Via Theo.

In Austria, when St. Nicholas arrives with gifts for good children, he is accompanied by Krampus, a hairy, horned and cloven-hoofed monster equipped with enormous fangs who carries a bundle of birch twigs to beat up on naughty children. Krampus was banned by the fascists in the 1930s for being too negative a symbol.

In the postcard above, a relatively benign version of Krampus is carrying unwary infants right away.

Wikipedia article.

Krampus: Santa’s Sadistic Sidekick

Sell them all to the Yanquis!

OK, the leftist in the White House is disgracing the United States by relaxing the embargo on trade and talking about restoring diplomatic relations with the communist despotism in Cuba.

If the libs get to vacation in the Workers’ Paradise sipping Mojitos, we Republicans ought to get our share of the deal by new trade policies permitting American importers to bring in Russian and Czech guns from Cuba. More Mosin Nagants and SKS-s, along with Czech Mausers and VZ52-s.

Some discussion at Gunboards.

Bill Kristol quotes Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 speech at Harvard.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

“Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

On Twitchy.

A few sources this morning are linking the recent massacre of school children in Peshawar with the December 7th handover by the Obama Administration to Pakistan of Latif Mehsud, second in command of the Pakistani Taliban.

Did the Pakis just turn Latif Mehsud loose?

GOP Daily Dose:

According to Reuters, only eight days before the Taliban faction known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) brutally massacred over 130 school children in Peshawar Pakistan on Tuesday, Obama released the terror group’s second in command, Latif Mehsud.

U.S. forces captured Latif Mehsud, the former number two commander in Pakistan’s faction of the Taliban, in October 2013, in an operation that angered then Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Mehsud, a Pakistani, and his two guards were secretly flown to Pakistan, two senior Pakistani security officials told Reuters. The U.S. military confirmed it transferred three prisoners to Pakistan’s custody on Saturday, but would not reveal their identities.Taliban terrorist-led attack on Pakistan school leaves at least 141 dead, including 132 children

Taliban: “We Slaughtered 100+ Kids Because Their Parents Helped America.” Muslim Terrorists who attacked an army-run school in Peshawar claim it’s retaliation for U.S.-backed efforts to crush a group that’s helped protect al Qaeda.FOX News The horrific attack in Peshawar, carried out by a relatively small number of militants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban group, a Pakistani militant group trying to overthrow the government, also sent dozens of wounded flooding into local hospitals as terrified parents searched for their children.

After thousands of American lives had already been sacrificed to capture known terrorists in the Middle East, Mehsud had finally been apprehended by U.S. forces during an operation in October 2013. Up until Sunday, the convicted terrorist had been held in the Afghanistan prison. But according to officials, he was handed over along with two others to security officials in Islamabad.

“TTP senior commander Latif Mehsud who was arrested was handed over to Pakistani authorities along with his guards,” one Pakistani security official said. “They reached Islamabad.”

Although the Obama administration could try to claim that the release was due to the fact that the United States will no longer be allowed to keep foreign prisoners in Afghanistan when the mission led by the U.S. ends later this month, there were still other viable options available rather than handing these terrorists over to Pakistan.

In an interesting statement, a U.S. embassy spokesperson commented on the release, referring to the convicted terrorists released by Obama as merely “third-country nationals.”

You know, just normal everyday guys.

“We’re actually just going through and returning all the third-country nationals detained in Afghanistan to resolve that issue,” the spokeswoman said.

—————

Or was the attack revenge for Meshud not being released?

Lubbock On-Line:

On Sunday 07 December President Barack Hussein Obama ordered the release of the second in command of the Pakistani Taliban. Latif Mehsud was transferred from a U.S. military prison in Afghanistan to the Pakistani government.

It is unclear if Mehsud was subsequently released from custody by the Pakistanis or is still incarcerated. The Taliban motive for its attack on the school, which was run by the Pakistani military, is yet unclear. It may have been revenge against the Pakistani government, perhaps because Mehsud remains in jail?

Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.

Nils Parker likes the service and selection of products at Whole Foods. He just can’t stand his fellow customers.

The problem with Whole Foods is their regular customers. They are, across the board, across the country, useless, ignorant, and miserable. They’re worse than miserable, they’re angry. They are quite literally the opposite of every Whole Foods employee I’ve ever encountered. Walk through any store any time of day—but especially 530pm on a weekday or Saturday afternoon during football season—and invariably you will encounter a sneering, disdainful horde of hipster Zombies and entitled 1%ers.

They stand in the middle of the aisles, blocking passage of any other cart, staring intently at the selection asking themselves that critical question: which one of these olive oils makes me seem coolest and most socially conscious, while also making the raw vegetable salad I’m preparing for the monthly condo board meeting seem most rustic and artisanal?

If you are a normal human being, when you come upon a person like this in the aisle you clear your throat or say excuse me, hoping against hope that they catch your drift. They don’t. In fact, they are disgusted by your very existence. The idea that you would violate their personal shopping space—which seems to be the entire store—or deign to request anything of them is so far beyond the pale that most times all they can muster is an “Ugh!”

Over the years I have tried everything to remain civil to these people, but nothing has worked, so I’ve stopped trying. Instead, I walk over to their cart and physically move it to the side for them. Usually, the shock of such an egregious transgression is so great that the “Ugh!” doesn’t happen until I’m around the corner out of sight. Usually, all I get is an incredulous bug-eyed stare. Sometimes I get both though, and when that happens, I look them square in the eye and say “Move. Your. Cart.” I used the same firm tone as Jason Bourne, with the hushed urgency of Jack Bauer and the

uncomfortable proximity of Judge Reinhold. From their reaction you’d think I just committed an armed robbery or a sexual assault. When words fail them, as they often do with passive aggressive Whole Foods zombies, the anger turns inward and they start to vibrate with righteous indignation. Eventually, that pent up energy has to go somewhere, and like solar flares it bursts forth into the universe as paroxysms of rage.

Outside the four walls of a Whole Foods, you might recognize these people as Gawker commenters or Twitter shamers. Inside, they are the breathless, self-important shoppers who just can’t believe!! that it’s taking this long to check out. They are busy, they have somewhere to be. Don’t these people in the other six open checkout lanes that are each 3 shoppers deep understand that, WTF??!?

Read the whole thing.

James Mitchell, the CIA interrogator who interviewed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who also beheaded Daniel Pearl, told Fox News that KSM predicted what the liberals would do and warned him.

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told me personally, ‘Your country will turn on you, the liberal media will turn on you, the people will grow tired of this, they will turn on you, and when they do, you are going to be abandoned.’ ”

Poor Diane Feinstein! Poor Andrew Sullivan!

Left-wing bleeding heart democrats were looking to produce a big stink with the partisan Senate “Torture” report released last week. CIA officers were supposed to be found scrambling for pardons, and Dick Cheney was supposed to be consigned permanently to the dog house.

Instead, the CIA essentially shrugged and Dick Cheney went on television and called the report “crap.”

Today, the Washington Post looks at the latest polling from Pew on national attitudes toward enhanced interrogation and reports that waterboarding & Dick Cheney are a lot more popular than Barack Obama.

Muslim jihadis attacked a school in Peshawar today killing over a hundred people, mostly teachers and children. Normal Americans generally tend to think that waterboarding is actually too good for these kinds of people.

Travellers often have the best eyes for the beauties of the cities they visit, and some of the best views of London in the early seventeenth century have been come down to us in the album amicorum of Michael van Meer, a Flemish soldier who lived in London in the years 1614-1615. In this album we find marvelous images of the Tower, London Bridge and Windsor Castle, views Shakespeare and his contemporaries have seen.

The album is now kept at Edinburgh University Library, La. III. 283. It’s extensively discussed in June Schlueter’s The Album Amicorum & The London of Shakespeare’s Time. London, The British Library 2011.

Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.