As we speak, XPOTUS Bush41 is still in the hospital and has been moved into ICU for more specialized care. Please pray for him and his family.

---

Online story: "NYPD data shows that as of this last weekend, 414 people in New York City had fallen victim to homicide in 2012, an 18.5% drop from 2011, when a total of 515 people were murdered. * For even more perspective: In 1990, 2,245 people were murdered in New York City * Overall crime for 2012, however, is on pace to increase in all five boroughs, The Wall Street Journal reports, an uptick the city hasn't experienced in 20 years." -- Murder down, but other crimes up.... must be either the cost of bullets or .... or.... the murders have moved to Chicago and found work there.

---

Online story: "WASHINGTON — Hobby Lobby Stores and a sister company, Mardel Inc., sued the government, claiming the mandate violates the religious beliefs of its owners. * Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday denied a request to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills." -- Judge Sotomayor, appointee of pot-US Obluster, says the government can control religion in spite of the US Constitution. Either that or the new Egyptian Constitution overrules ours in her mind.

---

Online headline: "Geithner: Debt Ceiling Will Be Reached Monday" -- How appropiate... that's New Year's Eve. Hmmmm, how about cutting off government credit cards, travel allowances, and expense accounts! Wait a sec, maybe this explains why pot-US Obluster left Hawaii early.

---

Online story: "Hawaii Democrats picked U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, Schatz and Department of Land and Natural Resources Deputy Director Esther Kiaaina as final nominees for the open U.S. Senate seat. Hawaii Gov. * After fighting respiratory complications, Inouye passed away December 17 at the age of 88. The day Inouye died, he sent a letter to Abercrombie asking him to appoint Hanabusa to his seat. * Neil Abercrombie announced Schatz as Inouye's replacement Wednesday evening." -- Hmmm, maybe the others couldn't come up with a birth certificate...

---

Online story: "The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour, with no cost-of-living adjustment, and prevails in 31 states that do not mandate a higher state minimum wage. The last raise to the federal minimum came in 2009, after a series of increases signed into law by President George W. Bush. * President Barack Obama, while campaigning in 2008, pledged to hike the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour and index it by the end of 2011, "to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage," as he said on his transition website. * Last year, Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives introduced legislation known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would have raised the federal minimum wage to $9.80 per hour after three years and indexed it to inflation. * the minimum wage for restaurant servers and other tipped employees has been separated from the standard minimum wage, with many servers still being paid $2.13 per hour before tips, a rate that hasn't changed in two decades, as HuffPost previously reported. The Fair Minimum Wage Act would raise this "tipped minimum wage" as well, pegging it to 70 percent of the standard minimum wage." -- The gist of the story was actually about 10 states who are raising their own minimum wage on January 1st, but the interesting part was another broken promise by pot-US Obluster and the Congressional DUMBERats who COULD have easily passed such during the first and/or second tears of Obluster's presidency. On the other hand, pot-US Obluster has raised non-workers/unemployed to higher levels of government entitlement, and those probably couldn't afford a pay cut to the new minimum wages.

---

Online story: "A week after the Newtown massacre, The Journal News published an interactive Google Map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities. * The bold move has escalated into a transparency arms race, after a Connecticut lawyer posted the phone number and addresses of the Journal‘s staff, including a Google Maps satellite Image of the Publisher’s home. “I don’t know whether the Journal’s publisher Janet Hasson is a permit holder herself, but here’s how to find her to ask,” read Christopher Fountain’s blog post." -- Hmmm, bet crime in the permit holders neighborhood dropped and the crime rate will rise in the journalists' abodes.

---

Online headline/story: "White House Delays Life-Saving Law * White House Dragging Feet On Car Tech Known For Saving Kids * Backup cameras save lives, but automakers squawking over costs * Congress passed the measure with strong bipartisan backing, and Republican President George W. Bush signed it in 2008. * But almost five years later, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which faced a Feb. 28, 2011, deadline to issue the new guidelines for car manufacturers. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times - promising in February that the rules would be issued by year's end. * NHTSA has estimated that making rear cameras standard on every car would add $58 to $88 to the price of vehicles already equipped with dashboard display screens and $159 to $203 for those without them. * The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a lobbying group that represents automakers, puts the total cost to the industry at about $2 billion a year that would largely be passed on to consumers." -- "cost to the industry at about $2 billion a year that would largely be passed on to consumers"? "Largely"? Largely my DEMOCRAT mascot! And where did the NHTSA come up with those figures for costs? Prior to the bailout, UAW members in Detroit were getting an average of $78.00 per hour alone for labor.. add that into the cost of the actual electronic devices PLUS the manufacturers' and dealers' mark-ups, and the cost to consumers will probably be another THOUSAND per car (and probably more with a color camera... Oh! then the mainstream media will blame it all on BUSH43.

---

Online headline: "Here Are The New Cars That Hold Their Value Best" -- Aha! Gotcha! I have a Brooklyn Bridge to sell, also.

---

Today, I received an unsolicited e-mail from Christian Mingle... I already had issues with the Christian Mingle advertising claims, but to send this e-mail out indiscriminately to married people is definitely not very 'Christian'.

---

At least one of those Benghazi related resignations is still on the taxpayers' expense. Seems he only "resigned" from the " appointed' aspect of his job, but is still getting paid and will be allowed to return to the payroll aspect that he is now on paid administrative leave. We don't need any more laws banning guns, we need laws banning such government shenanigans!

---

NBC's David Gregory was in violation of Washington, DC gun laws for holding/showing a bullet magazine that had the capacity to hold more than 10 bullets. What other laws can be passed that would be more restrictive?

---

From a fellow BCer:

 

“The Israelis have it right. A psychopath would have to be crazy indeed to attack a school where everybody knows that the people are armed’’ “We could easily do what the Israelis are doing. How about some good old-fashioned American volunteerism?’’ * “It seems that the Israeli’s have got the mass school thing figured out. After all when’s the last time you heard of a mass shooting of Israeli school children?’’ -- or an EL AL air plane being hijacked and flown into a building?

---

Major question... why is the L-E sitting on the MCSD story that involved and employee driving a MCSD truck into people walking on a sidewalk at 6:35 AM on a Saturday? The event happened on a Saturday, was not mentioned until Tuesday (with additional info on Wednesday that should have been available for Tuesday's excerpt) but details are still being withheld?

---

Liberal's L-E "soundoff": "Middle-class Americans will pay over $2,000 more in taxes if the one percent gets an additional tax cut. " -- Hmmm, so if 3,150,000 people get a 1% tax cut, the other 311,850,000 people will pay $2,000.00 more? Hmmm $623,700,000,000. more in taxes.... that would only cover half of the debt pot-US Obluster will add onto the $6 Trillion he's already borrowed and spent buying the votes of 51% of those who voted for him. The 1% don't have that kind of money combined!

---

L-E story: "Columbus Technical College is now an official Achieving The Dream institute. Achieving The Dream is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping more community college students, particularly low-income students and students of color, stay in school and earn a college certificate and/or degree. * ATD uses data collected from its participating colleges — 168 nationwide — to evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Columbus Tech uses the information gathered to help students overcome common obstacles like financial burdens, transportation issues and even childcare challenges. It’s all about the college being open and forthright in order to improve their students’ chances at success. " -- Did I miss something? Sounds like the ATD is all about keeping as many teachers employed rather than finding work for others.

---

Another L-E story: "Columbus State University paleontologist David Schwimmer recently had an article describing an extinct species of fish published in a leading science journal. * Schwimmer, a longtime professor of geology at CSU, is the third of six co-authors of the article, The Giant Cretaceous Coelacanth (Actinistia, Sarcopterygii) Megalocoelacanthus dobiei Schwimmer, Stewart & Williams, 1994, and Its Bearing on Latimerioidei Interrelationships, published Nov. 27 in PLOS ONE, referring to the web-based, open-access Public Library of Science. * Schwimmer and his colleages present a fresh description of Megalocoelacanthus dobiei, a giant fossil coelacanth fish based on more recent fossil discoveries." -- " a fresh description of Megalocoelacanthus dobiei, a giant fossil coelacanth fish"? In the big picture, in the big scheme of everything.. does anyone of you know what this guy is talking about or care? Will it make a difference to solving lowering the cost of education and improving job opportunities awaiting graduates? Just another fish story that's beginning to smell.

---

L-E's "Thought for Today": “I’m not young enough to know everything.” — Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish dramatist-author (1860-1937). -- Hmmm, maybe we've been doing the education thing backwards. When students become teenagers, maybe we should send them out into the world to live on their own, and when they get 21... let'em back into the schools to learn what the found oit they didn't know...

---

L-E picture:

Rep. Anne Kaiser, D-Montgomery, an openly gay member of the Maryland General Assembly, hold N______ V______, 10 MONTHS, the daughter of a member of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's staff, after O'Malley signed the Civil Marriage Protection Act -- Whomever placed that shirt on a 10 MONTH old, and allowed her to be openly held by a non-family family professed lesbian, should have her motherhood rights recalled.

---

The Merry Minuet... sung by the Kingston Trio (watch out for rewritten versions of political correctness now showing up in Google searches):

They're rioting in Africa.

they're starving in Spain.

there's hurricanes in Florida

and Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering

with unhappy souls.

the French hate the Germans.

the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs.

South Africans hate the Dutch

and I don't like anybody very much!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud

for man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day

someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.

They're rioting in Africa. there's strife in Iran.

what nature doesn't do to us

will be done by our fellow man.

-- It could have been written yesterday or tomorrow.

---

L-E 'headlie'/story?: "Shoplifting suspect arrested again for violating Macy’s lifetime ban * A 19-year-old who was arrested Dec. 15 for allegedly shoplifting at Dillard’s was arrested again Monday for violating his lifetime ban from all of the company’s stores." -- Last I heard was that Macy's and Dillard's were two different companies...

---

The ACLU has been popping up in the news defending who knows what so more people can be inconvenienced by "inaneness". If the ACLU wants to HELP lots of people, how about taking up the cause of the taxpayers who are taxed at higher rates than other paypers?