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!

Two Black Georgia Caregivers Waterboard 89-Year-Old Woman

The race of the victim is not mentioned, although just imagine if Mrs. Foley, who the assailants attacked by pinning her down, spraying a hose in her face, was white.

At London's Daily Mail, "Georgia caregivers 'waterboard 89-year-old woman after arguing over ice cream'."

And the video's at WGCL-TV CBS Atlanta, "Police: Two Clayton women waterboarded elderly patient."

The black assailants are probably Democrat Obama supporters. Freakin' criminal bitch losers.

'Occupy Hope'

Occupying a brain might be better place to start.

At L.A. Weekly, "Shepard Fairey Designs 'Occupy Hope' Poster, Replaces Obama's Face With 'V for Vendetta' Mask."

Added: From Obey Giant, "This image represents my support for the Occupy movement..." (via Memeorandum).

Forget Santa Barbara: Best Retirement Spots in California

Well, I've still got about 15 years to go until then, plus another 5 or so for my wife, but I'm thinking of bailing on California altogether. Sheesh.

At Smart Money, "Retire Here, Not There: California — Forget Santa Barbara. Here are four more affordable Golden State gems."

I love Santa Barbara, of course, but San Luis Obispo is pretty heavenly, I have to admit.

Occupy Protesters Snarl Traffic, Clash With Police in New York

And a couple of those protesters were going topless. See the additional video at the New York Post, "Now occupying your commute! Mob snarls transit, traffic and clashes with cops."

Also, at Lonely Conservative, "Occupy Update: Mayhem in NYC, Wells Fargo Bombed in Utah, OWS Adopts Marxist Terrorist Brand."

'Without You'

A pick from my kids' favorites. I like it:

Portland Occupy Protester Deploys Baby as Human Shield

Pure progressive cowardice.

Via Breitbart and Memeorandum:

Despicable.

Occupy L.A. Day of Action

A video from Reason.tv:

Also a slideshow at L.A. Weekly, "Occupy LA: Day of Actions in Downtown Los Angeles."

California Supreme Court Gives Huge Boost to Backers of Proposition 8

And the Court's ruling not only back-slapped the gay rights extremists, but Govenor Brown and Attorney General Harris as well.

At Los Angeles Times, "Backers win right to fight for Prop. 8":

Reporting from San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court ruled that the sponsors of Proposition 8 have the right to defend the measure, clearing the way for federal courts to decide the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans.

Thursday's unanimous decision, written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, strongly affirmed that ballot sponsors may represent California in defending initiatives when elected officials fail to do so. Gov. Jerry Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris have refused to challenge last year's federal ruling against Proposition 8.

"Neither the Governor, the Attorney General, nor any other executive or legislative official has the authority to veto or invalidate an initiative measure that has been approved by the voters," Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the court.

Legal scholars said the state high court's decision was so adamant that the U.S. Supreme Court, which could decide marriage rights as early as 2013, was unlikely to limit its ruling to the narrow and technical issue of "standing," a legal term for the right to go to court.

"It's a gangbusters opinion," said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, an expert on the state high court.

Hot Anne Hathaway Joins Occupy Wall Street

Yeah, she's hot, and a compelling actress as well. But smart? I guess not.

At London's Daily Mail, "Surely she's in the one per cent? Million dollar babe Anne Hathaway joins Occupy Wall Street protest."

'Occupy Bagram'

Via Sarge Charlie:

Los Angeles Times Poll: Fifty-Five Percent of Californians Oppose DREAM Act

But there's a massive ethnic split on the issue.

See, "Survey finds ethnic divide among voters on DREAM Act":

Many Californians worry that they are being priced out of the state's public university systems, and they object to allowing illegal immigrants the same financial aid that U.S. citizens can receive at the campuses, a new poll has found.

Fifty-five percent of the voters questioned said they oppose a new state law known as the California DREAM Act. It will permit undocumented students who graduated from California high schools and meet other requirements to receive taxpayer aid to attend the University of California, Cal State and community colleges starting in 2013. Forty percent support it.

But there is a huge ethnic divide on the issue, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey: 79% of Latinos approve of the law, while only 30% of whites do.

"There are not a lot of other issues on which there are such huge differences," said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of American studies and ethnicity.

Partly, he said, it's easier for many Latinos, because they may know more undocumented people, to "understand the potential of someone who lacks papers but can really contribute to America."

But there are pocketbook factors too, especially in rough economic times, said Pastor, director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. The poll shows that more Latinos than whites feel they may be unable to afford a university education; they may be more likely to support aid for all needy students, he said.

The bipartisan survey found that a narrow majority of registered Democrats, 53%, support the new policy, which was signed into law last month by a fellow Democrat, Gov. Jerry Brown. But only 23% of Republicans do.

"I don't think illegal aliens should have any benefits in this country," said respondent Lois Hartman, 64, a Republican who is a retired database supervisor from Downey.

As for arguments that many students were brought to the U.S. as babies and had no choice about where they were raised, she said, "Their parents should have thought about that. I don't have any sympathy for them."

On the other hand, Andrew Haesloop, 25, a Democrat from San Carlos, supports the DREAM Act. Its costs ultimately will be offset, he reasoned, by the higher taxes paid by students who land better jobs because they had the opportunity for a college education.

"It's a benefit that could encourage these people to become contributing members of society," said Haesloop, an admissions counselor at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont.

The Democrat Party is clearly the party of illegal immigration. And the Democrats have a chokehold on California, obviously, since the state's basically one big open-borders sanctuary. It's a freakin' joke.

Nancy Pelosi's Culture of Corruption

At IBD, "Pelosi Leads List Of Conflict Of Interest Dems":

Ethics: As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the "greedy" fiends of the financial crisis, they've lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi's just the latest example.

The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here's the Reader's Digest version:

After a Pelosi staffer left to lobby on behalf of credit-card giant Visa, Pelosi delayed bringing to the House floor a bill to end lucrative "swipe fees" for Visa and other credit providers.

The bill couldn't have come at a worse time for Visa. It planned to launch an $18 billion public stock offering, so stalling Hill action became a priority. The San Francisco-based company curried favor with Pelosi by pumping cash into her re-election efforts, earning its CEO a rare one-on-one meeting with the speaker.

At the same time, Visa offered her husband a VIP cut of the IPO. Paul Pelosi jumped at the offer, buying 5,000 shares at the $44 initial price. In a couple of days, the shares soared to $64. Pelosi later bought 15,000 more, raising the total value of his investment to about $5 million. In the end, the legislation Visa fought starting in 2007 was forestalled two full years.

More at the link.

And recall Sarah Palin hammered the epic trail of Democrat Party corruption: "Sarah Palin Slams Occupy Wall Street (and Obama's Culture of Corruption)."

The Meaning of the OWS Day of Protest

From Ron Radosh, at PJMedia:

In the day’s OWS protest, the motley crew of old New Left veterans, younger self-proclaimed socialists, Communists, and anarchists, as well as a bunch of New York University students protesting their private university’s tuition hikes, were to be joined by the SIEU and other AFL-CIO affiliates, who have decided to link their dwindling power to the OWS bandwagon — a move that will eventually backfire and lead to further erosion of trade union strength. After all, a movement that seeks to prevent working people from getting to their jobs is not likely to be popular with the union rank-and-file.

This week, even the usually hesitant Anti-Defamation League released a report that showed how much of the OWS included supporters of Hamas, opponents of Israel’s right to exist, and old fashioned anti-Semites. “History demonstrates,” Abe Foxman of the ADL said, how “time and again… economic downturns can embolden anti-Semites to spread malicious conspiracy theories and promote stereotypes about Jews and money. As a consequence, these statements must not be left unchallenged.” To date, no official representatives of OWS have addressed this issue.

A few days ago, the ADL released a more definitive condemnation, obviously because no one from the OWS responded to Foxman, who implied that the anti-Semites were just a fringe element of the protest.

Citing the endorsement of OWS by the BDS movement, the ADL statement proclaimed the following:

The first formal attempt to unite OWS and the anti-Israel movement came from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, the coordinating body of the global BDS campaign against Israel. On October 13, 2011, the committee issued a statement expressing solidarity with OWS and describing the objectives of the two movements as similar. The statement, titled “Occupy Wall Street not Palestine!,” called on Occupy protesters to incorporate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into their demands: “So as you break your own chains and build your own effective resistance against corporate tyranny, we ask you to demand a just peace for all the peoples in the Middle East…. 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.” ADL also cites the words of Phyllis Bennis, a leader of the left-wing think tank, The Institute for Policy Studies, who put their united goals in these words:

“What we are really seeing there is really a classic example of the one percent, where most of our interests do not lie, controlling the 99 percent, the one percent being Israel and its supporters in the United States.”

Anti-Semitism, once condemned in the last century by the German Social-Democrat August Bebel as “the socialism of the fools,” is again emerging as part and parcel of the OWS protest in this country and abroad. It is clear that the participants and leaders see the two fights they are engaged in as one and the same. The ADL article continues with citations of anti-Semitic incidents all occurring at OWS protests in the last month. Read these if you are the slightest bit in doubt of the reality.

More at the link.

Mitt Romney Holds Commanding Lead Heading Into Michigan's GOP Primary

At Detroit Free Press, "Poll: Mitt Romney leads field to win Michigan Republican presidential primary."

WASHINGTON - He still doesn't have a clear majority, but Mitt Romney holds a clear — and potentially commanding — lead in a crowded field to win Michigan's Feb. 28 Republican presidential primary, a WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) poll showed today.

With clear support across all age and income brackets, Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who grew up in Michigan, had the support of 34% of likely voters who said they were backing him or were likely to vote for him next year.

He led former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had 20%, and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who had 13%. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas was next with 8%. No one else in the field of eight had more than 5% support. Thirteen percent were undecided.

It's still way early, and that poll has a huge margin of error, but this is interesting given my earlier reporting on Michigan: "Michigan's Macomb County May Not Break for Obama in 2012."

Michigan's going to be a crucial battleground, with 16 electors in play. I can't wait.

Balanced Budget Amendment Fails in House Vote

It's a drastic step, but these are drastic times, and the establishment is making no progress toward spending restraint. Whether this is the right solution or not, perhaps continued pressure toward an amendment will help official Washington get a grip on our fiscal nightmare. At Los Angeles Times:

The House of Representatives voted down a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution on Friday, failing to revive a long-held and perpetually-elusive goal for the GOP.

The vote came 16 years after an amendment failed to pass Congress by just one vote in the Senate, but the intervening years have put the amendment even farther out of reach.

In a 261-165 vote, the measure fell well short of the two-thirds of members needed to pass. The White House has said it opposes the amendment. The Senate, which is required to vote on it as part of the August debt deal, is not expected to pass it.

The bipartisan cooperation needed to round of a two-thirds vote on any fiscal measure seems something of a pipedream in today's political climate. The divided Congress has locked horns all year on the best way to reduce the deficit and revive the sluggish economy.

A so-called super committee charged reducing the deficit appears deadlock. Friday's vote indicated few signs of hope.

Republicans watched several Democrats turn away from amendment -- even those who have voted for it in the past.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, (D-Md.), noted that when he voted for the amendment in 1995 he had some confidence that Congress could come together to vote for spending increases in an emergency as allowed.

"Regrettably over the 16 years, I've lost that confidence," Hoyer said.

The amendment was essentially identical to the one voted on in 1995. It would have required the government to balance its books within two years of ratification, but no sooner than 2017.

A three-fifths vote of each chamber would be required before Congress could add to the debt or raise taxes. The president would be required to submit a balanced budget and the restrictions could be waived in wartime.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the amendment's sponsor, said the measure would take the country off the path that's led to a $15 trillion debt and force Congress to do the right thing.

"We need the discipline that a balance budget amendment provides," Goodlatte said.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial from July, lays out the reasons why an amendment might not work: "GOP Balancing Act."

I'll have more on this later.

Shoppers Angry as Black Friday Sales Push Into Thanksgiving

At New York Times, "Thanksgiving as Day to Shop Meets Rejection":

For the first time in years, Michelle Nyberg probably will not be standing in line when stores open for their Black Friday sales.

She still loves a good deal — last year she spent a couple of thousand dollars on markdowns that day, the Friday after Thanksgiving — but Ms. Nyberg says that she does not want retailers to ruin the holiday for her or their own employees.

Ms. Nyberg is drawing the line now that major chains like Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s say they will open for the first time at midnight on Thanksgiving, and Wal-Mart will go even further, with a 10 p.m. Thanksgiving start for deals on some merchandise.

Retailers, eager to be the first to draw customers on one of the biggest shopping days of the year, are pulling the equivalent of the Republican primary shuffle by opening earlier and earlier than competitors.

Last year, a few stores, including Toys “R” Us, pushed into Thanksgiving.

But judging from the negative reaction among dedicated Friday after Thanksgiving shoppers on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the wave of midnight openings this year has crossed a line.

Continue reading.

My wife works retail management and she's not surprised at all. Most stores have been opening at 4:00am on Black Friday anyway. It just pushes back the clock a few hours. The best sales are those early ones, so I doubt the most competitive shoppers will boycott the stores. It's tough all around, and both stores and shoppers are looking to maximize their gains.

Sheriff Reopens Natalie Wood Case: Actress Drowned Near Catalina Island in 1981

At Los Angeles Times, "Sheriff reopens case of actress Natalie Wood's mysterious death," and "Natalie Wood: Detectives will interview captain as a first step."

And CNN has a bizarre interview with boat captain Dennis Davern, "New details in Natalie Wood's death."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia.

Sarah Palin Slams Occupy Wall Street (and Obama's Culture of Corruption)

A great interview on Hannity's, from last night.

And see also Palin at Wall Street Journal, "How Congress Occupied Wall Street" (via Memeorandum).

With Independent Voters, Romney Up 12 Points Over Obama in Latest Pew Presidential Poll

You have to dig down in the numbers: "Obama Job Approval Edges Up, GOP Contest Remains Fluid: Lackluster Ratings for Republican Field Continue."

Just 35 percent approve of President Obama's handling of the economy, and Mitt Romney leads Obama 52 to 41 among independents.

California Budget Expected at $3.7 Billion Less Than Forecast

I didn't see this until I opened the newspaper moments before my first classes yesterday: "Deeper cuts to state budget expected." The news was on top of reports of violent student protests at the Cal State Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday in Long Beach: "Violent clash erupts outside Cal State trustees meeting." So, during classes I asked students to discuss how the state budget, tuition protests, and the larger occupy movement were related. A main theme is that things don't seem to be getting better. And couple students were surprised at the faculty strike at CSU Dominquez Hills, with one saying, "Don't they realize there's no money"? I guess not.

Britney Spears Hot Green Bikini — Rio de Janerio

She looks good.

At London's Daily Mail, "Britney Spears shows off her flat stomach in a skimpy bikini as she relaxes poolside with her family and boyfriend Jason Trawick."

Linkmaster Smith forwarded some Britney goodness earlier, but I haven't had a chance to check it out. More on that later.

Hundreds Arrested as Occupy Protesters Take to Streets for 'Day of Action'

At New York Times, "Clashes and More Than 240 Arrests Mark Protests' 'Day of Action'."

Gingrich Found Gold in Health-Care Reform

At WaPo, "Gingrich think tank collected millions from health-care industry."

Debra Long, Birth Mother of Jerry Sandusky's Adopted Son, Speaks Out on Abuse Scandal

At ABC News, "Penn State Scandal: Mother of Sandusky's Adopted Son Speaks Out."

Faculty Members Strike at Cal State Dominguez Hills

I cruised by after work to check out the strike. I have pictures and will be posting some later. Here's the report at Los Angeles Times, "Cal State University faculty strike to protest salary dispute."

And at KABC-TV Los Angeles, "California State University faculty demands raise, stages 1-day strike."

Also, at San Francisco Chronicle, "CSU-East Bay teachers hold walk out."

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez Charged With Trying to Assassinate President Obama

At New York Times, " In Shooting at White House, Attempted Assassination Charge."

And at Astute Bloggers, "THE ALLEGED ASSASSIN AND OBAMA'S RUTHLESS APPEAL TO CLASS WARFARE: IF YOU SOW THE WIND, THEN YOU WILL REAP THE WHIRLWIND." (Via Memeorandum.)

Tammy Bruce at UCLA, November 16, 2011: 'How Conservative Politics Empower Women, Gays, and Blacks'

Yesterday was a big day. I had a full teaching schedule. And then after classes I stayed in Long Beach until late afternoon, before driving up to the Westwood campus. Tammy's speech was pretty good. UCLA Senior Barbara Efraim, formerly of Long Beach City College, organized the event. The announcement is here.

More on Tammy Bruce later.

Mass Non-Violent Direct Action Occupy Wall Street November 17, 2011

Today's supposed to be a national day of mobilization for the anarchist left. I'll be off the grid 'till later this evening, but Verum Serum is your hot-spot for occupy coverage, so check it out.

The Future of Occupy Wall Street

At Wall Street Journal, "Wall Street Protesters Grapple With Future of Movement":

Occupy Wall Street activists grappled with the future of their movement after a police raid and a day of legal drama ended their hold on a Manhattan park that had become the symbolic center of the world-wide protest.

Police in a predawn sweep cleared out a tent city the protesters had erected in the downtown park, marking a dramatic turn in what has become a vexing saga for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Later in the day, a judge backed up the mayor's move, ruling in favor of the park's owner, Brookfield Office Properties Inc., that it could enforce rules against camping in the park.

The forced evacuation came as other cities around the world have started to take similar steps, including Toronto, London and Oakland, Calif.

After protesters were evicted from Zuccotti Park early Tuesday morning it's not clear if the demonstrations will end or if they'll enter a new phase. WSJ's Hilke Schellmann reports from downtown Manhattan.

It wasn't clear whether the eviction in New York will end the protest or push it into a new phase that could be harder for police to control. As unruly as the encampment often was, it was easy for police to monitor since it was in a fixed site.

Continue reading.

Also, at New York Daily News, "Next up for Occupy Wall Street? Make sure movement is not hijacked by violence."

Also, from Ed Morrissey, "Does the Right own the Occupy narrative?"

Judge Upholds Eviction: Occupy Protesters Can't Camp at Zuccotti Park

At New York Post, "Judge rules OWS protesters can't return to Zuccotti Park with tents, overnight gear."

New York Police Evict Occupy Protesters in Early Morning Raid

At New York Times, "Police Clear Zuccotti Park With Show of Force, Bright Lights and Loudspeakers," and "Ousted, Wall St. Protesters Face an Uncertain Future."

Regime Change Libya Topples Herman Cain's Campaign

I guess Robert Stacy McCain's not getting that ambassadorship to Vanuatu after all.

William Jacobson provides the video, and lots of commentary at Memeorandum.

And see Allahpundit, "Brutal: Cain blanks on Libya, supports collective bargaining for public employee unions," and AoSHQ, "Cain Continues Being Very Authentic."

'Police Station'

I've been listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new CD, I'm with You (at Amazon here). I'm still tuning it in, basically, but I like "Police Station":

I saw you at the police station and it breaks my heart to say.
Your eyes had wandered off to something distant, cold and grey.
I guess you didn't see it coming,
Someone's gotten used to slumming.
Dreaming of the golden years,
I see you had to change careers.
Far away, but we both know it's somewhere.

I saw you on the back page of some pre press yesterday.
The drip wood in your eyes had nothing short of love for pain.
I know you from another picture,
Of someone with the most convictions.
We used to read the funny papers,
Fooled around and pulled some capers.
Not today, send a message to her.
A message that I'm coming, coming to pursue her.

Tell your country I, rest my face on your bed.
I've got you ten times over, I'll chase you down 'til you're dead.
I saw you on a TV station and it made me wanna pray.
An empty shell of loveliness is now dusted with decay.
What happened to the funny paper?
Smiling was your money maker.
Someone oughta situate her,
Find a way to educate her.
All the way, time to come and find you.
You can't hide from me girl, so never mind what I do.

Tell your country I, rest my face on your bed.
I bet my sovereign country and I, left it all for your head...

PREVIOUSLY: "'Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie'."

America's Broken Contract?

George Packer is a national security correspondent at the New Yorker. He's good. I enjoy reading him. But his cover piece at Foreign Affairs tugs at the guilt strings of "rising inequality" and the "tattered social contract." I'm not convinced there's anything here that can't be fixed with a renewed American economy, boasting GDP growth rates in excess of 4 percent annually. Until we get something like that, the stuff Packer laments is only magnified by economic dislocation and popular myths of an equality gap. See, "The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline":

As a thought experiment, compare your life today with that of someone like you in 1978. Think of an educated, reasonably comfortable couple perched somewhere within the vast American middle class of that year. And think how much less pleasant their lives are than yours. The man is wearing a brown and gold polyester print shirt with a flared collar and oversize tortoiseshell glasses; she's got on a high-waisted, V-neck rayon dress and platform clogs. Their morning coffee is Maxwell House filter drip. They drive an AMC Pacer hatchback, with a nonfunctioning air conditioner and a tape deck that keeps eating their eight-tracks. When she wants to make something a little daring for dinner, she puts together a pasta primavera. They type their letters on an IBM Selectric, the new model with the corrective ribbon. There is only antenna television, and the biggest thing on is Laverne and Shirley. Long-distance phone calls cost a dollar a minute on weekends; air travel is prohibitively expensive. The city they live near is no longer a place where they spend much time: trash on the sidewalks, junkies on the corner, vandalized pay phones, half-deserted subway cars covered in graffiti.

By contemporary standards, life in 1978 was inconvenient, constrained, and ugly. Things were badly made and didn't work very well. Highly regulated industries, such as telecommunications and airlines, were costly and offered few choices. The industrial landscape was decaying, but the sleek information revolution had not yet emerged to take its place. Life before the Android, the Apple Store, FedEx, HBO, Twitter feeds, Whole Foods, Lipitor, air bags, the Emerging Markets Index Fund, and the pre-K Gifted and Talented Program prep course is not a world to which many of us would willingly return.

The surface of life has greatly improved, at least for educated, reasonably comfortable people -- say, the top 20 percent, socioeconomically. Yet the deeper structures, the institutions that underpin a healthy democratic society, have fallen into a state of decadence. We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year: climate change, income inequality, wage stagnation, national debt, immigration, falling educational achievement, deteriorating infrastructure, declining news standards. All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress. Last year, a Wall Street company that few people have ever heard of dug an 800-mile trench under farms, rivers, and mountains between Chicago and New York and laid fiber-optic cable connecting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. This feat of infrastructure building, which cost $300 million, shaves three milliseconds off high-speed, high-volume automated trades -- a big competitive advantage. But passenger trains between Chicago and New York run barely faster than they did in 1950, and the country no longer seems capable, at least politically, of building faster ones. Just ask people in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, whose governors recently refused federal money for high-speed rail projects.

We can upgrade our iPhones, but we can't fix our roads and bridges. We invented broadband, but we can't extend it to 35 percent of the public. We can get 300 television channels on the iPad, but in the past decade 20 newspapers closed down all their foreign bureaus. We have touch-screen voting machines, but last year just 40 percent of registered voters turned out, and our political system is more polarized, more choked with its own bile, than at any time since the Civil War. There is nothing today like the personal destruction of the McCarthy era or the street fights of the 1960s. But in those periods, institutional forces still existed in politics, business, and the media that could hold the center together. It used to be called the establishment, and it no longer exists. Solving fundamental problems with a can-do practicality -- the very thing the world used to associate with America, and that redeemed us from our vulgarity and arrogance -- now seems beyond our reach.

I don't so much disagree with Packer. I only fear his implied solutions: more government to reduce inequality. The fact is government is bigger than ever and more people are dependent on some kind of government program than ever before. I'm less worried about inequality than the erosion of liberty. Let's reduce government --- especially the programs that are bankrupting us --- and restore some of the independence and entrepreneurialism of our founding creed. Compare Packer, for example, to Angelo Codevilla, "America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution."

More on this later.

Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra Retrospective

Gorgeous:

Michael Coren Interviews Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin spoke in Los Angeles last year, during the early phase of the Arab Spring. He'll change your way of thinking.

Structure of Brain Different in ADHD Children, Experts Say

Some of my readers responded strongly to my post on the parenting class my wife and I took, which featured lots of information on families dealing with behavioral challenges at home, so this might be of interest, at Wall Street Journal, "Scientists Probe Role of Brain in ADHD Cases":

A brain area that helps orchestrate mental activity works overtime in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, reflecting the internal struggle to hold more than one thing in mind at a time, neuroscientists reported Sunday.

The scientists used a functional magnetic imaging scanner to track signs of neural activity among 19 affected children and 23 other children who were asked to remember a simple sequence of letters. The scientists discovered that a critical mental control area, called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, worked much harder and, perhaps, less efficiently among children with attention problems.

This fundamental difference in brain function might be an underlying cause of the inattentiveness, impulsivity and focus problems that make it hard for ADHD children to concentrate in the classroom, the scientists said during an annual gathering of 31,000 brain researchers in Washington, D.C.

"Our findings suggest that the function as well as the structure of this brain area is different in children with ADHD," said Wayne State University biologist Tudor Puiu, who reported the team's findings Sunday at a conference held by the Society for Neuroscience. "It might explain the cognitive problems we see in the classroom."

All told, about two million U.S. children have been diagnosed with attention problems. No one yet understands the basic neurobiology responsible for the mental ailment, which has grown more common since 2003, according to a survey by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

The portion of those with the most severe symptoms who are treated with prescription stimulants, such as methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine (Adderall), also has continued to rise, the National Institutes of Health reported in September.

The finding reported Sunday adds to growing biomedical evidence that those diagnosed with the attention disorder—arguably the most common childhood behavioral issue—have unusual patterns of brain function that can persist well into adulthood.

More at the link.

Oligarchy and Democracy

From Jeffrey Winters, at American Interest:

It is a confounding moment in American political history. On the one hand, evidence of democratic possibilities is undeniable. In 2008, millions of Americans helped catapult a man of half-African descent into the White House long before observers thought the nation was “ready.” Democratic movements have won major victories in recent decades, spreading civil rights, improving the status of women and ending unpopular wars. This is the continuation of a trend with deep roots in American history, reaching back at least to the Jacksonian era, of extending the equality principle into American culture at large.

On the other hand, democracy appears chronically dysfunctional when it comes to policies that impinge on the rich. Despite polls consistently showing that large majorities favor increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, policy has been moving for decades in the opposite direction. Reduced taxes on the ultra-rich and the corporations and banks they dominate have shifted fiscal burdens downward even as they have strained the government’s capacity to maintain infrastructure, provide relief to children and the poor, and assist the elderly.

Everyone is by now aware of the staggering shift in fortunes upward favoring the wealthy. Less well understood is that this rising inequality is not the result of something economically rational, such as a surge in productivity or value-added contributions from financiers and hedge-fund CEOs, but is rather a direct reflection of redistributive policies that have helped the richest get richer.

Such outcomes are inexplicable on standard, commonly understood democratic grounds. The tiny proportion of wealthy actors among eligible voters cannot account for the immense political firepower needed to keep winning these policy victories. While motivated and mobilized minorities—those organized over issues like gay marriage, for example—can sometimes win legislative victories despite broad opposition from the electorate, America’s ultra-rich all together could barely fill a large sports stadium. They never assemble for rallies or marches, sign petitions, or mount Facebook or Twitter campaigns. So how do they so consistently get their way?

One increasingly popular answer is that America is an oligarchy rather than a democracy. The complex truth, however, is that the American political economy is both an oligarchy and a democracy; the challenge is to understand how these two political forms can coexist in a single system. Sorting out this duality begins with a recognition of the different kinds of power involved in each realm. Oligarchy rests on the concentration of material power, democracy on the dispersion of non-material power. The American system, like many others, pits a few with money power against the many with participation power. The chronic problem is not just that electoral democracy provides few constraints on the power of oligarchs in general, but that American democracy is by design particularly responsive to the power of money (a point Adam Garfinkle makes clear in his introduction to The American Interest’s January/February 2011 issue on Plutocracy and Democracy).

I read parts of that issue at the time.

My interest in this is mostly theoretical. I think all this whining about inequality is misplaced, and reading any Mark Steyn essay provides a quick corrective. We're losing our liberty. Most of those complaining about "rising inequality" end up proposing policies that expand the state, and hence reduce freedom. This is our problem.

Continue reading the Winters piece here.

Newsweek Circling the Drain

I tried reading it after Daily Beast took it over, but for the life of me, that magazine is the worst.

At New York Times, "Publisher and Two Top Editors Are Out at Newsweek/Daily Beast."

They need to put Jonathan Alter out on his ass.

How Mitt Romney Could Win

Well, since I've been blogging Mitt Romney, it turns out NYT's Bill Keller's got a hankering:

Election Day is nearly a year off and the first primaries aren’t until January, but I’m ready to skip ahead to the main event. The last serious hope of the Tea Partiers, Rick Perry, and their last not-so-serious hope, Herman Cain, are in campaign death spirals. Unless God has a cruel sense of humor, Newt Gingrich will pass like a tantrum. That leaves us with a general election between two serious and certifiably sane candidates. Phew!!

If you want to go into hibernation now and re-emerge in August for the campaign home stretch, I understand. But just to put the season of vaudeville firmly behind us, let’s contemplate the choice that awaits: two confident, intelligible, no-drama, rather distant men, each of whom seems to have overcompensated for bigot-arousing origins (Obama’s race, Romney’s religion) by being rational to a fault.

Despite efforts to polarize our politics into ideological base camps, in presidential elections the deciding vote still belongs to the middle. These voters have been drowned out lately by the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, but they are the main prize in 2012. Bruce Gyory, who is a consultant and teaches voting trends at the State University of New York at Albany, calls them the “40 within 40” — 40 percent of the electorate self-identify as independent, and 40 percent of those independents describe themselves as moderate. That means about one in six voters are up for grabs. Obama won them in 2008. The Democrats lost them badly in 2010.

We cannot know whose advertising arsenal will be most effective, which candidate will excel in the debates, or what blunders might tilt the outcome. We don’t know whether the MoveOn left or the evangelical right will simply stay home. We don’t know if Ron Paul will siphon off some of his libertarian devout into a third-party run. But we can, even at this distance, imagine the arguments that will be made to win over those decisive swing voters for Romney. Here are four.

Read it all.

Note how it's also a manifesto for defeating Romney, and Keller confesses he misses Bill Clinton.

PREVIOUSLY:

* "Obama Plan: Destroy Romney."

* "Presidential Debates Take Toll on GOP."

Israeli Sovereignty Over Judea and Samaria

At talk with Caroline Glick, from earlier this year:

Every Generation Has Its Heroes...

Via Kristina Ribali:

Obama Plan: Destroy Romney

I'm borrowing the headline from Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico.

The Mitt Romney campaign is convinced that the Obama White House has Romney in the crosshairs, and they're out with a new press release, "You're My Obssession":

“With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama and his Democrat allies are fixated more on Mitt Romney than on turning around our struggling economy. If the past is any guide, we expect this obsession will grow. A Romney Administration will be focused on reviving the economy and adding jobs, not consumed by campaign politics.” – Andrea Saul, Romney spokeswoman.

Well, there's more for the White House to consider. Although Newt Gingrich has now emerged as Romney's key challenger for nomination (given the developing collapse of Herman Cain), Romney leads in the Wall Street Journal's poll out last night, "WSJ/NBC Poll: Cain, Perry Woes Bolster Romney and Gingrich":

A week of turmoil in the race for the Republican presidential nomination has damaged Herman Cain and devastated Texas Gov. Rick Perry, all apparently to the benefit of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, according to new polling numbers from the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey. (The full results are here.)

The Journal/NBC News polling team late last week went back to re-interview Republican primary voters who had taken the Journal/NBC poll earlier this month. The results of 102 interviews, while not scientifically conclusive, are instructive.

Among those recontacted, 32% now say they favor Mr. Romney for president, up from 27% when they were surveyed between Nov. 2 and Nov. 5. During that earlier canvas, those 102 Republican voters favored former pizza executive Mr. Cain over Mr. Romney in a head-to-head race 51% to 47%. That same group now favors Mr. Romney 56%-43%.

I know a lot of conservatives aren't pleased with Mitt Romney. He's not my first pick, by any means. But as I noted previously, the left's institutional character assassination machine will attempt to rip the GOP nominee to shreds, and that may well be Romney, so the Obama/Occupy/Organizing or America thugs aren't wasting any time.

Health Law Puts Focus on Limits of Federal Power

At New York Times:

WASHINGTON — If the federal government can require people to purchase health insurance, what else can it force them to do? More to the point, what can’t the government compel citizens to do?

Those questions have been the toughest ones for the Obama administration’s lawyers to answer in court appearances around the country over the past six months. And they are likely to emerge again if, as expected, the Supreme Court, as early as Monday, agrees to be the final arbiter of the challenge to President Obama’s signature health care initiative.

The case focuses on whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority in enacting parts of the law. Lower courts have reached divergent conclusions.

Even judges in lower courts who ultimately voted to uphold the law have homed in on the question of the limits of government power, at times flummoxing Justice Department lawyers.

“Let’s go right to what is your most difficult problem,” Judge Laurence H. Silberman, who later voted to uphold the law, told a lawyer at an argument in September before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “What limiting principle do you articulate?” If Congress may require people to purchase health insurance, he asked, what else can it force them to buy? Where do you draw the line?

Would it be unconstitutional, he asked, to require people to buy broccoli?

“No,” said the lawyer, Beth S. Brinkmann. “It depends.”

Could people making more than $500,000 be required to buy cars from General Motors to keep it in business?

“I would have to know much more about the empirical findings,” she replied.

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who ended up in dissent, then jumped in. “How about mandatory retirement accounts replacing Social Security?” he asked.

“It would depend,” Ms. Brinkmann replied.

Ms. Brinkmann was cut off before she could elaborate on her answers. In other settings, she and other administration lawyers have described what they see as the constitutional limits to government power, though not typically using concrete examples.

Keep reading.

It's a great piece.

Are there limits to federal power? The question is now before the Court.

See, "Supreme Court to Hear Case Challenging Health Law" (via Memeorandum).

Also at Althouse, "Supreme Court takes the Obamacare case":

If the Court takes down the entire Act, it would do Obama a great favor, which is why I'm predicting the Court will do just that. That was my prediction a few weeks ago, reading, not the the existing doctrine, but "the political forces at play and assessing the Court's vulnerability to those forces."

But would John Roberts really want to do Obama a favor? Interesting...

Bachmann Says CBS News E-Mail Shows Bias

Well, perhaps the MFM isn't blowing off Bachmann after all.

At New York Times, "A Finger Slips, and the Bachmann Camp Pounces":

It is not exactly a state secret that the news media tend to lavish more coverage on perceived front-runners in presidential campaigns.

But CBS News’s political director, John Dickerson, made the mistake of saying basically that in an e-mail and accidentally sending it to the campaign of Representative Michele Bachmann.

In a slip of the finger that quickly ignited a furor among Mrs. Bachmann’s supporters, Mr. Dickerson e-mailed his colleagues that he would prefer to “get someone else” other than the Minnesota congresswoman for an online show after the CBS News/National Journal debate on Saturday night. The e-mail said that Mrs. Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” in the debate and that “she’s nearly off the charts” — an apparent reference to her low standing in many polls.

The problem was that Mrs. Bachmann’s communications director was copied in on the e-mail, and Mr. Dickerson hit “reply to all.” Oops.

The incident highlighted the tricky calculus media organizations must engage in when deciding which candidates to pay attention to, and which not, as they factor in criteria like standing in the polls, fund-raising and more nebulous things like momentum.

Aides to Mrs. Bachmann, who is polling in the single digits, seized on the e-mail as evidence of liberal bias by CBS News and used the episode to rally its supporters against a favorite Republican foe: the mainstream media.

Is Bachmann whining? Althouse claimed she was acting like a progressive. Actually, it see it more like a gimme. She got an opening from the blasted e-mail and she took it. And it's buying her some consideration at the New York Times, of all places, not to mention the Los Angeles Times, "Michele Bachmann sees bias in stray email."

Michigan's Macomb County May Not Break for Obama in 2012

Following up on some of my general election analysis from last night, the Los Angeles Times reports on Macomb County, Michigan, and President Obama's reelection chances, "Swing county in Michigan isn't sold on batting for Obama."

Reporting from Sterling Heights, Mich.

Macomb County's mercurial "Reagan Democrats" have long served as a barometer of the national mood. Their abandonment of their own party to support Ronald Reagan helped usher in GOP rule nationally. Three decades later, Barack Obama pulled them back into the fold, sweeping the county by more than 8 points and winning Michigan by the largest margin for a Democrat since 1964.

The size of that win — particularly in a white, blue-collar swing county like Macomb — might have been enough to convince Republicans that Michigan wasn't worth the effort in 2012. But as Obama seeks a second term, the Democratic loyalty demonstrated three years ago appears tenuous.

Unemployment, which peaked at 14.1% in summer 2009, is still the third-highest in the nation at 11.1%. After declining for 19 months straight, it climbed a full point between April and August.

Though Obama helped rescue two Michigan-based auto companies — a move his advisors credited with saving 1 million jobs — his economic policies draw little praise from independent and Democratic-leaning voters in Macomb County.

Among two dozen interviewed recently, some said they felt sorry for the president because congressional Republicans have thwarted him at every turn. Some were disappointed that he had not been able to accomplish more in the area of job creation when he had a Democratic majority in Congress. And some, like Donald and Arlene Wittmer of Sterling Heights, have simply concluded that he is out of his depth.

"His first stimulus was ridiculous; he spent [$787 billion] and got nothing out of it," Donald Wittmer said. "Now he wants to do it again and still doesn't really have a plan."

"We're just sinking," he said. "We're losing ground."

Michigan is Romney territory, and the state's 16 electors will go a long way toward a GOP victory in the Electoral College.

But continue reading the Times' report here.