How about a doppelganger for Christmas?

Militant Theophobes

Illegals, yes. Anatolie, no.

Climategate: Something’s Rotten in Denmark … and East Anglia, Asheville, and New York City 

Copenhagen: 'This Guy's Just Showing Up to Collect His Check'

A good post with good links re Paul Samuelson

Good comments on our sexual addiction post

A book: Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law. Interesting reviews there at Amazon.

Ann Applebaum: Some climate-changers are anti-human.

The 2009 Obama Achievement List

Climate Scientists and Ethics: Some Advice from a Finance Professor

How would the Reid bill affect the middle class?

Protecting Investors or Prosecuting Innocents? The Dangers of Vagueness in Financial Fraud Laws

Kimball:

...if it is hard to ginger up any enthusiasm for the topic of health care reform, it is even harder to contemplate what is happening in Washington without an overwhelming sense of alarm. The Obama administration is not only on the threshold of usurping some 20 percent of the U.S. economy, handing it over to government bureaucrats to oversee, it is also just a few signatures away from utterly transforming medical culture and the way you will be allowed to interact with your doctors. Do you really want this?

And via Insty:

ANN ALTHOUSE: Blaming Obama Is The New Trend. “People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. Obama kept his distance, which looks pretty smart now.”

If those guys at East Anglia had thought of this temperature trick, nobody would be giving them any grief.

Sorry, this was shut down. We'll try to find it again -

A friend asked me about squash pie. It's really the same thing as pumpkin pie, but made with winter squash (of which the pumpkin is just one type).

The winter squashes were discovered and genetically-engineered by clever American Indians - as was corn (maize), the potato, and the tomato. Modern Western cuisine owes a lot to the Indian gourmets.

This recipe for Butternut Squash Pie works for any type of winter squash including pumpkin. Squash pies (as in photo) have a more subtle flavor than pumpkin.

For a wonderful but not New Englandy dish, Butternut Squash and Pasta With Sage.

Pumpkin or winter squash ravioli is a fine dish too. We have become convinced, by a Cordon Bleu chef friend, that using supermarket wontons is perfectly fine for making ravioli. We will never bother to make our own homemade ravioli pasta again, because it's too darn much work and it's the inside that counts. (My Woodcock ravioli recipe will be posted one of these days).

I am fond of baked Acorn Squash with some butter and Maple syrup inside, but you can use any winter squash. Simple, and tasty:

Re health care, the O says we're "on the precipice." Truth, for once. No wonder he uses a teleprompter most of the time.

DOE sends a “litigation hold notice” regarding CRU

Harry Reid, Card Shark

York: Why Democrats push health care, even if it kills them

City Journal: Teachers’ Unions vs. Progress—Again. New York resists reforms that would bring in millions and improve teacher quality.

Faster? Please. Yet another proclamation that global warming is "accelerating, much faster than we anticipated," as activists have been telling us since the late '90s.

I think that was shortly after the decade of global cooling scares.

Tiger on what Jamie Dimon should have said to the O, including this comment: "...it is hard to see how anybody smarter than a reporter would be fooled by such silliness."

Woodstock, CT has always held a certain pride in the education of its children from colonial days to the present. Higher education beyond the basics of readin', writin' and 'rithmetic wasn't a staple of affluent farming communities during those times and Woodstock was somewhat unique in supplying the opportunity to colonial children.  The "high" professions of religion, medicine and politics required a larger perspective on the world and the citizens of Woodstock provided that opportunity - mostly under the instruction of various religious and university educated leaders of the community.

As the town expanded and became more populous, the need for an organized "high" school became apparent. On January 12th, 1801 the town leadership "granted provision to build an academy on the North side of Town Common" and $100 was collected from 32 leaders of the community to build the facility.

Farmers from around the area supplied the appropriate amount of white oak and the raising was quite the social event.  On Feburary 2nd, 1802, the building was opened for operation under the guidance of Preceptor Thomas Williams of Pomfret, CT.

Over the years, Woodstock Academy has both prospered and fallen on hard times.  In the downturn of 1860, the original building was razed, basic post/beam construction saved and this building was it's replacement. Henry Bowen (remember him - Pink House?) donated $5,000 of the $20,000 raised and the rest is, as they say, history. Yale University had an interest in the operating of Woodstock Academy for many years (up until WWII) and supplied many of its original Preceptors and Instructors.

Woodstock Academy, while considered by the state as a public high school, is actually a private non-profit institution governed by a Board of Directors and operates outside the governance of the Woodstock Board of Education. It is considered a "free academy" - the only other similar institution in the US is also located in Connecticut, the Norwich Free Academy in Norwich, CT.

Related: Al Gore's mosquito story is pure BS. Malaria is only a tropical disease due to public health advances, DDT, and drainage of marshes in the developed world. At the turn of the last century, malaria was endemic in New England. Russia, too.

Related: It's all about the $. A quote:

Leaders of fifty African nations came to Copenhagen asking $400 billion for the next three years to "offset" carbon credit "damages" which they claim to suffer. Inexplicably, two days ago, that demand was increased to an eye-goggling 5% of GDP (gross domestic product), estimated at $722 billion from the United States alone. There never was a response from the industrialized world.

Related: Copenhagen summit carbon footprint biggest ever. Why not? Who cares? Live it up with the Danish hos and the limos and the grand hotel rooms and the smorgasbord and the aquavit. It's all for Gaia, after all.

Related, via Dino from some psychotic, self-aggrandizing moron at Copenhagen:

I just sat there thinking: It’s not enough. We didn’t do enough. I should have started earlier. People are dying already.

And, via Driscoll's  It Was Necessary To Destroy The Carbon In Order To Save It:

I doubt it, although the idea of diagnosis nowadays is rather arbitrary and designed mainly to complete insurance forms.

In light of Tiger's family problems, I have been hearing the term "sex addiction" used a lot by non-professionals and by some quasi-professionals. Rock star-types have endless temptations and opportunities for recreational sex. And so does any guy who doesn't mind going to massage parlors or titty bars.

It seems to me that pathologizing hedonistic behavior of any sort tends to diminish the fact of human choice - and moral choice. We primates are wired for sexual adventurism, but also wired for restraint and for considerate behavior.

What do you think? How many of our guy readers could resist lovely young women constantly throwing themselves at them, and licking their ear?

Terrible poll numbers for the O. Why?

Gimme money. That's what Copenhagen is all about.

WSJ: The 'Cost Control' Bill of Goods - How Peter Orszag and the White House sold a health-care illusion.

Didn't they say the polar ice would be gone in five years, three years ago? They are moving the goalpost.

Pick just one thermometer

Good political advice from Newt (video) h/t, reader

Thompson: The wrong kind of rich

30% of Dems believe in astrology. Good grief. Explains a lot.

Powerline: Are the wheels coming off healthcare?