What did you get for Christmas?

I got ice skates...



... and the boys are in town.

"It's a hamburger wedged between two grilled cheese sandwiches."

1 of the 10 worst fast food products of 2010. And it's not the only grilled cheese-based one. There's also a grilled cheese sandwich with 4 fried mozzarella sticks inside.

"On behalf of the entire team here at the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, we wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas."

Least Christmassy Christmas email of the day.

Eat your Christmas tree.

"At my restaurant we use their needles as a spice. You can cook with a branch of spruce or fir as you would a sprig of rosemary or thyme. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if families gathered after Christmas, festively removed the decorations and then cut off the tasty needles of the tree to flavor their food?"

"O Holy Night"... over and over.

What's your favorite version? When have you had enough?

I was going to pretty much do exactly that post a couple days ago! But I never completely got my act together and now I've been scooped.

Ah, well... I did it with "Blue Christmas" in 2004, in the first Christmas on this blog, and things were much harder then... because we didn't have YouTube.

The traditional Althouse Christmas photograph.

(What we wore and how we looked in 1953.)

Merry Christmas!

Did you find your way home...

... for Christmas?

It's Grande Conservative Blogress Diva time again.

There are 16 nominees this year, including, once again, me.

Remember, to qualify as a conservative blogress diva, a nominee need only be a strong woman who commands the respect of gay male conservatives. She need not be conservative herself.

Get it, guys?

Christmas greetings!

A card from Palladian. Check out his cool sketchbook here.

The music...

... that died.

"But if the Volt appeals to you, my hunch is that you’re going to love it more than any car you’ve driven in years."

From the enigmatically written NYT rave review of the Chevy Volt. So... it's the kind of thing that people who like that kind of thing like.

How I learned to stop worrying and...

... love the global warming.

(Via Instapundit.)

There's a reason why you don't hear much talk on this subject. I'm tempted to say the reason is people don't really believe global warming is happening. But leave that to the side.

The reason is that when [IF!] global warming sets in, there will be winners and losers, and those who predict that they will win understand the value of circumspection and restraint. It's best for the Russians and the Canadians to keep quiet about the coming riches and pleasures. Don't prematurely rouse the future's losers. Global warming is a growling lamb. 

Go ahead. Argue with me. I'm ready for the malign blog war.

ADDED:  For the purposes of this discussion, assume global warming will occur.

If redistricting produces new Hispanic-majority districts, will that benefit Democrats?

It's a complicated set of variables, explained by Nate Silver. After the 2010 census, Texas will get 4 new districts, and under the Voting Rights Act, that might mean that 3 of them will need to be "majority minority" districts deliberately concentrating Hispanic voters. That seems as though it undercuts the idea that the GOP benefits from the new districts in the red state of Texas. But majority minority districts can hurt Democrats overall, even if the districts themselves easily and predictably yield a Democratic congressperson every single time.

If a new Democratic district is created, those Democrats must be taken from somewhere else. It is quite possible that in the process of creating one new Democratic district, two or more districts will be tipped toward Republicans.

The key is how efficiently each party’s voters are allocated. What a party would prefer is that, in the districts where it has a majority, that majority is as small as possible, so as not to waste any of its voters.... Conversely, in those districts where it didn’t have the majority, it would prefer to lose by as many votes as possible — in fact, it would prefer to have none of its voters there at all.

What a party wants to avoid, meanwhile, is districts where it has say 45 percent of the vote: it’s using up a fair number of its voters, but not enough to give it a majority. It would also like to avoid districts where it has close to 100 percent of the vote, since so many of those votes will be superfluous.

Silver is explaining how complicated it is, but he's actually also oversimplifying, because he's assuming each vote is either a Democrat or a Republican. But if you set up a district with 45% Republicans and 55% Democrats, the Republicans might be able to win with a relatively liberal candidate, especially if the Democrats had a candidate who leaned too far to the left. How safe do you want the district to be? If it's super-safe, you waste votes, but the narrower you make the margin, the more likely it is that the other party can swing enough of your party's voters to win.

How predictably Democratic are Hispanic voters? As Silver notes, they are not as locked in for the Democrats as are black voters. Silver says that's what makes Hispanic-majority districts more helpful to the Democrats than black majority districts: A majority minority district can be created without "wasting" as many Democratic votes. That only works, of course, if these Hispanic voters still go for the Democratic candidate.

Silver doesn't talk about the fact that the GOP controls the Texas legislature, so it will dominate the decisionmaking about where the district lines are drawn. It may be able to craft majority minority districts that have a close enough political balance to allow them to win, or it may be able to figure out how to pack the consistently Democratic voters into one district. It's a subtle game, and the parties have gotten really good at playing it over the years.

ADDED: Please note that I've expressed no opinion about whether the Voting Rights Act actually does require Texas to make 3 of the 4 new districts majority Hispanic. I assume there will be plenty of litigation over this.

"Washington's currency is power, and fashion helps to bring order to the power structure."

"Clothes provide the first hint of how we relate to one another and how seriously we should be taken. (Remember that, dear interns in your flip-flops and miniskirts.) Gentlemen may pull on a bespoke suit or rebel against that brand of traditionalism with rumpled jeans and T-shirts. Power is now a woman in a sleek sheath, not one in a frumpy suit and a pair of commuter sneakers."

Robin Givhan opines on fashion and Washington as she steps away from her fashion beat at the Washington Post (and into the more stylish Daily Beast). She thanks the Post and pleads for the importance of fashion writing — "fashion [can] provide a window on who we are... amid the frippery and parties, fashion is also business, politics, religion, sociology and ultimately, life." And she links to a few choice old items, going back as far as 1998 — I wish I were blogging then! — to a thing about Paula Jones:

She has smoothed the frizzy mane of curls that once reached to such dazzling heights. Her makeup is now subtle and based on natural, not neon, hues. Her clothing is inspired by the boardroom instead of the secretarial pool. She has embraced the markers of dignity, refinement and power.

So... the frumpy suit and not the sleek sheath? Funny how these "markers" get switched around, isn't it?

"I had been very aware of the horrible things the White House was saying about her. The main thing we looked at was what could we do to do away with all those things," says her California-based spokeswoman, Susan Carpenter-McMillan.

"She is not white trash," she says. "She is not a big-haired floozy."

Whatever the woman is, she needs to be the opposite. Do you have big hair and they're calling you a white-trash floozy? Get small hair! Wouldn't it be funny if men under attack made their big hair small or their small hair big and changed from — what would it be? — a conservative suit to a less conservative suit or a less conservative suit to a more conservative suit? Bill Clinton didn't alter his appearance when he got into trouble. (But see Al Gore.)

Tattoo OSU.

Ouch!

Terrelle Pryor and four of his Ohio State teammates will be suspended from the first five games of the 2011 season ... for first accepting discounted rates on tattoos and then letting that escalate into selling personal OSU memorabilia to the owner of a local tattoo parlor....