$4.20 – The price of ground beef just hit a brand new record high of $4.20 a pound. Exactly 10 years ago, it was just $2.21 a pound.

19.8 percent – This holiday season, nearly 20 percent of all American families are on food stamps. But since the stock market is soaring, most of the rest of the country doesn’t seem to care.

33 percent – According to the Wall Street Journal, close to one-third of all Americans have a file in the FBI’s master criminal database.

70 percent – Right now, about 70 percent of all government spending goes toward dependence-creating programs.

1979 – The United States has become the nation of the “permanent emergency”. In fact, there has been at least one “state of emergency” in effect in this country since 1979.

7,500 – The worldwide Ebola death toll has surpassed 7,500 for the first time, but most Americans seem to believe that the crisis is over. The truth is that it may just be beginning.

80,000 – Back in 1980, there were only about 3,000 SWAT raids conducted in the United States. But today, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.

30,000,000 – In America today, more than 30 million Americans are taking antidepressants.

110,000,000 – Approximately one-third of the entire population of the United States (110 million people) currently has a sexually transmitted disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

$2,000,000,000,000 – The war in Iraq cost US taxpayers more than 2 trillion dollars, but now a radical jihadist terror organization known as ISIS controls nearly a third of the entire country.

$18,031,021,541,347.52 – The current size of the US national debt.

$40,000,000,000,000 – There are five “too big to fail” banks in the United States that each have more than 40 TRILLION dollars worth of exposure to derivatives. This is a “sword of Damocles” that could destroy our financial system and our entire economy at any time.

Let’s just hope that it does not happen in 2015.

The two batteries were placed in the Be'er Sheva region and Netivot region, but according to Walla! the IDF didn't elaborate regarding the reason for placing the batteries at this particular junction in time at those particular locations - both of which were hard hit in Operation Protective Edge.

However, the general assessment is that the IDF is preparing for a possible escalation with Hamas after the Wednesday attack that could easily lead to another operation, which would make the fourth since 2008, a year after Hamas violently wrested control over Gaza.

Following the sniper attack which breached the November truce ending the last operation, a heavy exchange of fire broke out with the IDF reportedly firing tank shells and attacking with IAF jets. That strong response successfully killed Tayseer al-Ismary (33), a terrorist leader and head of the surveillance unit in Hamas's "armed wing" Al-Qassam Brigades.

While officials insisted the three acts of violence were totally unrelated, they have reignited fears of lone wolf attacks from Islamists amid government warnings that the terrorist threat “has never been so high”. The extra troops will be deployed in zones such as Paris’s Champs-Elysees avenue and main shopping districts, on top of the 780 soldiers already deployed to security patrols, said Mr Valls. “Fear over Christmas” declared Le Parisien, while Le Figaro newspaper wrote a front-page editorial warning of “enemies from within”.

"The State of Israel is building its strength from year to year, from decade to decade, in aircraft, submarines, in air defense systems such as 'Iron Dome' and the Hetz (air-defense) missile, and with some of the most modern offensive military systems in the world." Netanyahu revealed that Israel recently acquired three new battleships, in addition to the submarines recently bought from Germany, in order to bolster the country's naval capabilities. He thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her "commitment and ongoing assistance" to Israel's security.

Turning to the new recruits, Netanyahu added: "When you are flying in the country's skies you see just how close the different threats are… In our region there are endless conflicts raging, and terrible and cruel violence." "The fire of radical Islam is lapping at our borders in the north and the south," he continued. "Your, and our, supreme mission is to safeguard our home, the State of Israel."

"Our policy for doing so is twofold, to prevent and foil attacks as much as possible, and to respond in strength to any attack," he outlined.

It warned that censorship and filtering tactics are ineffective and that openly challenging the material is likely to have a greater impact. The report said despite concerns over fanatics radicalising themselves online, most vulnerable people are still targeted offline first and the Internet is only a “secondary socialiser”. Greater efforts are needed to combat radicalisation in schools, universities and prisons, it concluded.

Some individuals, perhaps naively, deduced on social media the perpetrator might just conceivably be a Muslim – and an unholy Twitter storm erupted. Outraged Tweeters fought to be the most offended by these “outrageous, Islamaphobic” allegations, declaring that “until his faith is officially verified you’re just another racist scumbag!”

Less than two hours later, the hostage taker was identified as “radical Muslim cleric” Man Maron Monis. There was no “racism”: the Muslim man who’d declared himself a Muslim was, after all, a Muslim. In 2014, political correctness finally got out of control. Intellectually, we are thought-policing each other towards the precipice. And that way, fresh madness lies. It’s time to tell the PC brigade to stuff their sanctimonious judgments where the sun don’t shine. And if that offends them, so much the better.

"Here we are again with our president clearly demonstrating his severe disconnect with blacks in America, as he has ginned up racial hatred and … completely ignoring the fact that he's the first black president and holds a historic role that is intended to mend and rebuild America's fractured racial history," said Stacy Washington, a radio talk-show host in St Louis.

She noted Obama's "dereliction of duty" in ignoring such statistics as high black unemployment and "the lack of educational resources for children who are trapped in failed inner-city schools and his refusal to even acknowledge that voucher programs and school choice play a large role in African-American children escaping poverty and escaping inner cities."

In November, the black unemployment rate stood at 27.6 percent, compared with 14.5 percent for whites, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The estimated trade deficit will be Saudi Arabia’s largest on record. The Finance Ministry said the government will try to save some money by cutting salaries, wages, and allowances that represent around “50 percent of total budgeted expenditures.” But the move could anger Saudi youth, who are already struggling to cover the costs of living in the country.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), about two-thirds of the population works for the government.

Endless war: Does anyone remember when the United States was going to invade Syria in late 2013/early 2014? The country’s dictator had been accused of gassing his own citizens. So once again, the American people were entrenched in a war in a country halfway across the world that had absolutely nothing to do with them. Now in late 2014, the White House is urging everyone to pour their hatred into IS/ISIS/ISIL, one of the three or more combatants currently in engaged in the latest wave of the Syrian Civil War.

Revisionist history: A recent article from the New York Times claimed that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and asserted that George Bush was correct in invading Iraq. This article has unleashed a new wave in the propaganda war between right wing and left wing media outlets, both criticizing each other more than doing any real examination of the facts.

Media control:Revising history is not the only role the media plays. No, it is capable of much more sinister disruption. The major corporations that control the flow of information are working hard to ensure that the average citizen stays not only uneducated, but unaware of the more important issues. In other words, the media serves to distract the public by incessantly placing irrelevant topics into the sphere of debate and purposefully hiding news about the issues that a democratic and vigilant group of people should be concerned about.

Following up on his predecessors' - Pope John Paul's and Pope Benedict's - historic visits to Cuba and meetings with Fidel Castro in 1998 and 2012, he helped broker a political deal which made headlines around the world this month.

Offering his Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia, the senior churchmen who run the Holy See, Pope Francis, having observed at close quarters for the past 20 months how the Vatican actually works, unexpectedly gave his Roman bureaucrats a severe dressing down.

He listed 15 deadly sins - "ailments" he called them - that he had witnessed since he took office. Too much micro-management, too little internal co-ordination, examples of boastfulness, showing off, claiming to be indispensible, a tendency to gossip and defamation and, even worse, clerics leading double lives.

According to worldwide polls conducted by the prestigious US-based Pew Research Centre, a majority of people in over half the 43 countries surveyed say they had a positive view of Pope Francis, with particularly high ratings in Europe (84%) and Latin America (72%).

According to US Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures, oil and gas shipments accounted for 68 percent of Russia's total $527 billion of gross exports in 2013, when Brent crude - comparable to Russian Urals - traded at an average of $108 per barrel.

Should the current price of Brent, at around $60 per barrel, be sustained over the next 12 months, that would result in Russia's export income from crude dropping to $95 billion, from $174 billion in 2013. However, these losses will be amplified by the total loss of revenue accrued from lower prices for refined petroleum products and domestic sales of crude, which totalled $122 billion in 2013, according to the EIA.

Comments made over the weekend by Saudi Arabia's powerful oil minister Ali Naimi that the kingdom would not cut production even if prices fell to a level of $20 per barrel will have sent a cold chill through the corridors of the Kremlin where preparations are already being made to cope with a deep economic recession. Russia is being squeezed hard by a combination of tough trade and financial sanctions and plummeting oil prices, which are eroding its main source of hard foreign currency earnings.