MERRY CHRISTMAS! Here’s a Christmas song by Audra and the Antidote.

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF RUMSFELD’S IRAQ VISIT, from a soldier. Thanks to reader Richard Mattson, the brother of the author, for sending the link.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT? I don’t know what the folks at The American Prospect are thinking, but this legal threat sounds like a bad idea to me. And I say this as someone who’s no particular fan of Steve Sailer’s positions on immigration (and, I believe, he thinks rather less of mine, and of me, though I seem to recall that he once complimented my typing skills).

WELL, I’VE NEVER SEEN JAMES WOLCOTT AND WILL COLLIER photographed together, but this post suggests that they’re really the same person.

MORE DISHONESTY from the AP, according to Power Line.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

MORE to worry about: “So, in summary, there’s a 1-in-233 chance of the worst disaster in recorded history happening on April 13, 2029, and a 232-in-233 chance of nothing happening. Have a nice day!”

Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Uh-oh. The risk is now upgraded to 1/62.5, with a Torino scale of 4. (Via Liberty’s Blog). This is moving out of the “isn’t that interesting” range, and into the “isn’t that worrisome” range.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The risk has been upgraded again, to 1 in 42.

IT PAYS TO BE VIOLENT IN BRITAIN: No doubt this lesson will be heeded by many.

FORGET TIREBLOGGING, says Ann Althouse — the big thing is cabbage-blogging!

ROGER SIMON HAS UNLIMBERED HIS cool digital camera and brings us photos of a Mexican Christmas in L.A.

A Jewish blogger uses a Japanese camera (made in Thailand, I think) to bring us pictures of a Mexican Christmas. Now that’s America!

UPDATE: These pictures from James Lileks, on the other hand, are downright psychedelic.

ANOTHER UKRAINE UPDATE at Le Sabot Post-Moderne. And Veronica Khokhlova is posting regularly, too.

RUMSFELD WENT TO IRAQ: I suspect that President Bush will be visiting some troops over the weekend, too.

UPDATE: More on Rumsfeld in Iraq here:

“How do we win the war on the media?” asks a soldier. “How do we win the propaganda war?”

That sounds like a question that was planted by the press [perfect comedic pause, appreciative audience laughter]. That happens sometimes.

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Michael Young looks at Syrian involvement in Iraq.

MORE: Here’s the CNN transcript, which has the passage as follows:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we’re getting beat up more than anybody else. I’ve been here — this is my third tour over here, and we have done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy’s Web sites and everything else are all over the media, and they love it. But the thing is, is everything we do good, no matter if it’s helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn’t pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?

RUMSFELD: That does not sound like a question that was planted by the press.

(LAUGHTER)

RUMSFELD: That happens sometimes. It’s one of the hardest things we do in our country. We have freedom of the press. We believe in that. We believe that democracy can take that massive misinformation and differing of views, and that free people can synthesize all of that and find their way to right decisions. . . .

I was talking to a group of congressmen and senators the other day, and there were a couple of them who had negative things to say, and they were in the press in five minutes. There were 15 or 20 that had positive things to say about what’s going on in Iraq, and they couldn’t get on television. Television just said we’re not interested. That’s just sorry.

Yes, it is.

I WAS ON CANADIAN RADIO LAST NIGHT, talking about Kofi Annan and the U.N. (Bad news for Kofi — the Canadians seem to be losing faith in him. When you lose the Canadians, well. . . .) David Janes has audio, along with more from Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan of SmallDeadAnimals. The audio was recorded using his new tool, Blog Matrix Sparks, which lets you record streaming audio from the Internet. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds cool.

DARFUR UPDATE: Rajan Rishyakaran has posted another Sudan genocide roundup, where — among other things — we learn more about Chinese oil interests in the region.

I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE over Christmas weekend, so blogging will continue, though probably at a reduced pace. Thanks to the folks who suggested that I take the weekend off, but honestly as long as I’m around a computer it’s not that much trouble.

Since portability is less of an issue, I’ve started reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and so far (I’m about 100+ pages into it) I’m liking it very much. That may serve as a bit of a distraction, too.

UPDATE: Polipundit’s Lorie Byrd seems to be posting up a storm. And Mickey Kaus looks at the ongoing Fannie Mae scandal, which I suspect deserves more attention than it’s getting.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

JEFF JARVIS IS AGREEING WITH MICHELLE MALKIN on questions of religion.

MORE PROBLEMS with the U.N.’s Congo operation:

The expert was a Frenchman who worked at Goma airport as part of the UN’s $700 million-a-year effort to rebuild the war-shattered country. When police raided his home they discovered that he had turned his bedroom into a studio for videotaping and photographing sex sessions with young girls.

The bed was surrounded by large mirrors on three sides, according to a senior Congolese police officer. On the fourth side was a camera that he could operate from the bed with a remote control.

When the police arrived the man was allegedly about to rape a 12-year-old girl sent to him in a sting operation. Three home-made porn videos and more than 50 photographs were found.

The case has highlighted the apparently rampant sexual exploitation of Congolese girls and women by the UN’s 11,000 peacekeepers and 1,000 civilians at a time when the UN is facing many problems, including the Iraqi “oil-for-food” scandal and accusations of sexual harassment by senior UN staff in Geneva and New York.

Kofi’s “annus horribilis” continues.

UPDATE: Richard Aubrey emails: “Do you think we’d be seeing more play made of this if Bush were Secretary General?”

Possibly.

UKRAINE UPDATE: “Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski has said an attack on him by Russian President Vladimir Putin was ‘unfair’.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL lists 15 people to watch in 2005. One of them is Nick Denton — but then, he always bears watching . . . . (Free link).

PUTIN’S TONGUE SLIPS: Not a complete shock. But read this probably not-unrelated item. Yushchenko — a Jew!

Next they’ll be calling him a Likudnik! Or even a Neo-Con!

CATHY SEIPP looks at the McCarthyism of the Left — which seems to be where a lot of it is to be found these days.

A MUST-READ CHRISTMAS-SHOPPING POST from Tony Woodlief: I was going to excerpt it, but, really, you should just read the whole thing.

CBS POLITICAL WRITER DAVID PAUL KUHN seems to have dropped the ball again.

UPDATE: More here: “What do you think, is it time for Kuhn to start advocating that CBS be regulated?” But who would believe him if he did?

KOFI ANNAN UPDATE:

UNITED NATIONS – One of the biggest power players at the United Nations abruptly announced his retirement yesterday in what may signal the beginning of a Turtle Bay shake-up, just one day after Secretary-General Annan said that the scandals and attacks from outsiders had “cast a shadow” on the institution.

In an announcement that surprised even the U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, who made it at a regular press briefing after a note was passed to him from upstairs, Mr. Annan said that he accepted a request from his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, to retire “with very mixed emotions.” His retirement will take effect on January 15, Mr. Annan said in the statement. . . .

Mr. Riza, 70, who has been chief of staff since January 1997, is considered the most influential policy adviser to the secretary-general, and many feel he was a leader in a policy that is perceived as adversarial to Washington, especially on issues related to Iraq and Israel. A U.N. insider said Mr. Riza leads a group of advisers who have called on Mr. Annan to take a hard line, urging him to refuse to share information with the congressional oil-for-food investigations.

Are the dominoes falling?

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has an article on exploding the self-esteem myth. Bottom line: “Boosting people’s sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, research shows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior.” This isn’t a big surprise. The Insta-Wife has noted for years that inflated self-esteem is often associated with negative behavior among teenagers, while teens with low self-esteem often behave well. (Here’s a chapter from her book that discusses some of those issues.)

UPDATE: Contrary view here.