My inner Grinch stirs

Do these people want to turn me into the Grinch? From today's Wall Street Journal, a story that makes my heart shink three sizes:

Beyond Gifts, More Homes Make Room for Wrapping

Anyone wanting to buy all the gifts in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" should prepare to do a lot of wrapping—364 presents if all items mentioned in the entire song are wrapped.

Linda Howard is ready. The second floor of her 8,000-square-foot Los Angeles home has all the materials to give presence to her presents

"I have ribbons galore assorted by colors, little cellophane, big cellophane, boxes, wrapping paper of all colors and holidays, cellophane bags, gift bags, bows, flowers and candy canes," says Ms. Howard, a wedding and event planner and frequent hostess.

As the hours count down to Christmas, an increasing number of Americans are heading into their wrapping rooms, spaces found mainly in large, upscale homes
dedicated to gift-wrapping and other crafts. Real-estate listings are touting
wrapping rooms more frequently, and organizational outfitters like the Container
Store have created specialized products to trick them out.

In other news . . . does this woman want to turn her husband into the Grinch?

Real Life Grinch? Man Dislikes His Home's 27 Christmas Trees

Real life grinch - or simply a man who's had enough? You decide.

Of the more than two dozen Christmas trees in their home, B.J. Cornstubble is
only attracted to one -- the Grinch tree.

"We started out with one tree," said his wife, Jo Cornstubble.

"Those were the good ole days," B.J. joked. The Cornstubbles live in the historic Levi-Welder House, and each year, Jo adorns the 5,500 square-foot home with Christmas decorations galore.

She starts decorating in September, pulling ornaments and fixtures from their equally as big carriage house. It's an organized operation, Jo said, with plastic
bins stretched to the ceiling.

"In the middle of summer, I'm like, 'how far do I want to go this year,'" she said. "And I'm still at it."

Though he takes the Yuletide ambush in stride, B.J. is a self-proclaimed Grinch when it comes to the holiday, hence the Grinch tree lovingly dedicated to him.

And this year, Jo somehow managed to out-decorate previous seasons.

She decorated 27 or 28 (they lose count) themed Christmas trees . . .

Two thoughts: (1) Twenty-seven trees! (2) Cornstubble, really? That's a name straight out of Dickens.

Yet another scientific breakthrough produced by stem cell research that doesn't require the destruction of human embryos (a continuing series)

Timothy Ray Brown, an HIV-positive American living in Germany, received a stem-cell transplant in 2007 as part of treatment for leukemia. Three years later, he appears to be free of HIV. Reports the Huffington Post:

On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood
affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

Brown's case paves a path for constructing a permanent cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells.

The Huffington Post story leaves out a rather important detail. Were these stem cells harvested from human embryos? Fortunately, Fox News doesn't leave its readers guessing, and reports that the transplant was a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with "a rare, inheritend gene mutation that seems to make carriers virtually immune to HIV infection." What is more, the transplant appears to have cured Mr. Brown of leukemia too.


Unfortunately, this sort of treatment will not be widely available anytime soon, as explained in the Fox News article:

The transplant appeared to wipe out both diseases, giving hope to doctors, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been studying HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years, said while this is an interesting proof of concept, it’s absurdly impractical.

“It’s hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this,” Fauci told FoxNews.com, “But you also have to find compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1 percent of the Caucasian population and zero percent of the black population. This is very rare.”

Fauci said while this patient is “functionally cured” this is not something you can do with every HIV- infected individual.

“This is not prime time to me at all,” he said. “This is a very unusual situation that has little practical application for a simple reason. This donor not only had to be a good compatible match, but the donor had to have a genetic defect of cells that do not express the receptor that the HIV virus needs to enter the cell.”

Fauci also pointed to the fact that this transplant process is not only expensive, it’s incredibly painful and complicated, and requires the patient to start a whole new regimen of drugs.

“This patient is trading one poison for another. He may not have to be on antiretroviral drugs anymore, but he has to take immunosuppressant drugs now to prevent the rejection of his transplant cells. Again, what this is, is an interesting proof of concept, but it’s absolutely impractical.”

Dr. Thomas Quinn, director of Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health told FoxNews.com that he is very familiar with the “Berlin patient” case.

“This was a new report that looked much deeper into whether HIV could still be present or lurking in the body in some way, not cured, and since the transplant he remains viral free and his cells appear to be resistant to infection,” he said.

Quinn said he agrees with the researchers on this case that it would be qualified as the first HIV cure, opening the door to alternative means of curing HIV.

“He [Brown] has been without therapy for three years and appears to be free of the virus,” he said. “It gives hope to the millions of people infected with HIV that cure is a feasible option in the future.”

Even though Brown’s procedure proved to be successful, Quinn also warns that this was a rare case and a bone marrow transplant is not a cure-all for other HIV patients.

“It is a near fatal procedure that he had to have done because of the leukemia, but this procedure is very expensive and you have to be transplanted with a donor who is shown to be already resistant to HIV,” Quinn said. “You’re asking for a tall order to replicate this in the future.”

Even so, who would have predicted 10 or even 5 years ago that stem cells -- adult stem cells -- could be used to spare even one patient from death by HIV and leukemia? Many other cures we take for granted today were once considered "unusual" and "impractical" and even "near fatal." Who knows what will come of this in the years ahead? (Particularly, one hastens to add, if people who support funding for adult-stem-cell research along these lines are not pilloried as being "anti-science.")

I will leave for our readers to ponder why HuffPo chose to omit the fact that adult stems cells were used and perhaps give the impression that this amazing development was due to embryo-destructive stem cell research.

(Previous posts on stem cell research can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Of apples and rising seas

In the late 1980s, environmentalists charged that a pesticide called "Alar" left cancer-causing residues on apples, in such quantities that comsumers' health was endangered. Whether they were right about this or not (the EPA now seems to say not), there was a huge outcry about Alar in the press. I remember one of the network news reports showed a particularly tendentious image -- a lonely farmworker in overalls, sitting on a bench in the middle of an apple orchard, his work put to a halt due to the boycott on Alar-treated apples. It was an absurd photo, as if he was forced to sit out there in the fields until the EPA decided what to do about Alar. But it conveyed the right message: only did Alar threat our lives, it threatened this man's livelihood!

I was reminded of this by the Associated Press story from last week about how the rise in the oceans caused by global warming threaten the Marshall Islands. Titled "If an Island State Vanishes, is it Still a Nation?" the article explains that if U.N. projections are correct, much of the island may be underwater by 2100. It was accompanined by a photo of an islander looking on in sorrow as the ocean topples palm trees lining the shore near his home.

Lucky thing for that guy, it isn't actually happening. Follow the link to see why it's a safe bet he'll be able to stand in that same spot and eat an (Alar-free?) apple years from now.

Our ambassador to Haiti is blowing it

.... at least that's the takeaway from this column by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, who covers Latin America for the Wall Street Journal. She writes:

In a moment last week when Haitians were struggling to overcome yet another misfortune—this time a fraudulent election—the U.S. State Department's top honcho for the region, Arturo Valenzuela, put his energy elsewhere. He went to Tegucigalpa where he spent two days trying to force the Honduran government to drop criminal charges against deposed president Manuel Zelaya.

Very few U.S. administrations have gotten much accomplished when it comes to Haiti, but it would be nice if the present one would try.

(Readers who would like to help the situation in Haiti might consider making a donation to Hands Together for Haiti, or Samaritan's Purse.)

Megyn Kelly makes moral case against estate tax

I didn't think it was possible for Megyn Kelly to get more attractive.

Discussion on estate tax starts at 2:30:


By the way, Anthony Weiner makes the case for the estate tax on budgetary grounds. But the fact is that the estate tax raises very little revenue for the government, and some have even argued that it's a revenue loser.

Joy Behar not a literary scholar

“I read a lot of C.S. Lewis when I want some divine inspiration” – Sarah Palin

“Didn’t he [C.S. Lewis] write children’s books?” – Joy Behar

Find a CS Lewis bibliography here. Looks like more than fifty works, and only seven are the books from the Chronicles of Narnia series.

H/T to Katrina Trinko at NRO.

Obama calls GOP "hostage takers"

A new addition to Obama's greatest hits.

Oh, and this one: the "GOP's central economic doctrine" is "tax cuts for the wealthy."

Limbaugh: All savings are spent

Limbaugh nails it, debunking the myth that only Keynesian, targeted tax cuts "stimulate" the economy.

Okay I save it. What does that mean? ... Some goes in a bank account, but then what does the bank do with it? They spend it. Whomever I give my money to spends it. I might buy stocks with it. I might buy municipal bonds. Everything that people do with their money is "spending it", one way or another.

Amen. All savings are ultimately spent. Savings are just "spent" on capital, and capital is what is required for economic growth.

The two year tax extension...

...does not solve the uncertainty issue. If you are a business looking to make an investment in a new project, you don’t care what tax rates are in the next two years, you care what they are for the next 10 years.

Not only that, a business person probably cares less about tax rates in the early years, because a new project usually involves upfront costs, such as hiring and training new employees or purchasing new equipment, and those costs can usually be deducted either immediately or during the first few years. The profits, if they come at all, come in the out years.

Boehner backs Flake for Appropriations

This is encouraging.

Unfortunately, it looks like earmarker Jerry Lewis will be Chairman, but Stephen Spruiell has argued that Flake will have a major impact as a member of the panel.

This 60 Minutes feature on Jeff Flake and his efforts to ban earmarks is a must watch. I think it's from 2008.

This week's signs of the Apocalypse

Floridians behaving strangely. That could be a daily section in every Florida newspaper. For example, take this trio of fun headlines from the Palm Beach Post.

Loxahatchee Groves to decide what to do about overpopulated nudist camp

West Palm Beach woman charged with stabbing boyfriend repeatedly with fondue fork

12-year-old boy and father charged with beating elderly man at Delray Beach Target

[[[UPDATE - Dec. 2, 2010]]]]

Sigh.

Suspect lies about carjacking because he can't find his car, Boynton police say

Classroom Beating: Florida Student Gets Pummeled While Teacher Sits Back

That last headline is via Drudge, as is this one, which is too gross for me to copy here.