A Romp Around the News with Wombat-socho

The Wombat is back in news business with the recent resumption of his more or less regular "Live at Five" post. An interesting collection of news you might not run into in your daily paper or your chosen network, and I'll focus on the things I find interesting or amusing. From today's "LIVE AT FIVE: 12.30.15":

MISSOURI ASKS RIVERBANK RESIDENTS TO MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND AS FLOODING CONTINUES - Residents of several states have paid an extremely high price for the warm, wet weather we've been enjoying.

Carrier Harry S. Truman Has Close Call With Iranian Rockets - In my world, the Iranians would just have had a close call with an American aircraft carrier.

Elodie Yung

ELODIE YUNG HEATS UP DAREDEVIL‘S SEASON 2 AS ELEKTRA - Might have to binge watch this one.

Norks’ Top Official In Charge Of ROK Relations Dies In Car Crash - I suppose it's remotely possible for a top North Korean official to die "accidentally", but I wouldn't want to put real money on it.

Texas asks Supreme Court not to review immigration case - I guess they don't feel confident of Justice Kennedy's opinion.

Former NY Governor Pataki Drops Out Of GOP Race - Who?

O’Malley’s Iowa Event Draws One Voter - Why so many?

Homeland Security Push Could Make Some IDs Invalid For Flying - Ready for internal passports?

Crude Slumps Towards $37 As Weak Outlook Prevails: - Yep, and gas is under $2 a gallon here. The Saudies are trying to kill fracking, and only partly succeeding. In the meantime, the rest of us are saving money.

Home Prices In Twenty U.S. Cities Rose In November - Mostly on the left coast.

Buffett Subsidiary Faces Renewed Misconduct Claims - Noted rich guy and democrat accused of taking advantage of minorities in "manufactured homes" sales.

Sonni Pacheco, the ex-Mrs. Renner.

Jeremy Renner Finalizes Divorce, Will Pay $13K+/Month In Child Support - Avengers star has revenge taken for poor marriage choice.

Whole Foods Pays $500K To Settle Pricing Dispute - With gross profits of about $5 billion (with a "b") in 2015, that's around 20 minutes work.

DuPont To Cut 1700 Jobs In January - Uncle Dupy has been a solid supporter of environmental science in the past few years, mostly as a result of their pollution in the previous 50.

Jobs to be cut include 80 percent of the 250 scientific professional positions in DuPont's Central Research and Development unit, though some of the Ph.D. principal investigators and their associate investigators may escape layoffs and be reassigned to product groups where most DuPont scientists now work. The scientists expect to learn their fate Jan. 4.

Rocco Says Madonna Treated Him As A Trophy, Not A Son - She's so sweet! But then, he's a teenager and presumptively a jerk.

Thousands In Scotland Without Power As Storm Strikes - How's that wind power working now?

Al-Qaeda Training Camps Reappearing In Afghanistan? - Remember how Obama said that Afghanistan was the "right war" that we were ignoring? Statement expired.

Burkina Faso’s First New President In Decades Sworn In - A small, and rare victory for representative government. I had to look this up to remind myself that it used to be called "Upper Volta".

Russia Names Chechen As Mastermind Behind Nemtsov Assassination; Cover-up Suspected - Suspected?

Diane Lane

Bloggy Stuff

EBL: Nature Vs. Nurture - Starring Diane Lane

American Irony: Fourteen New Year’s Resolutions For Liberals

3. Be more open-minded to only ideas I agree with.

Proof Positive: In Defense Of Samuel L. Jackson - Just saying what all the liberals were thinking.

Twitchy: Baltimore Leads 2015 With Highest Murder Rate Per Capita; 23 Were Children - To quote Insty quoting someone else:

"What I love about the Obama era is all the racial healing"

"Sara Winter"

American Power: Radical Founder Of Femen Brazil Renounces Feminism, Declares Herself Pro-Life, And Apologizes To Christians - Sara Winter, so soon old, so late smart.

American Thinker: Clinton’s Bimbo Eruptions Vs. Trump’s “Sexism” - No comparison. See Katherine Timpf (that goofy girl on the Greg Gutfeld show) ‘I will not stop talking about this’

Conservatives4Palin: The Democrats’ Theme For 2016 Is Totalitarianism - The rush to repeal the first and second amendments this year has been unprecedented.

Pamela Geller: Mob Rips Apart Woman Falsely Accused Of Burning Koran - ROP

The Gateway Pundit: Breaking Poll – 40% Of Blacks Back Trump, 45% Of Hispanics - Somehow I'm not shocked. They aren't any smarter than most people.

The almost always sensible Megan McArdle: The Force Awakens Has A Perfection Problem - Of course Rey is a Mary-Sue. Almost all women characters are Mary-Sues. Only men have flaws.

Abrams has replicated the structure of that story, but he has forgotten to give the other two main characters any actual reason to be there. Ten minutes of rewrite could have removed them entirely without significantly damaging the plot.

The Lonely Conservative: Video – 2015, The Year Students Went Completely Insane 

Grabien put together this video montage showing how US college students went completely insane in the year 2015. Hopefully none of those appearing here are going to be future US leaders, if so the country is doomed.

To be fair, the same thing happened back in the 60's. Maybe it's a solar cycle or something.

Wombat-socho has the ginormous "Rule 5 Sunday: Happy New Year!" ready for browsing at The Other McCain.