Saturday "News on the Run"

Christmas is coming at us fast, with only 14 shopping days left till Americans spend maybe two or three hours ripping into gifts that will take them most of 2012 to pay for. Maybe, just maybe it is time we rethink our approach to this holiday?

How many readers of this blog remember back to the days when Christmas truly was special, when there was not a sign of Christmas in the stores until the day after Thanksgiving? Perhaps I am wrong, but seems too many people see the Christmas and Hanukkah end of the year Holiday Season as obligation, as a chore filled with stress, rather than a beautiful special time and day to be spent with those you love. Watch the news, and you see announcers giving us a blow by blow by the numbers, burdening us with the knowledge that corporations were/are counting on us to put their companies in the black for the year. At every step of the way we are programmed to spend, spend and spend some more, feeling guilty if we do not do our duty to God and Corporation by going into debt in the name of keeping our economy moving.

Believe it or not, many of the traditions that we observe during the Christmas holiday season began way before the birth of Christ. Exchanging gifts, decorating trees, and the burning of the Yule log were all winter traditions that began before Christ was born, but were eventually incorporated into the holiday that became known as Christmas, and became part of Christmas history.

Just seems there has to be a better way to celebrate this important end of the year Holiday...I mean we hardly even say Christmas any more, choosing instead the politically correct terms of Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays. Imagine a movement to get back to the basics of the season. Baking cookies with Mom, getting a group of folks together to go out caroling around the neighborhood, adopting a family in need for the holiday, making sure their table is filled with the same bounty as your own. Just a thought...
Saturday "News on the Run"

Lets start with something light...on CNN they had a list of the top items shoplifted here in America during the holiday season. Number two on the list is Jameson Whiskey, and number one Filet Mignon.

While beef and whiskey are seeing popularity among shoplifters in the U.S., the same is not true on the global market. The most stolen food in the world, apparently: cheese.

In Boston, police moved in and trashed another Occupy Wall Street protest site, with at least 46 protesters arrested, though there was no violence. First Amendment rights trampled on, but no violence.

The Boston Globe says "a large force of officers swooped down" on the encampment, and forty arrests were made "in the lightning-swift operation." It quotes police as saying all were on trespassing charges.

Yet another reason to close Entergy's trouble plagued Indian Point reactors....radioactive water still leaking inside crippled Japanese reactors...authorities say the radioactive water is not leaking into the environment...YET.

Last year, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors discovered design problems at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska and the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York. In the former case, the NRC applied the most serious sanction levied against any reactor in 2010 and required the plant's owner to correct the problem. But at Indian Point, the NRC essentially shrugged and allowed the safety problem to go unsanctioned and uncorrected.

Last but not least, in Russia where average citizens seems to care, tens of thousands of people are protesting Putin voter fraud in Moscow...seems the only time we see tens of thousands protesting here in America is when the subject matter involves giving rights to "Illegal Aliens".