January 3, 2011

• NYC Snow Crisis Intentional
• Rosie The Riviter Has Died
• Saudi Arabia ‘Secretly’ Gets Pakistani Nuke Warheads
• U. S. Navy Superiority In Jeopardy
• Bungling To $5 Gallon Gasoline
• GOP Take Over of Congress Mean New Rules
• Life Stranger Than Science Fiction
• Juan Williams “Palin Lightweight”
• Iran Bomb Now 3-years Distant
• Many American School Books Wrong
• Housing Stumble Could Cause Double Dip
• “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell Is Soros Target
• Climarxists Insist Cold Due To Global Warming
• Obama’s Secret Order To Feds: Set Health Insurance Prices

New York City Councilman Dan Halloran, (R)-Queens, told the New York Post that several brave whistleblowers confessed to him that they “were told (by supervisors) to take off routes (and) not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner during the pre-Christmas snow storms. They were told to make the mayor pay for reductions in rank of the supervisors.

 City plowers were caught on videotape maniacally destroying parked civilian owned vehicles in a futile display of willful destruction of property. It would be laugh-out-loud comedy if not for the death of at least one newborn whose parents futilely waited for an ambulance that never came because of snowed-in streets.

This isn’t a triumphant victory for social justice and workers’ dignity. This is terrifying criminal negligence.

A precursor to last week’s deadly disaster was the infamous  New York garbage strike threatening a thyphoid epidemic, a rat infestation, and sparking scores of dangerous garbage fires.

Colorado Springs, Colo. has no sanitation department because enlightened advocates of limited government in our town realized that competitive bidders in the private sector could provide better service at lower cost.

The largest study ever conducted on outsourced garbage collection, conducted by the federal government in the 1970s, reported 29 to 37 percent savings in cities with populations over 50,000. A 1994 study by the Reason Foundation discovered that the city of Los Angeles was paying about 30 percent more for garbage collection than its surrounding suburbs, in which private waste haulers were employed. A 1982 study of city garbage collection in Canada discovered an astonishing 50 percent average savings as a result of privatization.

Like they say in California what’s orange and sleeps six - a CalTrans truck.

Let the snow-choked streets of New York be a lesson for the rest of the nation: It’s time to put the Big Chill on Big Labor-run municipal services.

A Virginia man retired after long public service once told me he had two rules: If its listed in yellow [ages government should not do it, and  a town can only grow as far as it toilet capacity.

Geraldine Hoff Doyle, the inspiration behind the now-iconic Rose the Riveter WWII poster, has died at age 86 in Michigan.

The poster of a young woman in a factory uniform and red polka dot head kerchief, her arm flexed to show off her muscle with  a speech balloon stating boldly, “We can do it!” was designed to encourage young woman to volunteer for the war effort while men were serving overseas.

Eventually 6 million women would heed the call and enter the workforce during World War II years. Many believe that permanently changed American society.

The image of Rosie the Riveter, itself inspired by a Norman Rockwell painting of the same name, became an instant classic and was later adopted by the women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

 After two years of consistently failed economicamd jobs policies Obama called on Republicans Saturday to be equal partners in his efforts to jump-start the nation’s fragile economy in the new year, pledging to work in good faith with the party as it prepares to assume greater power in Washington. Conservatives are skeptical that Obama can throttle his party’s and his own ideologic zealotry and accept  GOP’s ideas.

Almost completely ignored by U. S. media is that Saudi Arabia has jumped ahead of Iran in the race for nukes by secretly obtaining access to  two Pakistani nuclear warheads. Gulf sources believe the weapons are ready for delivery upon royal summons via Pakistan’s air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Already delivered is a quantity of Pakistan’s nuclear warhead capable Ghauri-II missile with an extended range of 2,300 kilometers (more than twice the distance to Teheran which is just 800 miles). The missiles are tucked away in silos in the underground city of Al-Sulaiyil, south of the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh in mid-Peninsula. The missiles join an arsenal of perhaps 50 others including Chinese models known to have been placed there in the late 1980s. It is not known if any of those are nuclear warhead capable.

 In 2008 Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was believed to contain 70-90 warheads ranging from 25 to 36 kilotons. One kiloton is equal to 1,000 tons of TNT high explosive which would be a cube of TNT almost 33 feet on a side that could flatten a city block. Just three weeks ago Pakistan again denied any such deal finessing that Saudi Arabia has none of its nukes — but that was just clap trap.

As you read this satellites show two giant Saudi transport planes sporting civilian colors and no insignia parked at Pakistan’s Kamra base with Saudi air crews reported nearby on ready standby. Kamra is a major airbase 43 kilometers West of Islamibad and in near proximity to believed nuclear warhead depots. The planes purposes is to fly the nuclear warheads to their new home around Iranian or other threats upon receipt of a double coded signal from King Abdullah and the Director of General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdel Aziz. A single signal would not be enough. Once the signal is received the warhead could be fitted and operational with 24-hours. It can be assumed those aircraft are being very carefully watched.

In recent weeks, Saudi officials close to their intelligence establishment have been going around security forums in the West and dropping word that the kingdom no longer needs to build its own nuclear arsenal because it has acquired a source of readymade nukes to be available on demand. Partial nuclear transparency was approved by Riyadh as part of a campaign to impress on the outside world that Saudi Arabia was in control of its affairs:  The succession struggle had been brought under control; the Saudi regime had set its feet on a clearly defined political and military path; and the hawks of the royal house had gained the hand and were now setting the pace.

Some worry this will start an international race to buy nukes willy-nilly. You can be assured Iran is all over North Korea for a nuke warhead as well as China, and Russia using this sale as justification.

Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, released its annual list of “banished words” (and phrases) — terms so overused, misused and hackneyed they deserve to be sent to a permanent linguistic trash can in the year ahead including: viral, epic, wow-factor, a-ha moment, back story, BFF, man up, refudiate, the American People, I’m just sayin, facebook and google as verbs and live life to the fullest.

Previous LSSU winners and nominees include the terms “shovel ready”, “battleground states”, “24/7″ and “family values.” Its fist list was in 1976 when it banished “At this point in time.” Go to http://www.lssu.edu/banished/submit_word.php to nominate your word.

In what some have called his “Pearl Harbor speech SecDef Gates has ominously said “We know other nations are working on asymmetric ways to thwart the reach and striking power of the U.S. battle fleet.” It has been his view that China’s newest anti-ship weapons may render America’s carriers as obsolete as battleships proved to be after Imperial Japan’s attack on the U. S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941.

“This is a particular concern with aircraft carriers snd other large, multibillion-dollar blue-water surface combatants, where, for example, a new Ford-class carrier plus its full complement of the latest aircraft would represent potentially a $15 (billion) to $20 billion set of hardware at risk,” Gates said.

He sketched other area denial threats ranging from Hizbullah’s use of anti-ship missiles against Israel’s Navy to erosion of what had been a virtual monopoly by the United States in precision guided weapons.

Sophisticated underwater threats are growing, including the use of sonar-evading stealth submarines that could “end the operational sanctuary our Navy has enjoyed in the Western Pacific for the better part of six decades,” Gates said. For decades the Navy has been developing super-secret ways to “vision” underwater targets.

Gates said budget constraints are forcing the military to reduce its efforts to maintain an 11 aircraft carrier strike group. Here-to-fore it has been argued that absent a massed attack with nukes those carrier strike forces were survivable.

 Canada has cut its corporate tax rate to 16.5%, the third recent cut, and now less than half of the U. S. rate just a thin border away. Canada’s economy by almost every measure is now stronger than that in the U. S.

 In late November, Obama effectively issued a seven-year ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Crude oil pirces are approaching $100 a barrel and gasoline is averaging over $3 per gallon on what many see as a quick trip to $5 a gallon putting nearly 100,000 American oil workers in the unemployment line.

Nevertheless nearly no questions have been asked of Obama by the media regarding:

• his bungled response to the Gulf oil spill;
• his unilateral policies that are creating higher home energy prices;
• rising gas and oil prices; or
• the de facto moratorium on domestic oil exploration.

It was Obama who lambasted Bush for $3 per gallon gasoline in 2006 as a Democrat congress demanded Bush do something. Now that same Democrat controlled Congress is mute.

Obama and his synchophants, like lameduck New Mexico Govenror Richardson can only blame the absence of an effective alternative energy program under Bush as if that’s the problem.

George Will raised a different part of the issue pointing out China is importing hundreds of thousands of tons of mostly American coal while Obama has clamped down on new coal power plants in the USA certain to drive electricity prices up, and maybe creating a shortage.

It’s time to start asking the White House some tough questions. A two year moratorium on accountability is long enough.

The lameduck Democrat controlled House of Representatives rushed back to Washington to pass a $30B “emergency” bill to help states with teacher salaries for the 2010-11 school year and Medicaid payments for the first half of 2011.  The bill is partly paid for by a cynical reduction in food stamp funding - in 2014.   In California, the $1.2B in additional funding will create or extend the teaching careers of 16,500 teachers. That works out to $72,727.00 per teacher. Local Congresswoman Capps whined about having her pork stripped from the bill but failed to mention local taxpayers would have had to shoulder the bulk of project costs.

When Republicans take over the House this week, they will do something that has never been done before in the chamber’s  221-year history — read the Constitution aloud.

And then they will require that every new bill contain a statement by the lawmaker who wrote it citing the constitutional authority to enact the proposed legislation.

The question being debated in legal and political circles off Capitol Hill is whether the constitutional rules are simply symbolic flourishes to satisfy an emboldened and watchful tea party base.

Democrats say the reading and citation are both just PR stunts

House Republican leaders have also announced dozens of new rules, including several measures designed to increase transparency in the legislative process. For instance:

• Committees will broadcast their hearings and
• mark-up sessions online,
• lawmaker attendance will be recorded for each committee hearing and
• the debt limit will no longer be automatically increased with each new budget resolution.

The reading of the Constitution will occur this Thursday, Jan. 6, one day after the swearing in of Speaker-designate John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). The 4,543-word document, including all 27 amendments, could be read aloud in just 30 minutes. But the exercise probably will last longer as many what their air time.

We always hear members of Congress talking about swearing an oath to represent their constituents, when in reality the only oath we take is to the Constitution,” Ohio’s Boehner said in a speech this fall. “We pledge ‘to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ No more, no less.”

“I see this as a statement of the Republican Party, heavily influenced by the tea party, that we are the defenders of the Constitution and we will exercise our constitutional responsibilities seriously in ways the Democrats did not,” said Neil Siegel, a law professor at Duke University.

In American high school students are generally no longer required even to pass a government class, which for some of us included reading the Constitution.

A relatively recent study found that hardly any American teachers (less than 5% have read even part of the Constitution) begging the question how and what are they teaching?

Congressman Darryl Issa (R) California new Chairman of the House oversight committee has said his committee and its four subcommittees will launch hundred of investigations and hold public hearing into a two year backlog of gripes about Obama..

A majority of Americans say that the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives is a good development, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. They also like the Republican Party slightly more than they do President Barack Obama, and far more than the Democratic Party.

The poll also shows that while Obama remains personally popular, an increasing number of Americans are increasingly dubious about his ability to lead, and many are pessimistic about his ability to realize his policies.

In sci-fi movies, life begins in a gooey pool of primordial gunk. New accidental discoveries suggests life may have begun in the stormy skies above.

A University of Arizona’s team recreated chemical reactions transpiring above Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It is about twice as big as our Moon and 40% Earth’s diameter. Titan is unique as a frozen time capsule of early Earth. Except the liquid on Titan’s surface is methane instead of water, it’s the only body in the solar system other than Earth with liquid on its surface.

The scientist mixed up a brew of molecules (carbon monoxide, molecular nitrogen and methane) found in Titan’s atmosphere. Then zapped the concoction with radio waves - a proxy for the sun’s radiation. Poof - a rich array of complex molecules emerged, including amino acids and nucleotides.

They  didn’t start out to prove they could make ‘life’ in Titan’s skies. But to solve a mystery. The Cassini spacecraft detected large molecules in Titan’s atmosphere, and they wanted to find out what they could be.

A scientist decided, on a whim, to look for nucleotides and amino acids using complex computer programming, went on a break and came back to the computer spewing out a list of about 5000 molecules containing the right stuff: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen. The elements for organic molecules, but they couldn’t tell how they were arranged. It’s kind of like legos - the more there are, the more possible structures can be made. And they can be put together in many different ways. They did find five nucleotides found in DNA and RNA, and two amino acids. But there could be more amino acids in the mix.

How could Titan’s atmosphere generate them?

The answer lies in another bizarre Cassini discovery: plumes of water blasting away Old Faithful-like from Titan’s sister moon Enceladus. The researchers have good proof that these geysers of water are the source of oxygen required to kick off the first chain reactions required for life and Titan if often in their path or sweeps up those water molecules.

“Water spewing across from the plumes gets broken up, releasing hydrogen and oxygen”, they say. In a fascinating happenstance the amount of oxygen entering Titan’s atmosphere from outside is precisely the quantity needed to make the amount of carbon monoxide detected in that atmosphere.”

Then, other chemical reactions occur, producing the heavier molecules Cassini detected. If the lab results are correct, amino acids and nucleotides are in the mix.

Picture it: One moon spraying another moon with water to generate the building blocks of life, which fall to the surface in a storm of methane rain.

It doesn’t then take much imagination to have a comet whiz through, agther up the water and eventually smack into earth a few billions years ago. Of course it could also gather up all sort of the other stuff too.

Real life may be stranger than science fiction, after all.

Ten thousands Baby boomers, average-wage, two-earner couples together earning $89,000 a year will retire every month for coming decades. They would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers supposedly plus interests and now expect $355,000 in benefits. But, the same average couple paid in more to Social Security than they can expect to get back in combined benefits.

Fox News contributor Juan Williams said Sunday that Sarah Palin “can’t stand on the intellectual stage” with President Obama.

Williams, in his role as an analyst on Fox News Sunday, was breaking down the Republican presidential field, which he says is weak.

“There’s nobody out there, except for Sarah Palin, who can absolutely dominate the stage, and she can’t stand on the intellectual stage with Obama,” Williams said.

Palin, like Williams, is a Fox News contributor. And when Williams was fired by National Public Radio this year after saying he felt nervous when he sees Muslims on an airplane, Palin was among the conservative voices defending him.

At the time, though, Palin acknowledged Williams has rarely been her ally.

“I don’t expect Juan Williams to support me (he’s said some tough things about me in the past) - but I will always support his right and the right of all Americans to speak honestly about the threats this country faces,” Palin said on her Facebook page.

A Cuban-American father and daughter face a possible jail term or hefty fines after their attempt to bring 72 unhatched pigeon eggs from Cuba to the United States falling afoul of U.S. Customs.

The United States maintains a long-running trade embargo against Cuba that prohibits commercial imports from the communist-ruled island and often leads to seizures of illicit shipments of Cuban cigars destined for U.S. connoisseurs.

The pair pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling and hope for leniency. .

A month ago Iran said centrifuges used in uranium enrichment had been sabotaged. There are suspicions, denied by Iran, that the centrifuges were targeted by the Stuxnet computer worm.

 Israel said Iran’s program had faced “a number of technological challenges and difficulties”.

Reports say the cyberweapon was contrived in China to specifically target a key computer component made in China for Finnish company Siemens. China denies that but is known to have made a series of arrests at the facility that builds the gadgets.

While nobody is accepting responsibility what seems certain is Iran’s nuclear bomb is more distant now than even a few months ago, and Stuxnet appears to have played a major role in that delay regardless of who is responsible.

 The BBC and AFP are releasing more juicy details about the now infamous Stuxnet worm that Iranian officials have confirmed infected 30,000 industrial computers inside Iran following those exact fears. The things spread like VD in a brothel when the fleet’s in town The targeted systems that the worm is designed to infect are in fact Siemens SCADA systems.

Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group, causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States - although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus.

 Iran bombastically claims Stuxnet did not infect or place any risk to the new nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which experts are suspecting was the ultimate target of the worm.

A leading European analyst claims Israel in fact introduced the Stuxnet computer virus into Iran’s nuclear energy plant at Bushehr. Ralph Langner, a German cybersecurity expert, said Israel, in what he said was an operation called “myrtus,” appeared to have designed Stuxnet and embedded the virus.

“Myrtus,” he says. “is the first operation in history that uses a cyberweapon that created physical destruction, struck a dedicated military target, was led by a coalition of nation states, and would have triggered a conventional military hardware attack if not successful,” Langner told the German daily, Die Zeit. If correct that makes it a watershed weapon development.

Some experts say program’s code might include reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament tale in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them.

The New York Times has written an article which intimates that the Stuxnet worm may be the work of Israel’s Unit 8200 (Unit Eight Two-hundred) (יחידה 8200 or shmone matayim in Hebrew) is an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit, responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption. It is also known in military publications as the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps. It was started in 1952 using cast-off British equipment and has operated continuously since.

Several of the teams of computer security researchers who have been dissecting the software found a text string that suggests that the attackers named their project Myrtus… an allusion to the Hebrew word for Esther… which does not itself appear in the Bible.

Some say b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb” stands for “My-RTUs” is the specific code line which ties it all together. Someday we’ll know.

Angels may not dress the part, With robes and wings that soar, Often angels come as friends knocking at your door.  - Unknown

History being taught in America’s classrooms is wrong including: New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917) because textbooks are wrong.

 The list of errors from an investigation primarily in Virginia spanned 10 pages, including inaccurate claims that men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor and that no Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo. Most historians say that some survived but were executed.

Teachers are not reading textbooks front to back, and they’re not in a position to identify the kinds of errors that historians could identify.

 Errors are not all that uncommon in textbooks,” experts says, citing other books that confused Mount Vernon and Monticello.

Other errors include, for instance, that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman did not “destroy” Atlanta but only portions of the city, and that Pickett’s Charge, which the book says involved 5,000 men, actually involved more than 10,000.

I once received an “A” for pointing out a small error in a high school American history text having carefully triple checked it, and the teacher mimeographed the correction and each student pasted the correction into the texts.

The “A’ I was told was for the ‘highest achievement’ recognizing an error from gained knowledge — is was sheer accident.

Sinister (SIN-uh-stuhr) adjective: 1. Threatening or foreshadowing evil or harm.
2. On the left side. Etymology: Via French from Latin sinister (left, left hand, unlucky). Earliest documented use: 1411.

The housing economist who predicted the massive housing crash sees a down year ahead in 2011 and, worse, believes that renewed housing problems could trigger a second recession.

“It’s not entirely clear that this is a double-dip in housing, but it’s starting to look like housing is beginning to resume the downtrend from 2006 to 2009,” says Robert Shiller, Yale professor and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

The latest Case-Shiller numbers show prices fell in October, down 0.8 percent from a year ago. Some metro areas are just now recovering to prices they saw a decade ago, while others - notably Detroit - are struggling with catastrophic price declines.

What’s driving the slow real-estate market, in Shiller’s estimation, is the jobless rate. He sticks to his view that the risk of a return to recession is real and that housing is symptomatic of our economic sluggishness.

“We haven’t recovered. We still have a 9.8 percent unemployment rate. We have 4.1 percent long-term unemployment rate, which is extremely high. It’s typically around 1 percent. We’re at near record levels on that,” Shiller told Fox Business. “Something isn’t quite right.”

Recessions do end, Shiller points out, when people finally are forced into buying to replace durable goods like cars and appliances. Oddly, the housing slowdown might be part of the reason retailers did so well this Christmas, Shiller says.

Two Berlin police officers were pelted by snowballs thrown by a group of about 40 youths but were able to fight them off with pepper spray, police said on Sunday. The officers first retreated but then fought back with the pepper spray, prompting the youths to flee. Many were later arrested. There were no injuries, police said.

Defeated Tea Party candidate Christine “I’m not a witch” O’Donnell, who ran for vice president Joe Biden’s former Senate seat, and lost reportedly isunder federal  investigation for using campaign funds for personal expensend s, AP  reports.

 The criminal probe is being conducted by two federal prosecutors and two FBI agents, an anonymous source told the AP. The matter has not yet been referred to a grand jury.

But O’Donnell campaign spokesman Matt Moran said the wire report was the first he had heard of an alleged investigation and he could not confirm its accuracy.

“The anonymous source seems politically-motivated and may well be tied to the ultra-liberal, George Soros-financed, former Sen. Biden staffer-run CREW  (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) complaint,” Moran said.

CREW  filed complaints with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office and Federal Election Commission in September alleging the Republican candidate misused campaign funds.

Moran said the questions surrounding O’Donnell’s campaign finances largely date to her 2008 campaign for then-Sen. Joe Biden’s seat. The issue surfaced during O’Donnell’s repeat bid for the Senate earlier this year.

Former O’Donnell campaign manager Kristin Murray said in a robocall taped for the Delaware Republican Party during the primary that O’Donnell used 2008 campaign funds for personal reasons.

 ”As O’Donnell’s manager, I found out she was living on campaign donations; using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt,” she said.

O’Donnell and her campaign say a reported federal investigation into her finances is “phony” and based on “unsubstantiated allegations and rumors” that are politically motivated.

 Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s famous painting “George Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which depicts a boatload of colonial American soldiers making their way to attack English and Hessian troops the day after Christmas in 1776. “Most people think these other guys in the boat are rowing, but they are actually pushing the ice away,” says art experts. Sure enough, the lead oarsman is bashing the frozen river with his boot.

Record-breaking snowfall and cold that hit the Northeast in December 2010 left nearly 55 percent of the U.S landmass covered in snow.

This is far from the greatest winter devastation in recent history. Nevertheless the global warming cultists or so-called climarxists were quick to say the cold is a result of global warming and working hard to stifle debate lest they loose millions in grants.

In 1888 piled more than 20 feet of snow fell on New York City, forcing some residents to enter and exit their homes from third-story windows. 1816 was called the year without summer because in the Northeast snow remained year-round in the shade of rocks and trees. That was apparently caused by the added chill of high-altitude volcanic ash circling and shading the Earth. From around 1400 A.D. until around 1850 A.D. was called the little ice age for the similar reasons.

During America’s Revolutionary War British soldiers dragging heavy cannons across the thick ice from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Boston, New York City, Baltimore, and Philadelphia harbours repeatedly froze over in winter. The winter at Valley Forge was far more severe than those today.

We may be sliding back into a little ice age, Lowell Ponte argued long ago in his book “The Cooling.” A bit of global warming might supply the atmospheric moisture that could make such a rapid return to Earth’s normal colder ice climate happen.

In 1974 Time magazine warned of a new ice age. In 2004 Discover magazine predicted an ice age lasting 300 to 400 years. Some now say that was right.

But you would never know this listening to global warming advocates, who in recent days have proclaimed that global warming is the cause of the record-shattering cold and snow in the Northeast, Great Britain, and much of Europe.

A Dec. 22 editorial in Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) put its finger precisely on the fallacy in such thinking. As philosopher of science Karl Popper observed, to be valid science a claim must be “falsifiable,” testable in a way that can prove it wrong.

But the global warming zealots now claim that any and every extreme of weather - hot or cold, wet or dry, stormy or free from almost all hurricanes - purportedly validates their belief in global warming.

“This isn’t science,” said IBD, “it’s a kind of faith. Scientists go along and even stifle dissent because, frankly, hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants are at stake. But for the believers, global warming is the god that failed.”

For many of these cultists “their real agenda has nothing to do with climate change at all,” opined IBD.

Weeks ago warming scientists, including some caught lying in “climategate,” and radical activists convened in Cancun, Mexico, and felt record cold in this tropical resort.

But the failure of their predictions led to no recantation of their dogma. What emerged instead from Cancun was a recommendation that by 2020 the world’s rich nations should transfer $100 billion per year to poorer nations to “mitigate” the harm they will suffer from global warming we purportedly have caused.

“This is what global warming is really about,” said IBD, “wealth redistribution by people whose beliefs are basically socialist. It has little or nothing to do with climate.”

And the largest share of wealth redistribution these climarxists intend via the pretext of global warming will go not from rich to poor, but from the private sector to the public sector, from private property and capitalists to socialists who control government and are eager to grab control over everything.

Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is defying a vote by the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate that refused to give the EPA unlimited power to regulate so-called greenhouse gases as if they were environmental toxins.

Such power could give the EPA dictatorial power over your body, which with each exhalation emits the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, a byproduct of the biological processes that keep you alive.

Such environmental and ideological extremists are unwilling to acknowledge that you are as much a part of “nature” as any other living thing.

They refuse to acknowledge that a human skyscraper or internal combustion engine is therefore just as “natural” as a bird nest or an anthill.

Or that natural climatic change is too vast and complex for today’s primitive and politicized science to comprehend.

How much longer will thinking people be fooled by the power-grabbers’ global-warming snow job?

Little of this has to do with environment but more to do with an ideological political class determined to reengineer lifestyles. This harkens to Lord Wellington (1769 - 1852) an aristocratic elitist of his day decried the building of railroads because they would cause what he saw as his inferiors  to “move about needlessly.”

Charivari (shiv-uh-REE, SHIV-uh-ree, shuh-riv-uh-REE) noun:1. A noisy, mock serenade to a newly married couple, involving the banging of kettles, pots, and pans.2. A confused, noisy spectacle. Etymologu From French charivari (hullabaloo), perhaps from Latin caribaria (headache), from Greek karebaria, from kare/kara (head) + barys (heavy). Earliest documented use: 1735.Also spelled as chivaree, chivari, and shivaree.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her staff are implementing a new 136-page federal regulation which, for the first time ever, gives the federal government the power to set health insurance premium prices nationwide, a regulatory role traditionally reserved for the states.

“Government control over the health care sector is the ultimate goal of Obamacare, and the latest rule giving the secretary authority over health insurance prices is part of the march,” Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based health policy think tank, told WND. “We’re only seeing the beginning of the onslaught of regulations to come.”

Another analyst noted that the policy essentially creates another layer of red tape for health insurance firms to jump through in order to bring policies to market, and likely will discourage new companies from entering the market, or established companies from expanding their offerings.

The move seems to be in line with recommendations from Obama advisers that his administration simply rule by executive action.

Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta has said Obama can implement almost any progressive agenda he wants, now that he’s facing a GOP majority in the U.S. House, in complete disregard of Congress. Sebelius, the former Kansas Governor is a staunch Obama ally often called Nancy Pelosi with a twang.

Want a free nip of booze before you lug those grocery bags home? Cookies, crackers and other food tastings have been common at supermarkets for years, but a new California law expands the concept to wine, beer and hard liquor beginning January 1, 2011.

Alcohol samples are expected to be offered sporadically, at best, but manufacturers hope that Californians will be more likely to buy their product if they can try it.

So, now you not only just have to worry about a crazy lady shoving a heaping shopping cart at break neck speed down narrow aisle but she could now be tipsy too. Can designated cart-pushers be far behind?

Each year a month before Christmas my mother began nurturing an Amaryllis bulb that she insisted would bloom on Christmas morning.

She said it was red from the blood of an ancient Greek maiden named Amaryllis whom a high priestess had told to pierce her heart with a golden arrow and go every day to the handsome young shepherd’s home to win his love.

 Many maidens sought him and he promised to marry the one who brought him a flower he’d never seen.

For 29-days Amaryllis trod the path to his house to no avail bleeding with every step. On the 30^th day she came upon beautiful, blood red flowers along the trail she’d trod for a month. Gathering them she presented them to him and he was smitten naming the new flower Amaryllis  in her honor. They married and lived happily ever after. Her heart was instantly healed.

As I write this four gorgeous blood red Amaryllis bloom on my coffee table the first opening its bloom on Christmas morning.

 By the way my mother’s telling of the mythological tale of Amaryllis was, as I recall it, accurate in its story even though her Amaryllis never cooperated.

 The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, along with sponsor, Jelly Belly, had the first-ever presidential themed float in the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day  The float kicks off a year long celebraton of what would have been President Reagan’s 100^th year.