Do they know it's Christmas time?

We grabbed a card off of one of those Christmas "Wish Trees" for a local homeless shelter when I took the boys out to get their hair cuts the other day. It was from a 10 year old girl living in the shelter. What was she asking for?

"Home Essentials"

Ya know: Tooth brush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo & etc.. A kid wishing for nothing more than basics many take for granted every single day. You don't have to look to third world countries to see large scale and extreme poverty this year. It ain't pretty out there this year right here in our own backyards:

As a longtime Santa Claus at a suburban Chicago mall, Rod Riemersma used to jokingly tell children they would get socks for Christmas if they were naughty.

This year, he stopped telling the joke. Too many children were asking for socks. "They've probably heard their parents say, 'Geez, I wish I had some money to get them clothes,' " says Mr. Riemersma, 56 years old.

...snip...

Sometimes even the best training can't keep Santa from being caught off guard. Mike Smith, who works as Santa at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio, says a 5-year-old girl wearing a Dora the Explorer sweat shirt last month hopped in his lap and asked, "Can you turn my daddy into an elf?" "Why?" he asked.

"Because my daddy's out of work, and we're about to lose our house," she said.

Who the heck is Barry Cafero?

Via ctblogger:

I know it's early to be making this call but I'm almost certain no one topping this comment today:

It's ok that Larry Cafero doesn't know my name. Over the course of the next year, he'll quickly realize that Connecticut voters don't know his, either.

-Connecticut Democratic Party Communications Director Colleen Flanagan

This comment from Flanagan was made in light of a cheap shot from House Minority Leader Larry Cafero's in which he purposely mispronounced her name "Kathleen" (even after being corrected by a reporter.

After being told that the Democratic Party's spokeswoman's first name was Colleen, Cafero said, "I wouldn't know Kathleen Flanagan if she bumped into me on the street."

State Rep. Cafero's latest hissy-hit has to do with the disclosure Thursday that he used his staff to set-up a meeting with The Norwalk Hour to announce that he's running for governor and that the newspaper would embargo the announcement.

Here's the email sent by Cafero's press secretary Patrick O'Neil.

"Larry, we're all set with The Hour," O'Neil's message said. "They'll have the editorial board and a writer waiting for you at 10 a.m. They've agreed to the embargo and were much appreciative of the advance notice and exclusive interview. Jared Ferrari, the managing editor, will be coordinating the deal."

All I know for sure is that if his name is Barry we should be demanding to see his birth certificate - teabaging rules dictate that he can't be 'Murikan - and the rest of the emails in his government account to see if he has been using it for other nefarious reasons because that would be the only sane reaction to this news.

We might want to see his psychological evaluation scores, as well, regardless of whom he thinks he is.