A New Communist Manifesto

As if the original Marx and Engels wasn't enough.

At The Utopian, "Towards a New Manifesto":

In 1956, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer sat down to write an updated version of the Communist Manifesto. These are previously unpublished notes from their discussions.....

Adorno: I have the feeling that, under the banner of Marxism, the East might overtake Western civilization. This would mean a shift in the entire dynamics of history. Marxism is being adopted in Asia in much the same way as Christianity was taken up in Mexico at one time. Europe too will probably be swallowed up at some point in the future.

Horkheimer: I believe that Europe and America are probably the best civilizations that history has produced up to now as far as prosperity and justice are concerned. The key point now is to ensure the preservation of these gains. That can be achieved only if we remain ruthlessly critical of this civilization.

Adorno: We cannot call for the defence of the Western world.

Horkheimer: We cannot do so because that would destroy it. If we were to defend the Russians, that’s like regarding the invading Teutonic hordes as morally superior to the [Roman] slave economy. We have nothing in common with Russian bureaucrats. But they stand for a greater right as opposed to Western culture. It is the fault of the West that the Russian Revolution went the way it did. I am always terribly afraid that if we start talking about politics, it will produce the kind of discussion that used to be customary in the Institute.

Adorno: Discussion should at all costs avoid a debased form of Marxism. That was connected with a specific kind of positivist tactic, namely the sharp divide between ideas and substance.

Horkheimer: That mainly took the form of too great an insistence on retaining the terminology.

Adorno: But this has to be said. They still talk as if a far-left splinter group were on the point of rejoining the Politburo tomorrow.

Horkheimer: What are the implications of that for our terminology? As soon as we start arguing with the Russians about terminology we are lost.

Adorno: On the other hand, we must not abandon Marxist terminology.

Horkheimer: We have nothing else. But I am not sure how far we must retain it. Is the political question still relevant at a time when you cannot act politically?

Amazing, that's 55 years ago and nothing's changed.

There's a book too, at Amazon.

Far-Left Congresswoman Jane Schakowsky: Occupy is Unstoppable

Yeah, because, you know, there ain't no commies in Congress or nothin':

This interview's from last week. No matter. Actually facts won't change any of these poisoned minds. See USA Today, for example, "Poll: 6 in 10 indifferent about Occupy movement."

'Nights in White Satin'

Check out Jonathan Sanders piece at PJ Media, "So You Think You Hate Punk Rock: The Five Bands That Will Change Your Mind." It's interesting, and a bit strange. Punk was indeed unusual at the time (1970s) but's it's mainstream now --- looked back on today as a period of innovation and rejuvenation in the history of rock and roll. I don't know if you can find folks who truly "hate" punk, since if they like The Clash or Green Day they're punked out. The other thing is that Sanders lists five bands for those new to the genre, but he doesn't mention any Los Angeles bands. I used to hang out with musicians back in the day --- like Annette Zilinskas, the original bassist with The Bangles --- who pretty much refused to accord any superiority to British punk bands, to say nothing of bands from New York.

In any case, may I suggest The Dickies, a Los Angeles mainstay, formed in 1977. They routinely opened for The Ramones and it looks like they're still going strong. Enjoy:

Michele Bachmann Endures Increasing Sexist Attacks on Campaign Trail

I guess Evan McMorris-Santoro's oppressed-women radar perked up after noticing the start of last weekend's GOP candidate forum with Frank Luntz. Michele Bachmann couldn't even be gracious enough to pour water for her opponents without being smeared as a "water-carrier." And the comments at the post are what you'd expect from the demonic commie-progressives at TPM, "Michele Bachmann Carries Her Opponents’ Water…Literally"

Then there's the "lying bitch" attack on the Jimmy Fallon show, at The Frisky, "Michele Bachmann Demands Apology For “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” Incident On Jimmy Fallon." And New York Times, "NBC Expresses Regret to Bachmann Over Introduction on Fallon Show."

And now progressive media are going after Representative Bachmann's cosmetics? At Huffington Post, "Michele Bachmann Wears Tons of Makeup For CNN Debate," and London's Daily Mail, "Michele Bachmann brings out the war paint as she cakes on the make-up for GOP debate."

Bachmann was subject to unhinged misogyny in August when Newsweek published the "Queen of Rage" cover photo: "The Conservative Crazy Eyes Cliche & Other Stupid MSM Photo Tricks." This stuff is par or the course for conservative women. And had right-leaning outlets slammed First Lady Michelle Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the same fashion, all hell would have broken loose across the progresso-sphere.

'Pinkwashing' and the Depravity of the Anti-Israel Left

William Jacobson responds to Professor Sara Schulman's New York Times essay, "Israel and ‘Pinkwashing’." (At Memeorandum.)

William's post is here: "The demented Israeli “pinkwashing” charge." Read it all the link. I have nothing but contempt for people like Schulman, whose essay is not only despicable, but exceptionally unintelligent as well.

Newt Gingrich Courts Conservative Backlash on Immigration

At New York Times, "Gingrich Risks Conservative Outrage on Immigration":

Did Newt Gingrich have a “heartless” moment on Tuesday night?

In a September debate, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, drew a furious response from conservatives in his party when he said critics of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants “did not have a heart.” The response halted Mr. Perry’s momentum amid charges from rivals that he was too soft on the issue of immigration for the party faithful.

Now, Mr. Gingrich — the newest leader in the national polls — has embraced a similar apostasy: the idea that the country should find a way to make many millions of illegal immigrants legal.

“There’s a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone,” Mr. Gingrich said, citing a program from the Vernon K. Krieble Foundation.

That was enough for Mr. Gingrich’s rivals to pounce. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, refused to allow Mr. Gingrich to claim that his suggestion was different than amnesty.

“If people who come here illegally are going to get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, that’s going to only encourage more people to come here illegally,” Mr. Romney said.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota agreed with Mr. Romney. “I don’t agree that you would make 11 million workers legal, because that in effect is amnesty,” she said.

Also, at The Hill, "Rep. King denounces Gingrich immigration plan as 'amnesty'." (Via Memeorandum.) And check AoSHQ, "Gingrich's Daft Immigration 'Solution'."

PREVIOUSLY: "Newt Goes All 'Dede Scozzafava' on Immigration!"

BONUS: Jeff Goldstein's post from last night, "Debate thoughts, nano edition."

Pepper Spray Saturates National Debate

At New York Times, "Pepper Spray's Fallout, From Crowd Control to Mocking Images":

Some women carry it in their purses in a pink, lipstick-shaped container. Hikers use it to deter bears. People in most states can buy a small canister of it on a quick-release key ring on Amazon.com for $7.07.

As pepper spray has become ubiquitous in this country over the last two decades, it has not raised many eyebrows. But now, after images of the campus police at the University of California, Davis, spraying the Kool-Aid-colored orange compound on docile protesters on Friday, pepper spray is a topic of national debate.

It has become the crowd-control measure of choice lately by police departments from New York to Denver to Portland, Ore., as they counter protests by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

To some, pepper spray is a mild, temporary irritant and its use has been justified as cities and universities have sought to regain control of their streets, parks and campuses. After the video at Davis went viral, Megyn Kelly on Fox News dismissed pepper spray as “a food product, essentially.”

Continue reading.

Robert Reich: Occupy Democracy

There's so much that's wrong with Robert Reich's commentary. It's like where to begin?

Mostly, it's the hypocrisy that's bugging me. The guy's hardly a money-grubbing occupy hippie. The author of numerous best-selling books, Reich has served three presidential administrations and was President Clinton's Secretary of Labor. As a political economist his words have significance, but as a class warrior he's pretty much fail. The fact that he's Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy makes me wonder if he's in his right mind. Certainly the school's benefactors have some issues with the widespread anti-Semitism of this movement, and Reich has been speaking up and down the state at these protests. I sense some desperation in the appeals as well. I mean seriously. "Money in politics"? Boy, that's a new one! Reich's boss --- Bill Clinton --- almost single-handedly turned "soft money" into a household phrase in the 1990s. It's so stupid, really. Attacks on "money in politics" are really attacks on Republicans, which in the end is nothing but lies, considering the trail of Wall Street cash leading right to the current occupant of the White House, to say nothing of the pay-for-play Democrat Party politics that's been SOP for decades. In any case, Lawrence Meyers had a lot along these lines last summer, at Big Government, "What’s Wrong With Robert Reich."

The Right-Wing Assault on the 99 Percent?

Man these people are truly desperate.

See Verum Serum, "Center for American Progress’ Outreach to Occupiers: Conservatives Are Against the 99%." I'm not linking to the despicable Center for American Progress, but VS has the link to the policy paper: "How Conservatives in Congress Are United Against Proposals to Help Ordinary Americans."

These people are just rank losers. Again, the hypocrisy is just killing me, and the opportunism to exploit petty anarchists is astonishing.

Wow! Blake Lively Looks Fabulous at 'Gossip Girl' 100th Episode Party

At London's Daily Mail, "Thank goodness for the tassels! Blake Lively steps out in daring sheer dress joining Gossip Girl co-stars to celebrate 100th episode."

Former LAPD Chief William Bratton to Lead UC Davis Pepper Spray Investigation

At Los Angeles Times, "Bratton to lead investigation of UC Davis pepper-spraying."

And from yesterday's lead story at the paper, "UC Davis chancellor apologizes for pepper-spray incident."

Newt Goes All 'Dede Scozzafava' on Immigration!

Remember Dede?

Michelle has the refresher: "An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing."

Old Newt's getting a little too comfortable up there in the frontrunner's spot, it turns out. He's already angling for the independent vote and we're still weeks away from the Iowa caucuses. Can you say "RINO"? See The Hill, "Immigration exchange during GOP debate nudges Gingrich toward the center":

Newt Gingrich ended up to the left of his GOP rivals on immigration during a CNN debate on Tuesday, defending his position that the United States shouldn't deport every illegal immigrant while the other presidential hopefuls accused him of supporting magnets that attract illegal immigration.

"I don't see any reason to punish someone who came here at 3 years of age and wants to serve the United States of America," Gingrich said, adding that those whose parents brought them to the country illegally but want to serve in the U.S. military should be included in a program that lets foreigners earn citizenship through military service.

Gingrich said he found it hard to believe that Americans would support deporting millions of people and that visas should be made available for those with math and science skills.

But he also made it clear that flexibility would apply only to those who had been contributing positively to the nation for years, not to those continuing to flout U.S. immigration laws.

"I do believe if you've come here recently and you have no ties to the U.S., we should deport you," he said.

Basically, come here illegally, don't get caught and live in the shadows for a decade or two, and you're good to go!

Yay Newt! We knew you still had the old RINO spirit!

Also at Politico (and Memeorandum).

Hamas Gains Momentum in Palestinian Rivalry

Wonderful news!

At New York Times, "New Winds in Mideast Favor Hamas":

GAZA — For years, the imposing black gate that sealed the border between Egypt and Gaza symbolized the pain and isolation that decades of conflict have wrought on this tiny coastal strip, especially under Hamas in recent years.

But recently, the gate has come to represent a new turn for the increasingly confident Hamas leadership. The twin arches of the border crossing have swung open twice in recent weeks for V.I.P. arrivals, first to receive hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails as one captive Israeli soldier moved in the other direction, and a second time for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to visit Gaza for the first time in decades.

Both instances lifted the fortunes of the Islamists at a critical time ahead of negotiations scheduled to be held in Cairo this week with their main rival, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who leads the Fatah party.

Hamas’s leader, Khalid Meshal, arrives at those talks with a sense of regional winds at his back. Dictators have fallen, replaced by protest movements and governments that include the Islamist movements those dictators suppressed. Hamas has lost no opportunity to highlight this development as it basks in the growing regional importance of its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most powerful Islamist movement in the world.

“This is a hot Arab winter that has not until now ripened into spring,” a Hamas official, Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, proclaimed in Gaza last month as he claimed the Arab revolutions for Islamic revivalism. The campaigns to oust corrupted leaders have reached a “critical stage,” he said, before concluding, “With God’s help, next year we will see the flowering of Islam.”

That should read, "With God's help, next year we'll see the flowering of terrorism."

But continue reading.

New Trove of Stolen E-Mails From Climate Scientists Is Released

At New York Times:

The anonymous hacker who shook the world of climate science two years ago by posting a trove of stolen e-mails delivered a new batch on Tuesday, stirring up climate-change contrarians a little more than a week before global negotiations on greenhouse gases are to begin in Durban, South Africa.

The new e-mails appeared remarkably similar to the ones released two years ago just ahead of a similar conference in Copenhagen. They involved the same scientists and many of the same issues, and some of them carried a similar tone: catty remarks by the scientists, often about papers written by others in the field.

Climate scientists said the release was likely intended to torpedo any potential progress in the Durban negotiations, though not much progress had been expected anyway given that countries have been reluctant to commit to binding emissions limits.

The University of East Anglia, the British institution at the middle of the previous hacking episode, confirmed that at least some of the newly released e-mails were authentic. The cache released in 2009 appeared to have come from a file someone obtained by hacking into the university’s computers, a crime for which no charges have been filed or suspects named. The new batch of more than 5,000 e-mails is evidently a fresh selection from the same set of records.

Continue reading.

I honestly don't pay heed to the global warming scaremongers these days, not that I ever much did in any case. The science is not settled, and it's just not even what academics call "normal science" anymore. That is, the scientific community long ago abandoned the rigorous methods of inquiry and morphed into a quasi-religious cult ready to burn heretics at the stake. Go back and read this post from October: "Dr. Martin Hertzberg Letter at the Vail Daily Skewering the Gore-Hansen-IPCC Climate Change Clique." And then check the instant classic from 2009, Steven Hayward's, "Scientists Behaving Badly," at the Weekly Standard.

And then back to the current controversy, check Watt's Up With That?, "Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!" And James Delingpole, "Uh oh, global warming loons: here comes Climategate II!" (At Memeorandum.)

Now, That's What I'm Talking About! — Occupy Protesters Heckle Obama in New Hampshire

At London's Daily Mail, "'Banksters are destroying America!': Obama heckled as Occupy protesters drown out President in New Hampshire."

Also at Memeorandum.

Place the Super Committee Blame Where it Belongs: On the Democrats

Look, idiot progressives are in denial, but the fact is Democrats have pushed for higher taxes all year and the GOP hasn't budged. Here's GOP Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, at Wall Street Journal, "Why the Super Committee Failed:

Even if Republicans agreed to every tax increase desired by the president, our national debt would continue to grow uncontrollably. Controlling spending is therefore a crucial challenge. The other is economic growth and job creation, which would produce the necessary revenue to fund our priorities.

In the midst of persistent 9% unemployment, the committee could have enacted fundamental tax reform to simplify the tax code, help create jobs, and bring in over time the higher revenues that come with economic growth. Republicans put such a plan on the table—and even agreed to $250 billion in new revenue by eliminating or limiting most of the deductions, credits, loopholes and tax expenditures mainly enjoyed by higher-income Americans. We offered this to avoid the even larger tax increases already written into current law that will intensify the pain Americans are feeling during these difficult economic times.

Republicans were willing to agree to additional tax revenue, but only in the context of fundamental pro-growth tax reform that would broaden the base, lower rates, and maintain current levels of progressivity. This is the approach to tax reform used by recent bipartisan deficit reduction efforts such as the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission and the Rivlin-Domenici plan.

The Democrats said no. They were unwilling to agree to anything less than $1 trillion in tax hikes—and unwilling to offer any structural reforms to put our health-care entitlements on a permanently sustainable basis.

Unfortunately, the committee's challenge was made more difficult by President Obama. Since the committee was formed, he has demanded more stimulus spending and issued a veto threat against any proposed committee solution to the spending problem that was not coupled with a massive tax increase.

RTWT.

Jennifer Rubin places blame directly on the president: "The consequences of presidential weakness" (via Memeorandum).

Additional thoughts at Left Coast Rebel.

Mila Kunis is GQ's Knockout of the Year

A full-size pic at London's Daily Mail, "Sexy Mila Kunis scores a one-two punch as she's dubbed Knockout of the Year by GQ." And of course, at Gentlemen's Quarterly, "Mila Kunis: GQ Men of the Year 2011: The Knockout."

PREVIOUSLY: "Smokin' Mila Kunis Attends Marine Corps Ball."

Thanksgiving Day Gets the Jump On Black Friday

At Los Angeles Times, "Black Thursday is replacing Black Friday as more stores open on Thanksgiving":

Black Thursday is becoming the new Black Friday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest retailer, will for the first time launch its holiday sale kickoff at 10 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, joining Toys R Us Inc., Kmart and other chains that have already thrown their doors open while holiday turkeys are still warm.

Other big retailers — including Target Corp., Best Buy Co., Macy's Inc. and Kohl's Corp. — have decided for the first time to open at midnight.

Chain stores have been advancing their opening times for several years, but analysts say it has reached a tipping point this season, with Thursday night poised to upend Friday morning as the official holiday kickoff.

"It's no longer Black Friday, it's going to be Black Thanksgiving from here on out," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group. "Retailers recognize the importance of being convenient, and one of those conveniences is opening earlier so people don't have to wait in line at 4 in the morning in the cold."

The trend in part reflects the tougher environment for brick-and-mortar retailers, who face increased competition from Internet sales that run on a 24-7 basis.

The late-night shopping hours also appeal to coveted younger customers, many of whom prefer to do a midnight shopping run Thanksgiving Day instead of having to leave their warm beds before dawn the day after.

"Young adults are the ones who really come out in force on Thanksgiving Day," said Kathy Grannis, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. "They may have three hours free after dinner, and they want to get some shopping done and be home by midnight."

The earlier hours are a big help to Jacob Nieto, a 35-year-old stylist who scours the circulars on Thanksgiving to plan his shopping strategy. The Koreatown resident, who saved more than $1,000 last year on Black Friday, said waking up before dawn to shop is "just torture."

PREVIOUSLY: "Shoppers Angry as Black Friday Sales Push Into Thanksgiving."

Russian News Anchor Tatiana Limanova Gives President Obama the Finger On Air

At BCF, "Russian Newschick Gives Obama the Finger On Air":

Also at Honolulu Civil Beat, "Russian News Anchor Gives President Obama the Finger Over APEC."

UPDATE: At Blue Collar Philosophy, "Russian Woman Who Flipped Off Obama During Broadcast Has Been Fired."

Rihanna's Videos Present Challenges

At LAT, "Pespective: Rihanna's videos present challenging issues":

The runaway success of the melancholic retro-rave "We Found Love" certifies Rihanna as one of the most successful pop singers of all time, according to Billboard magazine. It's her 20th Top 20 hit, amassed faster than any other solo artist in chart history. But it's the video that really dazzles. On Oct. 20, film director Dennis Dortch ("A Good Day to be Black & Sexy") tweeted the clip along with the comments, "Wow. I believe this to be flyest music video ever by a major (black) recording artist." He later added, "I wish someone would cast her in an indie film."

Directed by Melina Matsoukas, who also directed videos for Rihanna's "S&M," "Hard," "Rude Boy" and "Rock Star 101" and whose résumé includes videos for Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, the "Love" clip centers on a modern-day, melanin-infused Sid and Nancy, played by Rihanna and boxer-turned-model Dudley O'Shaughnessy. We see the drug-addled couple at a skate park, outdoor rave, fish-and-chips spot, rampaging through a convenience store, and passed out on sidewalks. While filming the video in Ireland, Rihanna tweeted, "This is probably one of the deepest videos I've ever done. Its all about love and love being like a drug."

BONUS: "Album review: Rihanna's 'Talk That Talk'."

Obama Rushes to Blame GOP for Super Committee Failure

Via Gateway Pundit:

Gilboa Assault Rifle

Via Double Tapper:

Newt Gingrich Surges to Top of Pack in Presidential Nomination Polling

I'm not surprised. Folks are looking for the alternative to Mitt Romney --- and Gingrich's wonkishness is a needed dose of gravitas.

At Gallup, "Romney, Gingrich Now Top Choices for GOP Nomination" (via Memeorandum). Gingrich beats Romney 22 to 21 percent among Republican-leaning registered voters at Gallup. And at CNN, "Gingrich at top of pack for first time in CNN polling."

The question now is whether Gingrich can maintain the momentum over the next six weeks until Iowa, or will he fade from the spotlight like every other Republican alternative to Mitt Romney all year? See, for example, USA Today, "Rising from the pack, Gingrich invites scrutiny."

PREVIOUSLY: "Newt Gingrich to Occupy Wall Street: 'Go Get a Job Right After You Take a Bath'."

Mozy Infographic: 'Storing the World's Nuclear Weapons'

This graphic features a functional integration of geographic and tabular information on the distribution of the world's nuclear weapons. Changes in the U.S. nuclear inventory are displayed at the second and third images. The problem of storage facilities is highlighted with attention to the United States at the map at bottom.

Via: Mozy

UC Davis Students Protest Pepper Spray Incident

This picture gives you an idea of the large size of the protest: "I've never seen so many people on the #ucdavis quad."

Protest video here: "UC Davis Students Protest Pepper Spraying."

And at Los Angeles Times, "Hundreds of UC Davis students protest pepper-spraying by police." And at San Francisco Chronicle, "5,000 gather on Davis quad, call on chancellor to resign."

Expect updates.

Were the UC Davis Police Justified in Pepper-Spraying Students?

That's the query from Wordsmith, at Flopping Aces.

Wordsmith has a 15-minute video, which includes almost 5 minutes of footage leading up to the pepper spray incident. The students were not violent, but they were being told to leave. And when police tell you to leave you leave. All of the progressive outrage is pretty overblown. But hey, no doubt it helps the cause to have police crack down. It's a "police state," dontcha know? And the university earns itself a public relations nightmare. Investigations are coming, which drags out the drama. See New York Times, "California University Puts Officers Who Used Pepper Spray on Leave." And at KCRA-TV Sacramento, "Statewide Investigation After Officers Pepper Spray Student Protesters: Two Officers Placed On Administrative Leave, University Police Say." And from the comments there:

Why are they asking for police presence if they are going to nail the police officers on every move they make?

That's a good question. It's not like UC officials were indifferent to possible outbreaks of violence. See last week at Los Angeles Times, for example, "UC regents cancel meeting, cite security threats":

Fearing potentially violent disruptions, University of California regents on Monday canceled a meeting scheduled for this week in San Francisco, while UC and Cal State students prepared for demonstrations Tuesday at campuses across the state.

The UC board had planned to hold its regular bi-monthly meeting Wednesday and Thursday at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus but postponed the session after what officials termed credible threats.

University police had received reports that "rogue elements intent on violence and confrontation with UC public safety officers" were planning to join otherwise peaceful protests at the meeting, according to a statement by regents Chairwoman Sherry Lansing, Vice Chairman Bruce Varner and UC President Mark G. Yudof. "Ensuring public safety must be a top priority."

And recall that the concerns are not new. It's been a state of siege at the UC for the past few years: "Berkeley Chancellor's Home Attacked by Torch-Bearing Mob: Governor Decries 'Terrorism'; Activists Pledge, 'Burn Every Rich Man's House to the Ground'!"

Super Committee Failure

From James Pethokoukis, at The American, "Democrats’ tax-hike obsession killed the SuperCommittee":

Newt Gingrich to Occupy Wall Street: 'Go Get a Job Right After You Take a Bath'

At Radio Iowa, "Gingrich to “Occupy” protesters: “Get a job right after you take a bath”":

RELATED: At Fox News, "Gingrich Tries to Preempt Attacks as Poll Numbers Rise," and New York Times, "Gingrich Site Seeks to Allay Conservatives' Fears."

Bachmann Decries 'Bailout Socialism'

At Los Angeles Times, "Michele Bachmann says Bush, GOP embraced 'bailout socialism'."

Reporting from Urbandale, Iowa— Michele Bachmann goes after not only Democrats but also fellow Republicans in her new book, accusing former President George W. Bush and her GOP colleagues in Congress of failing to stay true to conservative, free-market principles when they supported the $700-billion Wall Street bailout.

"The Bush administration … was embracing a kind of 'bailout socialism,' " wrote the Minnesota congresswoman, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination. "It was painful to find out John McCain too favored the TARP bailout. … Here was no ‘maverick’ moment. The same disappointing stance was taken by the Republican leadership in the House."

"I knew there was no way I could vote for it, because I couldn’t find authority for it in the Constitution,” Bachmann continued. “As a constitutional conservative, I put principle over party."

Nude Egyptian Blogger Causes Outrage

At Los Angeles Times, "Egyptian activist posts nude photos to protest repression." And at Comment is Free, "Egypt's naked blogger is a bomb aimed at the patriarchs in our minds."

And the Twitter hashtag is still humming: "#NudePhotoRevolutionary."

Occupy America: Leftists and Islamists United

At Answering Muslims.

Asshats:

'Occupy the Occupiers'

Pure evil.

And Caroline Glick responds, "Jewish American Community in Danger."

This is a community that has for generations seamlessly merged its definition of Judaism with leftist politics. And now that this generation of leftists has cast its lot with the anti-Semites, the young American Jews coming of age have embraced anti-Semitism to show their moral purity.

It may have once gone without saying, but apparently it is no longer obvious that this embrace of Jew hatred by young American Jews is a death embrace for the community.

Stopping Iran

Caroline Glick, via Atlas Shrugs:

Man Arrested in New York Bomb Plot

At USA Today, "Terror suspect had started making bombs, New York police say." And at New York Times, "Man Arrested and Charged in Bomb Plot."

Also at Yid With Lid, "Muslim Convert Arrested by NYPD in Terror Plot." And Atlas Shrugs, "All-American Muslim: NYPD Arrest Muslim Terror Suspect 'plotting to bomb police patrol cars, postal facilities and US soldiers'."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces:

And Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies."

RELATED: At IBD, "Elena Kagan Must Be Recused In ObamaCare Case."

USC Nearly Blows 24-Point Lead in 38-35 Win Over Oregon

That was one hella football game. I was saying to myself, "Good thing I'm not all invested in USC football this year, because the Trojans are blowing it."

They survived.

At LAT, "USC hangs on for a 38-35 victory over No. 4 Oregon," and "USC pulls signature win from the brink of an epic collapse."

PREVIOUSLY: "USC at Oregon is Real PAC-12 Title Game."

Socialist Party Delivered Humiliating Defeat in Spain's General Election

Voters booted the Socialist Party of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the prime minister who caved to terrorism in 2004, pulling Spanish forces out of Iraq.

At New York Times, "Spain Vote Deals Decisive Blow to Socialist Government":

MADRID — Spaniards struggling with high unemployment and a credit squeeze delivered a punishing verdict on almost eight years of Socialist government at the ballot box on Sunday, turning to the conservative Popular Party in the hopes of alleviating the pain of Europe’s debt crisis.

With 99.8 percent of the vote counted Sunday night, the Popular Party, led by Mariano Rajoy, had won 186 seats and a governing majority in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament, while the governing Socialists plummeted to 110 seats from 169. It was the Popular Party’s best showing, and the Socialists’ worst, since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

Spain is the third southern European country in two weeks to see its government felled by the debt crisis in the euro zone. In Italy and Greece, prime ministers were forced by mounting financial and economic woes to resign and give way to interim “unity” governments of technical experts, who are meant to take urgent but unpopular austerity measures to cope with the crisis and then call new elections.

The new Spanish prime minister will have an advantage they lack — the solid backing of a freshly elected single-party majority in Parliament — but he must still cope with the same dire combination of economic stagnation, gaping budget deficits and crushing debts that brought down his predecessor, and that swept governing parties out of office in Greece and Italy this month, Portugal in June and Ireland in February.

Also at Telegraph UK, "Spain: Conservatives win landslide victory."

RELATED: From 2010, "Aznar Calls for New Elections to Solve Spain’s Problems."

Debt 'Super Committee' to Announce Failure

I'm going to have more on this later. The "super committee" was an utter joke to begin with.

See National Journal, "Super Committee Talks Break Down."

And at New York Times, "Lawmakers Concede Budget Talks Are Close to Failure."

WASHINGTON — Conceding that talks on a grand budget deal are near failure, Congressional leaders on Sunday pointed fingers at each other as they tried to deflect blame for their inability to figure out a way to lower the federal deficit without having to rely on automated cuts.

The testy exchanges — which dominated the Sunday talk shows — made clear that leaders in both parties now see the so-called sequester — a term meaning an automatic spending cut — as the most likely solution to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, instead of a negotiated package of spending reductions and tax increases, something they have been unable to achieve over the last 10 weeks.

Democrats blamed the Republicans for their unwillingness to walk away from a no-new-taxes pact they signed at the request of a conservative, antitax group, arguing that the American public realizes that no grand deal could be reached without a combination of spending cuts and new tax revenues.

“As long as we have some Republican lawmakers who feel more enthralled with a pledge they took to a Republican lobbyist than they do to a pledge to the country to solve the problems, this is going to be hard to do,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, the co-chairwoman of the 12-member special Congressional committee on deficit reduction, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

It's the spending, not no new taxes.

Expect updates.

Hyper-Legal Institutional Wickedness

As always, Mark Steyn provides some of the best writing on society's descent into the normalization of evil.

See: "Penn State's institutional wickedness."

And ICYMI, don't miss Alan Keyes' comments, "Qua vadimus?"

Smokin' Mila Kunis Attends Marine Corps Ball

She's a good lady!

At London's Daily Mail, "Belle of the ball! Mila Kunis smoulders in stunning black gown at Marine Corps gala."

Anarchy in the U.S.A.

From Matthew Continetti, at the Weekly Standard, "The Roots of American Disorder":

Ever since September, when activists heeded Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn’s call to Occupy Wall Street, it’s become a rite of passage for reporters, bloggers, and video trackers to go to the occupiers’ tent cities and comment on what they see. Last week, the day after New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the NYPD to dismantle the tent city in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the New York Times carried no fewer than half a dozen articles on the subject. Never in living memory has such a small political movement received such disproportionate attention from the press. Never in living memory has a movement been so widely scrutinized and yet so deeply misunderstood.

If income equality is the new political religion, occupied Zuccotti Park was its Mecca. Liberal journalists traveled there and spewed forth torrents of ink on the value of protest, the creativity and spontaneity of the occupiers, the urgency of redistribution, and the gospel of social justice. Occupy Wall Street was compared to the Arab Spring, the Tea Party, and the civil rights movement. Yet, as many a liberal journalist left the park, they lamented the fact that Occupy Wall Street wasn’t more tightly organized. They worried that the demonstration would dissipate without a proper list of demands or a specific policy agenda. They suspected that the thefts, sexual assaults, vandalism, and filth in the camps would limit the occupiers’ appeal.

The conservative reaction has been similar. A great many conservatives stress the conditions among the tents. They crow that Americans will never fall in line behind a bunch of scraggly hippies. They dismiss the movement as a fringe collection of left tendencies, along with assorted homeless, mental cases, and petty criminals. They argue that the Democrats made a huge mistake embracing Occupy Wall Street as an expression of economic and social frustration.

A smaller group of conservatives, however, believes the occupiers are onto something. The banks do have too much power. Wages have been stagnant. The problem, these conservatives say, is that Occupy Wall Street doesn’t really know what to do about any of the problems it laments. So this smaller group of conservatives, along with the majority of liberals, is more than happy to supply the occupiers with an economic agenda.

But they might as well be talking to rocks. Both left and right have made the error of thinking that the forces behind Occupy Wall Street are interested in democratic politics and problem solving. The left mistakenly believes that the tendency of these protests to end in violence, dissolute behavior, and the melting away of the activists is an aberration, while the right mistakenly brushes off the whole thing as a combination of Boomer nostalgia for the New Left and Millennial grousing at the lousy job market. The truth is that the violence is not an aberration and Occupy Wall Street should not be laughed away. What we are seeing here is the latest iteration of an old political program that has been given new strength by the failures of the global economy and the power of postmodern technology.

To be sure, there are plenty of people flocking to the tents who are everyday Democrats and independents concerned about joblessness and the gap between rich and poor. The unions backing the occupiers fall into this group. But the concerns of labor intersect only tangentially with those of Occupy Wall Street’s theorists and prime movers. The occupiers have a lot more in common with the now-decades-old antiglobalization movement. They are linked much more closely to the “hacktivist” agents of chaos at WikiLeaks and Anonymous.

When the police officers and sanitation workers reclaimed Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street’s supporters cried, “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.” Whether the sympathizers or the critics really understand the idea and the method of the movement is a good question. The idea is utopian socialism. The method is revolutionary anarchism.

Keep reading.

I've been arguing basically the same thing for weeks. For example, Continetti echoes what I wrote at the time of the Oakland rioting a few weeks back:

When you see occupiers clash with the NYPD on the Brooklyn Bridge, or masked teenagers destroying shop windows and lighting fires in downtown Oakland, you are seeing anarchism in action. Apologists for Occupy Wall Street may say that these “black bloc” tactics are deployed solely by fringe elements. But the apologists miss the point. The young men in black wearing keffiyehs and causing mayhem are simply following the logic of revolutionary anarchism to its violent conclusion. The fringe isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.

PREVIOUSLY: "Hypocritical Occupy Oakland Supporters Denounce Anarchy and Violence of Occupy Oakland Protesters," and "On the Origins of the Occupy Movement."

What the Occupiers Believe

Robert Stacy McCain dwells on some of the big questions surrounding the movement, "Indoctrination: What the Occupiers Believe and Why They Believe It."

Decline of American Exceptionalism?

Charles Blow, at the New York Times, draws the wrong conclusion from the recent report at Pew Research indicating that less than a majority of Americans (49 percent) agreed with the statement that "our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others." See, "Decline of American Exceptionalism":

Even if you put aside the somewhat loaded terminology of cultural superiority, Americans simply don’t seem to feel very positive about America at the moment....

We are settling into a dangerous national pessimism. We must answer the big questions. Was our nation’s greatness about having God or having grit? Is exceptionalism an anointing or an ethos? If the answers are grit and ethos, then we must work to recapture them. We must work our way out of these doldrums. We must learn our way out. We must innovate our way out.

We have to stop snuggling up to nostalgia, acknowledge that we have allowed a mighty country to be brought low and set a course to restitution. And that course is through hard work and tough choices. You choose greatness; it doesn’t choose you.

And that means that we must invest in our future. We must invest in our crumbling infrastructure. We must invest in the industries of the future. We must invest in a generation of foundering and forgotten children. We must invest in education. Cut-and-grow is ruinous mythology.

We must look out at the world with clear eyes and sober minds and do the difficult work as we’ve done time and time again. That’s how a city shines upon a hill.

Blow's understanding of exceptionalism is not based in history, values, nor institutions. His view is in the things we do (like work hard to expand government and "invest" in the future) not what we stand for. He's a classic progressive that sees higher taxes and spending (for "infrastructure") as the means to buffing up that "City on the Hill" image. But Blow's meaning misconstrue's John Winthrop's famous sermon, where he evoked the Christian metaphor that the United States was a light unto the world. But not only that. Looking back over at that Pew study we see this data at the table embedded below. Part of our exceptionalism is the belief in individualism, that the individual is basis of the good society and that the political order is established to preserve individual liberties. Progressives continually downplay individualism in American exceptionalism because it conflicts with their big-government nanny-statism. Charles Blow wants to continue building the big nanny state. When he says we must "invest" in all those things he's really saying that we must spend more on the traditional progressive programs that are bankrupting the nation. But the way to invest again is the restore economic liberty and unleash individual potential and entrepreneurialism. To do otherwise will do nothing but turn us into a dependency society like all of the truly crumbling European states highlighted by the Pew data:

Via Astute Bloggers, "PEW POLL REVEALS CORE PROBLEM AFFLICTING THE WEST: MOST EUROPEANS NOW FAVOR A NANNY STATE."

36 Hours in Santa Barbara?

I just wrote about Santa Barbara yesterday, so what the heck?

Here's a travel review from the New York Times:

RECOMMENDATIONS about what to do in Santa Barbara invariably include references to the celebrities who have settled along this beautiful stretch of California’s central coast. Want to take an afternoon hike? Head into the hills near Oprah’s house. Looking for a place to eat? Try the taqueria that Julia Child adored. Just 100 miles north of Los Angeles, this quiet beach community has long been a hideaway for celebrity heavyweights. But over the past few years, the city has also made room for a new downtown scene humming with cool shops and laid-back wine bars, mobile food trucks and casual restaurants. It’s Santa Barbara for every budget — whether you debarked from a private jet at the city’s new $63 million airport terminal or cruised into town off Highway 101.

Forget the celebrities. If you stay in Santa Barbara long enough you'll run into a few. Get out and enjoy the beaches and the town. It's truly paradise.

The Times' recommendations are at the link.

One of mine to eat is Brophy Brothers. Or the Enterprise Fish Company. Or up State Street a bit is Harry's Cafe. I'm sure there are nicer, more prestigious restaurants. But these are the ones we visited time and again.

Progressive Islamofascism and Campus Indoctrination

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Michael Coren & David Horowitz on the Left & Islamofascism":

RELATED: From Stephen Schwartz, at the Weekly Standard, "What Is 'Islamofascism'?"

ANSWER Coalition: Socialism Conference in Los Angeles, November 19, 2011

I covered ANSWER first hand on a number of occasions. These people are true believers. Stupid, but true believers.

See for example, from October 2009, "STOP THE WAR! Teach-In on Afghanistan and the Anti-War Struggle - ANSWER L.A."

Michelle Williams Channels Marilyn Monroe

At LAT:

Her eyes were searching the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, peeking over the bougainvillea at a row of terra cotta-roofed buildings.

"I always wonder which bungalow was hers," said Michelle Williams, staring into the distance at a lodging that could have been home to Marilyn Monroe. The icon, whom Williams plays in the film "My Week With Marilyn," lived at the hotel in the late 1950s while in production on the movie "Let's Make Love."

"Is it too pretentious to say I feel I have a relationship with her?" the actress said suddenly, as if she could feel the blond's spirit. "The more time I spend with her, the closer I feel to her."

On the surface, Williams, 31, doesn't seem to share much in common with the tragic star. Monroe was all curves and soft flesh; Williams is pixie-like – on a recent fall night, she was covered up in black slacks and a sweater with a Peter Pan collar. Monroe affected a ditsy persona that many critics abhorred, and she was never nominated for an Academy Award; Williams, a two-time Oscar nominee, quotes the likes of Gustave Flaubert and Walt Whitman. The late actress was beholden to the studio system; Williams often opts for determinedly noncommercial, independent films such as the minimal "Meek's Cutoff" or the emotionally raw "Blue Valentine."

Still, on the set of "My Week With Marilyn" – which opens in Los Angeles on Wednesday – Williams felt an inexplicable connection to Monroe. During the shoot, she found meaning in seemingly ridiculous things – like an article in the National Enquirer.

Continue reading.

The End of Occupy Wall Street

From Jacob Laksin, at FrontPage Magazine:

NEW YORK – It turns out that Occupy Wall Street is not too big to fail.

The left-wing protest campaign that started with such a media-assisted bang two months ago ended with a whimper yesterday morning, as New York police shut down the protestors’ latest attempt to make a scene and generally to be a nuisance in lower Manhattan. Evicted from its base of operations in Zuccotti Park earlier in the week, Occupied Wall Street, or what remained of it, tried to improve on its former stunt by attempting to invade the New York Stock Exchange to shut it down. Instead the protestors’ so-called “Day of Action” came to little of consequence when police easily repelled them. It was just the latest setback for a self-styled movement that has fizzled out in recent weeks as public and official patience with it has worn thin.

While yesterday’s events highlight how ineffectual the campaign has become, Occupy Wall Street long ago became a parody of political cluelessness. The protestors’ grievances, while hailed by a sympathetic mainstream media, ranged from the confused to the contradictory. They raged about tax breaks to the rich “1 percent,” even as that one percent shoulders the largest share of the country’s tax burden. They denounced government bailouts for big banks, even as they demanded government bailouts for student loans and demanded that Americans “resist austerity.” They charged that “banks steal homes,” apparently oblivious to the role that the country’s biggest banks had in subsidizing countless risky mortgages that extended “equality” before ultimately collapsing the housing market. Occupy Wall Street did not so much bemoan America’s political and economic realities as invent them, with the result even the more reasonable aspects of their agenda – ending government bailouts for banks for instance – became impossible to take seriously.

Much of what Occupy Wall Street stood for would be meaningless, if it weren’t often menacing. In recent weeks especially there has been a surge in militancy among the protestors. Pollsters found that over one third of the protestors support violence to advance their agenda, a fact confirmed by the mounting violence originating in Occupy Wall Street encampments. In Oakland, protestors vandalized local businesses, set fires, hurled objects at police and shut down the local port. In New York they clashed with police and threatened to “burn New York City to the f—ing ground.” In Washington D.C., protestors laid siege to a conference by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, knocking a 78-year-old woman down some stairs in the process. Given the protestors’ penchant for violence, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the deranged gunman who fired an assault rifle into the White House this week was initially able to avoid police by blending in with the Occupy D.C. protestors. When there are so many violent radicals in the crowd, it can be difficult to tell them apart.

Continue reading.

Then compare Laksin to James B. Stewart, at New York Times, "An Uprising With Plenty of Potential":

In the wake of this week’s eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York and other urban campgrounds around the country, it’s tempting to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street movement as little more than a short-lived media phenomenon. The issues that spawned the movement — income inequality, money in politics and Wall Street’s influence — were being drowned out by debates over personal hygiene, noise and crime.

By Wednesday morning, when I dropped by the park, about 20 people, including some who looked disheveled and homeless, shared food and barely listened to a speaker with a graying ponytail who denounced New York as an “illegitimate police state.” Thursday’s “Day of Action” led to some more arrests, but it didn’t spawn the mass demonstrations some local politicians had predicted, let alone attract the throngs that the Tea Party mustered for a march on Washington in 2009.

But critics and supporters alike suggest that the influence of the movement could last decades, and that it might even evolve into a more potent force. “A lot of people brush off Occupy Wall Street as incoherent and inconsequential,” Michael Prell told me. “I disagree.”

Mr. Prell is a strategist for the Tea Party Patriots, a grass-roots organization that advocates Tea Party goals of fiscal responsibility, free markets and constitutionally limited government. He’s the author of “Underdogma,” a critique of left-wing anti-Americanism, which includes a chapter on the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the 1960s, which may be the closest historical parallel to the Occupy movement.

“They claim to stand up on behalf of the ‘little guy’ (the 99 percent), while raising a fist of protest against the big, rich, greedy and powerful 1 percent,” he said of the Occupy movement. “The parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement are too clear to ignore — right down to the babbling incoherence of the participants. The lesson from Berkeley in the 1960s and the protest movement they spawned is: it doesn’t matter that they don’t make sense. What matters is they are tapping into a gut-level instinct that is alive, or lying dormant, in almost every human being. And, when they unleash the power of standing up for the powerless against the powerful — David vs. Goliath — the repercussions can ripple throughout our society for decades.”

That's definitely taking the long view, and the comments by Prell are interesting, given that he's a tea party organizer. I'd add only that the occupy movement is just the latest manifestation of the post-Cold War resurgence of radical left-wing politics, and hence whatever impact we're seeing today will reside as the country returns to a full-employment economy. That could be as soon as the 2016 presidential election cycle. What will remain is the hardline anti-Americanism and campus-based radicalism that's always looking for a crisis to foist its revolutionary agenda down the throats of everyday Americans.

GOP Tax Pledge Is Hurdle to Deficit-Reduction Deal — Or Is It?

At New York Times, "Economic Memo: Tax Pledge May Scuttle a Deal on Deficit."

It's a good piece. But I think the claim that the tax pledge is the main driver of GOP decision-making behavior is off base. Spending it out of control today in a way that is dramatically different from earlier eras. That's what Senator Jeff Sessions is talking about, for example:

To Increase Jobs, Increase Economic Freedom

From John Mackey, at Wall Street Journal:

Is the United States exceptional? Of course we are! Two hundred years ago we were one of the poorest countries in the world. We accounted for less than 1% of the world's total GDP. Today our GDP is 23% of the world's total and more than twice as large as the No. 2 country's, China.

America became the wealthiest country because for most of our history we have followed the basic principles of economic freedom: property rights, freedom to trade internationally, minimal governmental regulation of business, sound money, relatively low taxes, the rule of law, entrepreneurship, freedom to fail, and voluntary exchange.

The success of economic freedom in increasing human prosperity, extending our life spans and improving the quality of our lives in countless ways is the most extraordinary global story of the past 200 years. Gross domestic product per capita has increased by a factor of 1,000% across the world and almost 2,000% in the U.S. during these last two centuries. In 1800, 85% of everyone alive lived on less than $1 per day (in 2000 dollars). Today only 17% do. If current long-term trend lines of economic growth continue, we will see abject poverty almost completely eradicated in the 21st century. Business is not a zero-sum game struggling over a fixed pie. Instead it grows and makes the total pie larger, creating value for all of its major stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, investors and communities.

So why is our economy barely growing and unemployment stuck at over 9%? I believe the answer is very simple: Economic freedom is declining in the U.S. In 2000, the U.S. was ranked third in the world behind only Hong Kong and Singapore in the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by this newspaper and the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, we fell to ninth behind such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland.

The reforms we need to make are extensive. I want to make a few suggestions that, as an independent, I hope will stimulate thinking and constructive discussion among concerned Americans no matter what their politics are.

A great piece.

Continue reading.

Police Pepper Spray Protesters at Occupy Davis

I saw this earlier, from Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, but here's The Lede, "Video of Police Pepper-Spraying U.C. Davis Students Provokes Outrage":

And from Professor Bob Ostertag, at Huffington Post, "Militarization of Campus Police."

There's lots more at Memeorandum, for example, "Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi."

The Political Blogging A-List

From the new book by Rutgers Speech Communications Professor Tanni Haas, Making It In the Political Blogosphere: The World's Top Political Bloggers Share the Secrets to Success:

While more than a million people have political blogs, a select few wield enormous inl uence within the political blogosphere and in politics. Variously referred to as the “political blogging A-list,” the “influentials,” or even the “kings and queens of blogland,” these bloggers attract the majority of political blog readers, set the agenda for the many smaller blogs, are widely read by mainstream journalists and, as I describe in the next section, exert a strong impact on politics.

Political blog readership isn’t evenly distributed as the top blogs attract most of the readers. One study revealed that the top 10 blogs account for 48% of readers.

The 20 bloggers featured in this book, all of whom belong to the political blogging A-list, have a combined daily audience of 2–3 million readers. The top blogs aren’t only read by a large and ever growing audience; they also inl uence what the rest of the political blogosphere blogs about. This becomes clear when one considers how political bloggers link to one another. If there were no agenda-setters in the political blogosphere, all political blogs would have roughly the same number of incoming links from other blogs. Yet, research shows, a few top blogs receive the bulk of incoming links. A study of more than 400 political blogs found that, while the top 12 blogs attracted 20% of all incoming blog links, the top 50 blogs attracted 50% of all such links.

h e inl uence of the top blogs goes beyond the mass of smaller blogs. Mainstream journalists — political reporters and columnists in particular — regularly read political blogs, often several blogs daily. h ey do so to gather ideas for future stories, hear what’s being said in the political blogosphere about their reporting, and to gauge public reactions to major news events.

But journalists don’t just read any political blog they happen to encounter. Like political blog readers, their reading is also focused on a few top blogs. A study of 140 journalists employed by national and local news organizations in the U.S. found that the ten most widely read blogs accounted for 54% of those mentioned. Among journalists working for national news organizations, this bias was even more pronounced: the ten most widely read blogs accounted for almost 75% of those mentioned.

Journalists’ blog reading behavior is quite logical. Since the top blogs attract the majority of political blog readers, and set the agenda for countless smaller blogs, journalists only need to read these blogs to get a relatively accurate impression of public (and blogger) opinion with respect to certain issues.

Haas interviewed 20 bloggers for the book. Here's this, from the e-mail she sent to me:

Dear Donald,

I am writing to let you know that my book, “Making it in the Political Blogosphere,” has just been released by Lutterworth Press. For your information, I have attached an electronic version of it.

The book features profiles of and interviews with 20 of world’s top political bloggers. These include (in alphabetical order) Rogers Cadenhead, Steve Clemons, Juan Cole, Cheryl Contee, Tyler Cowen, Kevin Drum, Eric Garris, Nick Gillespie, Taegan Goddard, Jane Hamsher, John Hawkins, Jim Hoft, Arianna Huffington, Thomas Lifson, Andrew Malcolm, Eric Olsen, Heather Parton, Lew Rockwell, Ben Smith, and Mathew Yglesias.

The book focuses on two central questions: what these bloggers have done to become so successful, and what others can do to achieve similar blogging success.

A book such as this one – aimed at political blog readers and writers – can best reach its targeted audience with your help. I hope you will publicize it on your blog and encourage as many of your fellow political bloggers as possible to do the same.

I'm more than happy to.

The Amazon link is here, and friends can email me for more information.

Burying Occupy Endorsements Down the Memory Hole!

At Big Journalism, "Panicked AP Attempts to Memory-Hole Democrats’ #Occupy Endorsements":

Thanks to the rise of New Media and our unwillingness to let the MSM’s lies, bias, and cover ups stand for even one more day, Occupy is in its death throes and might take the President and Democratic party down with it. First and foremost, we uncovered the lie that Occupy was grassroots and then we exposed every Occupy rape, poop, death, overdoese, old woman thrown down the stairs, attack on a police officer, and public act of masturbation. In the process, public opinion turned against the Occupiers and as a result these Leftists have started doing what the Left always does when they lose, have a tantrum.

Via Ed Driscoll, "Obama, MSM Trapped in Obamaville."

And also at Lonely Conservative, "Suddenly Elizabeth Warren Wants to Distance Herself from OWS."

USC at Oregon is Real PAC-12 Title Game

At Los Angeles Times, "Game at Oregon is as close as USC will get to a bowl game."

It's been billed, by some, as the real Pac-12 Conference championship game.

For fans of a USC team banned from the postseason because of NCAA sanctions, it is regarded as the closest thing to a bowl game.

Actually, No. 18 USC's game against No. 4 Oregon on Saturday at Eugene, Ore., is bigger than that.

It's a huge barometer game for the Trojans — perhaps the most important of the still-burgeoning Lane Kiffin era.

If the Trojans upset Oregon and end the Ducks' 21-game Autzen Stadium winning streak, the ramifications are enormous.

USC, left for dead last year after being hammered by the NCAA, would have the opportunity to finish the season as a top-10 team in the Associated Press media poll.

The Trojans would be regarded as an instant contender for the Bowl Championship Series title next season, a distinction that might influence quarterback Matt Barkley, offensive tackle Matt Kalil, safety T.J. McDonald and perhaps end Nick Perry when it comes to deciding whether to return for a final shot at glory.

A loss would leave the Trojans at 8-3 with the season finale against rival UCLA next week at the Coliseum.

Not that Kiffin sounds concerned about national perception.

"Winning or losing this game is not going to radically impact our future in recruiting or in playing next year," he said.

More at the link.

Plus, from Chris Dufresne, "USC vs. Oregon: It's the real Pac-12 championship game."

PHOTO CREDIT: Julia Roy on Twitter: "USC @ Autzen Stadium."

'Down With Capitalist Education!' — California Faculty Association Strikes at Cal State Dominguez Hills

Okay, as promised, here's the follow up to my earlier entry, "Faculty Members Strike at Cal State Dominguez Hills." The protest at Dominguez Hills was pretty subdued, especially compared to the violence and indecency taking place across the country on Thursday. But the communists were out in full force, which is the way public education is headed in this country.

Here's one of the big protest signs as I walked over to the entrance of the university:

The organizers had set up at the intersection of East Victoria Street and Tamcliff.

Cal State Chancellor Charles Reed was the focus of protest. The guy holding the sign ducked his head whenever I raised my camera, as did a lot of the other protesters. Freakin' cowards. I guess folks weren't so proud about standing up in solidarity after all:

Buses were pulling up periodically to drop off protesters. The crowd was an amalgam of faculty members, some from other campuses, union organizers, and student protesters representing the fringe of radical left-wing extremism. Below you've got this Yasser Arafat wannabe with the keffiyeh and blank stare of indifference. What a loser. Also below is apparently a CFA member with his obligatory "racist" protest sign. Idiots, all of them:

Here's a kid just off the bus with his "Down With Capitalist Eduction!" poster. He was cruising around with activists from the International Communist Workers Party:

More activists:

Here's some union solidarity with the AFL-CIO:

These two had "99 Percent" headbands, freakin' hippie wannabes:

Class warfare:

"This is what democracy looks like!"

Protesters blocked the entrance to the university to oncoming traffic. This public bus waited to enter until after the traffic signal changed:

Protesters droned on about making the rich pay more in taxes:

I guess it's all about "righteous justice," or something. The woman here is enthralled with her copy of the ICWP's Red Flag. Bunch of commie bloodsuckers:

More coverage at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "California State University faculty members demand raises, stage 1-day strike."

Pepper Spray Blast at Occupy Portland Is One for the Ages

At Los Angeles Times, "Portland pepper spray incident generates iconic Occupy photo."

PREVIOUSLY: "Pepper-Spray Those Occupy Mofos!"

'Breaking Dawn'

At New York Times, "‘Breaking Dawn’ Breaks ‘Twilight’ Opening Record."

It's popular, but the Los Angeles Times gives it a ho-hum review: "'Breaking Dawn — Part 1' review: Vampire tale is lifeless." But back over at New York Times, review Manohla Dargis gushes: "Edward, You May Now Bite the Bride."

'Exceptionalism' Argument May Prove Potent for Republicans

At New York Times:

Few themes have recurred more regularly in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination than American exceptionalism, and few are as potentially powerful — or divisive.

The idea that the United States is inherently special is well established in American politics, if a bit vaguely defined. By and large, Republicans have used the concept over the years to mean strength and to signal resolve. Democrats have tended to cite it when talking about values and the ideals of American democracy.

In the context of the 2012 campaign, however, it has taken on a much more partisan edge, invoked by Republicans as a way to define President Obama as weak, lacking in core American values and almost unpatriotic.

It is easy to dismiss as election-season jingoism, the political equivalent of a “We’re No. 1” chant from the cheap seats. But the exceptionalism argument offers some voters a reassuring counternarrative to persistent joblessness, a long-term hollowing out of the middle class and a sense that the nation’s best days are past. And it intensifies the pressure on Mr. Obama to avoid sounding defensive about the difficult challenges he has faced as president and to articulate a positive story for why he deserves another four years.

“We have a president right now who thinks America’s just another nation,” Mitt Romney said last Saturday, at the most recent debate. “America is an exceptional nation. We have a president who thinks that the way to conduct foreign policy is through his personal effects on other people. I believe the way to conduct foreign policy is with American strength.”

At a Values Voter convention in October, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said that “those in the White House today” do not believe in American exceptionalism and would rather emulate Europe.

“The answer to our troubles lies in a positive, optimistic vision, with policies rooted in American exceptionalism,” Mr. Perry said. “See, American exceptionalism is the product of unlimited freedom. And there is nothing troubling our nation today that cannot be solved by the rebirth of freedom — nothing.”

Conservatives have used the concept as part of a broader indictment of liberalism in the age of Obama. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in September, the author Shelby Steele suggested that Mr. Obama’s upbringing in the 1960s shaped him into the embodiment of an anti-exceptionalism world view.

“In this liberalism,” he wrote, “America’s exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil — an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America’s greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.”

In Mr. Obama, wrote Mr. Steele, “America gained a president with ambivalence, if not some antipathy, toward the singular greatness of the nation he had been elected to lead.”

Professor Michael Avery Sends Email Criticizing Care Packages for U.S. Troops

This man is really brimming with hatred.

At Fox News, "Massachusetts Law Professor Calls Care Packages for U.S. Troops 'Shameful'."

And at FrontPage Magazine, "A Professor’s Hatred for Our ‘Killer’ Troops":

The disclaimer “we support our troops” has practically become obligatory for proclamations of opposition to U.S. wars. But a Boston law professor felt compelled to declare to students and colleagues that he supports neither the wars nor the troops fighting them.

Michael Avery, a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, responded to an online solicitation for support for care packages for overseas servicemen by labeling them killers undeserving of sympathy.

“I think it is shameful that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings,” Avery professed in an email sent on the eve of the Marine Corps’ birthday and two days before Veterans Day. “I understand that there is a residual sympathy for service members, perhaps engendered by support for troops in World War II, or perhaps from when there was a draft and people with few resources to resist were involuntarily sent to battle. That sympathy is not particularly rational in today’s world, however.”

In the five-paragraph mass email, Avery also counseled students, faculty, and administrators “to be more mindful of what message we are sending as a school” and questioned the presence of an enormous American flag in a campus atrium. “Why do we continue to have this oversized flag in our lobby?”

“Perhaps some of my colleagues will consider this to be an inappropriate political statement,” the law professor continued. “But of course the solicitation email was a political statement, although cast as support for student activities. The politics of that solicitation are that war is legitimate, perhaps inevitable, and that patriotic Americans should get behind our troops.”

Avery, a recipient of the since-discontinued bachelor of laws degree at Yale University whose education included a late-’60s stint at the University of Moscow, has been active in left-wing causes for more than four decades. He is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild, and his resume boasts of work at the ACLU Foundation and Yale University’s Political Justice Workshop.

Wow, what a surprise!