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Clip video for Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses using some of their other videos and live performances.

Stocks sank early Friday, pacing toward a second-straight weekly loss, as more downbeat news on the U.S. economy accelerated a move lower. Near 10:10 a.m. ET, the S&P 500 and Dow were off 1.2%, while the Nasdaq fell 0.8%. Earlier in the session, the Nasdaq had moved into positive territory. The latest leg lower for stocks followed preliminary readings on economic activity in the U.S. this month from S&P Global, which showed a further deterioration in activity to start December. "Business conditions are worsening as 2022 draws to a close, with a steep fall in the PMI indicative of GDP...

Jacqueline Kennedy's oral history reveals husband's disdain for Lyndon Johnson. President John F. Kennedy was so "worried for the country" about the prospect that Vice President Lyndon Johnson might succeed him as president that he'd begun having private conversations about who should become the Democratic Party's standard-bearer in 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy recalled in a series of oral-history interviews recorded in early 1964. She said her husband believed strongly that Johnson shouldn't become president and, in the months before his death in November 1963, he'd begun talking to his brother, Robert Kennedy, about ways to maneuver around Johnson in 1968. "Bobby...

The unnamed passenger, 36, went overboard on the MSC Meraviglia Thursday morning and her remains were recovered by the US Coast Guard roughly 18 miles from Port Canaveral, Fla., according to NBC’s WESH 2. The ship had been returning to the Sunshine State from Ocean Cay in the Bahamas when tragedy stuck, the outlet reported. The Coast Guard quickly launched a search by boat and helicopter but authorities soon learned the woman had suffered fatal injuries. A worker on the cruise ship allegedly told a passenger that the woman had jumped, according to TMZ, which had not verified the comment...

Podesta’s net worth has skyrocketed since his time in the Obama administration, financial disclosures show ... John Podesta, the powerful Democrat consultant who Joe Biden tapped to oversee a multibillion-dollar climate investment fund, discussed those investments with an environmental group that had him on the payroll just months before, according to a new financial disclosure. Galvanize Climate Solutions, a green energy investment firm founded by billionaire Tom Steyer, participated in an Oct. 31 meeting with Podesta and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to discuss how to best use the $369 billion in federal funds. Galvanize paid Podesta $84,000 in advisory fees...

How could any sane person prepare himself for such a time as this? Tonje Gjevjon, a Norwegian artist and lesbian, was recently informed that she was being investigated by the police for engaging in "hate speech" because of a Facebook post she made stating that men can't be lesbians. Gjevjon could spend up to three years in prison for stating an obvious, immutable truth. Gjevjon wrote, "It's just as impossible for men to become lesbian as it is for men to become pregnant. Men are men regardless of their sexual fetishes." Daring to question or criticize the trans community will...

The pushback against ESG steps into high gear with hearing at the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs.Originally tweeted by Will Hild (@WillHild) on December 15, 2022..@SenBryanHughes starts off the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs ESG hearing by laying out how the ESG agenda poses a threat to both the security of American families and our overall national security: ... The first witness, @bmbrigham, told the story of how Wall Street’s ESG scam has affected him and his business personally, outlining how @CreditSuisse ( $CS ) indicated that if he didn’t tweet out various points praising the green energy...

I nominate The Mule as Prince of Our Democracy, for Person of the year in 2022. The Mule can legally vote 100 times or 200 times more than you or I can vote. He or she can show up at a voting facility or a drop box with that many ballots, and legally deposit that many votes. You or I, the commoner citizen only get one vote. How can this be happening? Maybe the Mule is on good terms with nursing home operators. Mules have been know to collect votes there, where in one state 92 nursing homes had 100%...

[Catholic Caucus] Paglia And His Academy Attack the Entire Sexual MoralThe Pontifical Academy against Life run by Archbishop Paglia is propagating a “radical paradigm shift” [= apostasy] that rejects the Church’s condemnation of contraception, Monsignor Livio Melina stated at a conference of Catholic Jurists in Rome (December 8-10).Melina was a co-worker with Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF and then professor and president of the John Paul II Institute. Because he is an outstanding moral theologian, Francis dismissed him in 2019.The hijacked academy opposes the Church’s condemnation of contraception as “intrinsically evil” and labels this rebellion as “theological progress,” Melina explains.The...

On Wednesday, a 20-year-old student at Winston-Salem State University, an HBCU in North Carolina, was arrested in her classroom after an argument with her professor over an essay. The video of her arrest has since gone viral and created significant controversy, with many suggesting the arrest was unnecessary and racially motivated. In the video, the student being arrested, Leilla Hamoud, is screaming as the police – one white officer and one black officer – try to handcuff her, saying they are hurting her. However, it appears she is the one fighting against them and making it much more difficult than...

As of Friday morning, the site selling the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) says they are sold out, and links to purchase the digital cards are no longer available. OpenSea Data, which tracks the sales and markets for NFTs, indicated there were 45,000 of the Trump cards initially made available for purchase for $99 each. The Trump digital cards were the top trending item on the site as of Friday morning.

Stone tools found in a 4,000-year-old grave near Stonehenge have traces of gold on their surfaces that indicate they were used to fashion gold ornaments. In 1801, archaeologists found the assemblage of Bronze Age artifacts, including the stone tools, in a barrow or burial mound from about 1800 B.C. near the village of Upton Lovell, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Stonehenge. The assemblage(opens in new tab) includes flint axes, a necklace of beads of polished stone and dozens of bone points — possibly from another necklace and the fringe of a garment. The collection, which is now on...

[Catholic Caucus] German bishop demands Church ‘widen its understanding of the family’ to include homosexual unionsBishop Franz-Josef Overbeck’s comments are the latest direct attack on perennial Catholic teaching from the German hierarchy.A German bishop said that the Catholic Church should “widen” its understanding of the family to include every form “where people live with children,” including homosexual couples. When bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck was asked in an interview by katholisch.de if the Catholic Church needs to “widen its understanding of the family,” Overbeck replied, “It is high time that she does that.” “Family is where people live with children,” the German...

The European Union has threatened to levy sanctions against Twitter following the suspension of several establishment media journalists over allegedly sharing private location of Elon Musk’s jet. On Thursday evening, Twitter suspended journalists from CNN, Mashable, New York Times, Washington Post, Vox, and former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann for alleged violations of the platform’s updated terms of service on doxxing, or the exposing of private details such as location or address on the internet. “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk tweeted Wednesday. “This includes posting links to...

Sent primarily to investigate the origin and evolution of Jupiter, Juno has been able to take in bonus observations of the planet's four major moons - Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and now Io. It performed its close flyby of Ganymede in 2021, and of Europa earlier this year. These passes produced some novel insights from Juno's microwave radiometer. Intended to look deep into the clouds of Jupiter, this instrument has also been able to see down through the ice layers of Ganymede and Europa for tens of kilometres. These two moons are of particular interest because they're both thought to hide...

CHICAGO -- A Chicago family said their latest property tax bill increased 440% and now their modest apartment complex could go bankrupt. A one bedroom apartment will now cost Michael Markellos $17,494 in property taxes for one year. "This has put us in a tremendous financial bind, the building has gone negative in the bills," he said. He and his mother own the 10-unit Lincoln Park apartment complex. Last year's tax bill for all 10 units combined was $23,674, but now the same 10 units are $128,282 dollars this year; up 440%. "I was outraged. These are basically simple one...

The Pewsey Hoard is a group of Late Roman copper-alloy vessels found by metal detectorists in 2014 in a field in the Vale of Pewsey, Wiltshire (UK). Excavated by the finders themselves, it consists of a large iron-rimmed copper-alloy cauldron (Fig. 1a,b) holding two bowls (Vessels A and C) and another vessel (Vessel B) containing four scale pans carefully packed with plants (Fig. 1c). Subsequent excavation of the area surrounding the findspot by Historic England concluded that the hoard was deposited in a pit, dug in an actively used landscape with no structures or ditches in its immediate vicinity...The adoption...

Pope Francis has urged Christians to spend less on Christmas and to send their savings to the people of Ukraine amid the war with Russia.The Pontiff addressed crowds gathered in the Vatican for his weekly General Audience.“There is so much suffering in Ukraine, so much, so much!” the Pope said. “I would like to draw some attention to the coming Christmas, even the parties,” he said.“It’s nice to celebrate Christmas, to have parties… but let’s lower the level of Christmas spending a bit,” he added.The Pope then suggested that the money saved on the commercial side of Christmas should be...

Even Steve Bannon and other key advisers to former President Donald Trump have had enough of his latest stunts — demanding everyone behind his wacky NFT collection be “fired today.” “I can’t do this anymore,” an exasperated-sounding Bannon said Thursday on his show, “The War Room,” when discussing the widely derided collection the 45th president launched the previous day.

Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) run by Kari Lake-hating operative Stephen Richer kept a GOP heat map on its wall before the 2022 election.The dark red areas of Republican voters just happened to include the voting centers where the tabulators and printers were not working on Election Day.