Good morning to you all.  It is unseasonably warm and the weather people expect the pattern to remain for at least another week.  Everyone is wondering if we will get a white Christmas.  It looks chancy at the moment.

Well, the House Repthuglicans put their extension of the payroll tax holiday with, of course, a Christmas gift to the oil industry--approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.  If these guys were on the streets they would be called extortionists.

I am not surprised at this given the hysteria that has been whipped up over illegal immigration.  Let's see--first we had Americans with Islamic names put on a travel watch list from which they were never able to get off.  Now we have Americans with Spanish/Hispanic surnames who spend days in detention until they prove their status.  They say no citizen has been unlawfully deported but I have to wonder if that is true and, if true, how long before that happens.

Evidently, that storm that produced the high winds and dramatic waves that hit Scotland also produced the largest wave ever recorded in Irish seas some 60 miles off Donegal, Ireland--a 67 ft. monster.

From high seas and winds in Ireland and Scotland to drought at in the Danube Basin.  Over the last couple of years several areas have discovered the threat drought poses to hydroelectric power supplies.

Tina Dupuy at Crooks & Liars has a perfectly on target analysis of Newt Gingrich and his proposals.  That this Repthuglican is now the front runner for the Republican nomination says volumes of where that once Grand Old Party has fallen.

This Crooks & Liars story had us rolling.  No, we don't find the charges that Sandusky is charged with sexually abusing ten, at last count, boys funny.  But there is something choice when his lawyer, in a news conference after waiving his client's right to a preliminary hearing, tells the reporters that anyone who believes his upstanding client is guilty needs to 'dial 1-800-REALITY.'  The number is real and is for a---gay, anal, phone sex line.