Friday, December 11, 2015

Twas The Night Before Two Weeks To Christmas

obama, obama jokes, political, humor, cartoon, conservative, hope n' change, hope and change, stilton jarlsberg, manhole steamrising, christmas, free, album

We gave up on trying to present "Good News Fridays" here quite awhile ago, and this stinkaroo of a week certainly didn't seem to offer up anything to change the pattern. So we decided to create a little good news of our own!

To take your mind off the cares of the world, and to gleefully annoy anyone who is offended by the word "Christmas," we're giving you a free no-strings-attached downloadable album of relaxing instrumental Christmas music!

Not available in stores. Trust us on this one.
It's the Manhole Steamrising "Complete Christmas Collection" and...what's that? You never heard of Manhole Steamrising? Well, you didn't think we could afford to hire Mannheim Steamroller to record a custom album, did you?! Besides, who needs all of those fancy-shmancy synthesizers when you're trying to enjoy quiet moments with the twinkling lights on your Christmas tree and the tinkling ice in your whiskey glass?

The album is solo harp which is actually played by a real angel (we think his name is "Harold") and consists of 15 soothing tracks of Christmas favorites, two of which are "Adeste Fidelis" and are done (as Basil Fawlty would say on gourmet night) "in two extremely different ways."

It's all perfectly legal, and you're free to share the music and/or the link with as many people as you like. In fact, we encourage you to share! Please! Tis the season! Just click this link to get your download started.

You'll end up with a ZIP file which, when double-clicked, will open up into a folder with your 15 songs in MP3 format. It's our way of saying "thank you" and "Merry Christmas" to everyone who visits Hope n' Change!

(UPDATE)  We got a couple of reports from readers who had problems with the download process. We've since made changes which should make it easier. If the existing link didn't work for you (it does for most people) please try THIS ONE:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/5rxrq5op8w596cp/ManholeSteamrisingHopeNChange.zip

or THIS ONE TRY THIS LINK.

But just to be sure NOBODY misses out...here's the full album which I just posted to Youtube. Enjoy!



25 comments:

  1. Thanks @Stilton. While that's downloading, I'll throw some chuckles ya'lls way:

    In new ‘Serial’ podcast, Bowe Bergdahl says he likened himself to Jason Bourne before capture

    No doubt Matt Damon has already signed to play him in the movie version.

    Another Obama sham achievement dissolves further:

    Iran’s Nuclear Nondisclosure - Tehran hides its past weaponization work. The U.N. gives up.

    "The IAEA is the U.N. outfit that is supposed to monitor Iran’s compliance with the agreement, which requires Tehran to answer the agency’s questions on its past nuclear work in order to obtain sanctions relief. On Wednesday the agency produced its “final assessment”—the finality here having mostly to do with the U.N. nuclear watchdog giving up hope of ever getting straight answers."

    Another mess for President Trump to deal with no doubt.

    The only upside of Hillary over Bernie is that as an extortionist, Hillary knows that she can only leech off the economy as long as it's still alive to leech from. Bernie on the other hand, is a true believer in top-to-bottom statism to solve all problems, real or imagined; he's the economic equivalent of the jihadist that doesn't realize he's wearing a suicide vest:

    "The Vermont Senator calls climate change “the single greatest threat facing our planet,” and he seems to mean it. He is proposing a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and an 80% reduction by 2050, which is significantly more than the up-to 28% cut by 2025 that President Obama has pledged at the Paris climate confab.

    To reach this developing world level of CO2 emissions, Mr. Sanders would: impose an unspecified carbon tax; ban all offshore drilling and fossil-fuel leases on federal lands; stop “dirty pipeline” projects; ban natural gas and oil exports; force states to ban fracking; ban mountaintop coal mining; impose a new fuel-efficiency standard of 65 miles per gallon by 2025; spend “massive” federal dollars on subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, home-efficiency programs and energy storage; federally underwrite electric-car charging stations, high-speed passenger and cargo rail, a smart grid, and clean-energy job training; shut down the nuclear industry; and provide “clean energy funding” to the rest of the world.

    Mr. Sanders doesn’t include the cost of all this, for obvious political reasons, yet give him points for honesty. Hillary Clinton wants voters to believe that Planet Earth can be cooled with this rule change or that subsidy tweak. The Sanders plan admits that decarbonization under current technology will require a government-mandated top-to-bottom remake of the U.S. economy, and maybe the American way of life. Welcome to the revolution."


    In the "irony" file: As the Progressive elite proclaim that "climate change" is both the biggest threat to peace, and something they can actually fix as opposed to the feckless helplessness they demonstrate as a response to global jihad, it turns out that they say all this under the shield of an Israeli-made defense balloon.

    Remember the "long rifles" CNN kept talking about last week? Well, another Democrat has discovered a new kind of weapon that needs to be outlawed, the "multiautomatic round weapon".

    Strange as to how anytime a leftist gets excited about something that should be outlawed, I want to go out and buy it.

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  2. Thanks Doc Very nice I appreciate it.

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  3. John I sure as heck want me some of those "multiautomatic round weapons". Any word how soon we can get our greasy little paws on those?

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  4. She blew me a kiss! I'm never gonna wash my face again! (Swoon)

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  5. Thanks, Stilton, for the very nice and Christmassy music. All good wishes.

    Barry in England

    http://blog.investis.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Turn-Right21.jpg

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  6. Thanks for the tunes!
    In keeping with "Take Your Mind off Bad News Friday", here is another of my favorite sites:
    http://www.damninteresting.com
    It contains over 350 articles and podcasts from various authors dealing with lesser known historical events, many quite riminiscent of Paul Harvey's " The Rest of the Story".

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  7. As of 8:23 am 12.11.2015

    I have downloaded three times, sep folders.
    Attempts to extract all state: no files.

    dbmretired@gmail.com

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  8. Wow, those are beautiful renditions. Thank you for the thoughtfulness, and all of your hilarious (and sadly true) commentary and cartoons. I use a lot of the cartoons as desktop backdrops on my computer. Oh, and by the the way,
    MERRY CHRISTMAS to you and your family. GG

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  9. Thank you. The music is just lovely!

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  10. Nothing there but the same picture that in the blog - no audio files at all.

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  11. @John the Econ- If anything, it was the overabundance of crazy/depressing news which made me try the giveaway thing today. And even that's become a tech headache because some people are getting lovely music and other people are having problems. It turns out, as I've been warning Bernie Sanders, it's somewhat easier to offer to give away free stuff than to actually accomplish it (wry grin).

    The Bergdahl and Iran stories are both "bang your head on the desk" gems. And Bernie Sanders' plan to cut carbon emissions by 80% is just slack-jawed idiocy. The man seems to believe that the wealth held by the one percenters is akin to the loaves and fishes that Jesus passed around: miraculously inexhaustible. And yet I have friends who think he's a genius and the country's best, last hope.

    Speaking of things Biblical, wasn't David's sling capable of firing round weapons? He beaned Goliath with one if I recall correctly.

    And speaking of Hillary, my head exploded when she announced that she never told the Benghazi victims' families that a filmmaker was to blame. For her to call the families of these heroes liars is just unacceptable.

    @Retired and Duke of URL VFM#391- It seems that most people are getting the download without problem. I've since added another link on the commentary with an alternate file which might work better for some folks. And here's the link again, right here - please let me know if it works for you!

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  12. @REM1875, I'm hoping to get some of those "multiautomatic round weapons" to use with my "long rifle" rounds for Christmas. Unfortunately, Mrs. Econ has had trouble finding them on the Internet. Seems that all of the search engine hits have to do with gun owners mocking ignoramus congresspeople and CNN.

    @Stilton, I think that these boobs who wish to live on 20% of their current carbon footprint should be leading by example, especially now that winter is upon us. The idea that we can plaster the countryside with solar panels and windmills and have anything more than an Afghanistanian standard of living would be amusing if it wasn't actually tragic.

    "The man seems to believe that the wealth held by the one percenters is akin to the loaves and fishes that Jesus passed around: miraculously inexhaustible."

    Ironically, it used to be the American free market that was the literal "loaves and fishes" that just kept producing eventually the highest standard of living in the world, even for those we consider "poor". After all, why do the refugees of the world keep wanting to come to such an unfair, racist, violent, misogynist country? Because it's better to be "poor" here than "middle class" in practically any other country on the planet.

    Hillary lied again? Really? And I thought those days were behind us. Really, @Stilton, if you're head is going to explode every time Hillary lies, we're going to have to ask how many heads you really have.

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  13. Thank you Stilt, I am enjoying the music. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and the family.

    @Geoff Thank you for the Damn link, very interesting!

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  14. Yes, it's Friday so I must be at the Hope and Change blog. And what did Stilton and his family leave under my Yule tree? Well, a great selection of Christmas carols and songs. and they are playing as I type.

    Thank you Stilton and I wish you and your loved ones and your Web family a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

    N.B. I have this in 8mm and show it to the young uns ever Christmas.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TefhmGMQCQw

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  15. Stilton:

    I've tried to download Manhole via everything on my confuser. No soap. Any Ideas?

    Lee

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  16. @Readers Having Trouble Downloading The Album- The downloads seem to be working for the great majority of people, so odds are that the remaining problems may be due to things like your security software, "unzipping" software version, or other things which I find baffling (grin).

    Here's a new link to an entirely different service which will hopefully work. Then I've got one final idea: I'm going to try to upload the whole thing to Youtube. I'll then post another link.

    @John the Econ- Maybe Bernie's plan to reduce our carbon footprint by 80% is to force every couple to open their home to 8 other people (illegal immigrants) thereby letting them share that carbon footprint. Of course, this will only work if they don't create extra energy usage so it will be important that the newcomers don't actually drive pollution emitting cars to jobs or indulge in non-communal showers.

    And speaking of "loaves and fishes," it's worth noting to the liberals who claim that socialism was the real message of Jesus that after the Sermon on the Mount He stopped feeding everyone rather than putting them on the dole permanently. The fact that He had the means to keep feeding them apparently wasn't an obligation to do so - even though liberals would suggest He wasn't doing his "fair share."

    @I.C. Nielseon- I love, love, love the video! Thanks!

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  17. @Readers- Okay, I've posted the whole album to Youtube. You can watch it (or more appropriately listen to it) right on the main Hope n' Change page for today!

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  18. Thank you. I couldn't get it to play.

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  19. That is one of the nicest presents I have ever received. Thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Jarlsberg and all of the little cheese balls for the great Christmas present. Merry Christmas from Mr. and Mrs. Witte.

    I love to type Merry Christmas and then stand by the Christmas tree. You can hear a liberal getting a colonoscopy without anesthesia.

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  20. The music was a nice, generous & totally unexpected holiday gift. And I'm impressed with your computer & internet know-how. We never know what to expect from HNC and Johnny. And you say the Missus is a fellow conspirator? I assumed she keeps you out of trouble. Thank you and Merry Christmas season to ALL.

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  21. Thank You !!!

    eagle
    III

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  22. If regulars have been dazzled by HNC so much they've been neglecting other like-minded blogs I'd like to remind ya'll about Earle of Taint. It seems the Earle was distracted for a while, but he's made up for it. Let's all share good ones 'cause we needs all the sweets we can get at Christmas. Sorry Stilt; but you ARE still the best. And surely not as insane as some others.

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  23. @Rod- This seems like a good time to remind folks that in the left column, there's a list of "Great Blogs" that are, well, great blogs. Earle of Taint is on there, as is The Daily Gouge (a personal favorite) and many others!

    And thanks, I think, for the glowing compliment that I'm "not as insane as some others." (grin)

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