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!

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."