Nashville Occupy Protesters Fight on Christmas Day

Freakin' animals.

At Frugal Cafe Blog Zone, "Christmas Day Fight Among Occupy Protestors in Nashville, Including Pregnant Woman, Police Called in."

And at Blazing Cat Fur,  "Occupests In Christmas Day Cat Fight."

Retailers Brace for Hordes of Post-Christmas Shoppers

I'm looking forward to the total retail sales numbers.

A big holiday season will give the 4th quarter GDP numbers a boost. That's going to be great for Americans, and could help Obama's reelection prospects --- to the great consternation of Republicans.

At Los Angeles Times, "Hordes of post-Christmas shoppers expected."

Even Profitable Firms Fleeing California

Something I've written about on numerous occasions.

At O.C. Register, "California businesses can expect little sympathy from leadership in Sacramento":

Democratic reaction to the news that Waste Connections, a $3.6-billion company and major Sacramento-area employer, is headed to Houston to seek a friendlier business climate tells other businesses all they need to know about the attitudes of those who run California's government.

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gave these clueless and snarky remarks in response to the news: "In this instance you have a company that is, in fact, profitable, making significant revenue gains in 2011 and 2010. That doesn't speak to a bad business climate here in California when a good company is able to thrive in that way. So whatever Mr. Middelstaedt's (company CEO) reasons are to leave the great state of California, I know I'm pushing back."

Steinberg claims to have worked on improving the state's business climate, but from what we see in Sacramento, Steinberg and the party he helps lead have been pushing hard mainly for additional regulations and much higher taxes. The California Democratic Party's attitude long has been that businesses are basically trying to rip off the public, and the source of all wealth and advancement can be found in the public sector, When businesses leave. Steinberg and Co. show little sympathy.

That's because Democrats suck.

Continue reading at the link.

Why the Left Doesn't Mourn Vaclav Havel's Passing

From Ron Radosh, at PJMedia, "How the Left sees the Life of Vaclav Havel, and why they Do Not Mourn his Passing":

PJ Media readers know why we mourn the passing of Vaclav Havel. On this site, Michael Ledeen beautifully laid out the reasons why the world knows it has lost one of its greatest leaders. Ledeen put it in these words: “he was one of a handful of people who changed the world by fighting totalitarian Communism and then, having defeated it, inspired his people to rejoin the Western world, embrace capitalism, and support democratic dissidents everywhere.”

But now that a week or more have passed since Havel’s death, some on the Western Left have decided to let their true feelings about Havel out. Despite having to give some lip service to Havel’s integrity and what he accomplished, these men of the Left quickly get to what they really think: Havel helped destroy the great ideal of Communism as a worthy goal, and for that, he cannot be forgiven.

The most egregious is the article in the British paper The Guardian. The headline to Neil Clark’s article reads, “Another Side of the Story.” Clark immediately ties Havel up with another individual who has just passed way, Christopher Hitchens, whose “consecration” he strongly objects to. For Hitchens was, he writes, “ another ‘progressive’ opponent of the communist regimes of eastern Europe who found favour with Washington’s neocons.”

Clark does not question that Havel was “a brave man” who stood up for his views. That he cannot deny. It is Havel’s views, and his anti-Communism, that he detests. For Havel, he writes, did not help make his country “and the world, a better place.” In particular, denying everything we know about the nature of Stalinism in Eastern Europe — the repression, the bureaucracy, the lack of necessary consumer goods to lead a decent life, the ever pervasive secret police — he faults Havel for the following:

Havel’s anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.

Surely Mr. Clark must be kidding. Has he not read any of the scores of books revealing the nature of life under what his comrades then called “really existing socialism”? Does he not realize that all these so-called “positive achievements” were there mainly in the minds of the state and Party propaganda apparatus, and that the only people to have them were the Party’s apparatchiks? Does he really believe that communism put the needs of “the majority first”? What accounts, then, for the scores of brave crowds who swept Havel into office, and who openly taunted the regime’s spokesmen as liars and no different than the Nazis who ruled before them?

Clark does not stop with the above. In true Communistpeak, he attacks Havel as “the son of a wealthy entrepreneur,” in other words used by the Maoists of the day, a “capitalist roader.” How dare the son of a bourgeois merchant becomes a national hero? Havel, to Clark, as to the comrades who ruled for decades, had no right to power, since he came from the hated capitalist class.

Continue reading.

Also, from Darleen at Protein Wisdom, "Pining for the fjords Communism." Hammering Whoopi Goldberg's comments on communism, Darleen adds:

The base misanthropy of collectivist advocates is glaringly clear. From communism [international collectivism] to national socialism [national collectivism], these are anti-human systems that declare individuals are not sovereign beings with inherent rights, but units that live at the pleasure of the regime. A regime that decides what needs are to be met and who will be sentenced to fulfilling those needs.

Remember that as Obama and statist Democrats continue their attempts to fundamentally transform America.

Freakin' murderous asshats.

Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview: Mitt Romney On Taxes, 'Modeling,' and the Vision Thing

It's amazing that Newt Gingrich dropped back down in the polls so quickly. The negative attacks took their toll and the Newt-phoria on the Iowa campaign trailed cooled off rather decisively. Now it's Ron Paul's turn to start fading in the less-than-two weeks we have left until the caucuses. All the attention to the racist newsletters should take some of the luster off Paul's campaign, although he's got the ground game in place so who knows? If Romney can hold on for the win in New Hampshire he'll be able to match whatever momentum emerges for the Iowa winner, and with his fundraising edge he'll likely be able to compete more effectively in the number of upcoming contests through January.

In any case, an interesting interview at WSJ, at the link:

Does Mitt Romney have a governing vision, a dominating set of political principles? It's the big question many voters say they have about the GOP presidential candidate. So when the former Massachusetts governor visited the Journal editorial board this week, we put it to him squarely, if perhaps tendentiously.

Voters see in him a smart man, an experienced executive, plenty of managerial expertise, great family—but they also see someone with the soul of a consultant who has 59 economic proposals because he lacks a larger vision of where he'd take the country. What does he think of that critique?

Mr. Romney has been garrulously genial for an hour, but here he shows a hint of annoyance. "I'm not running for president for 59 ideas," he says. "I'm not running for president because the country needs a management consultant or a manager. I'm not even the world's greatest manager. There are a lot better managers out there.

"People who know me from my years at Bain Capital, Bain and Company, the Olympics and Massachusetts wouldn't say he was successful because he was a great manager. They'd say I was successful because I was a leader, that I had a vision of how to change the enterprise, any one of those three enterprises, to make it greater."And that vision is? Mr. Romney says he's running "to return America to the principles that we were founded upon." He goes on, expanding on his campaign theme, Believe in America: "We have a choice in America to be remaining a merit-based opportunity society that follows the Constitution, or to follow the path of Europe.

And I'm the guy who believes in the former. I believe America got it right. I believe Europe got it wrong. I believe America must remain the leader the world. . . . I am absolutely committed to an American century. I see this as an American century."

He concludes with even more force, "America doesn't need a manager. America needs a leader. The president is failing not just because he's a poor manager. It's because he doesn't know where to lead."

Continue reading.

Occupy Wall Street and the Jews

Walter James Casper III has to answer for his ugly endorsement of the hate. Walter James Casper III has endorsed the anti-Semitism of the Occupy movement. Add this on top of his anti-black racist sentiments and the sponsorship of hatred at his blog under "free speech" pretenses, and it's beyond clear the depths of evil this man will go to destroy decent people, Jews and racial minorities especially, because they don't toe the collectivist line.

Here's Jonathan Neumann, at Commmentary:

Defenders and supporters of Occupy Wall Street have tried to downplay the extent of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hostility, but it was more prevalent than their initial denials suggested or their belated statements of concern conceded.

To begin with, any conspiracy theory that connects a tiny portion (in this case 1 percent) of the population with exploitative banking practices is susceptible to taking on anti-Semitic undertones. This is especially the case when the list of supporters includes the American Nazi Party, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, Louis Farrakhan, white supremacist David Duke, Socialist Party USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hezbollah, 911Truth.org, International Bolshevik Tendency, and myriad other dubious organizations and individuals. With such comrades in arms, leaders of Occupy Wall Street ought to have been much on guard against anti-Semitic talk.

Nor was the hostility a matter of undertones only. The tone, very early on, was set in part by signs and messages that were overtly anti-Semitic. “Google: (1) Wall St. Jews, (2) Jewish Billionaires, (3) Jews & FedRsrvBank,” read one sign. Another: “Nazi Bankers Wall Street.” The man holding up a sign that read “Hitler’s Bankers,” upon being pressed by passersby to explain himself, replied “Jews control Wall Street.” He was then asked whether the Fox News Channel had asked him to hold up the sign, presumably to make Occupy Wall Street look bad, and he responded, “F— Fox News. That’s bulls—t. F—ing Jew made that up.” Another protester, upon being interrogated by a skeptical elderly passerby sporting a yarmulke, brushed him away saying, “You’re a bum, Jew.”

An Occupier who had traveled from Georgia explained his anti-Jewish animus to a reporter from the New York Post by stating that “Jews are the smartest people in the world,” that “they control the media,” and that nobody is willing to point out this simple truth because “the media doesn’t want to commit suicide by losing the Jewish advertisers.” Still another Occupier expostulated in a widely circulated video: “The smallest group in America controls the money, media, and all other things. The fingerprints belong to the Jewish bankers who control Wall Street. I am against Jews who rob America. They are one percent who control America. President Obama is a Jewish puppet. The entire economy is Jewish. Every federal judge [on] the East Coast is Jewish.”

Occupy Wall Street’s group page on Facebook was littered with images of the title page of Henry Ford’s notorious pamphlet, The International Jew, as well as a picture featuring the phrase Arbeit Macht Frei, lifted from the entrance gate at Auschwitz, with the accompaniment: “We don’t work for bad money.”

At Occupy Los Angeles, one sign explained, in remarkable detail: the “[The] satanic cult called the Illuminati…represents Masonic and Jewish bankers who finagled a monopoly over government credit….Thus the people who control our purse strings are conspiring against us.” (It went on to claim how this nefarious force funded the first two world wars and is planning a third.) Another sign read “Humanity vs. the Rothschlds” [sic] as a speaker further advanced this classic trope: “How many people know that the wars, in WWII, both sides, were funded by the Rothschilds? Those are the bankers. So banking and war is [sic] very intertwined.”

To highlight such talk is to invite one predictable retort: One cannot hold an entire movement responsible for the excesses of outliers. But, despite the assertions of its advocates, Occupy Wall Street was not in fact a movement. Its ranks never numbered more than a modest few hundred people in Manhattan—which made its anti-Semitic cohort statistically significant. Its lack of structure, moreover, and near inability to repudiate sentiments by its participants meant that even a fringe was no less part of the whole.

And Neumann illustrates how the widespread anti-Zionism at Occupy Wall Street showcases the ruthless anti-Jewish eliminationism of the global left's Israel extermination industry:

And what of anti-Zionism? Naturally, given the resonance of the word occupy in association with controversial Israeli policies toward the West Bank and Gaza, the protests were a word-association game waiting to happen. On a random visit to Zuccotti Park in October, three signs were observed by this writer that related to American foreign policy, two of which pertained specifically to Israel. One read: “Obama stop giving bunker buster bombs to an extremist Israeli regime. Stop being Israel’s hit-man. AIPAC will still dump you in 2012.” The second: “USA and Israel are criminal psychopathic nations, an axis of evil, mass murderers, financial predators if not stopped no one has a future! Hands off Iran.” A small table exhibiting books for purchase was dominated almost exclusively by Marxist and Communist literature. Among the offerings, the one seeming anomaly was a book on Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS), an organization that seeks to isolate Israel on all fronts.

But the BDS book was no aberration; the policies and input of that organization seem to have been welcomed by Occupy Wall Street. On October 13, BDS issued a statement entitled “Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine,” expressing solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and hailing the objectives of the two as analogous. After all, “Palestinians, too, are part of the 99% around the world that suffer at the hands of the 1% whose greed and ruthless quest for hegemony have led to unspeakable suffering and endless war.” A month later, Adalah-NY, an organization that campaigns in New York for the boycott of Israel, relayed a message of support for the protests from the Palestinian Arab chapter of BDS and led a question-and-answer session at Occupy Wall Street on the ‘‘growing movement for BDS against Israel until it complies with international law.’’

Last summer mass domestic protests overtook Israel—protests that attracted hundreds of thousands rather than the scant crew down by Wall Street. When an organizer of those protests came to speak in Zuccotti Park, a member of the Occupy Wall Street outreach working group, Andy Pollack, decried the appearance of “Zionist racists.”

An anti-Israel group, If Americans Knew, sustaining the conspiratorial notion of an America-Israel corporate nexus, distributed fliers headlined “Occupy Wall Street…not Palestine!” and noted that “while people are losing jobs, homes, and hope, politicians—dominated by powerful special interests—are sending more of our tax money to Israel than to any other country on earth.”

On October 28, Zuccotti Park hosted “Kaffiyeh Day at Occupy Wall Street”—the kaffiyeh being the Arab headdress associated most famously with Yasir Arafat—and protesters waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Free Palestine” and “Long live Palestine! Occupy Wall Street.”

Nor was this sort of thing confined to New York. At Occupy Oakland, anti-Zionist commentators were fixated on the allegation that the tear gas used by the police to break up their encampment was manufactured by the same American company that makes tear gas for the Israel Defense Forces. The left-wing Jewish poet Amirah Mizrahi wrote, “i was palestine in oakland,” and Max Blumenthal, an anti-Zionist blogger, insisted that, far from being a distraction from the essential economic concerns of the Occupy protests, the Arab-Israel issue had now become more difficult to avoid, as the protesters were being confronted with the very same weapons used against Palestinian Arabs.

No, it's not confined to New York at all.

And it is in fact a movement, and the radical extremists are working to leverage Occupy into a long-term program against the establishment. President Obama and Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed Occupy. Today's Democrat Party is infiltrated with neo-communists who wouldn't flinch at the sight of Israel going up in flames  amid a Middle East holocaust to rival the interwar years. This is the program of the radical left.

Neumann goes on with further examples, citing the organizing magizine Adbusters, which is known for its virulent anti-Semitism:

And are the two—anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism—so easily divided? To begin with, the protests were originally a response to a call issued by the virulently anti-Zionist magazine Adbusters, a publication most noted for a short 2004 article entitled, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” Speculating that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was carried out to serve the interests of Israel, the essay explored the close affinity of Jewish neoconservatives for the Jewish state and emphasized the Jewish identity of several prominent neoconservatives within and without the Bush administration. In so doing, was Adbusters being anti-Zionist or was it being anti-Semitic?

What about the protester at Occupy LA who said, “I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our federal reserve, which is not run by the federal government, I think they need to be run out of this country”? Was she being anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic? Or the Kaffiyeh Day participant at Occupy Wall Street who shouted ‘‘Occupy Yahudi!’’ and ‘‘Yahudi are kafirs!’’ (‘‘Occupy Jews!’’ and ‘‘Jews are infidels!’’) and whom the group refused to silence? Was he being anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic? Or a protester at Occupy Oakland who, reacting to a speech from a Palestinian Arab youth crying “down with Israel,” turned to his fellow attendee and commented: “F—ing Jews.” How about the aforementioned protester from Georgia at Occupy Wall Street who explained that “the reason the Arabs hate us” is because of “the Jews”? Or the founder of Occupy D.C., Kevin Zeese, who has a history of lamenting the power of the “Israel lobby” in the United States?

These do not begin to exhaust the extent or foulness of the sentiments toward Jews and Israel that emanated from the Occupy protests—sentiments so extreme as to compel even Michael Lerner, editor of the left-wing magazine Tikkun, to share his ‘‘distress at the hatred toward Israel and/or toward Jews’’ on display in Oakland.

Continue reading.

Neumann explains how Jewish social justice activists became central organizers in Zuccotti Park --- and thus gave cover to those attacking the movement for its rampant anti-Semitism.

PREVIOUSLY: "Manifesto: Occupy for the Revolution."

Also, "Continuing Lies by Cowardly Hate-Blogger W. James Casper in Left's Demonic Workplace Intimidation Campaign," and "Deranged Stalker Walter James Casper III Fires Up the Criminal Hate-Blogging for the Holidays."

New York Times Decries 'Right Wing Extremism' — Again

Well, since I've been reading the Times' editorials, here you go with the latest attack on the "extremist" right, "The Race to the Right":

The toxic effects of right-wing extremism in Washington were vividly on display during the payroll-tax fiasco — even to the right wing. On the campaign trail, though, those lessons are being ignored. The leading Republican presidential candidates are overtly competing for the title of Most Conservative, distorting their own records and advocating increasingly radical positions.

Candidates often move to the ideological edges to win a primary, because that’s where the primary voters are, but the frenzied efforts of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are particularly hard to watch. Neither has a record as a dogmatic conservative, and they are competing with candidates like Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann who have much longer and more consistent conservative records. That makes their rush to the right all the more desperate and convoluted.

Last week, Mr. Romney blasted Mr. Gingrich as “an extremely unreliable leader in the conservative world,” citing specifically Mr. Gingrich’s criticisms of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan and his appearance with Nancy Pelosi in a commercial against global warming. Mr. Gingrich, in turn, claims he’s “a lot more conservative” than Mr. Romney.

Real conservatives, in their columns and magazines, say neither of them qualifies, noting that both have previously called themselves “progressives” when appealing to very different audiences than the ones in Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr. Romney once supported abortion rights, though now he says he has changed his mind. Mr. Gingrich fiercely opposes the government’s role in the housing market, but worked for Freddie Mac. Both have supported an individual mandate for health insurance, as well as the TARP bailout of Wall Street.

To make up for their lapses in orthodoxy, each has now adopted positions at the far end of the ideological spectrum. Mr. Romney wants to send home all 11 million illegal immigrants and make them wait many years to return. He equates the president’s goal of raising taxes on the rich with redistributing wealth until the government achieves “equal outcomes” for everyone, all but calling President Obama a Marxist. Rather than demonstrate prudence after the death of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, he recklessly demanded that the United States now push for regime change there. (Without feeling any need to explain just how that might be done, just as he has failed to explain precisely how he will end Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all.)

Mr. Gingrich, meanwhile, is now dispensing with the Constitution in his call to drag federal judges before Congress to explain their decisions...

Continue reading.

Call me a right wing extremist, because I don't think any of that stuff from Romney is that exceptional. Sure, both Romney and Gingrich are pandering to the base, but frankly, the concerns of the tea party and others at the grassroots aren't going to be easy to ignore heading into the general election. Republicans have to stay on  message on the economy. They have to hammer this administration for painting extreme economic conditions  in order to seize more power for a massive bureaucratic response to the recession. It hasn't worked. Just keep plugging away on that and in no time the payroll tax debacle will be ancient history and Obama will have to run on his economic record fair and square. And screw the New York Times' editors. These people are pathetic losers cheerleading for more of the same old failed policies. Progressives suck like that.

New Air Jordans Cause Race Riots Across the United States

That's hardly exaggerating.

See the headline at Edmonton Journal, "New Air Jordan shoes cause shopping frenzy in Seattle, across U.S."

And at Small Dead Animals, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire."

Added: At London's Daily Mail, "Arrests, pepper spray, brawls and doors pulled off hinges: Chaos at stores across U.S. as thousands of shoppers scramble for new Air Jordans."

Ron Paul Talks About Newsletters in 1995 Video

Ron Paul can't keep walking out on interviewers when asked about racially inflammatory statements.

With videos like these, he's on record in the mid-1990s as being very knowledgeable about the content of things put out under his name. The New York Daily News has a report, "Video surfaces of Ron Paul talking about racist newsletters in 1995, far earlier than he said he knew about them."

And the New Republic has a roundup, "TNR Exclusive: A Collection of Ron Paul’s Most Incendiary Newsletters."( Via Memeorandum.) And see also David Weigel, at Slate, "Ron Paul and the Coming Race War."

By this time it's pretty much all out there. The best thing for Ron Paul would be to come clean. His name is on some of these newsletters, so it sounds like a bald faced lie when he denies knowledge of them.

And see previously at Pamela's, "BOMBSHELL! RON PAUL'S RACIST NEWSLETTERS."

Yeah, House Republicans Screwed Up — So Suck It Up and Get Back to Fighting Democrat Big-Government

I'm glad Boehner "caved," as the radical progressives describe it.

Now Republicans can work to minimize the public relations fallout over being bizarrely tarred as favoring tax increases on the middle class. It's going to take a few news cycles and perhaps a few pessimistic economic forecasts before the administration will be forced back into what should rightfully be a defense of its failed policies. In the meanwhile, the MFM outlets are having a field day with the schadenfreude, so might as well roll with it for a while.

At New York Times, "The House Backs Down":

For a full year, House Republicans have replaced governing with confrontations that they allow to reach the brink of crisis, only then making extreme demands in exchange for a resolution. On Thursday, that strategy crumbled. Battered by public opinion and undermined by more reasonable Senate Republicans, the House’s leaders backed down and signed off on a deal to continue the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for two months.

The House Republicans’ stubborn opposition to the extension “may not have been politically the smartest thing in the world,” Speaker John Boehner said, in the understatement of the week. He still called it “a good fight.”

If the deal goes through on Friday — and even one angry lawmaker could stall it — the paychecks of 160 million workers will not shrink for at least eight weeks and three million jobless workers will keep their benefits. That will be paid for largely by mortgage fees, and negotiations will resume on paying for the remaining 10 months.

A Republican demand that President Obama make a decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline will remain in the measure, as negotiated by the Senate last week. Republicans also won some minor adjustments to prevent small businesses from being harmed by the extension.

The struggle to reach an agreement, which was a clear victory for President Obama, exposed voters in the starkest way to the real temperament of the House that Americans elected a year ago. If the president wants it, they’re against it. If it might assist the middle class, as opposed to the rich, they will concoct an economic argument to oppose it. (“The payroll tax cut isn’t really that effective.”) And if it absolutely has to pass, they will throw in stray ideas — an oil pipeline, air pollution regulations — to win some part of their agenda, or kill the bill trying.

The Republican wounds this time were entirely self-inflicted. The crisis over the two-month extension wasn’t really about the payroll tax at all; it was about the hurt feelings of bumptious House members having to accede to a deal driven by the Senate and the White House. The real confrontation, over paying for the tax cut, is yet to come.

Well, enjoy the moment, New York Times. Paying for that "tax cut" is really more about paying for the endless entitlement state, which we can't afford and which is killing innovation and entrepreneurialism. The GOP House screwed up the messaging and tactics, but the larger goal to starve the bureaucratic beast is a necessity. The tough choices of reinventing government would perhaps be less wrenching during a period of robust growth. But we don't have any luxuries right now.

See Don Surber for more on that, "It’s worse than Zero Hedge said."

'Home for the Holidays'

Via Darleen Click, at Protein Wisdom, "Obama sends out instructions on how to really annoy your family members at Christmas."

And it's not just about being obnoxious, although there's no shortage of that. No, parents might also realize that they wasted their lives bringing such stupid people into the world. Families can say to their kids, "Obama promised 'Hope and Change' in 2008. All he's delivered is debt and destruction of our most cherished values. Wake up dear ones before it's too late."

Obama Claims Victory as Congress Reaches Payroll Tax Deal

It's a good thing Boehner took the deal. The GOP was getting hammered on this, letting the Obama-Democrat-Socialists seize the mantle of tax-cutters. What a joke that is.

At Los Angeles Times, "Lawmakers reach tentative deal on payroll tax cut; House action Friday":

The agreement amounts to a reversal of sorts for the House Republican majority, which had rejected a compromise plan that the Senate overwhelmingly passed last weekend to extend relief for wage-earners for 60 more days.

Boehner had said the House wanted a full-year extension, and called on President Obama to demand the Democratic-controlled Senate return to Washington to continue negotiations.

Earlier Thursday, the Ohio Republican showed little sign of reversing course, convening his top negotiators in an otherwise-empty Capitol to call on Democrats to join them for "serious negotiations."

Asked later about the perception that Republicans had caved, Boehner said, "I think our members waged a good fight." He admitted, though, that it may not have been a politically popular one.

The White House issued a statement from Obama congratulating members "for ending the partisan stalemate.""This is good news, just in time for the holidays," he said.

"This is the right thing to do to strengthen our families, grow our economy, and create new jobs."

I commented on this debacle previously at length. But check Howard Portnoy at Hot Air, "The GOP’s costly fumble over the payroll tax extension." And also, Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Capitol Hill Fiasco Again Shows Why Obama is No Pushover." More at Memeorandum.

Experts See a False Dawn in Economy's Recent Gains

Here's hoping the bad economic news weighs heavier on the voters than GOP incompetence.

At New York Times, "Signs Point to Economy's Rise, but Experts See a False Dawn":

WASHINGTON — As the fourth quarter draws to a close, a spate of unexpectedly good economic data suggests that it will have some of the fastest and strongest economic growth since the recovery started in 2009, causing a surge in the stock market and cheering economists, investors and policy makers.

In recent weeks, a broad range of data — like reports on new residential construction and small business confidence — have beaten analysts’ expectations. Initial claims for jobless benefits, often an early indicator of where the labor market is headed, have dropped to their lowest level since May 2008. And prominent economics groups say the economy is growing three to four times as quickly as it was early in the year, at an annual pace of about 3.7 percent.

But the good news also comes with a significant caveat. Many forecasters say the recent uptick probably does not represent the long-awaited start to a strong, sustainable recovery. Much of the current strength is caused by temporary factors. And economists expect growth to slow in the first half of 2012 to an annual pace of about 1.5 to 2 percent.

Even that estimate could be optimistic if Washington lawmakers fail to extend aid for the long-term unemployed and a payroll tax cut for the United States’ 160 million wage earners.

At stake is about $150 billion, the bulk of which would go to middle-class families and the unemployed. If Congress does not pass the measures, economists say, it would significantly weaken growth from already-damped levels anticipated early in the new year.

Well, come to think of it, Boehner and friends may still find a way to give the Dems all the political advantages of the lousy economy.

More on that coming up later...

The Number of Squatters Nationwide is Rising

These are just people without homes. Not to be confused with the Obama-endorsed Occupy freaks expropriating property for the revolution.

At Los Angeles Times, "Squatters say foreclosed homes beat homeless shelters":

Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing.

Nobody lives here, at least not officially.

But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America. Given their clandestine lives, it's impossible to say how many people are squatting in this country, but with more than 1.3 million homes in foreclosure and hundreds of thousands of people homeless, advocates say it's safe to assume the number is growing.

"You have these abandoned dwellings that are sitting there vacant, sometimes for many months," said Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, where shelters are reporting record numbers of residents. "It's not an issue of whether squatting is right or wrong. The fact is that people are desperate for places to live, and they're going to do what they need to do."

RTWT.

Thank the Obama-Dems for the Depression-like conditions in this country. Squatting is illegal, but the administration doesn't give a Flying V one way or the other. For example, "Taxpayers Will Pay for President’s Hawaiian Vacation Whether He Goes or Not."

Ron Paul's Positions Play Well in Iowa

Too well, unfortunately.

At Wall Street Journal:

FORT MADISON, Iowa — On the debate stage, Rep. Ron Paul often finds himself isolated from his rivals for the White House. All the major Republican candidates call for limited government, but Mr. Paul's platform is unique in saying that means scaling back drug laws and opposing aggressive action to rid Iran of its nuclear capabilities.

Here in Iowa, however, Mr. Paul's mix of positions has found an audience—and it's big enough to give him, at least for now, the unlikely title of front-runner in the state.

The Texas congressman holds a lead among younger voters, some of whom cite his skepticism of U.S. military action and opposition to federal marijuana laws. Mr. Paul is also drawing a share of fiscal conservatives due to his longstanding call for smaller government. And with his call to "end the Fed," he is attracting voters who are wary of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.

"I will be a Ron Paul supporter first and then a Republican," said Frank Conrad, a 62-year-old corrections officer and cattle farmer, who has had a Ron Paul sign on his garage for four years. "He's saying the things I believe."

Few people think Mr. Paul's coalition can carry him all the way to the GOP nomination. His isolationist foreign-policy views have turned off many Republicans. Evangelical Christians, a prominent part of the party, tend to look to other candidates, partly because they believe Mr. Paul will be insufficiently protective of Israel.

But amid a highly fractured GOP field, Mr. Paul has held the lead in three of the last four publicly available polls of GOP voters in Iowa, with support ranging from 20% to 28%.

More at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "What Ron Paul Thinks of America."

What Ron Paul Thinks of America

From Dorothy Rabinowitz, at Wall Street Journal:

Ron Paul's supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It's a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, "You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs."

He was speaking, it's hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace. 

Hear Dr. Paul on the subject of the 9/11 terror attacks—an event, he assures his audiences, that took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions. True, we've heard the assertions before. But rarely have we heard in any American political figure such exclusive concern for, and appreciation of, the motives of those who attacked us—and so resounding a silence about the suffering of those thousands that the perpetrators of 9/11 set out so deliberately to kill.

There is among some supporters now drawn to Dr. Paul a tendency to look away from the candidate's reflexive way of assigning the blame for evil—the evil, in particular, of terrorism—to the United States.

Continue reading.

Paul can win Iowa. He can't win the GOP nomination. See, "Why Ron Paul Can't Win."

Folks suggested earlier that the Republican establishment would turn on Paul if he came close to securing the nomination. Again, he's sounds too crackpot to me for that thought to even register, but this is a crazy year in politics, so I don't dismiss an intra-party program of merciless destruction if push comes to shove.

The racist newsletter problem is bad enough, from a credibility standpoint, at least. But Paul's foreign policy is not something he can brush off: he's campaigning on it. To give that platform serious legitimacy by elevating its advocate as the GOP standard-bearer would be a horrible omen for the future of politics on the right. And it would also tell us something about the shape of the conservative political universe that this particular candidate could come so far into the mainstream. It would be a testament to the visceral dislike with the Obama-Democrat policy agenda, but it would also signify a mainstreaming of political isolationism in American foreign affairs. That alone would be one thing, but Paul's ideological program is closely intertwined with the bubbling up of anti-Semitism from the fringes, and would combined horrifically with the left's program for the extermination of the Jewish state.

That's what bugs me most about Ron Paul and his paleoconservative brew.

See AoSHQ for a refresher.

Ron Paul Walks Out of CNN Interview

You know, Gloria Borger's been in the business a long time, and she's not haranguing the candidate. And she's apologetic as he pulls the microphone off of his lapel. But Paul is very defensive and his answer is too pat considering his status as the Iowa frontrunner.

The CNN report is here, with video in case this one gets pulled: "Ron Paul defensive over past newsletters."

And today's Los Angeles Times made a serious effort to accept Paul's explanation, saying that:

Paul has disavowed the ranting of the newsletter published under his name (just as he did when the subject came up in 2008) and his spokesman says that Paul didn't write it and "disagrees with it totally." That's comforting. Sort of. It helps distance Paul from these lunatic scribblings, but it fails to answer the question of why he allowed them to be published in the first place. He and his admirers complain bitterly when he's ignored, then protest when he's scrutinized. Paul should answer for these writings.

That sounds reasonable.

See also, Saberpoint, "Solving the Problems of Race in America."

Republicans Losing the Tax Issue to Obama

As I was saying about those MFM headlines.

At New York Times, "Obama Gets a Lift From Tax Battle With Republicans":

WASHINGTON — After a long stretch of high unemployment, legislative turmoil and, in turn, slipping public approval, President Obama seemed to regain his political footing this week with the help of House Republicans, whose handling of a standoff over payroll taxes had even leading conservatives attacking them for bungling the politically charged issue.

At stake were continued payroll tax cuts for 160 million workers and aid for several million long-term unemployed Americans that expire Dec. 31. The holiday brinkmanship over the issue recalled the December budget showdown 16 years ago between another first-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and a new Republican Congressional majority — a fight that capped their year of confrontation over the nation’s fiscal priorities by reviving Mr. Clinton politically as he began his re-election race.

But the impasse was not without risks for Mr. Obama. Democrats fretted that Mr. Obama’s vow to stay in Washington through Christmas and New Year’s to get a deal would backfire should he join his family in Hawaii before a resolution. Also, though House Republicans were bearing the brunt of criticism for the latest show of Washington dysfunction, Mr. Obama could be hurt if the tax break and jobless aid are not extended and the fragile economy sours, as nonpartisan economic forecasters have warned it will without the continued stimulus measures.

And while even other Republicans were predicting that the House Republicans would have to blink, or risk further political damage, the ugliness of the fight reminded Americans yet again of the seeming futility of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to make Washington work as the year of his re-election race is upon him.

Sounds balanced, right? Obama faces liabilities just like the GOP? Well, not exactly. Republicans have to run not only against their Democratic opponents but against the MFM as well (i.e., the "Mother F***ing Media). Republicans won't get breaks from the press. So they can't afford to screw up as bad as they are right now by giving the Democrats the upper hand in the public relations battle. The irony is that John Boehner's right: Republicans are the party of tax cuts, but they're blowing the year-end politics on a grand scale.

Miracles do happen, of course. Maybe the Democrats will beat the odds and manage to screw up this gift they've been given by Boehner's incompetence. It's a riveting political battle, at least.

GOP's Taking a Beating On Payroll Tax Extension

Image is everything, as Andre Agassi used to say.

And I can't see how the House GOP expects to win the public relations battle over the payroll tax holiday when you've got this kind of obstructionist imagery right at before the Christmas holiday. It looks really bad:

And the MFM headlines aren't helping either. At Christian Science Monitor, "In payroll tax battle, GOP shows cracks under Democratic pressure." At CBS News, "House GOP takes a political beating in payroll tax fight."And at Washington Post, "After payroll-tax debacle, GOP goes into damage-control mode."

Ron Paul is Frontrunner in ISU/Gazette/KCRG Poll

At Iowa Caucus 2012, "ISU/Gazette/KCRG Poll: Ron Paul new frontrunner." (Via Memeorandum.)

Ron Paul takes a whopping 27.5 percent at the poll, a ten point lead over the putative GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney.

Today is a great day for the Democrats. The GOP is really succeeding in the perfect meltdown. Amazing, really. Also, at CSM, "What if Ron Paul wins Iowa – and New Hampshire, too? "