NORAD’s real-time coverage of Santa’s flight path

Visit NORAD's Web site for Santa's minute by minute whereabouts

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Rate of homeless children has skyrocketed since 2007

It's no coincidence that this rapid increase started at the same time as the economy started to collapse. The bankers never seem to connect the dots and accept their responsibility for ruining families. For that matter, the political class isn't very good at that either as they keep finding new ways to make life easy for those who caused the problems.

In a report issued earlier this month, the National Center on Family Homelessness, based in Needham, Massachusetts, said 1.6 million children were living on the streets of the United States last year or in shelters, motels and doubled-up with other families. That marked a 38 percent jump in child homelessness since 2007 and Ellen Bassuk, the center's president, attributes the increase to fallout from the U.S. recession and a surge in the number of extremely poor households headed by women. Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau provided a sobering backdrop. Based on new or experimental methodology aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty, the data showed that about 48 percent of Americans are living in poverty or on low incomes.

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Springsteen & The E Street Band - Merry Christmas Baby

It won't be the same without The Big Man. Read the rest of this post...

Justice Dept. knocks down SC voter ID law

It's good to see that Attorney General Holder has managed to find something worthwhile to do rather than sucking up to the recording industry. This is what Democratic voters want to see from the Justice Department. Now onto the other states with similar racist laws.

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley in May signed into law a measure that says voters must show a driver's license, passport or military identification along with their voter registration card in order to vote. Under the law, anyone who wants to vote but does not have a photo identification must obtain a new voter registration card that includes a photo. A birth certificate or passport can be used to prove identity. The Justice Department said the requirement could harm the right to vote of tens of thousands of people, noting that just over a third of the state's minorities who are registered voters did not have a driver's license needed to cast a ballot.

Just in case you were wondering how the Justice Department has the power to block South Carolina's new law:

Under the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, certain states like South Carolina must seek approval from the Justice Department or the federal courts for changes made to state voting laws and boundaries for voting districts.

That's because certain states have historically been a bit too comfortable with racism. And it looks like certain states, and certain political parties, still are.

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Trump changes registration, now independent

What, is his TV show coming to an end and he needs to renegotiate again? NBC News:

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump has changed his voter registration in New York state from Republican to unaffiliated to preserve his option of running for president as an independent. Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump, said Friday that Trump could enter the race if Republicans fail to nominate a candidate who the real estate mogul believes can defeat President Barack Obama. Cohen told to NBC News that Trump would consider his position "after the finale of 'The Apprentice' in May of 2012 if he is not satisfied with the Republican nominee for president."

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Rolling Stone: Three Obama Keystone Pipeline scenarios

Obama has just signed into law the "Transition Social Security to the General Fund" bill, smartly branded as the "Here's $10" Payroll Tax Holiday. Way to go, Team Still Smarter Than You — that extra gift at the top end is completely invisible to me.

This is being positioned as a Big Win for the Blues (after all, who can't use $10 a week?) and a scathing defeat for the Reds. What the Reds (House Republicans) got in return was a mandated accelerated decision for the Keystone Sludge Oil Pipeline, something progressives and environmentalists fought hard against all last year.

The Red team goal was to put Obama in a box well within sight of his base; force his hand, in other words, since Obama clearly wants that pipeline built (as do the oil-soaked R's), but can't appear to want it until after the election. So goes the thinking, anyway.

Well, not so fast. According to Jeff Goodell writing in Rolling Stone, Obama has a way out of that box. The article is called "Keystone Pipeline Endgame: Three Scenarios". (Because the article was written before Obama signed the bill into law, only the last two are operative.)

Scenario Two is to sign the bill and renege, blow off the requirement. Here's Scenario Three (my emphasis and paragraphing to accommodate our columns):

3. Obama could sign the legislation and then find a way to allow the pipeline to get built, perhaps along a slightly different route. This scenario, which would require some fancy footwork from the White House, was laid out for me last night in an off-the-record conversation with a top environmentalist.

It goes something like this: Everything that happens in Washington right now is about the upcoming election. To win, Obama needs to keep his base happy; two key constituents are environmentalists and labor. Obama gave enviros a big win with the initial decision to delay the pipeline last month. But he gave them an even bigger win this week when he issued the first-ever rules to control toxic air pollution, including mercury from coal plants.

This was a huge deal, a move that will save tens of thousands of lives every year and likely lead to the shut-down of dozens of old coal plants. By virtually any measure (including reduced carbon pollution), the impacts of this rule far outweigh those of denying the pipeline.

Politically, this puts Obama (and his political team) in a sweet spot. He can now go to enviros and say: I gave you mercury regulations, now I'm going to OK the pipeline in order to make my friends in the labor unions happy and get Big Oil off my back.

In this scenario, he wins with enviros, he wins with labor, and he gets to point to the pipeline as a big infrastructure project that is creating jobs and keeping Americans working (although the number of jobs the pipeline will actually create has been wildly inflated).

He keeps Big Oil from hammering him in the election, and – best of all – he doesn't look captive to enviros. The risk, of course, is that he will have to back-track on the administration's much-praised decision to stall the pipeline. And hard-core anti-pipeline activists are likely to kick up a ... storm.

But most enviros will buy the argument that the mercury regulations were a much bigger deal than the pipeline, and thus criticism of the president will likely be muted. All in all, it could be a smart political play. That is, if your goal is to win re-election, rather than to actually break America's addiction to oil.

It will be interesting to watch this play out. The strategy is perfectly designed to confuse opposition, perfectly cynical, and perfectly soulless, in that "Once I was good, so of course I still am" kind of way.

Will Obama play that card? We've got until February (two months from bill-signing) to find out.

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The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping

Everyone ready for Christmas? Our very exciting new washing machine arrived and was installed on Wednesday. The delivery was scheduled for 8AM-12 but the phone rang at 7:30AM. I kept wondering what asshole kept phoning me at that hour and then the doorbell rang. They were about the nicest delivery crew ever, especially for such an early hour. I finally went with a capon for the meal so it's sitting in a brine at the moment. (Ooops, just remembered I had to flip it this morning.) I've never cooked one but could tell it has a lot more fat than a standard chicken. The capon weighs just over seven pounds so should be plenty. For starters we have a few dozen oysters, Alaskan smoked salmon, foie gras with fig spice bread and Champagne. For the main we have the capon plus chestnuts, green beans and mashed potatoes. I picked up a few cheeses including a goat cheese from Burgundy, a lamb's milk cheese from Corsica, a real Gruyere from Switzerland, a Brie from Melun (where I love to cycle) and a Beaufort. There will be a red Burgundy served and a vin jaune to go with the the cheeses, or at least the mountain cheese. We generally don't do a lot of gifts for each other over the holidays but instead, prepare a nice meal. (We do give each other gifts, but it's not dictated by the holidays.) Now to set the table and bring some order to the house. Joelle's parents plus an elderly neighbor are coming for Christmas dinner this evening. Tomorrow will for relaxing and maybe a bike ride to work off the dinner. Read the rest of this post...

France, UK inch closer towards recession

There's been a lot of back-and-forth between the UK and France over who has the worst economy, but ultimately they're both in trouble and neither has a strong near term future. The argument is a side show distraction for internal voters. The UK will continue to be hampered by the austerity program which has been too harsh and counter productive. Their banking industry, which provided a substantial portion of growth in the past won't return to it's "glory" days any time soon. (Or at least we should hope it doesn't.) In addition, nearly half of all trade is done with Europe which is on the edge of major problems. France has its own issues plus its a central player in the eurozone which is teetering on the edge of maybe not collapse, but significant restructuring. The eurozone of today is very likely to be very different from the eurozone of this time next year. There are too many open questions to provide for a stable market which means lots of action for currency traders. It's never good to get in the middle of traders who are looking for an opportunity to squeeze. Much of Europe avoided the depths of the recession that was experienced in the US a few years ago (which continues, of course) but 2012 may be the year it finally arrives. Read the rest of this post...

100 mile oil spill in Nigeria

Big Oil doing what Big Oil does. The track record in Nigeria is already bad, but this one stands out.

Oil from an offshore spill has spread roughly 100 nautical miles after a leak occurred while loading a tanker, a Nigerian official said Thursday. Royal Dutch Shell shut down a deep-water oil field off Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta on Tuesday. Peter Idabor, the head of the country's oil spill management agency, said the offshore oil spill is likely the worst in a decade.

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