There’s one good thing about Kathleen Parker’s insipid column — some of the comments are great. I liked this one in particular:

One nit: True, the economic pie is not precisely a zero-sum game as the pie does grow. BUT when one segment of society is cutting ever larger pieces for itself faster than the economy as a whole grows–as we’ve seen now for many years–the amount of pie left for everyone else very definitely does decrease.

“The Disneyfication of Tibet” by Pearl Sydenstricker is one of the best articles I’ve read on the continued Chinese occupation of Tibet. There’s little in here that I haven’t been hearing for awhile, and I believe it to be accurate. One thing I hadn’t heard was that the Chinese are selling tickets to the “sky burials.” Sick.

Basically, China is turning Tibet into a tourism theme park, and the monasteries are the equivalent of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. And China is being every bit the exploitative imperial power in Tibet that Europeans were in China a century ago. This is not just about religion. Tibetans are now second-class citizens in their own country.

Bill DeBlasio was inaugurated today. I’m not going to link to the really stupid New York Times article about him, but instead will link to dread pirate mistermix commenting on the article.

See also Don’t you know the crime rate’s going up up up up up?

Seriously, I hope the new year is good to you, and to me, too. I intend to celebrate by spending some quality time with Sadie Awful Bad Cat.

My prediction for 2014, based on the I Ching, is that for the next few months the nation and world will be stumbling along as it has for the last few months, and we’ll somehow manage. Things shouldn’t get any worse, anyway.

Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times fires back at the Right:

Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who has made a special crusade out of the attack on the American diplomatic and intelligence compound in Benghazi, was asked on “Meet the Press” to justify Republican claims that Al Qaeda agents planned and executed the operation. (The article found no evidence that Al Qaeda was involved.)

Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC put her finger on the political question when she asked Mr. Issa why Republicans “use the term Al Qaeda.” After all, she said, “you and other members of Congress are sophisticated in this and know that when you say Al Qaeda, people think central Al Qaeda. They don’t think militias that may be inspired by Bin Laden and his other followers.”

“There is a group there involved that is linked to Al Qaeda,” Mr. Issa said. “What we never said — and I didn’t have the security to look behind the door, that’s for other members of Congress — of what the intelligence were on the exact correspondence with Al Qaeda, that sort of information — those sorts of methods I’ve never claimed.”

I’m still trying to parse that sentence.

Sometimes weasel words do turn around and bite you, don’t they, Rep. Issa? I think, though, that these days the term “al Qaeda” (which just means “the base”) can mean just about anything one wants it to mean. It can mean a particular organization that is currently being run out of Pakistan, or it can refer to a kind of amorphous movement of dissociated anti-Western militias, and many things in between.

This makes weaseling pretty easy. A Republican operative can say “al Qeada,” meaning any Muslim from Turkey to Malaysia with an attitude about the West; and the followers hear “al Qaeda,” meaning the specific organization founded by Osama bin Laden.

(In Rightie World, a lie doesn’t count as a lie if they can argue there’s some literal truth to it, depending on how terms are defined, even if the statement is intentionally deceptive.)

The Weaseling continues:

On Fox News on Sunday, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan insisted the story was wrong in finding that “Al Qaeda was not involved in this.”

“There was some level of pre-planning; we know that,” he said. “There was aspiration to conduct an attack by Al Qaeda and their affiliates in Libya; we know that. The individuals on the ground talked about a planned tactical movement on the compound — this is the compound before they went to the annex.”

What does any of that even mean? “Some level of pre-planning” in rightie speak could mean that in 2009 some Libyan sent an email to his brother-in-law in Islamabad calling for death to westerners. “There was aspiration?” “Individuals on the ground?” Please. Basically all he’s saying is that the Libyan militants had given some thought to how they might attack the U.S. compound before they attacked it — which nobody is denying — and that the group is ideologically similar to and admirers of the original al Qaeda — which nobody is denying.

Rosenthal continues,

For anyone wondering why it’s so important to Republicans that Al Qaeda orchestrated the attack — or how the Obama administration described the attack in its immediate aftermath — the answer is simple. The Republicans hope to tarnish Democratic candidates by making it seem as though Mr. Obama doesn’t take Al Qaeda seriously. They also want to throw mud at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who they fear will run for president in 2016.

Which brings us to one particularly hilarious theme in the response to the Times investigation. According to Mr. Rogers, the article was intended to “clear the deck” for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Rosenthal leaves out what I thought to be the most hilarious reaction to the Times story, from Bob Taylor in The Washington Times.

That does not mean, however, that the Times timing of the story should not come under some degree of scrutiny. A piece of journalism as extensive as this does not happen overnight. Obviously the Times set out well in advance with the idea of breaking the story on the weekend before the new year.

Obviously? It’s certainly not obvious to me.

One of the dirty little secrets about investigative media is that more often than not reporters already know the story they want to tell before they leave the building. The “investigation” results in seeking out the people who can corroborate the result the media outlet is seeking.

Ah, he’s been hanging out with the Fox News crew, I see.

If the Times discovered al Qaeda had been involved in the Benghazi attacks the investigation would have been for naught. It would have been a non-story.

That makes absolutely no sense. Actual evidence of a real al Qaeda connection (meaning the al Qaeda al Qaeda, not al Qaeda lite) would have been a huge scoop for the Times and The Story of The Year. It would have sold newspapers up the wazoo. Discovering that the attackers were just local yokels is the non-story.

So the question, or questions, become who is the Times protecting? Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Or both?

No, the question is, What kinds of drugs is Bob Taylor on?

For example, consider the phrase, “the raid was accelerated in part by anger over the video.” Not a definitive statement to say the least. Surely, given the amount of time spent on pursuing the report, the Times could have reached a more concrete answer than that.

Does Taylor speak English? “The raid was accelerated in part by anger over the video” seems pretty definitive to me.

The quote by Abu Khattala who “suggested that the video which insulted the Prophet Muhammad was justification for the killings” is hardly a strong verification either. “Suggested” merely refers to the “possibility” that the video was a culprit.

Or, it’s a accurate description of what Abu Khattala said.

Furthermore, the world “justification” is significant in any understanding of Islamic radicalism. The word “justify” appears throughout the Koran. In the Muslim world, if you can “justify” your actions it is all that is necessary to be free of any responsibility. Barack Obama uses such tactics all the time. It is one of the primary reasons many people believe he still has Muslim ties.

I’m guessing ol’ Bob is on something like Diazepam or Dopamine, but since I don’t know him personally I have no way to know that. It’s possible he’s just nuts. Sorry I can’t be more definitive.

Over the weekend the New York Times came out with an exhaustive investigation of Benghazi. The basic take-aways are:

First, there is no evidence al Qaeda or any other international terrorist group was involved. The perps were local militants.

Second, anger fueled by an American-made anti-Islam video really was part of the motivation for the attack.

Do I think the New York Times is infallible? Of course not. But they’ve done the legwork and make a persuasive case through, you know, evidence.

Righties have gone into full temper-tantrum mode, screaming about “revisionist history.” They do not want to hear that al Qaeda was not behind Benghazi. Because.

One of the better retorts comes from Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard. I say “better” because he at least makes an effort to blow enough smoke to bring the Times’s investigation into doubt, instead of just whining and stamping his feet like most of his fellow travelers.

However, Joscelyn’s retort relies rather heavily on dishonesty. For example:

Left out of the Times’s account are the many leads tying the attackers to al Qaeda’s international network.

For instance, there is no mention of Muhammad Jamal al Kashef, an Egyptian, in Kirkpatrick’s retelling. This is odd, for many reasons.

On October 29, 2012 three other New York Times journalists reported that Jamal’s network, in addition to a known al Qaeda branch (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), was directly involved in the assault. The Times reported (emphasis added): “Three Congressional investigations and a State Department inquiry are now examining the attack, which American officials said included participants from Ansar al-Shariah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.”

Wow. Except from what I can gather from the earlier story, the “officials” were mostly Republican senators and congress critters. Here’s the earlier story in the Times:

But the question on the minds of some lawmakers is why the declining security situation did not prompt a fundamental rethinking of the security needs by the State Department and the White House. Three Congressional investigations and a State Department inquiry are now examining the attack, which American officials said included participants from Ansar al-Shariah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.

“Given the large number of attacks that had occurred in Benghazi that were aimed at Western targets, it is inexplicable to me that security wasn’t increased,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the senior Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, one of the panels holding inquiries.

In other words, the New York Times was not reporting on what happened in Benghazi, but on what mostly unnamed people were speculating about what happened in Benghazi. It was merely reporting on suspicions being voiced by “officials,” and that the matter was under investigation. The New York Times is not contradicting its own reporting, as half the rightie blogosphere is claiming right now.

The Right has been implicating Muhammad Jamal and tying him to al Qaeda — and he may well be tied to al Qaeda, for all I know — but if they have any concrete evidence connecting him to Benbhazi, they’re keeping it hidden. Mostly they just quote each other’s implications as “evidence.” Everybody’s saying it, so it must be true.

Something we do know, and that the Times left out, is that The Benghazi Hoax was Spun up by the GOP to Protect Mitt Romney.

See also what Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said about Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

This week 1.3 million people will be losing unemployment benefits, which will be a disaster for them (just as food stamps are going away, too) and a drag on the economy overall.

WaPo has a map showing where the people losing benefits live. Wow, New Jersey is about to get slammed. What’s up with that, Gov. Christie? Hasn’t yelling at schoolteachers created more jobs?

One person happy about the loss of benefits is Paul Ryan, who seems to sincerely believe that cutting people off of benefits will inspire them to get jobs that aren’t actually there.

Ryan has always defended his stinginess on safety net issues as tough love for the poor, giving them “incentives” to take a job, any job, to support their families.

“We have an incentive-based system where people want to get up and make the most of their lives, for themselves and their kids,” he says. “We don’t want to turn this safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency. That’s the big debate we’re having right now.”

Now, where have we heard this before? Timothy Egan remembers.

When a million Irish died during the Great Famine of the 1850s, many in the English aristocracy said the peasants deserved to starve because their families were too big and indolent. The British baronet overseeing food relief felt that the famine was God’s judgment, and an excellent way to get rid of surplus population. His argument on relief was the same one used by Rand Paul.

“The only way to prevent the people from becoming habitually dependent on government is to bring the operation to a close,” Sir Charles Trevelyan said about the relief plan at a time when thousands of Irish a day were dropping dead from hunger.

(I understand the one million figure is a conservative estimate. And the Irish were growing plenty of food in Ireland. They just weren’t allowed to eat it.)

Ryan always strikes me as being possibly less bright than a bag of hammers. But, still, there’s something particularly galling to me when someone with an Irish surname takes up this “tough love for the indolent poor” crusade.

What strikes you about this paragraph?

The congressman is among a growing number of conservatives who have vowed to resist “the war on Christmas” that they say threatens to turn the holiday into a secular celebration. Many of them have charged, for example, that it’s become less politically correct to use a Christmas greeting exclusively.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, announced early this month that lawmakers are now allowed — for the first time in 40 years — to send holiday cards to constituents that say “Merry Christmas.”

OK, I boldfaced the part that struck me. This has been going on for 40 years? And it’s just now bothers you?

I’m assuming that when Miller says “not allowed” she means “not allowed to use their free franking privilege for religious purposes.” So who decided my tax dollars can underwrite somebody else’s religion? Don’t these people ever red the flipping Constitution?

Part of the problem here is that the Christianist tribe has expanded the idea of a “religious” holiday to include elements like shopping mall decorations and Santa Clause (but only if white) as “Christmas,” and therefore “religious,” and then they complain that “liberals” are trying to turn Christmas into a “secular” holiday as opposed to a religious one.

We don’t have to try, dears. You did that yourselves, a long time ago.

Now, I realize that the legend of Santa Claus evolved from stories about Saint Nicholas (270-343), but at this point the Jolly Old Elf resembles the Saint about as much as My Pretty Pony resembles Secretariat. (Among other legends, Nicholas is said to have punched out another bishop at the Council of Nicaea.)

Yes, Nicholas was said to have given secret gifts — to the poor — which has little to do with rioting WalMart shoppers trying to snag the last marked down iPad. And the practice of leaving presents under a decorated evergreen tree is relatively recent; the German tradition of decorated Christmas trees didn’t spread elsewhere until the 19th century.

Next they’ll be telling us there’s a “war on Easter” (a holiday possibly named after Ä’ostre, an Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess — bunnies? eggs? hello?) and a liberal disrespect for Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross because somebody doesn’t like pastel-colored marshmallow baby chicks.

This year some dippy woman defended Christ by assaulting a Salvation Army bell-ringer for saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” This has got to be a peak example of missing the point.

I would be absolutely thrilled if Christians did re-claim Christmas as a religious holiday, emphasizing prayer, church attendance, and charity, and let the rest of us tone it down to a nice family get-together with less hype and expense.

However, there is evidence we are winning. First, the Pope is on mostly our side now. And then there’s this:

A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Group points to a shifting toward such pluralism, with close to half of Americans (49%) surveyed agreeing that stores and businesses should greet their customers with “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” instead of “merry Christmas”, out of respect for people of different faiths. This number is up from 44% when they conducted this survey in 2010.

That said, I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays as best you can.

See also “A Merrier Christmas for Liberal Christians.”

The composer is Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 1612).