Yesterday, being Christmas Day, there was no post, as we were all working like busy little elves getting ready for the big Christmas dinner. Kyle smoked the turkey, pork loan and rib roast – all turned out wonderful. We also had duck breast – something I’m definitely going to add to the larder list. Good stuff, easy & quick to make. Robin gave me a terrific cookbook, with the fascinating title of “Fifty Shades of Chicken”, after the notorious book (no, I have not read it and do not intend to. I’m not being prudish, I just hear it’s poorly written…really)…

So that was Day 6..Today, as previously mentioned, is Boxing Day in Great Britain, but no action since nobody intends to return to D.C. today – sleeping off yesterday’s comestibles and spirits, like Bob Cratchitt.

Speaking of Bob, Christmas Eve, Kyle and I watched the Patrick Stewart, Joel Grey version of “A Christmas Carol” on TBN. I’ve seen every version of that story, including Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol multiple times. This one with Jean Luc P adheres most closely to the actual, Dickens’ written word. He is a wonderful Scrooge, and Richard Grant was a creditable Cratchitt. But the story of Scrooge is something for us all to ponder this holiday season.

The people most affected by the fiscal cliff are not wealthy – they are soldiers, the unemployed and the poor utilizing Medicaid, food stamps and food subsidy programs like WIC. Are these the people Republicans and Democrats alike are truly worried about? No. They are worried about donors and wealthy constituents on both sides of the aisle.

So far the markets have taken all this in stride, thinking the world didn’t end on the 21st, and the fiscal cliff will never be breached. Well, with five days left and an outgoing bunch of angry tea party House members, that is now a much higher probability than most economists’ predict.

I only ever gave it a 28% chance of success, using Baye’s Law. Now I’d say it’s still about that because none of my three criteria has been invoked. All the suggestions my not-so-gentle readers have suggested generally resort to murder & mayhem. If nothing short of physical violence is likely to work, we need to look at that quadrant of action. Maybe we need to re-visit the Drone strike advice and kill two birds with one little airplane? Wow – how in keeping with the Twelve days of Christmas!