As a fifteen-year veteran of this site, I’d like to make an appearance once a week or so, at least to tell myself that I’m still part of this project. However, as in many novels, powerful forces collide to keep us apart:
1. Storms & Outages: One of those forces was last week’s high winds that caused an unfortunate chain of events, especially because of wimpy trees around here that collapse onto powerlines:
To close out the year the 3WHH barflies recorded a special Boxing Day edition, in which, following the obligatory McDonald’s news for John and a breaking story that indicates President Trump really does mean it about defending Western Christendom, we review our predictions for 2025 from a year ago (which, unlike the old McLaughlin Group predictions, turned out to be fairly good in most cases); then discuss what each of think is the most significant story of 2025, and offer predictions for 2026.
We couldn’t make the Substack livestream work, but we’re going to sort that out in the next week before our first show of the new season next weekend, which will be 2026!
Remember that phrase?
I do.
It’s referred to, on Wikipedia, as a series of slogans and public influence campaigns from the 2010s and beyond, particularly gaining steam (ancient energy metaphor) when then-President Joe Biden suggested (just six short years ago) that out-of-work coal miners had an obvious option and alternative career path, if only they’d stop resisting the inevitable dissolution of their livelihoods and get with the program:
We have a special Christmas season episode to tide everyone over through the holidays. Steve Hayward sits down with Rob Long, who’s just wrapped his first year at Princeton’s Theological Seminary. They discuss dramatic career changes, the storyteller’s take on the link between show business and the saving souls business, and the modern cultural discomfort with the faith of our fathers.
Just how are you going to pass the time on Christmas Day after you’ve got the roast in the oven (at low temp, of course) and you’ve finished your obligatory annual screening of Die Hard? How about a special Christmas Day edition of the Three Whisky Happy Hour!
Lucretia took time out from the kitchen to host this ad-free episode which features a discussion of the law governing religious symbols on public property, and why they are NOT violations of the Estasblishment Clause of the First Amendment (the phrase “separation of church and state” is not even hiding in any of the emanantions an punumbras of the Constitution, so don’t even look). Discussion also turned to wondering why liberals are increasingly hostile to religion—especially Christianity—and Steve offers his theory that the decline of patriotism among liberals, which also shows up in opinion survey data, is connected to the decline of religion among liberals, too. (He gave the full analysis of the matter in this Substack post a few months ago. One sentence summary: politics, the substitute diety for the left, isn’t going well for them right now, which makes them angry.) And did you know that Christmas itself is now a”far right” plot? That’s what Politico thinks. (Yes, we know: “Politico thinks” is an oxymoron.)
On a small bookshelf in the hallway of our home, there’s an insignificant looking chunk of concrete no larger than a pincushion. The bottom of this little concrete nugget reveals a small sticker with a name and address, written in German, over which a handwritten note:
Authentic piece of the wall of Berlin – to Mari & Jim.
Recently, I wrote about lighting the Chanukiah for Chanukah in our home, and lighting the “candles” on the one we built outside. I was in charge of the inside one, and my husband took care of lighting the outside one. Each night, we could appreciate how the light grew, reminding us in a moving way that the “light can grow” if we make the effort.
In these dark times, growing the light is up to each one of us. It’s easy to get buried in the shadows and the darkness; we keep hoping for miracles instead of working hard to actualize G-d’s intervention in our lives. We pray that the attacks on Jews will stop, that the radical Islamists will throw down their weapons. We hope to save our country from criminal illegal aliens and that ICE agents are safe. We hope for sanity on the part of our adversaries and reconciliation for the sake of our country. We wait . . . and wait . . . and wait.
This is about the everyday stuff that we overlook. This morning I went out to feed the chickens and grabbed a wool watch cap from the stash of hats and gloves in a closet by the door. This one is a lot thicker than the others, and I looked at the tag inside. It was a military watch cap I was issued, probably in 1982.
Later I looked up the company on the tag. Apparently they aren’t in business any longer. These caps are listed on eBay for $50-60. We have a bunch of different yet similarly styled caps, and I’ve even purchased some for our firefighters with our department name on the side. I like them a lot, and most are lighter weight than this classic.
I’m just back from Japan for a fairly brief break on a project that will fire back up a couple of days into the new year. I’m relaxing in my normal way, engrossed in a historical novel. For the last few months that’s been the Marius Mules series by SJA Turney. I’m enjoying them, and I’m happy to point anyone in that direction if they enjoy Julius Caesar’s Roman legions having at it with the Gauls. I’m not going to tell you that it’s high literature (it isn’t), but it’s fun and I enjoy it.
My phone rings and I grudgingly answer. I’m not big on phone conversations, and this one very quickly becomes one I really don’t want to hear. My wife is calling and she is in a panic. She has a reason to feel this way. She was at HEB, the regional supermarket, shopping for Christmas dinner. No big deal. She moved on to Walgreens to get something and found that she did not have her purse. The purse she just used at HEB to buy items for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, she is no longer at HEB.
Today is a nice, warm, early winter day in north central Texas. So I am working on our front porch, which means I get a front seat view of the many, many deliveries being made to my neighborhood by aerial drones from the Walmart store about 2 miles away.
Our local Walmart has been offering aerial drone delivery since August, using drones from an outfit called Zipline.
This poem appeared in Kipling’s book Rewards and Fairies, a children’s book. It opened the story “The Conversion of St. Wilfrid.” I think we can include it as doggerel for the purposes of Doggerel of the Day. It was not written as great poetry. It is one of the finest Christmas poems I know, so I thought to run it today.
Rudyard Kipling
One of the issues I stumbled across back in the day was word-processor files/documents that retain fragments of material that had been deleted or overwritten in the document as presented. Anyone with the skills to examine such files’ raw format could find the proposal elements that were cut, the spelling mistakes that were corrected, or the seventeen versions of the summary that did not pass muster. This issue is especially interesting when documents, for example, are abridged to produce a lower classification version of a document. I suspect that most federal workers are unacquainted with the issue and unlikely to take steps to frustrate hackers like me from prying loose the deepest, darkest secrets that the authors never intended their documents to convey. In the down-classification scenario, it would involve the “spillage” of the higher classified information redacted not from the document’s file, but solely from the document as presented by the word processor.
So it was with some amusement that I ran across this tidbit:
What does it mean to be American? How does one become an American? Join us for this special episode as Peter Schramm, past Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center and Professor of Political Science, discusses his family’s flight from Communist Hungary, move to California, and growing up in his adopted home, learning the answers to those questions and, in his career, teaching native-born Americans about their homeland and the legacy they had been gifted by past generations.
In this season of reflection and the impending start of a new year, take some time to consider what being American means for you, and how you fit into our great story as we approach our 250th birthday.
This week on The Learning Curve we’re looking back on memorable episodes of 2025: In this episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Alisha Searcy interview Trish Schreiber, senior fellow in education at the Frontier Institute in Montana. Schreiber shares her journey from Silicon Valley to Montana and her passion for expanding educational opportunities. She discusses the impact of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the state’s growing education tax credit program, and the recent passage of Montana’s charter school law. Ms. Schreiber also examines challenges posed by entrenched special interests in K-12 education and highlights key resources that inform her work in advancing school choice and education reform.
In my occupation, I serve many elderly clients. I have been serving this population for 30 years. When I first started, I had numerous WWII veterans as clients. Oh, the stories I have heard! I received a living history lesson nearly every week from a different man, each having served in a different branch of service and having a different war experience.
Some examples:
For this special Christmas episode, Chris is joined by Joseph Bottum, a distinguished man of letters who has written extensively about the Yuletide season. They discuss the significance of the holiday and the festivities (both old and new) associated with Christmas, its various literary portrayals over the years, and Jody’s own Christmas essays and tales.
Show notes:
Lovely to see the Christmas posts here. I am totally there for them. I love Christmas. And its message.
Nevertheless, I’m about to go full transgressive and tell you how much I dislike one of the most beloved of all Christmas stories, O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi.
It seems that a little more than 124 years ago, on July 24, 1901, one William Sydney Porter was released early from his five-year prison term at the Ohio Penitentiary, where he’d been sent down for embezzlement.
It’s time for the annual Beyond the Polls Festivus episode! That’s right, before you immerse yourself entirely into the holiday spirit, join Henry for one last rant of 2025. On his naughty list you’ll find pollsters with dodgy models; an unrestrained Mr. President, who’s back to tweeting and ugly truthing his way into unpopularity; and who can forget the centrist Democrats? Or, wait…how could we not forget them when they consistently fail to deliver results?
But it ain’t all bad! Stay tuned to the end for credit given to this year’s great feats of strength, shown both by the progressive base over their own party and DJT’s TKO of MTG.
With Christmas only a couple days away, many of you may be interested in attending a local church. Perhaps you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to be more spiritual, or your football team needs divine intervention to make the playoffs. However, given the many denominations and traditions, it can be hard to know which one is right for you. Fortunately, I have a handy questionnaire to determine which church is right for your unique spiritual needs.
(Inspired by this flowchart from Holy Taco and, needless to say, completely tongue-in-cheek.)
Kevin Sabet, an American drug policy scholar, is the only person appointed to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in both Republican (George W. Bush) and Democratic (Barack Obama and Bill Clinton) administrations. He was also an assistant professor adjunct at Yale University Medical School’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies.
Ann interviews him about his latest book, One Nation Under the Influence which covers the “micro-dosing” fad in Silicon Valley; the results of “Harm Reduction” policies in Oregon, San Francisco, and Canada and what about drug legalization in Portugal? AND MORE!
The voice of adventurer John Mantle, “Judge Mental” to the world: The phone woke me at 3 am. I was still half asleep when a canned voice came on. “This is a land link provided by Southern Ohio Citizens’ Band Network Operators.” Click. Then after a static-y, hissy pause, I heard the sporadic signal of a very familiar English voice. “Allo, Judge? You there?” I was baffled. “Hm, Andrew? Um, it’s 3 here. What’s up?”
The voice that came back was accompanied by the noises of roaring traffic, a huge motor, and the wind roar of illegally fast driving. “O, so very good to have you on the phone. I seem to be at the wheel of a Kennethworth, or a Kennelworth, some sort of large eighteen-wheeled lorry. I’m heading your way on a national motorway, the trailer is heavily loaded, and I have no brakes.” “Do you know what the cargo is?” He replied thoughtfully. “Plutonium, I believe.”
As always, the airports will be mobbed at this time of year. People will probably still show up in their pajamas (sorry about that, Sean Duffy) and irritate each other while they wait in line. But the latest annoyance I learned about was that people who don’t need wheelchairs are requesting them to bypass lines and board their flights:
When Carlos Gomez’s recent flight from Guadalajara was delayed, he asked a gate attendant why. It wasn’t weather or crew shortages. There were 25 wheelchair passengers holding up boarding.
Islamic law requires a tax on infidels, among other oppressive measures. In Minnesota, that tax (jizya) appears to be approaching 15%, the proportionate share of the state budget surrendered to foreign and domestic Somali pirates waging fiscal jihad on the clueless.
It is noteworthy that the official media arm of the lemmings (the Minnesota Star Tribune) not only continues to downplay the amount stolen but tries to say that the real story is that President Trump overstated the amount stolen, presumably out of some unworthy motive. (If Trump were to announce a new federal war on childhood cancer, would the Strib feel compelled to find some nice things to say about the disease?)
I loved seeing in a recent Ricochet Member Feed meme collection some pictures of rather odd nativity scenes:
