He Sprang To His Sleigh, To His Team Gave A Whistle….

….And said "Oh, thank Heavens they didn't have a missile!"

A Santa flying in a helicopter over a slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, came under gunfire from the streets below as he was being flown to a Christmas party. The helicopter and Santa, fled the scene as soon as they realized that they were being shot at. Two bullet holes were found through the aircraft after it returned to the airport. Santa then had to make other, safer travel arrangements.

The helicopter was flying over the shanty town of Vila do Joao when the attack happened and it is believed the drug traffickers mistook it for a police helicopter.

The Santa later returned to Nova Mare by car to deliver his presents, where more than 1,000 children and parents were still waiting for his arrival.

The actor told Brazil's TV Globo that he feared there was going to be a crash, but when he saw that the pilot remained calm and that the helicopter was flying normally, he stopped worrying.

The president of the local residents' association said the children were very sad as they had expected Santa to arrive by helicopter.

Who knew there was an open season on Santas? Whats the bag limit?

Death Match Bambi

Going to the mat with Bambi! A Maryland man got to star in the main event by wrestling a deer into submission in his own living room.

MONROVIA, Md. - A man subdued a deer that ran through the front picture window of his house. Martin "Pete" Castle wrestled the beast to the floor in the living room, and carried it out through the garage door, when Frederick County Animal Control officers took over.

"My couch is ruined," says Castle's wife, Robin. She had to clean blood off her computer, printer and coffee table.

Pete Castle was in the garage when the deer entered the house though a hole no bigger than a large steering wheel on Saturday morning.

Word is that the WWF is interested in signing Castle. Or the deer. Or both, for a cage match.

Ronald Reagan Saves 14-Year Old

No, not the Gipper himself, of course, rather the ship named after him. The USS Ronald Reagan airlifted a 14-year old girl off the deck of a cruise ship by helicopter and flew her back to the ship where she underwent an emergency appendectomy in the ship's sick bay.

Laura Montero, 14, fell ill aboard the Dawn Princess cruise ship off the coast of Baja California. The Bahamian-registered ship sent out a distress call Friday that was answered by the USS Ronald Reagan, which was on training maneuvers about 500 miles away.

Montero, a fair-haired girl with bright blue eyes, appeared to be doing well as she gave a brief interview with reporters at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego.

"I'd like to thank the captain of the Dawn Princess, the surgeon and the crew and everyone on the USS Ronald Reagan," she said quietly, then flashed a shy grin. She said she was usually "a tiny bit" scared of heights but hadn't been nervous when she was hoisted on a flat stretcher into the helicopter that came to fetch her.

"I was in pain," she said.

The Reagan, a nuclear carrier, was the closest ship with a hospital facility, according to a news release from the Navy. It steamed overnight toward the cruise ship, which was about 250 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas when the call went out.

A helicopter took off from the Reagan around 5 a.m. Saturday to close the final 175-mile gap between the ships. The crew arrived after a 45-minute flight and lowered a medic onto the cruise ship deck in a basket because there wasn't space to land, said Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Leland, the pilot.

Montero, who was on an antibiotic drip, was loaded into a litter basket, lifted into the helicopter and flown back to the Reagan for an appendectomy. Her mother stayed aboard the cruise ship.

The Navy press release about the incident quotes Captain Terry B. Craft, the commanding officer of the Reagan:

"It's a great example of the type of things we are called upon to do, and it's neat we were able to execute it as well as we did," said Capt. Terry B. Kraft, Ronald Reagan's commanding officer.

"I was most impressed with the teamwork on board the ship. Everybody rallied together," added Kraft. "It was a great coordinated effort between our helicopter squadron, HS-4, our medical folks and the Sailors here on the ship that enabled us to head down there very quickly. I'm also very proud of our ship's surgeon, who completed a successful operation."

Kudos to the entire crew of the USS Ronald Reagan for a job well done. The Gipper would be very proud.

I Saw (Some Lady) Groping Santa Claus

Even the jolly, old elf himself isn't safe these days. A Santa at the Danbury Fair Mall (in Connecticut) was allegedly groped by a 33-year old woman. The woman was arrested and charged with sexual assault, so the authorities are taking this seriously.  

DANBURY, Conn. - Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him. "The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted," police Detective Lt. Thomas Michael said of the weekend complaint.

Sandrama Lamy, 33, of Danbury, was charged with sexual assault and breach of peace. She was released on a promise to appear in court on Jan. 3.

Police quickly found and identified Lamy because the woman was described as being on crutches, said Capt. Bob Myles.

A call seeking comment from Lamy was answered by a recording Tuesday morning. A woman later called back and said: "It's a false report and I don't have any idea."

The Santa in question, a 65-year old man, was particularly upset about the incident because children were waiting in line. There is no word on how much they might have seen of the incident.

You know, this is the second instance of a Santa being assaulted this year that I know of. The first was the genius film student who thought it would be funny to smash a pie into Santa's face. What the hell is wrong with people?

The Democrat’s Waterloo

David Freddoso at National Review Online says the Democrats, through a combination of the absolute ineptitude of their leadership, extraordinarily bad timing and a frankly disastrous plan of putting politics above policy have managed to set themselves up to hand the Republicans five major legislative victories in a week. This is precisely why I have been predicting that Reid and Pelosi will end up being reviled by the rank and file.

1) The first and biggest Republican victory comes in the form of the omnibus spending bill, which funds nearly every government agency. Not only does the bill, which was handed down yesterday morning, match President Bush’s funding levels, but it also contains none of the so-called “policy-riders” that Republicans had most feared, such as the abolition of the government’s Mexico City policy and even an expected expansion of union-backed “prevailing wage” rules. Democrats had no choice — they simply ran out of time, mostly because they thought it to their advantage to run down the clock (on this and the issues that follow). The best they seem to have come up with is a cut in abstinence education funding and money for needle exchanges in the District of Columbia. They are even patting themselves on the back for keeping out certain Republican provisions (English in the workplace), as though they were in the minority.

Conservatives have complained loudly (and rightly) that the bill is something of a “Christmas Tree,” containing more than 9,000 earmarked pork projects and $11 billion in so-called “emergency funding” (actually a widely used accounting gimmick to make the final number appear closer to the president’s request). The bill has other defects as well, yet Republicans are amazed at what they have gotten. They can’t believe it, and they are making heroic (if unsuccessful) efforts not to crow too loudly before it passes. This summer, Republicans could not have imagined negotiating Democrats down to this funding level — $933 billion in regular discretionary spending, right at the level of President Bush’s request.

I know that is a huge victory, but the others, I think, will sting even more. A massive capitulation on war funding will enrage the left wing, the collapse of the SCHIP political puppet show, a failure to get any meaningful energy bill passed and the absolute disaster of the failure to patch the AMT are going to leave bruises. Even if they somehow pull out the AMT fix, they will have delayed millions of tax returns in the process.

Some little bit of these victories can be credited to maneuvering by the Republicans, but mostly these are self-inflicted wounds for the Democrats. They look like total incompetents at the moment, and rightly so. They actually could have accomplished quite a few things but for their bumbling leaders. The steadfast refusal to negotiate or give an inch led them right into a box canyon. (Pelosi appears to have been mostly to blame for errors of commission, Reid just appears to be virtually clue proof, although he has had his moments of utter ineptitude as well.) Read the whole thing. It is a catalog of failure that is amusing if just for the Schadenfreude value.

Bad News For Clinton

These polling results indicate why camp Clinton launched the sudden charm offensive. Democratic voters are worried about nominating the most electable candidate - and they don't appear to think that candidate happens to be Hillary Clinton.

WASHINGTON — Democratic voters increasingly are focused on nominating the most electable presidential candidate, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama fares better than New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton against prospective Republican rivals.

Less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the nationwide survey finds races in both parties that are fluid enough to defy predictions and could be reshaped by results from the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire……

……In a shift, Democratic voters are almost evenly divided between those who want a nominee who agrees with them on almost all issues and those who want one with the best chance of beating the Republican. Last month, they preferred an ideological match by 3-2.

"The Democrats have become more comfortable with their field generally, so they think they'd all be a fairly decent president," says Democratic consultant Peter Fenn. "Then the question becomes, 'Who has the best chance of winning this thing?' "

While Clinton does still hold a slight lead over Obama and has actually rebounded a little, the latter bit of news is bad news for Clinton. If the voters are really that much less worried about ideology, then the elusive electability becomes that much more important. There is a significant percentage of people who simply do not like Clinton. This could really hurt her in the early contests - and momentum (or lack thereof) after those might be a deciding factor.

Sticking It To America

Steny Hoyer just made a rather shocking admission. The Democrats may not be able to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax, effectively sentencing 20 million American taxpayers to an average $2,000 fine of additional taxes. The fact that most of those who will get clobbered by this come from the bluest of blue states appears to be lost on the lunatics running the asylum.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted Tuesday that Congress may not be able to stop a big tax increase from hitting 23 million Americans.

Hoyer, pressed on whether Congress would resolve disputes over the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), said, “Maybe.”

His remark came as a surprise, since it has widely been assumed that Democrats will give up their effort to “pay for” the AMT patch and go with the Senate plan to load the cost onto the deficit.

Hoyer’s statement came the morning after nearly 30 conservative Blue Dog Democrats signaled their discontent with the Senate AMT plan by voting with Republicans against an adjournment resolution.

Hoyer was asked about efforts to resolve the dispute. He said he had come to the 11 a.m. briefing directly from the meeting to resolve the impasse and did not know the “state of play on AMT.”

“There’s no deal” with the Blue Dogs, he said.

An AMT patch must be passed soon to avoid a big tax hike. By waiting as long as they have, lawmakers have already raised the risk of a tax-filing mess that could provide fodder for political attacks. The IRS says it needs seven weeks from the time the president signs the AMT patch into law to update its forms and re-program its computers.

If they do not fix this, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy surprises for a lot of people. The fact that the impasse has resulted directly due to large contributions to the Senate Democrats will mean they will not have even a fig leaf to cover their failure. This is going to be a disaster for the Democrats in 2008.

Any wonder why America thinks Congress is useless? The conventional wisdom is that Democrats are going to do well in 2008. I think this disaster will make the election more of a "throw the bums out" election than anyone really expected up until now. Some of the most endangered will be those Blue Dogs - because all those fine principles will mean nothing to the taxpayer who has to shell out $2,000 due to Congressional Democrat's inability to manage a patch on the AMT. Those folks will be looking for a little payback.

If they do not fix this, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy surprises for a lot of people. The fact that the impasse has resulted directly due to large contributions to the Senate Democrats will mean they will not have even a fig leaf to cover their failure. This is going to be a disaster for the Democrats in 2008.

Any wonder why America thinks Congress is useless? The conventional wisdom is that Democrats are going to do well in 2008. I think this disaster will make the election more of a "throw the bums out" election than anyone really expected up until now. Some of the most endangered will be those Blue Dogs - because all those fine principles will mean nothing to the taxpayer who has to shell out $2,000 due to Congressional Democrat's inability to manage a patch on the AMT. Those folks will be looking for a little payback.

Even They Can’t Cover Up The Fraud

How ragingly bad must the fraud be if even the United Nations can't hide it from an internal investigation? A UN group has determined that there is widespread, pervasive fraud in the UN's peacekeeping operations. The fraud they admit to runs into hundreds of millions of dollars (and heading north rapidly) and 10 UN procurement officials have been charged with offenses so far. And they are not even finished investigating yet.

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. task force has uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials and services used by U.N. peacekeeping operations, which are in the midst of their largest expansion in 15 years.

In recent weeks, 10 procurement officials have been charged with misconduct for allegedly soliciting bribes and rigging bids in Congo and Haiti. It has been the largest single crackdown on U.N. staff malfeasance in the field in more than a decade

The task force has issued a series of public and confidential reports charging that corruption has spread from U.N. headquarters — where three officials have been convicted in bribery schemes — to the far reaches of its growing peacekeeping efforts. The task force has also cast a spotlight on the United Nations' repeated failure to take action against officials long suspected of wrongdoing, allowing them to carry out criminal schemes in one U.N. mission after another.

"The task force identified multiple instances of fraud, corruption, waste and mismanagement at U.N. headquarters and peacekeeping missions, including ten significant instances of fraud and corruption with aggregate value in excess of $610 million," said one report by the task force, headed by a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut, Robert Appleton.

The new corruption cases highlight the limits of reforms imposed since the early 1990s, when a previous buildup of peacekeeping missions led to reports of rampant corruption in Cambodia, Somalia and the Balkans. In response, in 1994 the United Nations created the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), but it has a poor record of holding corrupt officials to account.

Yet people insist on trusting the United Nations with the global economy? There is a definition of insanity that applies here. Why in the world have we not shut this sickeningly corrupt organization down or withdrawn from it?

Why do people trust the IPCC at this point? If they can be this corrupt and inept over a relatively straightforward program, how can you trust them on an enormously complex subject like the global environment?

British Authorities Come To Their Senses

It wasted some £4,000 of taxpayer money, dragged a 12-year old boy through the British court system for months, terrorizing him and made Britain look totally insane to the rest of the world. But finally, the British authorities have dropped the charges against the boy for his offense. That "crime" was to throw a cocktail sausage at a man.

The case of a boy charged with assaulting a pensioner with a cocktail sausage in a 'Just William-style' prank is set to be dropped after spiralling in cost, it was revealed today.

The bill for prosecuting the 12-year-old, who allegedly threw the pork snack at elderly neighbour is thought to have reached £4,000.

But now after the case was taken to court and adjourned FIVE times Crown lawyers are expected to announce they are offering no evidence against the schoolboy.

His mother, who said a 'notice of discontinuation' has been issued, today launched a furious attack on prosecutors for making her son's life a 'living nightmare'.

She said: "It was absolutely ludicrous to bring him before the court for that. My boy is in bits.

“Every night before he had to go to court he couldn't sleep.

"He was thinking somebody was going to come and take him off to prison."

Well, yes, they sent Sherlock Holmes, in fact. Got to have those priorities all straight and all. For example, the same authorities spent all that time and money on the case of the killer cocktail weenie which distracted them from requiring a violent offender to wear a monitoring bracelet. So that yob was free to attend a drunken party where he murdered a 15-year old.

It's all about priorities.

I’ll Be *Bleeped* For Christmas

The Daily Mail reports that BBC Radio has decided to bleep a word out of a 20-year old Christmas song by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl titled Fairytale of New York. Apparently, this song is a perennial hit around this time every year and is climbing toward number one again this year. The BBC says that the word 'faggot' may upset gays, therefore their belated decision to bleep it after 19 years of no problems.

Politically correct BBC Radio station chiefs have censored the word 'faggot' from a hit Christmas song in fear of upsetting homosexuals.

Fairytale of New York by the Pogues has fallen victim to 'the bleep' after being re-released for the festive period.

Censors have also decided the word 'slut' - but have deemed the word 'arse' okay to air.

The hit song, which is challenging for the Christmas number one spot, is famous for it's outrageous lyrics and was recently voted the best Xmas song ever in a VH1 pole.

The Pogues' legendary ballad tells the story of a junkie couple reminiscing on Christmas Eve about youthful ambitions which never materialised.

During the foul-mouthed pop hit, lead singer Shane MacGowan and English singer Kirsty MacColl hurl insults at each other in a supposedly drunken manner.

The song is, at best, depressing, but it is supposed to be two characters telling a story. (For some reason the Brits in particular seem to be fond of depressing Christmas songs, don't they?) You can decide for yourself if the BBC should bleep the word, the song can be listened to over at YouTube. I don't much care for it myself, but it seems a bit of an overreaction on the part of the BBC.

UPDATE: The Telegraph has some furious comments about the BBC'c nannyish behavior from readers. It ain't pretty.

Unintelligent Design

The New York Times has an interesting article on unintelligent design. No, this has nothing to do with the debate over creationism versus evolution, this is about lousy design in something really important: gadgets.

So the bad news is that despite two decades of lectures from Dr. (Donald) Norman on the virtue of “user-centered” design and the danger of a disease called “featuritis,” people will still be cursing at their gifts this Christmas.

And the worse news is that the gadgets of Christmas future will be even harder to command, because we and our machines are about to go through a rocky transition as the machines get smarter and take over more tasks. As Dr. Norman says in his new book, “The Design of Future Things,” what we’ll have here is a failure to communicate.

“It would be fine,” he told me, “if we had intelligent devices that would work well without any human intervention. My clothes dryer is a good example: it figures out when the clothes are dry and stops. But we are moving toward intelligent machines that still require human supervision and correction, and that is where the danger lies — machines that fight with us over how to do things.”

Can this relationship be saved? Until recently, Dr. Norman believed in the favorite tool of couples therapists: better dialogue. But he has concluded that dialogue isn’t the answer, because we’re too different from the machines.

You can’t explain to your car’s navigation system why you dislike its short, efficient route because the scenery is ugly. Your refrigerator may soon know exactly what food it contains, what you’ve already eaten today and what your calorie limit is, but it won’t be capable of an intelligent dialogue about your need for that piece of cheesecake.

It's actually an amusing, yet disturbing, read. Dr. Norman is not at all optimistic that designers of many of these gadgets will figure this problem out in the short term. Norman has spent two decades or more trying to get designers and engineers to design the human-machine interface in a way that makes sense to the end-user. It is an uphill battle at best, a losing one at worst. Gadgets just keep coming out that appear to have extra "features" tacked on for no apparent reason whatsoever. Fundamentally, however, the problem is not really the machine as much as it is the human element, of course.

“Our frustrations with machines are not going to be solved with better machines,” Dr. Norman said. “Most of our technological difficulties come from the way we interact with our machines and with other people. The technology part of the problem is usually pretty simple. The people part is complicated.”

Or, as I like to say, the nut behind the wheel is loose.

The Undemocratic Democrats

An op ed in today's New York Times by some people with intimate knowledge of the caucus process in Iowa charges that the Democratic party caucus rules are arcane, obscure and fundamentally undemocratic. The rules that apply only to the way the Democrats conduct their events do not report actual vote tallies, only delegate results.

An early order of business in each Democratic precinct caucus in Iowa is a count of the candidate preferences of the attendees. For all practical purposes, this is just what the polls try to measure. But Iowa Democrats keep the data hidden. The one-person, one-vote results from each caucus are snail-mailed to party headquarters and placed in a database, never disclosed to the press or made available for inspection.

Instead, the Democratic Party releases the percentage of “delegate equivalents” won by each candidate. The percentage broadcast on the networks and reported in the newspapers is the candidate’s share of the 2,500 delegates the party apportions across Iowa’s 99 counties, based on Democratic voter turnout in each of the 1,784 precincts in the two most recent general elections. So, the turnout for a candidate in a precinct caucus could be huge, yet the candidate’s share of the delegate pie could be quite small — if that precinct had low voter turnout in 2004 and 2006.

Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents — that is, the headline “winner” — did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses. Further, it is possible that a second or third-tier candidate could garner a surprising 10 percent or 12 percent of the popular vote statewide and get zero delegates. (That’s because to be in the running for a delegate a candidate must have support from at least 15 percent of the people at a precinct caucus.) He or she may have done two or three times as well as expected among Iowa’s Democratic voters and get no recognition for it.

The Republicans follow completely different rules and are transparent with the actual counts of attendee preferences. Frankly, the caucuses are a kind of an odd throwback to an earlier day to begin with. The Democrat's rules smack more than a bit of the old smoke-filled room day of politics. Secrets kept from the voters and from the media are a real problem in the political process. A secret system like this could also easily be manipulated by insiders, couldn't it?

Makes you wonder why the rules are written as they are, doesn't it?

You There! Step Away From The Pepsi!

The Mayor of San Francisco is just the latest politician to presume to dictate what foods may or may not be consumed by free citizens. He wants to impose taxes on so called big box retailers that target soft drinks. Even the San Francisco Chronicle realizes this imposition of the nanny state is inherently unfair and ultimately useless.

We heartily agree with Mayor Gavin Newsom that soft drinks, loaded with high-fructose corn syrup and caffeine, are unhealthful.

But there is also something unhealthful about a politician's attempt to selectively target one source of calories for a new tax - the mayor prefers to call it a "small" fee - to fight obesity. Newsom is raising the idea of imposing a fee on large retailers who sell sodas to help fund the "Shape Up San Francisco" program and a media campaign about the evils of soft drinks.

Guess what? Kids, especially teens, have heard the lectures about "empty calories," but it doesn't stop them from making unhealthful choices when they decide how they want to wash down that Big Mac and supersize fries or a giant slice of pizza. Government could drive itself crazy trying to calculate the societal cost of a bag of Cheetos, a bucket of extra-crispy fried chicken or a sumptuous serving of tiramisu at the end of a four-course meal.

The left is fond of screeching that government should stay out of their bedrooms yet appear to have no trouble with the food police inspecting what is in your refrigerator. The Chronicle points out that the tax, as proposed, would not target the likely source of many of the sodas consumed - small grocery or convenience stores. This is just another imposition of a nanny state mentality that should be causing outrage among voters. Things like this are not what we pay government to do. We should not tolerate this. If you start letting government decide what is good for you, you are giving away your personal freedom. Come on San Francisco voters, tell Newsom to keep his nose in his own refrigerator and out of yours.

700 Pages Of Pork

The Examiner notes the ginormous festival of pork that has made its way into the omnibus spending bill just passed by the House. The list runs to nearly 700 pages - each page crammed with money taken from taxpayers and glad-handed away by Congress. They look at just one earmark and ask why.

Within hours of the bill’s posting, eagle-eyed readers were uncovering gems like the $2.6 million noncompetitive award for unstated purposes to the National Center on Education and the Economy, with the money required to be delivered within 30 days. A couple of quick Internet searches revealed that NCEE is a 501 C(3) tax-exempt educational foundation devoted to providing “strategic assistance” to local, state and federal policy-makers on work force development programs in education.

Marc Tucker is NCEE’s most highly compensated officer, receiving more than $800,000 in salary and benefits, according to the organization’s most recent 990 tax return. Tucker is a long-time donor to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., including giving the maximum individual contribution of $4,600 to her presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. Over the years, he has contributed to other major Democratic leaders like 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Tucker is free to support the candidates of his choice, of course. But NCEE’s tax return showed more than $30 million on hand at the end of the 2006 tax period and the group claims to receive support from many of the nation’s richest private foundations, so why does Tucker’s group need a sweetheart deal paid by the taxpayers for $2.6 million and why the rush? Since the NCEE award is just one paragraph taken from nearly 700 pages of pork barrel in the omnibus spending measure, President Bush should get that veto pen ready.

The sheer number of pork items is staggering. This is only one of them. Betsy Newmark has a link to the Heritage Foundation's Omnibusting website, which has ferreted out more than 11,000 separate pork expenditures - so far. That's our money they are shoveling out , at least in part to keep their campaign funds flowing in. That has got to stop, folks. Regardless of what party you belong to, you should be vehemently opposed to this practice.

Just In Time For Christmas

Donald Sensing tells of walking away virtually unhurt from an automobile accident that by all rights should have killed him.