Get ready for your holiday parties and "may you stand, walk and dance happily ever after." In order for you to dance your way through the holidays more comfortably, check out these helpful toe tips to keep your feet in good spirits. For those of you who are wearing killer heels, muscle spasms and cramping in your arches can be an unwelcomed visitor. These problems are the result of abnormal pronation, which is the excessive collapsing of the arch during walking or standing. Experiencing pain in the balls of your feet is another problem that can occur when standing or dancing for long periods of time while partying. This is caused by wearing high heels that are usually 2 or 3 inches high. Wearing high heels will naturally throw your foot forward and the balls of your feet get jammed into the floor of the shoe. The fat pad in the balls of your feet can shift and expose the heads of the metatarsal bones to increased pressure. Another common foot problem that can occur when wearing high heels that have pointed toes is pain on the sides and tips of the great toe nails. This can be the beginning of an ingrown toe-nail. Ouch! So make sure you are careful when selecting your party shoes.



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House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) says he thinks it's weird that Democrats have "time to bring a comedian to Congress but they don't have time to end the uncertainty by extending the tax cuts." It's an amazing statement when you think about it even for a second. After all, is it possible that the tax cut issue is not really timely? In fact, is there any way to interpret Stephen Colbert's appearance before the House Judiciary subcommittee on his experience as an entertainer-turned-migrant worker as having anything at all, however remotely, to do with extending tax cuts for Americans making $250,000 or more a year? (And couldn't the alleged "uncertainty" be dispelled with a clear, uncomplicated, "You had your party for the past decade. Now get lost.")

Until I heard Boehner on "The Daily Show" I thought the silliest statement he would be able to come up with was in response to Chris Wallace's question as to whether he was aware that "a number of top economists say what we need is more economic stimulus." He replied, "Well, I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists. All I need to do is listen to the American people, because they've been asking the question now for 18 months, 'Where are the jobs?'"

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The only word to describe the dozens of Democrats that are sprinting from President Obama in Olympic record sprint times is gutless. They have taken out ads loudly protesting that they voted against health care and immigration reform, the stimulus, and extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, are hawkish on the wars, and that they are their own political man or woman and don't take any orders from the White House. Now bear in mind these are the same Democrats that in 2008 clung to Obama's coattail as if it was the Holy Grail. They blitzed voters in their districts with stagey photo-op shots of them with a smiling Obama, splashy videos with his image, and mug shots of Obama on virtually every page of their campaign toss outs.

But that was then. The GOP sniffing political blood in the Democrat's gutless desertion from the president has plowed nearly $40 million into 300 ads ramming Siamese twin like the defecting Democrats to Obama. The White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a legion of Democratic campaign officials shrug this off as just politics. This is the kind of thing they say that Democrats and Republicans have to do to get elected and re-elected. They distance themselves from the policies and even person of an unpopular president.

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They've finally cemented up BP's runaway well (from above with a second relief well plug still to seal it from below). Unfortunately this comes after 220 million gallons of oil slimed the Gulf of Mexico. So what's the effect of a spill 20 times the size of the Exxon Valdez? Apparently not much, if you believe the government's estimates.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget put out by the Department of Interior and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says one quarter of the total oil naturally evaporated or dissolved. Having spent time in the heat and oil of the Gulf in June and July, and given the volatile compounds in the light crude that was released, I don't have a hard time believing this. Score one for air pollution. They claim 25 percent was burned, skimmed or recovered from the wellhead. Again, having seen the surface burns and the Q-4000 rig flaming off 6,000 barrels a day in July, creating a black column of oily smoke, skipping the middle men (cars and trucks) and putting sooty carbon dioxide right into our already overheated atmosphere, I can almost believe this figure although it would represent the most successful mechanical recovery of spilled oil in history and I know from being there a lot of oily water was counted as recovered oil.

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