.

But for thousands of families there will be less gifts than they planned – after FedEx admitted it did not make all of its scheduled deliveries on time for the big day.

With just hours to go until Christmas, the delivery service admitted defeat, infuriating scores of customers whose festive plans are now ruined.

Bah humbug: FedEx has admitted that it will not deliver thousands of presents on time for Christmas this year (file picture)

Continue reading “FED EX F**KS UP”

MERRY CHRISTMAS

East Coast Celebrates Christmas With Warmest Weather On Record

Guess whose 20 year old air conditioner stopped working in the middle of their Christmas eve party? And Santa didn’t bring me a new one. I guess I was naughty.

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/25/2015 09:45 -0500

It was just 10 months ago that Boston smashed its all time snowfall record, and the US was blanketed in freezing weather from west to east as the Polar Vortex unleashed cold air for the second year in a row. It was so cold, the GDP report for the winter period had to be double-seasonally adjusted as the sharp economic slowdown, which was blamed on the “harsh weather”, simply did not make sense otherwise.

Fast forward to today when according to AccuWeather, Christmas felt more like Memorial Day across much of the eastern United States as temperatures rose between 20 and 35 degrees above average and 5-15 degrees above previous record highs.

While unlikely that it was the hottest Christmas ever – temperature recordings only go so far – records were broken all along the Eastern Seaboard, from the Southeast to New England with some areas breaking their previous record high by more than 10 degrees F. Some records were broken from the 1800s.

The highs that occurred on Thursday are more typical of late spring and early summer.

Continue reading “East Coast Celebrates Christmas With Warmest Weather On Record”

The Abolition of Christmas

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan – December 21, 2001

When I was a boy, Kensington was a village half an hour north of Chevy Chase Circle where, inside an ice-cold armory, Catholic kids practiced basketball. Montgomery County was a bedroom suburb of D.C. Nothing beyond existed, except for the Rockville drive-in.

This fall, both precincts became world-famous as citadels of wacko liberalism. The Montgomery County Council voted to fine homeowners $500 who let cigarette smoke escape into neighbors’ houses. And the Kensington council voted to purge Santa from its 30-year-old tradition of lighting a pine tree in front of town hall.

Why did the Kensington Taliban expel St. Nick? Says the mayor: “Because two families felt that they would be uncomfortable with Santa Claus being a part of the event.” Ebeneezer Scrooge felt the same way.

Now this may not be in the Christmas spirit, but it needs to be said – as writer Tom Piatak says it so well in Chronicles. The spirit that seeks to purge Santa, and has already purged Christ from Christmas, is not a spirit of tolerance, but a spirit of “hatred, resentment and envy.”

And why should a tiny few who resent Christmas prevail in America over the great joyous majority who love it?

Continue reading “The Abolition of Christmas”

Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth

Guest Post by David Stockman

After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the death of the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the red army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end.

The world had descended into what had been a 77-year global war, incepting with the mobilization of the armies of old Europe in August 1914. If you want to count bodies, 150 million were killed by all the depredations which germinated in the Great War, its foolish aftermath at Versailles, and the march of history into the world war and cold war which followed inexorably thereupon.

To wit, upwards of 8% of the human race was wiped-out during that span. The toll encompassed the madness of trench warfare during 1914-1918; the murderous regimes of Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism that rose from the ashes of the Great War and Versailles; and then the carnage of WWII and all the lesser (unnecessary) wars and invasions of the Cold War including Korea and Vietnam.

I have elaborated more fully on this proposition in “The Epochal Consequences Of Woodrow Wilson’s War“, but the seminal point cannot be gainsaid. The end of the cold war meant world peace was finally at hand, yet 25 years later there is still no peace because Imperial Washington confounds it.

In fact, the War Party entrenched in the nation’s capital is dedicated to economic interests and ideological perversions that guarantee perpetual war; they ensure endless waste on armaments and the inestimable death and human suffering that stems from 21st century high tech warfare and the terrorist blowback it inherently generates among those upon which the War Party inflicts its violent hegemony.

Continue reading “Christmas 2015—–Why There Is No Peace On Earth”

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOODNIGHT

This isn’t exactly the scene at my house today. It’s 74 degrees and I have the air conditioner on, as at least three dozen family, friends and neighbors will descend upon the Quinn household in about two hours. The cases of beer and bottles of liquor have been bought. The feast will include:

Roast beef
Meatballs & Sausage in sauce
Pulled pork
Tomato Pie
Chicken fingers for the kids
Shrimp Tartlets
Cheese dip
Broccoli casserole
Philly soft pretzels
Cakes, cookies, eclairs for dessert

I raised none of this food myself. I didn’t slaughter the cows or the pigs to make this meal. It’s likely GMO produced food is included. I’ll still try to enjoy myself. The party is likely to go on until the wee hours of Christmas morning, and it’s possible I wake up in this condition.

I’ll pretty much be out of touch for most of the next 48 hours as tomorrow we have another feast at my sister’s house. My Christmas present will be the 6 millionth visitor to TBP which will happen tomorrow. Not bad for a two bit blog I started six years ago so I could post my articles without having them censored or edited.

It’s been a wild ride, with three versions of TBP, denial of service attacks, the loss of two of my biggest supporters, and the friendship of hundreds of people I’ve never met in person. TBP is a big dysfunctional family that fights, makes up, and fights some more. I’ve learned so much from all the contributors and commenters over the years. I appreciate everyone’s efforts to make this place a learning experience for everyone that stops by. I also appreciate all the donations I’ve received over the years to pay the costs of running this place.

The list of people I’d like to thank personally is endless, but I’d like to give a big thank you to the Man With No Name who rescued this site from attack back in 2014 and has kept it safe and smooth running since then. He’s doing God’s work, as Lloyd Blankfein would say.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, because 2016 is going to be a doozy.

“Now Stucky Now Muck!
Now, Llpoh and SSS!
On, T4C! On, Indentured Servant!
On, Gayle and Jimski!
To the top of the porch!
To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away!
Dash away all!”