Better ring up the Huff Post and call the Wire Services, Pat just told me she wants to be considered for the NEXT SENATOR FROM NEW YORK!


She's rested, she's ready- click to enlarge

Now, don't get me wrong, Caroline Kennedy or Fran Drescher would be great, but as long as they're asking, maybe it's Pat's year.
True, she has not lived in New York since 1980, but hey, Hilary and Bobby didn't live there long either! And being a genuine Bronx Chick, unlike Rudy she is more likely to root for the Yankees and not express support for the Red Sox when in Boston and the Cubs when in Chicago.

Now dat's integrity.

Ask if she has experience? Well, how much experience do you need to join a group with a 16% approval rating? And as an animation checker and production coordinator, she's had to negotiate difficult animators' egos and crazed producers and directors. So her diplomatic skills have been extensively tested.

Pat for Senator! We're awaiting Governor Patterson's phone call.
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Quiz: Why is Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, important to the way we celebrate Christmas?

Yesterday’s question answered below: Of all the Apostles, Simon, John, Andrew, why is Judas Iscariot the only one with a last name?
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History for 12/17/2008
Birthdays: Paracelsus (otherwise known as Nicholas Paracelsus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim) the father of modern medical diagnosis, Antonio Cimmarosa, William Lyon Mackensie-King, Arthur Fiedler, Bob Guccione founder of Penthouse Magazine, William Safire, Cal Ripken Sr., Ford Maddox-Ford, Erskine Caldwell, Tommy Steele, Bill Pullman is 55, Eugene Levy is 62, Wes Studi, Milla Jovovich is 33, Sean Patrick Thomas, Giovanni Ribisi, Bart Simpson- is 19

ROMAN FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA-Tonight began the festival of Saturn, the biggest holiday to the ancient Romans is one of the roots of Christmas. On this holiday Roman families got together, masters served their slaves and gave them a day off. People gave each other gifts in pretty colored wrappings. Romans also decorated the outsides of their houses with wreaths and lights to welcome the New Year -sound familiar? Most modern scholars agree that Jesus was probably born in July or August, but Christians began using the Saturnalia as the birth festival of Jesus as early as 335AD. It was made official by the Vatican in 885 AD. So at sunset, raise both hands palms-up towards the sky ( the Roman way of praying) and shout "Io,Io, Saturnalia!" Greek for Hail Saturn!

1777-VALLEY FORGE- When Lord Howe’s British Army called the Christmas Truce and beds down in Philadelphia, George Washington’s army made camp at Valley Forge. The severe winter and poor conditions made Washington’s Army lose as many men as if there had been a battle. 2500 out of 10,000 colonials do not survive to see Spring. Meanwhile the surrounding farmers sold their food to the British, who paid better.

1843- Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story for Christmas" first published. In the 18th century and earlier the Christmas celebration was a more rowdy affair with public drinking, marching around in costumes “mummery” and mayhem more like today’s Mardi Gras. This is why the Pilgrims tried to ban it. The popularity of Dickens story of Scrooge, Marley and Tiny Tim did much to help Victorians change the nature of the Christmas celebration to a more intimate and pious observance among centered on the family.

1865- Schubert's Unfinished Symphony (#8) received it's world premiere. In 1822 Schubert wrote the first two movements and 8 measures for the 3rd (Scherzo) then gave the manuscript to a friend who kept it in a closet for 43 years.

1892- Peter Ilyich Tschaikowsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker” premiered at the Imperial Ballet in Saint Petersburg. One child dancer playing a candy cane in that first performance was a Georgian boy named Gyorgi Balavadajze-later American choreographer George Balanchine.

1902- THE VENEZUELA CRISIS- Kaiser Wilhelm threatened Venezuela with naval blockade and invasion if she did not pay her international debts. US President Teddy Roosevelt sent Admiral Dewey with 23 battleships to the Caribbean and threatened war. Der Kaiser backed down and war was avoided. This incident was kept secret for seventy years. It’s when Teddy first said:” Speak softly and carry a big stick!”

1903- THE AIRPLANE- Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For one minute a powered heavier than air craft flew. Orville finished the day with a telegram to their father minding the bicycle shop back in Dayton Ohio: “Success. Four Flights Thursday Morning against twenty-one mile an hour wind.. Inform press home for Christmas.” The news failed to get into most national newspapers. The Wrights themselves maintained a strict secrecy because they knew rivals like Glen Curtis, the French and Smithsonian professor William Langley were all close to inventing an airplane as well. The sensation of the airplane didn’t really become widespread until the Wrights demonstrated their plane in France in 1908 and around New York Harbor in 1909. In 1913 Curtis took Langley’s flying machine the Aerodrome out of storage and flew it to prove to the Smithsonian that the Wright Brothers were not the first. The bitter disputes lasted the length of their lives.

1917-HAPPY BIRTHDAY THE KGB! Lenin created the first Communist Secret Police, the Cheka, led by Felix Derszhinsky:” My thoughts induce me to be without pity.” In a few months the Cheka executed more people than the Czars’ police the Okrana did in all of the XIXth Century. The Cheka in Stalin’s time was called the OGPU, then NKVD, his executioners in the Great Purges. After Stalin their name was changed to the KGB, the great spy and Secret Police operation set to bedevil their counterparts in the west the CIA and MI5. The KGB was disbanded in 1991. Current Russian President Vladimir Putin was a former KGB agent.

1928- Under orders from Josef Stalin the Central Committee of the Soviet Union first declared that rural land belonged to the community and all landowners were enemies of the state. This began the War on the Kulaks- the name for middle class peasants who owned farmland. The purges of Kulaks and famine from forced collectivization killed millions.

1934- First test flight of the Donald Douglas' DC-3, the most widely used airplane in aviation history. Unchanged for almost 50 years the two engine DC-3 was the backbone of most of the world's first passenger airlines and with the military name C-47 (the Gooney Bird) it became the workhorse cargo plane of from World War Two until Vietnam.
There are still DC-3's in service in many small countries.

1941- As if he hadn’t put his foot in his mouth badly enough already Charles Lindbergh does it again today. After earlier in the year railing on about the “International Jewish Conspiracy pushing America into war” today in a speech Lucky Lindy denounced the war with Germany:” The only real threat to America is the threat of the Yellow Race. Japan and China are united against the white race. And our only natural ally is Germany”. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Morgenthau told President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I am convinced this guy is a Nazi”.

1944- the MALMEDY MASSACRE- The largest documented atrocity committed on U.S. troops in Europe in World War Two. During the Battle of the Bulge Nazi S.S. troops rounded up a large group of U.S. prisoners and machined gunned them all. 87 men of Battery B, 285th Field Artillery died. This was unusual; the statistics show only 1% of U.S. P.O.W.'s died in German captivity as opposed to 37% in Japanese hands. The atrocity stiffened U.S. resistance to the Nazis advance. The furor over President Reagan's laying a wreath at the Bitburg cemetery in 1985 was that some of the guilty SS troops of Malmedy were buried there. The commander of the SS troops, Major Otto Wolf, did some prison time after the war and lived quietly until 1967, when he was found shot to death in his burning house, a smoking rifle in his hands like he was defending himself. Obviously someone had not forgotten.

1955- Carl Perkins awoke in the middle of a bad nights sleep and wrote Blue Suede Shoes, the first song to be a hit in Country, R&B and Rock n’ Roll charts simultaneously.”Well you can knock me down, step on ma face, etc.”

1962- The Beatles first hit "Love Me Do" enters the U.K. pop charts.

1969- Tiny Tim, the campy, ukulele strumming crooner, married his Miss Vicky, or Victoria Budinger live on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

1969- The US Air Force terminated Operation Blue Book, the investigation of UFO phenomena.

1989- Communist dictator Nicholas Cercescu ordered the Romanian Army to open fire on democratic protesters in Timisoara. Two thousand were killed. This incident pushed elements of the Army to turn their guns on the government.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: Of the Apostles, Simon, John, Andrew, why is Judas Iscariot the only one with a last name?

Answer: It’s not really a last name, more of a nickname. The Hebrews who resisted Roman domination were called Zealots, and the terrorist fringe of that group were called Sicari, for a knife they used to murder political enemies. So the name Judas Iscariot, meant Judas the Knife-Man. The Romans claimed the Sicarians were at the forefront of the great Jewish revolt in AD70.