• New Years Likely Oldest Holiday
• 40 Million Face Increased Obamacare Costs Jan. 1
• Pope’s BBC Christmas Message Draws Protest
• How the World’s Religions Rank.
• Nitwit Ideas Spread From California.
• One In Five Suffered Mental Illness Last Year
• Navy’s New ‘Gadget’ For New Class Carrier
• Following NBR, PBS Money To CPB And LBJ
• Pelosi Turns To Spielberg For Help
• China Antes $2.7 Trillion To Bail Out Europe
• Spielberg Denies Pelosi Story
• Former Shell CEO Predicts $5 Gasoline In 2011.

As New Years approaches violence in Gaza has increased. A rocket fired from Gaza exploded near an Ashkelon-area kindergarten Tuesday morning as children were arriving at school, injuring a teenage girl and sending others Israelis into shock.

The rocket landed shortly before 8:00 a.m. less than a mile from the border separating Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza. A group calling itself the Army of Islam, which shares the ideology of al Qaida, claimed responsibility for the rocket strike.

The celebration of the New Year is likely the oldest of all our holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible crescent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring) signaling Springtime planting.

The beginning of spring is a logical time to start a new year. After all, it is the season of rebirth, of planting new crops, and of blossoming. January 1, on the other hand, has no astronomical or agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.

The Babylonian New Year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year’s Eve festivities pale in comparison.

The Romans continued to observe the New Year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.

In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the New Year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the New Year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

Although in the first centuries AD the Romans continued celebrating the New Year, the early Catholic Church condemned the festivities as paganism. But as Christianity became more widespread, the early church began having its own religious observances concurrently with many of the pagan celebrations, and New Year’s Day was no different. New Years is still observed as the Feast of Christ’s Circumcision by some denominations.

In the Western world January 1^st has only been celebrated as the New Year for about 400 years.

The tradition of using a baby as a symbol of the New Year’s began in Greece around 600 BC. It was custom then to celebrate their god of wine, Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket represented the symbol of new birth.

Early Christians denounced that as pagan but the notion of celebrating the baby Jesus won them over and the tradition began to be favored.

Making New Year’s resolutions dates to the Babylonians with a popular resolution being the return of borrowed farm equipment as ancient tablets attest.

The use of a baby on a banner was a German idea since the 14^th century and they brought it to America.

My Irish grandmother, with some German tucked away somewhere insisted you had to eat sauerkraut on New Year’s Day and you had to celebrate well after midnight with family and friends. It was said the first visitor set the luck for the year a reason my Scottish grandfather demanded family gather on New Years. It was especially lucky if that visitor was a tall dark-haired man.

The Dutch insist eating a donut was good luck on New Year’s Day because it represented coming full circle. Some make tea rings for the same superstition. In America south black eyed peas with hog jowls are lucky and elsewhere it is rice. Cabbage leaves are also favored as a symbol of money.

I can still hear aunts and uncles signing “Auld Lang Syne” at the stroke of midnight. It is an ancient Gaelic song likely preserved by a Scot’s tradition when old clanswomen memorized and sang their history while they were forbidden to read or write.

First published in 1876 the song Robert Burns transcribed literally may be translated into English as “old long since”, or more idiomatically, “long long ago”, “days gone by” or “old times”. Consequently “For auld lang syne”, as it appears in the first line of the chorus, is loosely translated as “for (the sake of) old times”.

It had been sung long before Burns set it down, and ironically was not published until after his death.

Two Miami of Ohio University students were caught by Oxford. Ohio police just before Christmas hacking away at a 30′ pine tree near their home. One staggered over to police to explain he wanted to fell it, and cut off the top for a Christmas tree. His partner with the axe ran off while his buddy explained to police admitting “I’m pretty wasted.” Police said the tree could have fallen on them both or someone else killing them. The drunk was arrested but not jailed for Christmas and the tree is relatively unharmed its owner is annoyed.

Due to an Obamacare provision taking effect on Jan. 1, Americans will no longer be able to use their flexible spending account (FSA) and health savings account (HSA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (with the exception of insulin).

Under current rules, health consumers may use these pre-tax accounts to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines. But on New Years Day 2011, the 40 million Americans who use FSAs and HSAs will no longer be able to use their accounts to buy simple, everyday medicines like the following:

 

• Aspirin
• Antacids
• Laxatives
• Menstrual pain relievers
• Antihistamines
• Stimulants
• Anti-ulcer medicines
• Athlete’s foot cream
• Cough medicine
• Motion sickness medicine
• Anti-diarrheal medicine
• Decongestants
• Hemorrhoid cream
• Anti-flatulence medicine

So people are stocking up before the New Year. The provision is just one of Obamacare’s two dozen new or higher taxes totaling over half a trillion dollars billion over the coming decade.

No one in the Department of Health and Human Service (HSS) or the White House has been able to explain the logic of the latest costly imposition on middle class Americans except to say when it all takes effect you’ll like it.

When this and the secret imposition of “death panel” rules seep out the call to repeal Obamacare will be even louder on the new Congress. A Rasmussen poll finds 60% of likely voters at least somewhat favor repeal of the national health care law, while the number who expect health care costs to increase is at its highest level since August.

With all the talk about forcing people to buy health insurance, health insurance exchanges, and high-risk pools, it is often forgotten that most of what Obamacare really is — a massive expansion of an existing and already failing entitlement program.

Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid.

In its current form, Medicaid is already bankrupting states across the country.

Obamacare only further overloads this already broken system by expanding Medicaid eligibility to include all Americans under 133 percent of the federal poverty level. While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years, and 90% of it after that,

Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates for states to absorb.

Worse, current Medicaid enrollees already have trouble finding doctors who will see them because, nationwide, Medicaid pays only 56% as much as private coverage does..

A new study finds that 44% of Americans think marriage is on the way out. Fewer Americans are marrying today than ever before.

Scores of complaints poured into the BBC over Christmas weekend after the Pope’s historic Christmas Eve message on its religious slot “Thought For The Day.”  In the three-minute broadcast on Christmas Eve morning, Benedict XVI prayed for the elderly and recalled his State visit to Britain in September ‘with great fondness’.

Critics said Benedict XVI should not have been allowed to present his views unchallenged when many people questioned his role in controversies lead by clerical child abuse coverups.

The irony of these complaints cannot be overlooked as they arrived almost coincident with Pope Benedict’s Saturday delivery of his traditional Christmas message and blessings to thousands gathered in Saint Peter’s Square and millions more following him on television around the world.

‘Previous religious speakers on BBC segment have included the Chief Rabbi, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster and representatives from other faiths.’

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley told BBC that it was the Pope’s reception on his recent visit to Britain that had persuaded him to make the ground-breaking broadcast. Of course anti-Papist thread run deep in some places in England

The Pope stirred more controversy in his traditional Christmas Day message from the Vatican by referring to the limits placed on Chinese Catholics by the state.

China’s 10 million Catholics are split between followers of the Pope and the state-sponsored version of the church, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

No Pope has ever presented the BBC radio’s religious slot before, and of course never amid such vitriol.

In the 1950s 70% of U. S. Catholics said they attended church weekly. Now 40% say the attend regularly. Only 21% say they go to mass weekly.

Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million ($113 million in today’s dollars) at about two cents per acre ($4.74/km²). Pretty good deal.

The Roman Catholic  Church, remains the world’s largest church, claiming more than a billion members from among 2.1 billion Christians.

Worldwide 1.5 billion say they are Muslim of various sects; 1.1 billion are Secularist; 900 million are Hindu, 384 million are Chinese traditionalist, and 376 million are Buddist. 15 million claim Spiritcualism, 14 million Judaism, and others including 1 million Neo-pagans, and 500,000 Scientologist.

Contrary to what some politician have claimed the USA remains the biggest and most overwhelmingly Christian nation with at least 230 million; Brazil is #2 with 140 million; Mexico at 3^rd with 90 million; 4^th is Russia with 80 million and 5^th China with 70 million. The totals in Russia and China are the roughest to estimate, and even more so confusing in China because of its state sanctioned CPCA (Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association).

CCPA established in 1957 by the People’s Republic of China’s Religious Affairs Bureau to exercise state ’supervision’ over mainland China’s Catholics.

In 2010 the number of Catholics, including the number of priests and seminarians, is increasing worldwide, especially in Asia and Africa. 

The People’s Bank of China said it is raising the one-year benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points to 5.81 percent and the benchmark deposit rate by the same amount to 2.75 percent in an effort to cool inflation. Inflation which is raising prices for everything is spreading nationwide discontent.

California is in trouble: Unemployment is over 13 percent, the state is broke and hundreds of thousands of people, many of them middle-class families, are streaming for the exits. California’s political class is whining that more than a million of its 37 million were ot counted costing iot many tens of  million  in federal dollars. For the first time in its history the state did not increase its Congressional delegation.

But to some politicians, like Sen. Alan Lowenthal, the real challenge for California “progressives” is not to fix the economy but to reengineer the way people live.

Lowenthal’s idea is to ban free parking. This way, the Long Beach Democrat reasons, Californians would have to give up their cars and either take the bus or walk “Free parking has significant social, economic and environmental costs,” Lowenthal told the Los Angeles Times. “It increases congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.”

Scarily, his proposal has actually passed the State Senate and with Moonbeam Brown about to assume the Governor’s chair who knows how far this nitwit idea can go.

His wooly-headed idea could be dismissed as just more California lunacy. Except  across the country, and particularly within the Obama Administration, there is a growing predilection to endorse policies that steer the bulk of new development into our already most-crowded urban areas.

One influential document called “Moving Cooler”, cooked up by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Urban Land Institute, the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency and others, lays out a strategy that would essentially force the vast majority of new development into dense city cores.

Over the next 40 years this could result in something like 60 million to 80 million people being crammed into existing central cities to live like ants crawling over each other. These policies want to make suburban life as miserable as possible by shifting infrastructure spending to dense areas. One proposal, “Moving Cooler,” outdoes even Lowenthal by calling for charges of upwards of $400 for people to park in front of their own houses.

The justification is slowing climate change. Forcing people to live in dense cities, the reasoning goes, would make people give up all those free parking opportunities and even their private vehicles, which would reduce their dreaded “carbon imprint.”

Yet there are a few little problems with this “cramming” policy. Its environmental implications are far from assured. According to some recent studies in Australia, the carbon footprint of high-rise urban residents is higher than that of medium- and low-density suburban homes, due to such things as the cost of heating common areas, including parking garages, and the highly consumptive lifestyles of more affluent urbanites.

Moreover, it appears that even those who live in dense places may be loath to give up their cars. Over 90% of all jobs in American metropolitan regions are located outside the central business districts, which tend to be the only places well suited for mass transit.

Indeed, despite the massive expansion of transit systems in the past 30 years, the percentage of people taking public transportation in major metropolitan regions has dropped from roughly 8% to closer to 5%. Even in Portland, Ore.–the mecca for new wave transit consciousness–the share of people using transit to get to work is now considerably less than it was in 1980. In recent months overall transit ridership nationwide has actually dropped. People complain in many places the buses stink, are ditry and drivers are surly and insulting.

These realities suggest that densification of most cities–with the exceptions of New York, Washington and perhaps a few others–cannot be supported by transit. Furthermore, drivers in dense cities will be confronted with not less congestion, but more, which will likely also boost pollution. The most congested cities in the country tend to be the densest, such as Los Angeles, Sen. Lowenthal’s bailiwick, which is in an unenviable first place.

Then there is the little issue of what people prefer ot what nincompoop politicos dream up. Urban boosters have been correct in saying that until recently there have been too few opportunities for middle-class residents to live in and around city cores. But over the past decade many cities have gone for broke with dense condo and rental housing and have produced far more product, often at very high cost, than the market can reasonably bear.

Initially, when the mortgage crisis broke, the density advocates built much of their case on the fact that the biggest hits took place in suburban areas, particularly on the fringe. Yet as suburban construction ended, cities continued building high-density urban housing–sometimes encouraged by city subsidies and the monumental scam called redevelopment authorities. As a result, in the last two years massive foreclosures have plagued many cities, and many condominiums have been converted to rentals. This is true in bubble towns like Las Vegas and Miami; “smart-growth” bastions like Portland and Seattle; and even relatively sane places such as Kansas City, Mo. All these places have a massive amount of high-density condos that are either vacant or converted into lower-cost rentals.

Take Portland. The city’s condo prices are down 30% from their original list price. The 177-unit Encore, one of the fanciest new towers, has closed sales on only 12 of its units, while another goes to auction. Meanwhile in New York half-completed structures dot Brooklyn’s once-thriving Williamsburg neighborhood, while the massive Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan teeters at the edge of bankruptcy.

Finally, it is unlikely that cities would be able to accommodate the massive growth promoted by urban boosters, land speculators and policy mavens. Aaron Renn, who writes the influential Urbanophile blog, says that most American cities today struggle to maintain their current infrastructure. They also have limited options to zone land for high-density construction, due in part to grassroots opposition to existing residential neighborhoods. Overall they would be hard-pressed to accommodate much more than 10% of their region’s growth, much less 50% or 60%.

Given these realities, and the depth of the current recession, one might think that governments would focus more on basics like jobs and fixing the infrastructure–in suburbs as well as cities–than reengineering how people live. Yet it is increasingly clear that for many “progressives” the real agenda is not enabling people to achieve their dreams–especially in the form of a suburban single-family house. It is, instead, forcing them to live in what is viewed as more ecologically and socially preferable density.

In the next few months we may see more of the kind of hyperregulation proposed by the likes of Sen. Lowenthal. It is entirely possible that a hoary coalition of HUD, Department of Transportation and EPA bureaucrats could start trying to restrict future housing development along the lines suggested in “Moving Cooler.”

Yet over time one has to wonder about the political efficacy of this approach. Right now Americans are focused primarily on simply economic growth–and perhaps a touch less on the intellectual niceties of the “smart” form. In addition they are increasingly skeptical about climate change, which serves as the primary raison d’etre behind the new regulatory schema.

Given the zealousness of the density advocates, perhaps the only thing that will slow, and even reverse, this process will be the political equivalent of a sharp slap across the face. Unless the ruling party begins to reacquaint itself with the preferences and aspirations of the vast majority of Americans, they may find themselves experiencing repeats of their recent humiliating defeat–manufactured largely in the Boston suburbs–in true-blue Massachusetts.

Americans–suburban or urban–may resist a return to unbridled and extreme Republicanism, whether on social issues or in economic policy. But forced to choose between Neanderthals, who at least might leave them alone in their daily lives, and higher-order intellects determined to reengineer their lives, they might end up supporting bipeds lower down the evolutionary chain, at least until the progressive vanguard regains a grip on common sense.

Supercilious (soo-puhr-SIL-i-uhs) adjective: Showing haughty disdain. Etymology the word alludes to someone being disdainful by raising an eyebrow. It’s derived from Latin supercilium (eyebrow, pride), from super (above) + cilium (eyelid). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kel- (to cover, conceal, or save) that is also the source of hollow, hole, holster, hell, apocalypse, and eucalyptus. Earliest documented use: 1528.

One in five American adults, 45 million, suffer some form of mental illness. almost 11 million or 4.8 percent of these adults aged 18 years and above suffered from serious mental illness.

Major depressive episodes were witnessed in 2 million young youths aged between 12 to 17 years, of which 35.7 percent were addicted to drugs

Women were at a higher risk of developing mental disorders as compared to men, 23.8 percent versus 15.6 percent.

 One million attempted suicide. In all, 8.4 million citizens had seriously thought about committing suicide, 2.2 million had actually developed a suicidal plan while another one million tried committing suicide during 2009, according to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. A Mayo Clinic study debunks the myth that suicides peak during the Christmas holidays.

Substance abuse disorder was observed among 20 percent of the mental illness patients.

The rate increased up to 25.7 percent for people suffering from serious mental illnesses, almost 4 times greater than those without a serious disorder.

Such mental illnesses were found to be greater among those who were without work as compared to those with full-time jobs, 27.7 percent versus 17.1 percent.

Young adults reported the highest number of such disorders while people aged 50 and above reported the lowest, 30 percent versus 13.7 percent.

Very few received medical help. In spite of the shocking number of mental disorder cases, only 37.9 of the mentally ill patients received appropriate mental health services.

At China’s first robot hotpot eatery, the Dalu Robot restaurant, in Jinan in eastern China a dozen robots resembling Star Wars droids circle the room carrying trays of food in a conveyor belt-like system. The robots never lose patience, get snotty or demand tips. There is a plan to rollout a total of 30 of the $6.000 robot waiters.

General Atomics celebrated a milestone with the launch of an F/A-18E aircraft using the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. This is the first time in over 50 years that the Navy has been able to launch a carrier-based aircraft using a system other than steam.

EMALS is the catapult launch system that is being designed for CVN-78 Ford class aircraft carriers, replacing the steam catapults used on the current generation of aircraft carriers. As the EMALS prime contractor, GA was awarded a contract to produce the new catapult for CVN 78 (USS Gerald R. Ford) in June 2009.

EMALS was chosen as replacement for steam on board the new Ford-class carriers because of the ability to dial up or down the output of the system. As a result, everything from a 25-ton E-2 Hawkeye radar plane to a 3-ton killer drone can be launched from the same deck.

The EMALS system is a multimegawatt electric power system involving generators, energy storage, power conversion, a 100,000 hp electric motor, and an advanced technology closed loop control system with diagnostic health monitoring.

The FORD Class will replace the NIMITZ Class carriers, and feature:

• Advanced arresting gear.
• Automation, which reduces crew requirements by several hundred from the Nimitz class carrier.
• The updated RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missile system.
• AN/SPY-3 dual-band radar (DBR), as developed for Zumwalt class destroyers.
• An Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) in place of traditional steam catapults for launching aircraft.
• A new nuclear reactor design (the A1B reactor) for greater power generation.
• Stealthier features to help reduce radar profile.
• The ability to launch the F-35C Lightning II.

The new warships will be 1,092 feet long, 134 feet wide and displace 112,000 tons. The addition of the most modern equipment and extensive use of automation, it will be able to reduce the crew requirement by 25% but still embark 4,000 sailors, and lower the total cost of operating future aircraft carriers. The primary recognition feature compared to earlier supercarriers will be the more aft location of the navigation “island”.

It will have a compliment of 90 aircraft, and cost $5.1 billion. It is set to launch in 2015.

The Cabell County, West Virginia school system has decided to remove swing sets from all school playgrounds, due to lawsuit fears. The school district faced two different lawsuits from the same parent over relatively minor injuries suffered by his two kids in separate incidents on a school playground and decided to remove all swing sets. Because those swing sets are of the same design as tens of thousands of others such legal blackmail could infest the whole nation.

Partly taxpayer paid NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg took political correctness to new heights when she actually apologized on-air for using the word “Christmas.”

Totenberg said: “We just passed this huge tax cut in part because business said, you know, we have to plan, we have to know what kind of tax cuts we have. Well, these agencies, including the Defense Department, don’t know how much money they’ve got and for what. And I was at - forgive the expression - a Christmas party at the Department of Justice and people actually were really worried about this.”

The Mediaite website observed: “Maybe in the wake of Juan Williams’ firing, [do] NPR employees, just to be safe, apologize for anything in advance?”

NPR fired Williams after he made what was viewed as a politically incorrect statement about Muslims, saying he gets “nervous” when he sees people in “Muslim garb” on an airplane.

The NewsBusters website observed that Totenberg was “seemingly embarrassed to invoke any religious terminology for Christmas. She didn’t say what she’d prefer parties this time of year to be named. Winter solstice party?”

Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly has been an outspoken opponent of what he calls the “war” on Christmas, saying in 2005 that “it’s all part of the secular progressive agenda . . . to get Christianity and spirituality and Judaism out of the public square.”

He also said: “I don’t believe most people who aren’t Christian are offended by the words ‘Merry Christmas.’ I think those people are nuts.”

Some in Congress are openly talking about defunding NPR which is mostly tripe.

Historically, 15% to 20% of the aggregate revenues of all public broadcasting stations have been funded from federal sources, and depending on how you count it another 5-6% comes from states and local governments principally through CPB.

CPB was created on November 7, 1967 when U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The new organization initially collaborated with the pre-existing National Educational Television network. In 1969 CPB talked to private groups to start the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In 1970, CPB formed National Public Radio (NPR), a network of public radio stations.

CPB provides some funding for PBS and NPR, but much more of its funding goes to public television and radio stations that are members of PBS or NPR, as well as to other broadcasters that are independent of those organizations. In more recent years, CPB has started funding some Internet-based projects.

So, if funding for CPB is cut that could bite.

20-year-old Bristol Palin’s cash purchase of a brown stucco house near Pheonix, Arizona for $172,000 has caused something of a hubbub. The 3,900 square feet house with three-car garage sold for almost $330,000 four years ago - it was in foreclosure.

Nancy Pelosi . the California Democrat, successfully vilified by Republicans in the last election as a symbol of what was so wrong in WDC, has turned to director Steven Spielberg for help in rebranding House Democrats in the wake of their November shellacking.

Spielberg, an Eagle Scout, is now a confirmed leftists who until 2001 carefully cultivated anything but. He then succumbed to pressure from Hollywood’s large homosexual activist community (known as the lavender mafia for its ruthlessness) and resigned his long advisory board relationship with the Boy Scouts of America when it declared it could not allow homosexuals to be Scout leaders risking their exposure to young boys.

For years the BSA had tightroped the issue but increasing pressure from parents of young boys, and litigation costs became insurmountable.

Many Republicans are pleased that Pelosi is still around albeit in a greatly reduced role in the House claiming she is such an appealing target, and will damage Obama as he gears for 2012.

With less than a month to go in the campaign, no clear leader has emerged among the six candidates, who include embattled incumbent chairman Michael Steele for the RNC Chairmanship  The winner must receive votes from 85 of the 168 members of the Republican National Committee. Most committee members are still publicly undecided.  Steele will show up for a six party debate in the coming week. Some are saying were he not black Steele would already have been replaced.

China has said it is willing to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone using its $2.7trillion overseas investment fund. By comparison the then landmark Marshall plan to rebuild a war ravaged Europe was only 4 cents on the dollar even after adjustment for inflation.

In a fresh humiliation for Europe, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said it was one of the most important areas for China’s foreign exchange investments.

The country has already approached struggling European countries with financial aid, including offering to buy Greece’s debt in October and promising to buy $4billion of Portuguese government debt.

‘To have any discernible effect China will have to buy a lot more than 5 billion euros if they expect to have any impact on the negative sentiment surrounding Europe,’ said Michael Hewson, currency analyst at CMC Markets.

China’s astonishing economic growth has put it on track to overtake America as the world’s economic powerhouse within two years, a recent report claimed.

But experts believe it will still be some years before America’s leadership role is really challenged - largely because Beijing has given no indication it is ready to take on the responsibility of shepherding the world’ economy.

This foray into the future of the euro could be a signal from Beijing that it is ready to change that perception.

The euro rose temporarily on the news of China’s support - but was sinking again this morning to a three-week low against the dollar.

Impugn (im-PYOON) verb tr.: To call in question or cast doubt upon. Etymology  via French from Latin impugnare (to attack), from im- (towards) + pugnare (to fight), from pugnus (fist). Ultimately from the Indo-European root peuk (to prick) which is also the source of point, puncture, pungent, punctual, poignant, pounce, and poniard. Earliest documented use: 1384.

Only 21% of likely U.S. voters want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet as it does radio and television. Fifty-four percent (54%) are opposed to such regulation, and 25% are not sure.

By a 52% to 27% margin, voters believe that more free market competition is better than more regulation for protecting Internet users. Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly share this view, but a plurality of Democrats (46%) think more regulation is the better approach.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters believe that the FCC would use its regulatory authority to promote a political agenda. Half that number (28%) disagree and believe the commission would regulate in an unbiased manner. The partisan divide is the same on this question as the others. A plurality of Democrats sees an unbiased regulatory approach, while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters fear a political agenda.

Sixty two percent of Britons, 58 percent of Canadians and 53 percent of Americans use artificial trees, while only about 16 percent of Americans and Canadians and 14 percent of Britons use fresh trees, according to poll done by Angus Reid Public Opinion. More than a quarter of the people surveyed in each country said they did not plan to have a tree at all, the survey found.

Bradley Manning, the Private First Class that gave WikiiLeaks tens of thousands of confidential and secret cables is the new poster boy for the left that claims he is being tortured by being kept in solitary, and in the don’t ask don’t tell kafluffle.

Manning is a confection for the left for his anti-war views, homosexuality, and WikiLeaks treachery.  Homosexuality is often a disqualifier for secret work because of the risk of blackmail. Foreign intelligence services often entrap targets during escapades and then threaten to distribute lurid photos to friends and family, etc. Not only homosexual behavior is exploited but almost any sexual fetish or aberrant behavior can be exploited.

Manning is  juicy grist for anti-American and anti-military rants.

Manning is being kept in solitary in a USMC brig at Quantico, Virginia to keep him safe from others who could exact harsh retribution for his actions.

Imagine the brouhaha were he beaten to a pulp by other irate inmate(s). He’s about as popular to the general population there as a child molester is in a civilian prison.

New hitherto ’secret’ EPA regulations on electric generating plants are estimated to add 16-20% to the average Americans’ electric bills. Watch for the perverse argument that those artificially raised bills as reasons to insulate and use renewable sources. There is a lot right with both but the approach is borderline draconian. There is worry about an electricity shortage if new plants are further delayed. Bureaucrats and lawyers are said to be talking about nothing being built for 7-years.

The Washington Post recently reported that outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had “turned to director Steven Spielberg for help remaking her personal brand. I dutifully reported that here. Actually the story’s bounce said Pelosi wanted help rebranding the Democrats.

Spielberg’s publicist, Marvin Levy, denied that his client would be helping Pelosi with image consulting. The Post’s “story regarding Nancy Pelosi made a reference to Steven Spielberg that requires a response,” Levy said. Spielberg “has made it his career to direct actors, not political figures.”

Makes you wonder whose image really needs protection.

21.12.2012. It is called the end of time; the end of the world, a.k.a. the end of Mayan Long Count. Whether you call it that or just the apocalypse, some say that all of us have less than two years to live. That’s when the Mayan calendar runs out. The closer it comes that wackier things will become. Just watch and smile.

A Shell Oil analyst predicts $5 per gallon gasoline in the U. S. soon, and even the return of gas lines like during the 1973 oil embargo. In predicting $5 a gallon gas, the former Shell executives cites not only increased oil demand from Asia, but Obama’s clampdowns on offshore drilling.

“In the U.S., we use 20 million barrels a day, “he said. “We produce about seven. We’re not drilling. We’re going to produce about six each year, a year-and-a-half from now - mid 2012. That means we have to import more oil, while the whole rest of the world is also importing oil. It’s going to put tremendous upside pressure on the crude oil price, which is the only way to tamp down demand. It’s very worrying for consumers and, really, for the American economy to think we would go back to such high prices.”

He calls it a “disgrace” that officials here didn’t see this coming. He failed to describe how much of this manufactured crisis has to do with Obama’s keen desire to force America’s out of their cars and his social reengineering plan to push Americans into urban areas and out of suburbs.

If gasoline rises to $5 per gallon in 2011-2012 Obama will become a political piñata as our economy backslides into deeper recession.

Violent crime fell in Los Angeles by 11% in 2010 compared to 2009. There were the fewest number of  murders since 1967.