SDB Evening News Reads for 122711: Clinton most admired woman…again!

Vintage Ad for sheet music. Kind of looks like Newt... doesn't it?

Good evening!

We have sleet falling from the skies here in Banjoland, the wind has calmed down but did we have a storm blowing last night.

Gallup has posted the results of its yearly poll, and yes, Clinton is again at the top of the list.  Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton Again Top Most Admired List

Clinton Most Admired Woman for a record 16^th  time.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama continue to be named by Americans as the Most Admired Woman and Most Admired Man living today in any part of the world. Clinton has been the Most Admired Woman each of the last 10 years, and Obama has been the Most Admired Man four years in a row.

Here are the results:

These results are based on a Dec. 15-18 USA Today/Gallup poll. In 1946, Gallup first asked Americans to name, without prompting, the person they most admire living in any part of the world. Since 1948, Gallup has asked Americans to name separately the Most Admired Man and Most Admired Woman, and has done so each year except in 1967 (when only Most Admired Man was asked) and 1976.

And what about the 16 times Hillary has been at the top…

Hillary Clinton has now topped the list of Most Admired women a total of 16 times since 1993, finishing second in 1995 and 1996 to Mother Teresa and in 2001 to Laura Bush.

No other woman has been named Most Admired Woman as many times as Clinton. Eleanor Roosevelt is second with 13 No.1 finishes, followed by Margaret Thatcher, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Mother Teresa.

As far as the most admired men, Dwight Eisenhower has the most No. 1 finishes, at 12 years. After that a tie for second place goes to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton at 8 years each.

Now that the Iraq war is officially over, you would think a ten-year war would at least warrant a parade…right? The Associated Press: As Iraq War ends, no parade for US troops in cards

No ticker tape parade in NYC, more on this from HuffPo: Iraq War Parade In New York City Concerns Pentagon

At least two New York City councilman want to throw a parade in Manhattan for soldiers returning from Iraq, just as the city did for troops returning from the Gulf War in the early 90s (see video below).

From CBS News:

“We all love our veterans and we all should honor them and say what a great job they did and memorialize those who paid the ultimate sacrifice,” said Republican Councilman Vincent Ignizio.

“To have a chance to honor them, I, for one, would want to be there to see the looks on their faces as the adulation sort of reverberates down that canyon,” added fellow Republican James Oddo. “I think it would be amazing.”

The ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes, however, is getting some resistance from Washington DC, Fox New York reports. Officials at the Pentagon fear the parade could be perceived as a victory march by America’s enemies and would further endanger the lives of US troops across the world.

I don’t think of it so much as a victory parade, but as a homecoming. This war already has a stigma attached to it…I don’t want to see the soldiers that fought in Iraq treated with the kind of attitude that brought about the disdain for Vietnam Veterans.

Oil prices are going up again: Oil price climbs amid Iranian threat  For those who do not have a Financial Times subscription, there is this from Business Week: Crude Oil, Corn Rise on Supply Threats: Commodities at the Close

Crude oil rose for a sixth day, the longest stretch in 13 months, as Iran threatened to block transportation through the Strait of Hormuz and confidence among U.S. consumers beat expectations in December.

Crude advanced after Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency cited Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi as saying the country would bar shipments through the strait if sanctions are imposed on its oil exports. Prices also gained as the Conference Board’s index reached the highest level since April, exceeding all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey.

Crude oil for February delivery climbed $1.66, or 1.7 percent, to settle at $101.34 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract reached $101.77, the highest level since Dec. 7. Futures have climbed 11 percent this year after increasing 15 percent in 2010.

Have you all read about the fallout over SOPA at GoDaddy? Well this bill is seen as a threat to both left and right bloggers: SOPA is the end of us, say bloggers

The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers aruging their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.

“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass Group [liberal] will cease to exist,” wrote a blogger at Red Mass Group.

Some have asserted that the controversial measures would criminalize pages and blogs that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. In particular, this has concerned search engines like Google, which could face massive liability if some form of the bill passes, some say.

“Of course, restrictions of results provided by Internet search engines amount to just that: prior restraint of their free expression of future results. Google and others, under SOPA, are told what they can or can’t publish before they publish it. Kill. The. Bill,” conservative blogger Neil Stevens argued at RedState.

The liberal side of the blogosphere has concerns too:

Liberals had their own spin on it, cheering on the fact that corporate support for SOPA was starting to subside.

In particular, GoDaddy, a domain registration firm, suffered a spectacularly bad round of PR when it came out in support of the measures. But after a grass-roots campaign to boycott the firm, driven by Reddit, an online community, and others, GoDaddy reversed course and renounced its support.

“Some good news on the SOPA front: Its corporate base of supporters is starting to crumble,” David Dayden wrote at Firedoglake. “GoDaddy is not alone. Scores of law firms are requesting their names be removed from the Judiciary Committee’s official list of SOPA supporters.”

In the blogosphere, the trajectory of the bill seemed set — that it is destined for failure if the pressure of the online community is kept up.

We have touch on the possibility of these laws affecting us here on Sky Dancing, in that we use bits of articles via the Fair Use law. Perhaps with both sides of the spectrum voicing concern, this bill and the other internet bill, Protecting IP Act or PIPA, will not pass into law.

In the world of newspapers, the New York Times is selling some of its regional papers: NY Times Co to sell regional newspapers for $143 million

The New York Times Co said it will sell 16 regional newspapers spread across the U.S. Southeast and California to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million in cash as it looks to cut costs and focus on its most important papers and their websites.

Regional newspapers have struggled recently because of weak local retail and national advertising, partly reflecting the economy’s broader travails.

The company said it will record an after-tax gain of $150 million on the sale — expected to close in a few weeks — in the first quarter of 2012.

“I think that it’s toward the low end of what we expected. I was expecting $150-$200 million,” Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur told Reuters.

“What it implies is that margins on regional newspapers were not as high as we thought, but the underlying profitability of the main New York Times is higher.”

The analyst, however, said pension obligation will stay with the company and that could be one of the uses of the proceeds.

Hopefully this means the workers will still get their pensions.

The group to be hived off has a weekday circulation of about 430,000, with newspapers such as Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Ledger, in Florida; Herald-Journal in South Carolina; and The Press Democrat in California in its stable.

Last week, the Times Co said it will sell its regional newspapers days after Chief Executive Janet Robinson announced her sudden retirement.

The group’s revenue — more than a tenth of Times Co’s overall sales — fell about 7 percent to $190 million in the first nine months of this year.

“These newspapers have been a drag on overall results due to heavier reliance on local advertising which lags national advertising growth,” Morningstar’s Joscelyn Mackay said.

“Without these papers, the firm will be able to focus on its flagship The New York Times and monetize its digital content.”

Advertising, like billboards are always the first things to be cut when times get tough…at least it always seems like that is the case. Just think about all those vacant billboards around your town…we started seeing this in my home town before the big 2007/2008 crash really hit our part of North Georgia. I remember my husband saying it was a sign that bad times were coming, and he was right.

Well, that is all I have for you tonight…catch y’all later in the comments!