Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf post small December sales

If you build it they will pass.

DETROIT (AP) -- This was the year General Motors Co. and Nissan made good on their promise to bring mass-produced electric cars to the market. But don't count on seeing one in traffic soon. Sales so far have been microscopic and they're likely to stay that way for some time because of limited supplies.

GM sold between 250 and 350 Chevy Volts this month and Nissan's sales totaled less than 10 Leaf sedans in the past two weeks. Production for both is slowly ramping up.

It's still unclear just how large the market for electric cars will be once those early adopters are supplied. The base sticker price is $40,280 for the Volt and $32,780 for the Leaf, much higher than most similar-sized, gas-powered cars. If those prices rise, it could make them even more of a niche product than predicted. Buyers also are worried that advertised lease deals may not last, and a federal tax rebate of $7,500 could disappear if Congress decides battery-powered cars are no longer a priority.

Pinstripe Bowl a Joke

I have seem some ridiculous excuses for a bowl game in my life but this POS takes the cake.

The officiating was suspect thoughout but the call of "excessive celebration" after the Kansas State score with 42 seconds left was surreal. The player simply saluted the crowd and was penalized 15 yards which essentially took them out of the possibility of a 2 point conversion to tie the game. Absolutely disgusting.

The ref that made that call should be fired for life.

It's bad enough that so many bowls have become a "home team" playing on their home field against a team usually out of the midwest and calling it fair is ludicrous. (Illinois-Baylor, Army- SMU) etc etc. Home fields all.

I am an Iowa fan so I've got no dog in the race but I'm so sick and tired of the biased commentators and the the crap that is presented, it's unbelievable.

Bowls are supposed to be 2 equally matched teams on a neutral field. It's become anything but.

US revokes Venezuela ambassador's visa amid Chavez row

Lovers quarrel or Kabuki Theater?

Washington has revoked the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to the US, the US state department has said.

The move comes amid a diplomatic dispute between the two countries over President Barack Obama's choice of ambassador to Caracas, Larry Palmer.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been angered by comments Mr Palmer made about the country this year, and withdrew his approval of Mr Palmer.

The US move in effect expels Venezuelan envoy Bernardo Alvarez Herrera.

Al Gore Blasts Fox News Over Global Warming 'Bias'

Former Vice President Al Gore is picking a fight with Fox News over a year-old management memo that he says betrays a bias against global warming science.

"Fox News has consistently delivered false and misleading information to its viewers about the climate crisis," Gore wrote on his website. "The leaked e-mails now suggest that this bias comes directly form the executives responsible for their news coverage."

Gore was referring to a Dec. 8, 2009 memo attributed to Fox News' Washington Managing Editor Bill Sammon and posted by the liberal-leaning website Media Matters, according to The Hill newspaper. In the memo, Sammon wrote, "Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts."
Media Matters said the memo went out just after a Fox News correspondent reported that the United Nations World Meteorological Organization had said 2000 to 2009 was the warmest decade on record.

The prevailing view in the scientific community is that it's getting hotter -- and the warming is due to human activities such as energy production from coal-fired power plants. But there are dissenters, some of whom suggest that the warming is cyclical and not man-made.

"There's no legitimate debate," Gore insisted. "The planet is warming. Moreover, man-made global warming pollution is the principal cause."

So, making sure that both sides are represented is deemed bias. How typical of the left to brand any reported disagreement with THEIR views as prejudiced.

Had missed this article when originally published, thank you to presidio9 at FR for bringing it to my attention.

Fox Crushes Competition

Any wonder why the left despises Fox?

In 2010 Fox News Had More Total Viewers Than MSNBC, CNN, And HLN COMBINED.

The ratings are out for 2010.

Perhaps not surprisingly Fox News continued its march of dominance through the cablesphere, clocking its second-highest rated year ever in total viewers.

It was also the only news channel to hit the top 10 in cable networks, ranking fourth in Primetime behind USA, ESPN and TNT.

Want some context for that? Fox News' total viewers for the year exceeded MSNBC, HLN, and CNN combined.

That dominance came primarily at the expense of CNN which lost 29% of its total viewership in 2010 and 34% of its prime time viewers.

Home price plunge is widespread

More great news from Obamaville.

NEW YORK -- Home prices took a shockingly steep plunge on a monthly basis, an indication that the housing market could be on the verge of -- if it's not already in -- a double-dip slump, according to an industry report released Tuesday.

Prices in 20 key cities fell 1.3% in October from a month earlier, an annualized decline of 15%, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index. Prices were down 0.8% from 12 months earlier.

Month-over-month prices dropped in all 20 metro areas covered by the index. Six markets -- Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Miami; Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Tampa, Fla. -- reached their lowest levels since the housing bust first began in 2006 and 2007.

"The double-dip is almost here," said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "There is no good news in October's report. Home prices across the country continue to fall."

Foreclosures Still Dragging Down Housing, Economy

Plain and simple, untill this turns around the economy will continue to stink.

The housing market has remained at the center of the nation's economic troubles throughout 2010. The housing market started the year flat on its back, and it's ending the year in nearly the same condition.

Home sales are still depressed, home-building remains near a 50-year low, and home prices are still about 30 percent below their peak.

Part of the problem this year has clearly been high unemployment. But the ongoing foreclosure crisis also keeps glutting the market with unsold homes. Meanwhile, the government's efforts to prevent foreclosures over the past year were a pretty big disappointment to many people.

'Octomom' Faces Eviction From California Home

Better have a few more.

LOS ANGELES - The man who sold his Southern California home to "Octomom" Nadya Suleman said Sunday that he's going ahead with eviction proceedings because she hasn't made a long overdue $450,000 payment.

Amer Haddadin said he'll evict Suleman if she and her lawyer Jeff Czech don't pay the balance on the house by Friday. A balloon payment was due Oct. 9.

"I think they have money, but they are hiding the money," Haddadin said.

Oprah says America would’ve had breadlines if Barack Obama wasn’t elected

Well Ms. never skipped a lunch in my life, foodstamps are the modern form of breadlines and last time I checked their usage had skyrocketed.

Oprah Winfrey says America would’ve had breadlines if Barack Obama wasn’t elected. That overpaid queen of daytime TV is opening her mouth again—and when she does, it usually includes praise for President Obama. In a new interview with Parade magazine, the talk show queen, who recently refocused the priorities of America by denying in an interview that she was a lesbian, offers nothing but support for Obama.

Winfrey says that she is pleased as can be with everything that number 44 has thus far accomplished in his first two years. Declaring that she’s not been disappointed in anything Obama has so far done in office, Winfrey also took the time to scold her fellow Americans by reminding them that they should instead be grateful for everything Obama has done.

Merry Christmas

American Muslim indicted for wanting to join US military to kill soldiers

I wonder what excuse the MSM will come up with for this guy. Oh wait, they just won't report it.

A US-born Muslim from Staten Island, New York, has just been indicted for lying to the FBI about his true intentions to join the US military and then start killing US soldiers. 21-year-old Abdel Hameed Shehadeh faces three terrorism-related charges that involve his plan to join the US military only so he could fight against US soldiers.

According to the complaint, Shehadeh plotted to deploy with the US military to Iraq, but once there to desert the military and then fight alongside Islamic terrorists against the US. Shehadeh is also an operator of multiple, radical and violent Jihadist websites that promote terrorism against the west.

Parcel Bomb Explodes at Swiss Embassy in Rome

And so it begins...

ROME — Diplomatic missions in Rome were hit by a coordinated assault of parcel bombs on Thursday, officials and news agencies reported, seriously injuring at least one person and injecting Europe with a new atmosphere of anxiety about possible terrorist plots ahead of the Christmas holiday. Police were conducting checks at all embassies in the capital, The Associated Press reported.

The first attack, a parcel bomb at the Swiss Embassy, exploded at midday. Shortly after, a second parcel bomb exploded at the Chilean Embassy here, wounding an employee, Reuters reported, and a suspicious package was reported at the Ukrainian Embassy in Rome.

Katie Couric, CBS Discussing Pay Cut as Contract Talks Begin

Considering her ratings performance, a pay cut isn't the answer.

Katie Couric is in early talks on a new contract with CBS Corp. that could see the CBS Evening News anchor take a pay cut while expanding her role at the company, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.

The network began meeting with Couric's agent at CAA early this month, according to Bloomberg, which reported that both parties have agreed that Couric must take a pay cut to remain at CBS, whose evening news lags behind NBC and ABC in the ratings with a nightly average of 5.7 million viewers.

In addition, viewership for CBS' news program has dropped by 24% from when Couric took over in 2006, a bigger drop than both NBC and ABC have experienced during that same period.

Muslim Immigrants Get Santa Cancelled in Minnesota

Santa's such an infidel...

Santa will not be visiting students in St. Peter, Minnesota this year. Muslim immigrants got him cancelled. The MinnPost reported, via Pat Dollard:

Santa Claus, as portrayed by Dennis Jackson, won’t be visiting students at the Head Start classes in St. Peter this year.

Jackson has made appearances the past four years at the classes for students who need help preparing for school, but this year officials said, “No, no, no.”

The reason: The classes have many immigrant children who don’t celebrate Christmas, says the Mankato Free Press.

Another Judge Seems Poised To Declare ObamaCare Mandate Unconstitutional

This is a big one folks

This has been a busy week when it comes to legal challenges to the national health care law. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled that the law's requirement to purchase health insurance was unconstitional... And on Thursday, another district court judge, Roger Vinson, heard oral arguments in a separate case launched by Florida and 19 other states.

While a judge's posture in oral arguments isn't an ironclad indication of how he intends to vote, several news accounts of the hearing suggested Vinson -- a Reagan appointee -- was extremely skeptical of the administration's argument that the Commerce Clause gave the federal government the authority to regulate inactivity.

"It would be a giant leap for the Supreme Court to say that a decision to buy or not to buy is tantamount to activity," Vinson said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The judge noted that when he was in law school he was uninsured when his first son was born and paid out of pocket.

FWIW Judge Vinson is a Reagan appointee.

Sunday Funny

Dream Act fails to move forward 55-41

A pandering piece of crap legislation if there ever was one.

A measure that would have offered provisional legal status to some adults (and their families) who came to America illegally as children failed to advance in a Senate vote Saturday.

Democratic backers of the legislation fell short of the 60 votes to move the DREAM Act legislation forward. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jon Tester of Montana, Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted against bringing the bill to the floor; Republican Sens. Richard Lugar, Lisa Murkowski, and Robert Bennett voted for it.

Backing off an arsenic-eating claim

Between the bias and manipulated "Global Warming" crusade and this, the once great and respected NASA has become a largely diminished caricature of itself.

Amid a flurry of criticism, a NASA-funded team on Thursday backed off the more extravagant, textbook-changing claims they'd made about a bacterium that had allegedly substituted arsenic for phosphorus in its DNA.

The original announcement, made at a NASA news conference Dec. 2, seemed to break a cardinal rule of biology that all organisms need some phosphorus to survive. NASA researchers claimed to have discovered an exotic organism in California's Mono Lake that lived instead on arsenic, thus broadening the types of life that may exist in the universe.

The news made headlines worldwide including a New York Times story that ran in The Inquirer on Dec. 3.

On Thursday, the researchers issued a more modest claim. Instead of saying the microbes had completely substituted arsenic for phosphorus, a new statement says the arsenic replaced "a small percentage" of the phosphorus.

A number of biologists say they'll be surprised if even this stands the test of time.

Hundreds Of Toys For Needy Kids Stolen In Orangevale

Scumbags.

ORANGEVALE (CBS13) – Hundreds of toys set aside for kids in need have been stolen just days before Christmas.

The toys were taken from the lobby of the Orangevale Chamber of Commerce Monday night.

They were donations to the Toys for Tots program.

'Breakfast at Tiffany's' Director Blake Edwards Dead at 88.

A superb Director, he will be missed

A spokesman for Blake Edwards says the filmmaker has died in Southern California at age 88.

Publicist Gene Schwam says Edwards died from complications of pneumonia at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. His wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side.

Edwards directed "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "The Pink Panther" and many other popular films.

Congress' Job Approval Rating Worst in Gallup History

Which MSM knothead will be the first to blame the Republicans for this even though they don't assume control untill after the first of the year. Please report.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is also the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.

'All Hell' breaking loose in Senate over budget

There better be.

An unidentified GOP source told Fox News Tuesday that "All hell is breaking loose" in the Senate over a 1,924-page spending bill that includes 20,000 earmark requests.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) will likely demand the omnibus bill be read in its entirety on the Senate floor prior to a vote.

Fox News reported the bill - described as "a total mess" - is intended to cover the rest of the current fiscal year. If passed, the bill would become law without any debate in the Senate.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the bill must pass:

"The twelve bills included in this package fulfill the Congress' most basic responsibility, to exercise the power of the purse," he said in a statement. "This measure reflects a year's worth of work by members of both parties. Together, we have closely scrutinized the president's budget request, held hundreds of hearings, thousands of meetings, and asked literally tens of thousands of questions to each and every federal department and agency seeking justification for how taxpayer dollars are being spent."

Senate spending bill contains thousands of earmarks

Republicans either stand up to this travesty or face squandering ever bit of political capital given them in the November elections.

Senate Democrats released a massive spending bill Tuesday that contains money for thousands of lawmakers' pet projects, setting up a fierce debate over so-called earmarks in the waning days of the lame-duck congressional session.

Leaders of the Appropriations Committee combined a dozen spending bills into a single measure with more than $1.2 trillion in appropriations to fund the federal government for a full year. The committee said the bill is $29 billion below the budget proposed by President Obama.

The House took a different approach this month in passing an alternative spending bill, known as a "continuing resolution," that would keep funding level through September and contains no congressional earmarks.

Obama fatigue? Press room half empty for president

Should've invited Clinton back.

The White House Briefing Room was half empty when President Barack Obama delivered a statement Monday afternoon on a Senate vote related to the tax cuts legislation he's pushing.

Reporters filled the first three rows for the president's appearance -- though a few were taking vacant seats. And almost every seat in the back four rows was empty.

That kind of sparse attendance for a president's personal appearance is unusual, particularly for a president in his first term and one engaged in a high stales tax debate with Congress.

Judge in Va. strikes down federal health care law

Very big in the sense that it's now on the fast track to SCOTUS.

A federal judge declared the Obama administration's health care law unconstitutional Monday, siding with Virginia's attorney general in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson is the first federal judge to strike down the law, which has been upheld by two others in Virginia and Michigan. Several other lawsuits have been dismissed and others are pending, including one filed by 20 other states in Florida.

Sources: RNC Chairman Steele to Announce He Won't Run for Second Term

Good bye, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is expected to announce he will drop out of the highly contested race to keep his post, multiple RNC sources told FoxNews.com on Sunday.

Fox News has confirmed Steele sent an e-mail to committee members Saturday night with the subject line, “conference call.”

In the note, he asked members to join him "for a private conference call" Monday evening.

Republicans picked up 63 seats in the House, narrowed the gap in the Senate and picked up 19 state legislative bodies in the November midtem election, but pressure has been mounting all year for Steele to step down from the position.

I actually pushed for this guy, well, I was dead wrong and I'll be the first to admit it. What a huge disappointment he has been.

Sunday Funny

Explosions kill 1, injure 2 in central Stockholm

Appears the Swedes have a problem with the Amish as well.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — A car explosion and what appeared to be a suicide attack injured two people, killed the apparent bomber, and caused panic among Christmas shoppers in Stockholm Saturday.

Stockholm Police spokeswoman Petra Sjolander said a car exploded near Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street in the center of the city. Shortly afterward, a second explosion was heard higher up on the same street, and a man was found injured on the ground.

He was later pronounced dead.

Sjolander said it was unclear what caused the second explosion and whether the two blasts were linked, but said a police bomb squad has been sent to the site.

Pic of the Day

The amazing vanishing President. Something right out of the Twilight zone.

November federal budget deficit highest on record

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal budget deficit rose to $150.4 billion last month, the largest November imbalance on record. And the government's deficits are set to climb higher if Congress passes a tax-cut plan estimated to cost $855 billion over two years.

The Treasury Department says the November budget deficit was 25 percent higher than the $120.3 billion deficit in November 2009. Some of the jump, though, was due to a quirk of the calendar determining when benefit checks are mailed.

Tax cut? What tax cut are they referring to?

'PA to cancel all security commitments to Israel'

Big deal, it's not like they were honoring them anyway.

Al Quds al-Arabi reports that PLO, Fatah plan to push for a unilateral abrogation of all Oslo and Road Map commitments, including fighting terror, in response to failed peace talks.

The Palestinian Authority will stop coordinating its security with Israel, in response to the US's official announcement that peace talks have failed, Al Quds al-Arabi reported on Friday.

Khana Amira, a PLO official, told the UK newspaper that the PA is also considering canceling its other commitments to Israel, including the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, which demand that terror organizations will stop.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly plans to convene a meeting with the PLO and Fatah central committees on Friday afternoon, in order to make a new plan for the Palestinians.

House blocks US trial of Guantanamo detainees

Another Obama campaign promise bites the dust.

In a setback for President Barack Obama, Democrats still controlling the House have approved legislation to prevent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay from being transferred to the U.S. for trials in criminal courts.

USA Stinks In International Education Test

Yet we still spend more per student then any country in the world.

The results are in for the 2009 Program for International Students Assessment test of 15 year olds students from 65 different countries.

The assessment included math, science, and reading tests. So how did the the United States of America do in the results tally? Not well at all. Here is a look at our placement in the tests and a few countries that embarrassingly scored better:

Reading – 17th: Shanghai and Hong Kong, china, Belgium, Estonia, Iceland

Science – 23rd(One Point Above Average): Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macao, China, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Hungary

Math – 31st (Below Average): Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macao, China, Taiwan, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, Denmark, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Luxembourg...

Wikileaks: WMD program existed in Iraq prior to US invasion

Well you could knock me over with a feather...

The release by Julian Assange's web site Wikileaks of classified documents reveals that U.S. military intelligence discovered chemical weapons labs, encountered insurgents who were specialists in the creation of toxins, and uncovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, Washington, DC officials and the news media have ignored this information.

One of the WikiLeaks document dumps reveals that as late as 2008, American troops continued to find WMD in the region.

There are numerous mentions of chemical and biological weapons in the WikiLeaks documents, however the U.S. media appear only interested in those portions of the leaked material that highlight actions that are viewed as embarrassing for the U.S. military such as the accusation that U.S. commanders were aware of abuse and "torture" of prisoners by Iraqi soldiers and police officers.

Fort Lauderdale breaks cold record for Dec. 7

Won't be long before some nimrod from the MSM spins the cause of this on "global warming".

South Floridians woke up Tuesday morning to temperatures hovering around the very low 40s that sometimes felt like the mid-30s because of the wind chill factor.

In Fort Lauderdale, a low temperature record of 42 degrees for Dec. 7 that had been in place for 169 years was broken, said Dan Gregoria, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.

"It was at 7:24 a.m. when the temperature reached 40 degrees," Gregoria said.

Al Gore's climate group shrinking

The more people know the less they believe his bullshi!.

One of Al Gore's campaigns to save the planet has scaled back its field operations since climate legislation failed earlier this year in Congress.

The Alliance for Climate Protection was operating in about 25 states at its peak, including Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But the group now has field offices in just seven states.

"We've always believed it’s a mobile and nimble operation," said Sean Sarah, the non-profit group's spokesman. "We move to areas where it’s most effective. Of course the situation in Congress has changed. So our strategies and tactics have changed along with it."

Sunday Funny

Ford, BMW, Toyota Took Secret Government Money

How this could possibly be construed as Constitutional is beyond me.

In the depths of the financial collapse, the U.S. Federal Reserve pumped $3.3 trillion into keeping credit moving through the economy. It eventually lent $57.9 billion to the auto industry — including $26.8 billion to Ford, Toyota and BMW.

The Fed on Wednesday was forced to reveal the identity of the companies it aided during the crisis, after contending to Congress that keeping their identities and the details of such lending secret was essential. Much of Wall Street, and corporate giants such as General Electric, Harley Davidson and McDonald's, took advantage of the Fed's help. We've done the math on how the Fed propped up the auto industry.

While Chrysler and General Motors had to go to Congress to beg for cash in 2008, every other automaker's finance arm was having trouble as well. Typically, once they lend money to a buyer, they sell the loan, get the cash upfront, then pump the proceeds back into the business. They also take out short-term loans called commercial paper that keeps the day-to-day business afloat. The crash cut the circuit, raising the chances the automakers couldn't make loans to buyers and keep selling new vehicles.

That's where the Fed stepped in. In normal circumstances, the Fed only lends money to banks, leaving the decisions about who should get credit to them. But when the financial markets started to collapse in late 2008, the Fed set up several programs to lend money directly to corporations, a highly unusual step.

WikiLeaks Cables Reveal How US Manipulated Climate Accord

This will probably get buried just as the Cimategate scandal.

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Friday Funny

Unemployment Rate for November Surges

Non-Farm Payrolls Rise Much Less than Expected, Up 39,000 Pushing Unemployment Rate Higher to 9.8%.

Considering the seasonal hiring, this really stinks.

High School Football Player Gets Penalized For Pointing To God

Clueless refs are unfortunately becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Occasionally we come across a story like this and the injustice can only make you sit back, shake your head, and wonder what we are coming to. A extraordinary young man, Ronnie Hastie, who plays high school football in Spokane, Oregon, always makes it a habit after scoring a touchdown to quickly kneel in the end zone and point to God – in an effort to give him the credit for the score and for his talent.

In this particular game, after a 23 yard touchdown, he took 1-2 seconds to do what he’s always done traditional…quickly kneel and point to God. But this time, the ref didn’t appreciate it and threw a penalty flag directly at his chest- docking the team 15 yards. KOMO-4 writes:

"Hastie said he’s pointed up as a gesture to God after every touchdown he’s scored in every game and never had a problem before.

“It’s usually one or two seconds long,” he said. “It’s something I’ve done as a tradition.”

Hastie said he asked the ref why he was penalized, and the ref responded that Hastie wasn’t supposed to draw attention to himself.

‘Misleading’ Andy Griffith Ads Cost Taxpayers $3 Million, Gov’t Documents Show

It's too bad his persona is not at all like the real person. As a matter of fact, three of the four main characters on the Andy Griffith show are the exactly the opposite of who they portrayed on the screen. Andy Griffith has always been a mean leftist, Opie (Ron Howard) grew up to be everything but what his fictional father taught him to be and Aunt Bea was an absolute witch in real life.

The federal government spent $3.1 million on TV ads featuring actor Andy Griffith touting the new health care law that a non-partisan watchdog group says are misleading.

“Currently, about one in every four beneficiaries is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan,” said FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“For many of them, the words in this ad ring hollow, and the promise that ‘benefits will remain the same’ is just as fictional as the town of Mayberry was when Griffith played the local sheriff,” the group said in an article titled “Mayberry Misleads on Medicare.”

Now "Bea" is long dead, Ronny Howard is a 50 year corrupted Hollywood elite pushing every liberal cause that enamours him with his contemporaries and Andy Griffith is a Dinosaur that likely never believed a word he uttered in his signature show. Considering he is now drawing on that "persona" to shaft the American elderly, I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

Wachovia Bank: No Christmas Trees

Wachovia Bank won't be putting up Christmas trees in their banks this Christmas. FOX 35 news received a call from someone upset after hearing about this policy and we went to check it out. Customer Wilhelmina Cox says, "To be honest with you, that kinda offends me. I might think about changing banks."

We asked Wachovia's corporate office for a statement on why no trees. They sent us this statement, "At Wachovia, we respect the diversity of our customers and team members therefore we are decorating our stores with poinsettia plants so that everyone can be included."

A corporate spokesperson told FOX35 News they don't put up Christmas trees so as not to offend their non-Christian customers.

You bet, offend 80% of your customers to not offend less than 10% of your customers. Now that's a sound business decision.