“It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities.”

– Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) US author

Science Daily (Dec. 31, 2009) — Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.

However, some studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.

Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for

predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase.

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

WASHINGTON – As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring a bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane and tries to blow it up on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident.

TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.

Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about three hours and again on Wednesday morning when he was forced to hand over his lap top computer. Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn’t cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo.

“It literally showed up in my box,” Frischling told The Associated Press. “I do not know who it came from.” He said he provided the agents a signed statement to that effect.

“[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.” –

–Zacharia Johnson, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

“Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero.”

“The solutions are in our hands; we just have to have the determination to make it happen.”

Al Gore-President in waiting and world-class hypocrite.

—Orlando Sentinel

(AP) MOSCOW (AP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia wants the U.S. to share detailed data about its planned missile shield under a new arms control treaty, signaling potential new difficulties in the ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

LONDON TIMES: Russia needs more weapons to punch through America’s new missile defence shield, Vladimir Putin said yesterday in blunt remarks that will complicate efforts to cut the nuclear arsenals of the former Cold War rivals.

The Russian Prime Minister, reasserting himself as the country’s real ruler, said that Moscow should press ahead with a new generation of weapons to stop the Americans doing “whatever they want”.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year’s Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don’t expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor.

Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) — France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a web of exemptions violated the principal of equality and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.

The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20.

The tax, which would have started on Jan. 1, was set at 17 Euros ($24.38) per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in September. To make the tax more palatable, he partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.

RAPID CITY JOURNAL: A Sturgis woman had a blood-alcohol level of .708 percent, possibly a state record, when she was found earlier this month behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle parked on Interstate 90, according to Meade County State’s Attorney Jesse Sondreal.

A South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper discovered Marguerite Engle, 45, on Dec. 1 passed out behind the wheel of a delivery truck reported stolen in Rapid City.

Her blood-alcohol level was almost nine times South Dakota’s legal limit of .08 percent.

Checks with local and state labs where blood-alcohol levels are tested suggest Engle’s reading may be the highest ever recorded in South Dakota, Sondreal said.

Sondreal said a state chemist recalled a sample that tested .53, but nothing higher, in his more than 30 years on the job.

Sondreal’s research indicates that a blood-alcohol level of .40 is considered a lethal dose for about 50 percent of the population.

“Engle’s was almost double that,” Sondreal said.

After she was found, Engle was hospitalized and freed on bond.

She failed to appear in court on Dec. 15, but Sturgis police located her Monday evening in another stolen car sitting in a ditch along S.D. Highway 34 near Fort Meade.

Engle was arrested for second offense driving under the influence and taken to jail.

Sondreal said Engle has been living in a hotel after recently moving here from Minnesota.

“Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But the Marines don’t have that problem.”

…Ronald Reagan

LONDON TIMES: Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants are planning terror attacks from Yemen, the country’s Foreign Minister said today.

Abu Bakr al-Qirbi appealed for more help from the international community to help to train and equip counter-terrorist forces.

His plea came after an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day airliner bomb plot.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, alleged to be behind the attempt to blow up an American-bound aircraft, spent time in Yemen with al-Qaeda and was in the country only days before the failed attack.

The Citizens against Public Waste have published their “2009 Pig Book”. Among the absurd examples of state waste detailed in the Piglet Books: $11,900,000 for a new 55,000-sq. foot administrative building for 116 turnpike workers in Maine; $9 million for the “Party Bunker,” an underground entertainment facility buried in the front yard of the Governor’s Mansion in Tennessee; $4 million for a private golf club in Louisiana; and $875,000 to reconstruct a hiking trail that is now barred from public access in Hawaii.

If you would like to learn more about Citizens against government waste or become a member, I am including their URL. http://www.cagw.org/

In January 2000, leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, invited their favorite son, Billy Graham, to a luncheon in his honor. Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because he struggles with Parkinson’s disease. But the Charlotte leaders said, ‘We don’t expect a major address. Just come and let us honor you.’ So he agreed… After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and said, ‘I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honored by Time magazine as the Man of the Century.

Einstein was once traveling from Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets. It wasn’t there, so he looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it. Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it. The conductor said, ‘Dr. Einstein, I know who you are. We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.’ Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket. The conductor rushed back and said, ‘Dr. Einstein, Dr. Einstein, don’t worry, I know who you are No problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.’ Einstein looked at him and said, ‘Young man, I too, know who I am.

What I don’t know is where I’m going.” Having said that Billy Graham continued, ‘See the suit I’m wearing? It’s a brand new suit. My children and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this luncheon and one more occasion. You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing. I want you to remember this: I not only know who I am… I also know where I’m going.’ Thanx, Dick

“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.” Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian Writer

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory.

Conferences involving members from both houses are messy things. They are usually conducted in public and often televised, and can produce a compromise version of the bill that leaves rank-and-file members tempted to vote against the final version. That could be perilous in the case of health care since it’s likely to pass without a vote to spare in the Senate and the House’s version passed by only five votes.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, chair of the Budget Committee, has already warned that if the final bill “isn’t close to the Senate bill, there will be no way to get the 60 votes here” to shut off debate and pass the final product. But many House members, led by Michigan Rep. John Conyers, are insisting on major changes in the Senate’s version.

Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi would love to come up with a way to bash heads in private and skip any public discussion that further reveals just how incoherent and unworkable both the bills are. Luckily, there is a subterfuge readily available that wouldn’t require the House to swallow the Senate’s bill unchanged but also ducks the traditional give-and-take of the conference committee.

“…Which brings us to the age of Obama, perhaps — mirabile dictu — the most exhilarating time of all. There is nothing as bracing for democracy as the alternation of power, particularly when it yields as serious, determined and challenging an ideological agenda as Barack Obama’s. This third wave of transformative liberalism — FDR, then LBJ, now Obama — is no time for triangulation. This is not incrementalism. We’re not debating school uniforms. When Obama once declared Ronald Reagan historically consequential and Bill Clinton not, he meant it. Obama intends to be the Reagan of the new liberalism.”

–Dr. Charles Krauthammer—Washington Post Columnist

THE HILL: Freshman Rep. Parker Griffith (D-Ala.), a Blue Dog Democrat, announced on Tuesday that he is switching parties to become a Republican.

Griffith has bucked his party on nearly all of the items at the top of its legislative agenda.

Griffith said in August that he would not back Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for House Speaker again because she is too divisive.

“I would not vote for her. Someone that divisive and that polarizing cannot bring us together,” he told the Huntsville Times. “If she doesn’t like it, I’ve got a gift certificate to the mental health center.”

The White House appeared to be caught unaware. At the end of the daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he did not know that Griffith was switching parties.

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives have been pressuring him not to speak out on the “compromise” abortion language in the Senate version of the health care bill. “They think I shouldn’t be expressing my views on this bill until they get a chance to try to sell me the language,” Stupak told CNSNews.com in an interview on Tuesday. “Well, I don’t need anyone to sell me the language. I can read it. I’ve seen it. I’ve worked with it. I know what it says. I don’t need to have a conference with the White House. I have the legislation in front of me here.”

The current version of the Senate bill contains so-called “compromise” language crafted by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). This language does not bar taxpayer funding of

health plans that cover abortion, but does create a firewall to supposedly keep federal money from being used to pay for abortions. Over the weekend, Stupak issued a statement calling the proposed Senate language “unacceptable.” “A review of the Senate language indicates a dramatic shift in federal policy that would allow the federal government to subsidize insurance policies with abortion coverage,” said the statement.

(Guardian-U.K.)

BREITBART: President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday announced a new chain of government-run, cut-rate retail stores that will sell everything from food to cars to clothing from places such as China, Argentina and Bolivia.

“We’re creating Comerso, meaning Socialist Corporation of Markets,” Chavez said at the opening of a “socialist” fast-food location for traditional Venezuelan arepas (cornbread).

“They’ll see what’s good. We’ll show them what a real market is all about, not those speculative, money-grubbing markets, but a market for the people,” said Chavez in his drive to change Venezuela from a market-based economy to a socialist one.

CBS NEWS: Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, responded Tuesday to widespread criticism that Democrats only garnered the 60 votes needed to defeat Republican stalling tactics on the health reform bill by catering to self-interest, saying Democrats are focusing on the big picture; “trying to cross a demarcation line.” Harkin dismissed deals dubbed vote-buying by GOP senators as “small stuff” that distracted Americans from the primary focus of the overhaul bill.

“On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we’ll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.”

ASSOCIATED CONTENT: Nathan Myhrvold is a former technology officer for Microsoft who has found his own company, Intellectual Ventures, which is involved in a number of technology development programs, including new forms of energy generation.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Carbon prices plunged yesterday in the aftermath of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, dealing a blow to the credibility of the European Union’s carbon-trading scheme.

Prices for carbon permits for December 2010 delivery, the benchmark contract for pricing European permits, dropped nearly 10 per cent in early trading, before recovering to end the day 8.3 per cent lower at €12.41.

Lower prices give companies less incentive to invest in cutting their greenhouse gas output. Analysts estimate that prices of more than €40 a tonne are required to stimulate investment in new low-carbon technologies.

MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE: A large winter storm with the potential to dump a foot or more of snow is grinding its way toward Minnesota, and its arrival is likely to mess up travel plans, complicate last-minute errands and ensure a very white Christmas.

“It’s not definite yet, but it has an uncanny resemblance to the East Coast storm last Saturday,” meteorologist Paul Douglas posted Monday on his Facebook page. “I

want to see one to two more computer runs, but this could be the snowiest Christmas for Minnesota in 30 years.”…

“This is major,” said James McQuirter, meteorologist at the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service. “It might not get out of here until Saturday.”

Douglas said in an interview that, depending on the temperature, freezing rain, sleet and/or ice could enter the picture, particularly to the east and south.

“The question is the timetable and the amounts. … It’s going to be wave after wave of snowfall.” As my sister in Minnesota would say, “Where is this global warming when you need it?”

All I have to say on this is they better be true specialists in “sustainable living”, because the term acquires a whole new meaning when one has both “right & left wing militias” after them.

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba’s foreign minister called President Barack Obama an “imperial and arrogant” liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island’s increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

Bruno Rodriguez spent an hour and a half lambasting Obama’s behavior in Copenhagen, telling a news conference, “at this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries.”

He called the summit “a fallacy, a farce” and said Washington used back-room deals and strong-arm tactics to foist on the world a deal that he labeled “undemocratic” and “suicidal” because it urges - but does not require - major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts.

Rodriguez also said Cuba and other poor nations have refused to recognize the agreement because they weren’t permitted to participate in its development.

He singled out comments Obama made during a news conference in Copenhagen, when the U.S. president said no agreement had yet been reached but he was confident one would before the summit ended. “Obama knew he was lying, that he was deceiving public opinion,” the foreign minister said.

During his syndicated radio show Friday, libtalker and MSNBC host Ed Schultz relayed to listeners how he observed ‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski take feedback directly from the White House during their program last week. Schultz appeared on Thursday’s Morning Joe and directly challenged Obama’s David Axelrod on the current version of the health care bill under consideration in Congress. Interestingly, this particular segment has since generated a great deal of attention elsewhere, given the defensive nature of the White House advisor and the supposed conflict between the far left and the administration: And here’s what Ed told radio listeners the next day about the visit: SCHULTZ (07:14): I just want to get things clear, it was not arranged for me to have a question for David Axelrod. SCHULTZ (08:12): So Mika starts looking at her Blackberry and so does Scarborough and obviously the White House is texting them or emailing them or whatever and they didn’t like the show. Because Arianna had been on there, I’m on there, Howard Dean

had been on there and they wanted some balance. Now think about that - here’s the White House getting in contact with ‘Morning Joe’ because they’re afraid there’s too many lefties on the air! Now if that’s not sensitivity at its highest level, I don’t know what is! I told ya a few days ago they had rabbit ears! They don’t like anything that’s being said right now, they’re getting beat up!

Is it really possible that the White House has a direct line to MSNBC’s hosts, communicating with them during their live broadcasts? Now THAT’S state control! And do MSNBC staffers actually carry out the administration’s commands? In this case, they certainly made room on short notice for a lengthy segment featuring Axelrod, there to rebut comments made by Howard Dean and other recent guests. Now, imagine if Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, or another non-”progressive” host had been caught taking orders from Bush during the program. When would we ever hear the end of that?

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. ” –Ronald Reagan

A true liberal will never defend his own country.

In all, the Navajo population in the U.S. is about 250,000, the largest tribe in the nation. The Navajo Reservation, including Monument Valley, covers 17.5 million acres in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Navajos prefer to call themselves Dine (Di-NEH, or “the people”).

Valdez socked in

All the experts says the effects of climate change will be felt most in Alaska, home of the ex-governor who contends climate change is no big deal.

Good thing she wasn’t in Valdez this week when the citizenry got buried under a record snowfall. We’re not talking about your ordinary little dump here. That was in Copenhagen, where world leaders were meeting to discuss what to do about global warming and the Bloomberg news service was warning that Barack Obama and the rest would “face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.”

Four inches overnight? Valdez got more than four inches per hour at the height of the snowstorm that began there Monday and ran through the week. By the time the citizens of Alaska’s only oil port finally caught a break, the snow was piled 5 feet, 8 inches deep.

Yes, you read right.

Five feet, 8 inches; over the head of your average American woman, up the nose of your average American man. The National Weather Service called it record. Fire hydrants were buried so deep under snow not even Tiger Woods could have hit them.

Not that residents are letting it bother them too much. At Valdez City Hall Thursday afternoon, accounting clerk Chris Moulton looked out the window and didn’t see any lights on in other buildings — City Hall has a generator, he said, but it looked like everyone else was in the dark.

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.” –Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Wednesday passed legislation giving the federal government the ability to borrow a whopping $290 billion to finance its operations for just six additional weeks.

The 218-214 vote sends the must-pass bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve it as its last act before adjourning for the year. The alternative would be a market rattling, first-ever default on U.S. obligations.

The measure is needed as a result of the out-of-control budget deficit, which registered $1.4 trillion for the budget year that ended in September. The current debt ceiling is $12.1 trillion and is set to be reached by Dec. 31.

Democrats had hoped to pass a far larger increase of almost $2 trillion to avoid another vote before next year’s midterm elections - and to wrap the increase into the popular defense appropriations bill to give some political cover.

WORLD NET DAILY: Twenty senators are demanding an investigation into reports the Obama administration threatened to close Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska if that state’s Democratic senator, Ben Nelson, didn’t join other Democrats in voting for health-care reform. The group of 20, all Republicans, today called for a hearing in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and the committee’s top Republican Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz

THE HILL: Sen. John Kerry wavered Wednesday on whether Congress will accept a cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon emissions.

Kerry (D-Mass.) told reporters at the climate change summit in Copenhagen that he isn’t sure what system Congress will endorse for setting the prices companies will pay for carbon emissions.

Kerry and other advocates of greenhouse gas curbs say it is vital to create a system that makes industries pay for carbon emissions in order to reduce them and spur the development of green energies.

U.S. officials say President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev plan to meet Friday during the U.N. climate talks as the two countries seek a deal to replace an expired Cold War-era arms control treaty.

AP – This photo released by Anthony M. Tortoriello shows Faith a two-legged d

LOS ANGELES – For several years, Jude Stringfellow and her Lab-chow mix have toured the country with a simple message: Faith walks.

Born without front legs to a junkyard dog around Christmas 2002, Faith the puppy was rejected and abused by her mother. She was rescued by Reuben Stringfellow, now an Army E-4 specialist, who had been asked to bury other puppies in the litter.

“Can we fix her? Stringfellow, then 17, asked his mom. “No, but maybe we can help her,” she said.

So Reuben turned Faith over to his mother, English professor Jude Stringfellow. At first, the family had to carry Faith to keep her off her chest and chin. But with peanut butter and practice, Faith learned to walk on her two hind legs.

Today Faith is a brisk, upright walker. When she runs, every so often she adds a hop or skip to her step, but she stumbles less often than most humans. She takes vitamins and joint supplements, and vets have declared her very healthy, Stringfellow said.

Since her first step on March 22, 2003, Faith has done the talk show circuit, gone on tour with Ozzy Osbourne and been named an honorary Army sergeant. Jude Stringfellow has become a motivational speaker and written two books. Next year, the

two are moving from Ardmore, Okla., to Chicago where they plan to write a third called “Faith Walks.”

For many, Faith brings a powerful message about overcoming adversity. “Faith has shown me that different is beautiful, that it is not the body you are in but the soul that you have,” Jill Salomon of Montreal, Canada, wrote on Faith’s Web site.

Stringfellow will never forget a woman from New York who happened to see Faith on a street corner. She was depressed and had lost both legs to diabetes.

“She was in her wheelchair and saw us. She was crying. She had seen Faith on television. She just held her and said she wished she had that kind of courage.” Stringfellow said. “She told us: ‘I was on my way to pick up the gun.’ She handed the pawn ticket to a police officer and said she didn’t need it anymore.”

That sense of hope is especially important for Faith’s visits to Army bases. Last weekend she headed to Washington state, where she met with as many as 5,000 soldiers at McChord Air Force Base and Fort Lewis. Some of the soldiers were headed to war, some were coming back.

“She just walks around barking and laughing and excited to see them all,” Jude Stringfellow said. “There is a lot of crying, pointing and surprise. From those who have lost friends or limbs, there can be silence. Some will shake my hand and thank me, some will pat her on the head. There is a lot of quiet, heartfelt, really deep emotion.”

Faith never fails to bring a smile to a soldier’s face, said Patrick Mcghee, general manager at Fort Lewis.

“To see the children interact with Faith is simply priceless,” he said.

But Faith’s most emotional reunion — with Reuben Stringfellow, who rescued her 7 years ago this Christmas — will have to wait for January. He’s already gotten Faith a birthday present: a peanut butter cookie with her name on it.

“For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.” –Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian Writer