Well, you'd have to have been living under a rock if you didn't spend most of 2012 inundated with talk of the 2012 presidential election or Apple's much-anticipated iPhone 5. A very big rock somewhere on an island that magically had no communication with the outside world. The election, the iPhone 5, and famous-for-what-exactly Kim Kardashian grace the top of Yahoo's list of most-searched terms in 2012.

It's just the third time in the 12 years that Yahoo has been compiling the list that a news event was the year's most popular search term. In 2010, "BP Oil Spill" had that honor. In 2009, it was "Michael Jackson's death," which I guess counts as a news event. Last year we were iPhone-obsessed. What else were we searching for?

Prince Charles has never been a popular figure. First came the Princess Diana scandal, and then came his marriage to Camilla Parker-Bowles which would have been a touching love story had it not have been tainted by his scandalous behavior while still married to Princess Di, well, if not in action, certainly in thought.

Unfortunately, Prince Charles has never really been a winner. There was a point once upon a time when Prince Charles was fairly popular amongst his people but those days are long gone.  A recent poll showed a massive decline in public support in the UK for Prince Charles. It’s no surprise, really, especially if you take into account how well his son, Prince William, and daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, have been doing in establishing a modern monarchy.

Are you getting that feeling like your little raft is about to plunge over the edge of Niagara Falls into the mist and rocks below? The "fiscal cliff" talks began today! One of the biggest points of debate is raising taxes. Obama wants to freeze taxes for those of us who make under $250,000 and allow the Bush tax cuts to expire as planned for people making over $250,000. Republicans don't want to increase tax rates. Instead, they want to raise revenue by limiting deductions that benefit the wealthy.

Just for a little context, people who gross $100,000 a year or less are taxed at 35 percent. If the Bush tax cuts expire, people who gross over $250,000 a year will return to a 39.6 percent tax rate (from 35 percent). The median household income for Americans is around $50,000. How do Americans feel about a tax rate increase for relatively wealthy people? Let's take a look at both sides of the argument.

Oh, well. I was hoping for a hanging chad controversy or some other indication that the 2012 election wasn't truly over. Some fluke by which Romney wins the popular vote and the Electoral College is turned on its head. The truth is it was over fairly early. Far earlier than anyone thought it would be. And as close as Mitt Romney got to the White House, at the end of the day, he never got close enough to the voters to oust President Barack Obama. 

I don't know what happened.

Call me a naive new mom, but when a friend told me you're actually allowed to bring your children into the voting booth with you, I was mildly stunned. It hadn't even occurred to me to drag my baby with me to the polls when I vote for President on Election Day. I couldn't picture waiting in that long line with the poor girl, who at 11 months is very squirmy and itching to crawl everywhere, then pushing her stroller into the cramped booth, pulling the curtain closed (we cast votes behind dark curtains here in New York), and yanking the rickety old lever once I'd ticked off my picks. My guess is it would scare her, there would be tears (but enough about me), and we'd come away from the electoral experience a hot mother-daughter mess.

That said, plenty of moms -- and dads! -- don't have the choice of leaving their kids at home because they have no one to watch them. For many parents, it comes down to bringing the children to the polls or not voting at all.

Gov. Rick Scott of FloridaHey, remember when George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election, fair and square? Me neither. I do remember thousands of Florida residents (mostly Democrats) having their constitutional right to cast ballots taken away from them for completely bogus reasons thanks to Florida's Secretary of State at the time, Republican Katherine Harris: Hey you, potential voter,  you're ... ineligible! Yeah, cause, um ... you're a convicted felon! Oh, no you're not ... my bad. Oh well. Better luck next time, bro!

Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, is what they call a "crucial battleground state." What does that mean? Well, let's put it this way: The practice of voting suppression in states like Florida (and Ohio) can pretty much throw the entire election -- in 2000 the presidency was determined by a mere 537 votes. 

Mitt Romney looked relaxed and confident heading into the Presidential debate on foreign policy, the last debate of the 2012 Presidential Election. And well he should have! With the Gallup poll putting him 9 points ahead of President Barack Obama two weeks out from the elections, and having never been wrong before when a candidate had that big a lead this close to Election Day, Romney was the most confident he's been so far.

Everyone has an opinion on who they want to win the 2012 Presidential election and why. Will it be four more years for President Barack Obama? Or will Mitt Romney prevail? We do have more than two choices, but the debates have our Democratic President and Republican choice getting us all riled up over everything they say. What if we simplified it? What if we took this vote to the littlest of kids?

That's exactly what I did. I showed kids 5 and under side-by-side photos of the candidates and asked them who they wanted to be President and why. Some kids saw the photos pictured above (that's my daughter); others saw images of the candidates wearing different suits. All images shown were chosen in attempt to be non-biased. But it was revealed to me quickly that some kids just like blue a lot. I also learned that my house is divided in who we are voting for. Regardless, there was a clear winner in our kid vote for President. Check out their picks and reasons behind them.