Newt Gingrich Goes After Ron Paul on Newsletters

At New York Times, "With Paul on the Rise in Iowa, Gingrich Takes Aim":

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Newt Gingrich turned his fire on Representative Ron Paul of Texas on Friday, saying that his Republican opponent had to answer for political and investment newsletters that included racist, anti-gay and anti-Israel passages that Mr. Paul has disavowed.

Mr. Gingrich also sharply criticized Mr. Paul for what he said were his isolationist views on foreign policy. The pointed comments suggested a new dynamic in the presidential primary race, with Mr. Paul as a new and enticing target. His fortunes have risen in Iowa, scrambling the field as some polls suggest that Mr. Paul could pull off a victory in the caucuses on Jan. 3. But in recent days, he has come under increasing scrutiny for offensive passages in newsletters that bore his name, although he has denied writing or approving them. 

“These things are really nasty, and he didn’t know about it?” Mr. Gingrich said to reporters after a town-hall-style meeting here.

At the same time, Mr. Gingrich refrained from criticizing Mitt Romney, with whom he has frequently sparred, calling him, at worst, “a Massachusetts moderate.”

Speaking to a large and enthusiastic crowd outside the Blue Marlin restaurant here on a warm and sunny day, Mr. Gingrich mainly framed his candidacy in opposition to President Obama. But he strongly criticized Mr. Paul’s foreign policy positions. Mr. Paul’s criticism of American military involvement overseas is at odds with the views of many Republican voters who may otherwise be attracted to his strong antigovernment message.

“The only person I know who is for a weaker military than Barack Obama is Ron Paul,” Mr. Gingrich said.

“His positions are fundamentally wrong on national security,” he added. “I do not agree with him that America is at fault for 9/11, I do not agree with him that we can ignore an Iranian nuclear weapon, and I do not agree with him that it’s O.K. if Israel disappears.”

A top official with the Paul campaign, Jesse Benton, suggested that Mr. Gingrich’s comments were slanderous and an overreaction to the possibility that Mr. Gingrich might not have collected enough signatures to get on the nominating ballot in Virginia — a matter not yet resolved.

“Today was a bad day for Newt Gingrich,” Mr. Benton said in an e-mail, adding that the former House speaker had “jumped the shark trying to slander Dr. Paul.”

Continue reading.

And notice at the video how Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry are using Paul's racist newsletters to smear not only the American right, but American society all together!

Ron Paul won't be the nominee --- indeed, he's probably in a situation akin to Herman Cain's: caught in the headlights upon emerging as the frontrunner, and even if he wins Iowa it's going to be a long primary process and Paul's scrutiny will only intensify. He'll have to answer and answer decisively at some point. But as noted, there's something of a nativist and isolationist trend that animating the primary process. That's something quite different from the small-government conservatism that drove the tea parties in 2009. All this together is extremely fascinating. And how some of these tensions are resolved over the next few months will go a long way towards determining the GOP's chances in defeating the Democrats next November.

Occupy Wall Street and the Jews

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

Here's Jonathan Neumann, at Commmentary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading.

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

PREVIOUSLY: "Manifesto: Occupy for the Revolution."

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

Iowa and the Future of the GOP

This is a point I argued previously.

From David Yepsen, at Wall Street Journal, "No matter the outcome, Ron Paul's strength indicates a resurgence of the libertarian and isolationist wings of the Republican Party":

This race feels a bit like 1980. Democrats and some pundits tee-hee about the "dwarfs" in this race, but perhaps their snickers are premature. Can "has-been" politicians stage comebacks? Yes. Can new stars emerge? Yup. With the right candidate, can the party pick off a sitting Democratic president with weak poll ratings? You betcha.

Some insights to consider as the contest enters the final days:

• No matter the outcome, Ron Paul's strength indicates a resurgence of the libertarian and isolationist wings of the Republican Party. Hard times and unpopular wars will do that.

It's always wise to watch which candidate is attracting new people because they—or their message—are on to something. That was true with George McGovern in 1972 and Pat Robertson in 1988. In this race, the one candidate attracting hordes of new people is Mr. Paul. Many of them are young—and while Mr. Paul is unlikely to become the GOP nominee, those young adults will mature into a political force, just as Mr. McGovern's antiwar factions and Mr. Robertson's religious conservatives have done.

• The Iowa contest will also help the party chart its course on immigration—and it may not be a successful or wise one. Candidates are falling over themselves to bash illegal immigration.

While that plays well to GOP activists, it fuels the fire of nativism that burns so hot inside the GOP today. It also alienates people of Latino ancestry and is driving them and their children into the Democratic Party. That shift will have a huge impact in the fall campaign, since many toss-up states could be decided by the votes of Latinos.

You'd think the GOP would learn. Just as the Yankee Brahmins drove the Irish into the Democratic Party generations ago, many GOP leaders are pushing Latinos there today.

• Too much is made of the power of social conservatives, perhaps because both politicians and pundits tend to fight the last war. Polls show that only about 40% of likely caucusgoers describe themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians. That would mean 60% aren't. (In 2008, some polls had it 60%-40% the other way.)

Continue reading.

Yepsen warns that the GOP could end up like McGovern in '72 --- getting clobbered in a landslide of epic proportions. But I'm not down with that suggestion. A conservative candidate --- I'd prefer Michele Bachmann --- can beat the president by hammering the administration on the economy. Progressives laugh when they hear such stuff, but hubris will do them in, and the president's the most hubristic of all.

NewsBusted: 'The Chuck E. Cheese pizza chain has been fined for violating federal child labor laws'

Via Theo Spark:

New York Times Decries 'Right Wing Extremism' — Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading.

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

Five Myths About Margaret Thatcher

I was thinking about this the other night, while watching the preview for "The Iron Lady" at the movies.

See Claire Berlinski, at Washington Post.

Ron Paul Has a Lot of Disqualifiers That Make It Impossible for Him to Be the Next President of the United States

From John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, "Liberalism In 120 Seconds: Ron Paul’s Fans Can’t Have It Both Ways":

Also, from Jamie Kirchik, at The New Republic, "Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?" (via Eric Dondero).

Bikini Christmas!

'Tis the season:

And I don't see a 2011 Lucy Pinder Christmas video, but here's one from a couple of years ago.

Merry Christmas!

Ron Paul Portrays Himself as Champion of Minorities in Interview on Fox News' Neil Cavuto

He still doesn't address the core issue: Why would Ron Paul permit such inflammatory newsletters go out in his name? Paul says it's ironic he's getting hammered on this, since he's the biggest "civil libertarian" in the race, who backs the rights of minorities against government. That's chutzpah, I'll tell you. And he goes on to blow off the more incendiary charges as perhaps a failure of management. By now most people don't buy that Paul had no clue of these things, and the candidate simply keeps the discussion away from the clearly racist statements by saying that the "race war" stuff was less than 1 percent of what was published in what was basically a "hard money newsletter."

See also New York Times, "Gingrich Criticizes Paul on Newsletters and Foreign Policy."

And Robert Stacy McCain has a limited defense of Paul, seeing the newsletters as fringe fundraising classics of the pre-Internet era, "Classics of the Golden Age of Fringe, Or: Ron Paul Digs the Beatles’ White Album."

EXTRA: Ta-Nehisi Coates has a sick obsession with finding racism in every crack or crevice under the sun, so it's no surprise that the Paul letters have been a bonanza for his blogging. That said, I can't really disagree with this:

Yesteday [sic] Ron Paul claimed on CNN that he'd never read the newsletters that went out in his name. Here is Ron Paul in a 1995 video discussing the very newsletters he claims to never have read.

If you can find away to explain away a hateful newsletter written in someone's own name, it's likely you can find some way to explain this video away too. There's always a path to make yourself right, if that's your intent. Indeed, at this point it probably behooves me to stop arguing.

Obama Post-Recession Recovery Badly Lags the Reagan Recovery After the Severe 1981-82 Recession

At Investor's Business Daily, "Five Myths About President Obama Economic Recovery":

Over the past several months, President Obama has spent much time pleading for patience on the sluggish economy and ongoing high unemployment, arguing that the economic hole was so deep and the crisis so monumental that a slow recovery — now in its 30th month — was inevitable.

But in making his case, Obama appears to be perpetuating several myths about the recession he inherited and the slow recovery over which he's presided. Among them....

2) The country had to dig out of a historically deep hole. Obama often explains the length of the recovery by noting how deep the recession had been.

But while the so-called Great Recession lasted 18 months and sent unemployment to 10.1%, the 1981-82 recession was comparable in length and severity. That one lasted 16 months, and pushed unemployment even higher, to 10.8%.

The difference is that today unemployment is still at an historically high 8.6%, and it's only that low because the labor force has declined. Real GDP is a mere 0.04% above its pre-recession peak. At the comparable point in the Reagan recovery, unemployment had plunged to 7.3%, while the economy had grown 12% above its pre-recession peak, and was still climbing fast.

RTWT at the link.

PHOTO CREDIT: The White House, "President Barack Obama talks with a patron at Reid's House Restaurant in Reidsville, N.C., during a lunch stop on the American Jobs Act bus tour, Oct. 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

New Air Jordans Cause Race Riots Across the United States

That's hardly exaggerating.

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

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

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

Ron Paul Talks About Newsletters in 1995 Video

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

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

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

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

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

Mitt Romney Highlights His Marriage in New Hampshire

This is part of Romney's bid to batten down the hatches in the Granite State.

At Los Angeles Times, "Spotlight on Romney's marriage casts shadow on Gingrich's past":

Reporting from Lancaster, N.H.— It was a simple errand, a husband buying a Christmas gift for his wife. But in this case it was Mitt Romney buying for Ann Romney, the woman he introduces alternately as "my bride," "my sweetheart" and occasionally "the boss."

And with 13 days before the first votes are cast — with thousands of voters to win over — the former governor brought more than a dozen reporters, cameramen and photographers along for the holiday excursion.

Taking his wife of 42 years by the hand, the former Massachusetts governor led the way Thursday around the outdoor outfitter Simon the Tanner: "Ann, keep your eyes open here."

They reminisced about the best Christmas gifts he's given her — a horse, which he called "the gift that keeps on giving" — and the worst.

"For the first, I don't know, 10 years of our marriage, I would buy her clothing of various kinds," the candidate told reporters at the store, "and she would say, 'Ohhhhh, this is so nice,' and then it was gone a week later."

The candidate suggested presents along the shelves without much success. Finally, Ann Romney tried on a sleek white ski jacket and modeled it for her husband as he looked on approvingly.

"Christmas accomplished," he beamed. After picking up the $300 tab, which included socks for his eldest granddaughter, he joked to his wife that she was lucky he hadn't picked out her gift at the next stop, an Agway farm store.

Continue reading.

Romney denies that he's playing the marriage card to hammer Newt Gingrich, but with this latest video narrated by Ann Romney --- featuring nostalgic pictures of the early family --- it's undeniable that the value of family is central to Mitt's persona. And no doubt he has a nice family. He seems genuinely doting. But some have already indicated that Romney will get hammered for suggesting his family's better than Gingrich's. Divorce is a fact of life in this country. The issue is whether Newt cheated during his first and second marriages. Perhaps so, although there's considerable dispute on the details. Either way, it's a potential minefield. Gingrich has admitted his mistakes and signed a pledge to "uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others." Romney will look like he's browbeating if he keeps harping on the issue.

Niccolo Caldararo, Lecturer in Anthropology, San Francisco State, Hails North Korea as 'Ripe for Capitalism'

Well, I was waiting to see something like this. The U.S. leftists are falling in behind the Communist Party of Canada in support of the Kim regime in totalitarian North Korea --- and publishing their pro-communist agitprop at the anti-Semitic hate blog Daily Kos. See NewsBusters, "Daily Kos Comes to Defense of North Korea; No Worse Than South Korea, USA."

Following the link takes us to the diary at Daily Kos, "North Korea & Hysteria, Madness." I love this passage:

We have to realize that much of what is written about North Korea is for popular digestion regarding potential invasion. Let's face it, North Korea is ripe for capitalism, there are millions of potential workers who will work for near nothing. The hope is that the regime will crumble like the Soviet Union and give way to massive investment opportunities.

Right.

Millions of potential skeletons, but check the post. I can see where Professor Caldararo is coming from. He cites some political science literature on Cold War international politics, and he places North Korea in the framework of a besieged state surrounded by hostile powers. This is something of a realist take, but realism has been perverted by the academic left to demonize Israel as a detriment to U.S. security interests. This Caldararo piece is another application of such abstract analysis in furtherance of the far-left agenda. In particular, this piece is noteworthy for its extreme moral equivalence between North and South Korea, and thus their respective patron systems, communism and capitalism. But while Caldararo is quick to point out the authoritarian politics of the South Korean state, he omits that today Seoul is a democratic regime and perhaps the most successful developing economy in the world today. He also leaves out the enormous human rights abuses and North Korea's threats to international security and regional order, such as state-sponsored terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Inconvenient facts, I guess.

In any case, see Doug Bandow at American Spectator, "Otherworldly Defense of North Korea":

There is much to complain about South Korea under military rule. But, in case the professor didn't notice, the South Koreans escaped repression and achieved freedom. It turns out that nasty dictator Park Chung-hee (and he was nasty!) followed economic policies which allowed his people to avoid famine and escape poverty. And dictator Chun Doo-hwan responded to mass protests by holding an election. Silly fellow. He was later convicted and originally sentenced to death for his crimes. His successor, a former general and ally named Roh Tae-woo, allowed another election in which former dissident Kim Young-sam was elected. Roh also later was convicted and sentenced to prison.

These guys were amateurs compared to the Kims.

See what I mean?

But this is the progressive left for you. "No enemies on the left," and all that. It's the evil U.S. imperial system that's the real problem, to hear it from these idiots. And of course, the hate trolls of the progressive fever swamps won't be inundating the administration at San Francisco State with demands that this guy be fired. No, that's reserved especially for people who dare to indicate a believe in God and moral decency.

It's pretty messed up. But this is just one more example of the upside-down world we live in where good and decency are deemed as evil and real evil is championed as the saving grace of humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Home for the Holidays'

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

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

George H.W. Bush Endorses Mitt Romney

Unofficial, they say, but it still counts quite a bit from a former president.

At New York Times, "Elder Bush Tells Paper Romney Is 'Best Choice'."

And at the Houston Chronicle, "Bush 41 backs Romney for president, admits he’s not Gingrich’s ‘biggest advocate’."

Europe's Unfinished Program to Exterminate the Jews

See Melanie Phillips, at London's Daily Mail, "Europe's unfinished business":

Of course, there are profound differences between today’s anti-Jewish animus and 1930s Germany. But there is also more than an unsettling echo; there is a direct line of connection. Many of the Palestinian Arabs are descended from ancestors who formed Hitler’s Middle Eastern front in Palestine, with a shared goal of exterminating the Jews. And their current agenda is being promoted by Europeans who, having created the EU to exorcise the continent’s demons, never fully faced up to the true and universal sources of the eternal hatred and lunacy that had caused the genocide of the Jews.

Year-End Kate Upton Sports Illustrated Flashback

She's probably the biggest fashion phenomenon of the year.

A stunning beauty.

Obama Claims Victory as Congress Reaches Payroll Tax Deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tricks for Roasting a Juicy Prime Rib

We'll be having tri-tip steak and lobster for Christmas dinner, but prime rib sure sounds good.

At Los Angeles Times, "How to roast a prime rib."

Michelle 'Big Butt' Obama: Spending is 'Spiraling Out of Control'?

That's not very nice that Rep. Sensenbrenner slammed the First Lady for a fat posterior, but he's recanting now: "Sensenbrenner apologizes to first lady over "big butt" remark."

iOWNTHEWORLD had the initial report, "Rep. Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin Tells it Like it Is – Michelle’s Got a Fat Ass."

And London's Daily Mail has a dishy update on the Obamas vacation planning fiasco, "Is Michelle Obama's spending 'spiralling out of control'? First Lady 'insisted on $4m trip to Hawaii when her husband wanted local vacation'."

Dozens Killed in Bomb Attacks in Iraq

At Telegraph UK, "Iraq gripped by sectarian crisis as 63 killed in wave of bombings."

At least a dozen separate blasts hit mostly Shia neighbourhoods of the Iraqi city, though some Sunni areas were also affected. The attacks ranged from "sticky bombs" to fully-loaded car bombs, some doubled up to ensure emergency crews were caught by the second blast, a common tactic of Sunni insurgents.

At first sight, the blasts are likely to be attributed to Sunni groups, in response to the hard line taken by the Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the days since American forces observed President Obama's promise to withdraw by the end of the year. He has issued a warrant for the arrest of the Sunni vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi, accusing him of running a hit squad, and called for a vote of no confidence against his own Sunni deputy, vice-premier Saleh al-Mutlaq.

The worst single incident this morning was a suicide attack near a government office in which a stolen ambulance packed with explosives was detonated by its driver, sending debris into the air and into the grounds of a nearby kindergarten. Police said at least 18 people were killed in that bombing alone.

The series of attacks was on course to be the most lethal since at least August. Police suggested they were designed to instil fear rather than to hit specific targets. "They didn't target any vital institutions or security positions," the Baghdad security spokesman, Major General Qassim Atta, said. "They targeted children's schools, day workers, the anti-corruption agency."

Also at Washington Post, "Baghdad explosions kill at least 63 in 1st major violence since U.S. pullout."

Experts See a False Dawn in Economy's Recent Gains

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on that coming up later...

The Number of Squatters Nationwide is Rising

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

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

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

Nobody lives here, at least not officially.

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

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

RTWT.

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

Ron Paul's Positions Play Well in Iowa

Too well, unfortunately.

At Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "What Ron Paul Thinks of America."

Discovering Autism: Wrap Up

I got busy and missed a chance to wrap up the L.A. Times series on autism. My previous posts are here and here. And more from the Times, "Part 3: Families chase the dream of recovery," and "Part 4: Finding traces of autism in earlier eras."

One of my readers e-mailed to say that she started to comment on my second post on "Racial Disparities in Autism Services." Her comment was in fact an full-blown essay (and too long for the comments), and I'm posting it here for the wrap-up, "Your blog post re ASD and more money agenda":

False [about the racial disparities]. There is no difference between socioeconomic status or race and support. The only difference between parents is gumption. Are you willing to have a "teacher" look you in the eye and tell you they are the "expert" when you as the parent spend more time with your child on a daily basis? All the material for a sped [special ed.] parent to be "fully informed" is free, they may represent themselves in court for free, and every state has a parent center just to help due to IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act]. While it has always been the squeaky wheel that gets the oil in local education agency (LEA) terms from PTA to sped, the one factor that explains this disparity is parent literacy. Think about it. A layman (or translator) can do it but it takes concerted effort.

More importantly, however, is not what the (greedy) parents negotiate for but what works best. The aides, o/t, speech, etc. are all irrelevant if the parent is not focused on the student always having access to regular education material, and finding the proper reading methodology at an early age to become proficient by 3rd grade. Otherwise, it is all an academic catch-up game fighting the entrenched school system path of sped student tracking for behaviour modification warehousing to age out of the system.

Also, this is not a matter of more funding. Sure, the teachers union is pleased to build the agenda for more money and staff, and there are, sorry to say, numerous parents happy to delegate their parental rights to self professed "experts" but it is the exact opposite of what any sped student needs to make their time matter just as a typical student's education block time would and graduate, irregardless of diploma or certificate of completion, to independent living. Lofty goal you might say but if that is not the desired path for every typical AND sped student, then someone, at some point in that student's academic career, denied them of the opportunity to further try and achieve learning milestones. (Granted, some students with mental impairment will plateau, but as a parent, don't you want to be in on that decision?) You must ask yourself, is this task a functional life skill? Reading, writing, basic math, following directions, etc. all apply within a curriculum discipline. (Tragically, many a parent and student find this out too late, hence the academic catch-up game, tracking, and excessive dropout rates.)

The one thing that could make all the difference right this moment: parental rights. We all know they don't end at the schoolhouse gate but if schools opened up and allowed parents to be their child's aide it would diminish school retaliation and an informed decision can be met for the academic/behavioural path choice that will have to be faced (with no regrets) for every student. Sadly, teachers are loath to agree to have someone around their classroom who will hold them accountable. After all, the expensive seminars and training the teachers get that the school districts pay for to accommodate sped students can then be their calling card to extra cash on the side for their home based sped "expert" business during the summer months and holiday closures. No double dipping money to be made off parent experts.

Bottom line, if you have an ASD child, homeschool. Focus on proficient reading and giving them the background knowledge to jump into the system in 6th or 7th grade, or even 4th if they are reading proficient by 3rd grade. Homeschooling will eliminate the distraction that socializing brings until they mature. Homeschooling is easy, inexpensive, and fun. I promise. However, if you can not, then I can not stress this enough: You simply MUST shadow your child for the day. You should be able to show up and do it but if the school insists on your making an appointment to do so, then by all means accommodate them, we don't want to start off antagonizing too much above and beyond the initial request, but do insist it be within three days or so. One day the MOTHER, and a separate day the FATHER, must shadow the student for the entire school day. Speak not and take notes. Volunteer to be an aide. Enter the rabbit hole then visit WrightsLaw.com

P.S. Once you have your PhD in IEPs, and you'll know, then volunteer to become an IEP advocate for foster kids. It is not very time consuming, and can make all the difference in smoothing a kids home groove if any problems or concerns with school/sped are able to be delegated with continuity until everyone is up to speed.

P.P.S. Regarding the article, what is to be learned specifically is that the tragedies are of the parents own making. Gissell's parents speak no English but expect their autistic daughter to after being placed in a special education classroom, tracked for behaviour modification with no access to regular education material for 8 years? Her mom doesn't work but never incorporated supplemental homework let alone homeschooled. (If the school is teaching her only Spanish, I would consider it abuse to raise a disabled child in America who speaks no English.)

Jese's mother was content to have him suffer in silence for six years before an ambulance chaser found her through a group of non-English speaking parents with ASD children. (Six years in LA and his mom can't speak English?) Must the school district and PTA do everything in duplicate or triplicate or more to accommodate other languages other than the one in which they do business, English?

I bet the oft noted 30 minutes a week during school of speech therapy for each student are two 15 minute group sessions a week. Useless. This is the IEP standard operating procedure across the nation for sped. Period. Furthermore, there have been studies showing institutionalized behaviour is learned, and some of the remediated students can make considerable progress. We haven't even touched on restraints. That we allow civil servants this power is shameful.

However, I think you missed the real reason this gem of "racial inequality" was brought forth, Mr. Douglas. The "wealthier parents" are the evil 1%. So much of this article's emphasis is on the fact the white parents are using, and paying for, lawyers to secure services despite the fact (and never mentioned) the IDEA law allows parents to represent themselves at all levels; IEP, hearing officer, mediation, administrative law judge, appeal, etc. For parents, there are no special legal points or advantage in procedure or law background to having a costly education attorney as legal representation. So why do they do it?

Parents rarely win vs. school administration. Look at the DOE stats across the nation and it is systemic bias. In some districts parents never win. Go to the mattresses. Parents have had to bring in the law community heavy hitters to give any grievance oxygen, and then network to force procedural change on civil servants to bring them into compliance with federal law. These white parents are paving the way and literally paying extra for it too boot. The Latinos, blacks, and illegal aliens will now have easier access to sped services upfront, but would it kill anyone to appreciate the financial drain and time sacrificed by the evil wealthier white, English speaking parents?

As a nation, we our $15 trillion in debt. It's not personal. It's business. Let's have the conversation regarding personal responsibility, parental rights, and lack of minority intellectual curiosity.

Southland Punk Bands Help Goldenvoice Celebrate Its 30th Anniversary

At Los Angeles Times, "Live review: X, Social Distortion at GV30."

I'll look for some X clips later. Meanwhile, here's Mike Ness and Social Distortion with some "Lude Boy" for all my drug decrim readers:

I'm on the 714, cause I got a brand new jar, 
Lemons put some light in my life, keep me happy through the night 
I'm a lude boy, I don't care if I ever get home. 

Getting ready to jump on the train, give me more to rack my brain. Sudden alteration in my point of view, tables turn when I got the ludes. 

I'm a lude boy, I don't care if I ever get home.

What Ron Paul Thinks of America

From Dorothy Rabinowitz, at Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

Continue reading.

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

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

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

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

See AoSHQ for a refresher.

Is Mark Sanchez Dating Kate Upton?

Well, here's a good excuse to post on the lovely Kate Upton (as if I needed one).

At New York Post, "Sanchez in huddle with Secret beauty."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez 'dating underwear model Kate Upton'."

Heading Out to 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'

And I'll have a response tomorrow.

And ICYMI, the reviews are here: "'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' Out Today."

Ron Paul Walks Out of CNN Interview

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

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

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

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

That sounds reasonable.

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

Republicans Losing the Tax Issue to Obama

As I was saying about those MFM headlines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOP's Taking a Beating On Payroll Tax Extension

Image is everything, as Andre Agassi used to say.

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

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

Ron Paul is Frontrunner in ISU/Gazette/KCRG Poll

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

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

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

'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' Out Today

The New York Times has an approving review, "Tattooed Heroine Metes Out Slick, Punitive Violence":

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs. The animating force in Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy — incarnated on screen first by Noomi Rapace and now, in David Fincher’s adaptation of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Rooney Mara — Lisbeth is an outlaw feminist fantasy-heroine, and also an avatar of digital antiauthoritarianism.

Her appeal arises from a combination of vulnerability and ruthless competence. Lisbeth can hack any machine, crack any code and, when necessary, mete out righteous punitive violence, but she is also (to an extent fully revealed in subsequent episodes) a lost and abused child. And Ms. Mara captures her volatile and fascinating essence beautifully. Hurt, fury and calculation play on her pierced and shadowed face. The black bangs across her forehead are as sharp and severe as an obsidian blade, but her eyebrows are as downy and pale as a baby’s. Lisbeth inspires fear and awe and also — on the part of Larsson and his fictional alter ego, the crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played in Mr. Fincher’s film by Daniel Craig) — a measure of chivalrous protectiveness.

Continue reading.

The Los Angeles Times isn't as enthusiastic, "Movie review: 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' is too frigid."

Harsh: Wall Street Journal Slams GOP's 'Circular Firing Squad' on Payroll Tax Debacle

It's a devastating indictment, and depressing if you're a conservative.

See: "The GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco."

And the story's trending at Memeorandum. No doubt progressives are eating this up, since they live for the deception.

Gingrich Berated as a 'F-king A-hole' in Iowa

It's hard out there.

At Talking Points Memo, "Newt’s Campaign Comes Down To Earth As Iowan Calls Him ‘F—king A—hole’ To His Face."

RELATED: At New York Times, "Conservatives Remain Suspicious of Gingrich."

Ann Counter Interview with Brian Lilley of Sun TV

At BCF, "Brian Lilley Interviews Ann Coulter":

Newt Gingrich on 'The O'Reilly Factor'

O'Reilly spends a lot of time on Gingrich's aggressive stand against activist judges. That's just not that controversial to me and seems like a diversion from a lot of other issues, like the economy. At the second half of the clip Gingrich responds to his decline in the polls and whines about running an exclusively positive campaign. O'Reilly mentions the piece from yesterday's New York Times, "In Murky Republican Contest, the Clearest Target Is Gingrich." I wish O'Reilly would have mentioned Marc Thiessen's essay at Friday's Washington Post, "Gingrich’s abortion contortions." Mitt Romney, speaking to O'Reilly earlier, made a pretty good case for his pro-life bona fides. It would been nice to hear Gingrich make the case for his.

Mitt Romney on 'The O'Reilly Factor'

It's a good interview, overall. But Romney won't call Obama a socialist, or even consider that the administration's policies are socialistic. He calls the president a "big government liberal," which means he's willing to let the progressive left set the terms of acceptable debate. If Romney's going to win in the general election, however, he's going to need to be firing with both barrels. He'll be eviscerated by the radical left's institutional character assassination machine. I've said it previously and more and more folks are stressing the point, particularly William Jacobson.

A Blend of Cult and Coercion in North Korea

It's a question on the minds of many: What explains the almost macabre outpouring of grief at the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il?

Well, see New York Times, "North Korea’s Tears: A Blend of Cult, Culture and Coercion":

SEOUL, South Korea — Among countless mourners at a public square in North Korea, the kneeling middle-aged man in an off-white windbreaker stands out. The state broadcaster’s camera zooms in as he wails, rocking back and forth with clenched fists, his grief punctuated by the white puffs of his breath visible in the cold of the capital, Pyongyang.

The camera lingers a few seconds too long on this perfect mourner. A couple of rows away, two teenaged boys stand motionless, seemingly uncertain about how to behave. They look toward the man — perhaps even at the camera beyond him — then briefly away, before also dropping to their knees to weep.

A day after North Korea announced the death of its longtime ruler, Kim Jong-il, televised video and photographs distributed by the reclusive state on Tuesday showed scenes of mass hysteria and grief among citizens and soldiers across the capital. The images, many of them carefully selected by the state Korean Central News Agency, appeared to be part of an official campaign to build support for Mr. Kim’s successor, his third son, Kim Jong-un.

In his first public appearance since his father’s death, Kim Jong-un visited the mausoleum in Pyongyang where Kim Jong-il’s body lay in state, covered with a red blanket. The coffin was surrounded by white chrysanthemums and Kimjongilia, a flower named after the deceased leader.

Kim Jong-un was accompanied by a group of senior party and military officials, giving the outside world a hint about whom he might be relying on as he seeks to consolidate control over a dynasty that has controlled North Korea since it was founded by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, whose death in 1994 led to even greater outpouring of public mourning.

Contrived as they might look to Western eyes, the wild expressions of grief at funerals — the convulsive sobbing, fist pounding and body-shaking bawling — are an accepted part of Korean Confucian culture, and can be witnessed at the funerals of the famous and the not famous alike in South Korea. But in the North, the culture of mourning has been magnified by a cult of personality in which the country’s leader is considered every North Korean’s father.

More at the link.

'The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there’s a quick death...'

Well, that's an Althouse-style title for the post, but that's who first came to mind when reading this piece at Los Angeles Times, "India has no shortage of aspiring hangmen." The quote on the "neck snaps" was highlighted at the essay in the hard-copy version, and it still kind of sticks out as so matter-of-fact:

Pawan Kumar is looking for a job. Not just any job; he wants to be India's newest hangman.

Kumar, 50, an apparel salesman from a family of executioners, says it's in his DNA, demonstrating with well-callused hands how to slide a hood over a condemned person's head, grease the noose and wrench the lever so the floor parts like a wave.

He acknowledges that he's never performed a hanging, India's preferred execution method, but says he's witnessed several and practiced using sandbags.

"The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there's a quick death," he says.

RTWT.

Adam Clymer on the Changing Nature of the Iowa Caucuses

The former New York Times reporter has written an interesting blog post at the Times' "Campaign Stops" blog, "The Romance of Iowa."

Claire Potter, Radical Lesbian History Professor at Wesleyan, Can't Comprehend Shot of 'Veritas' Between the Eyes

This lady broadcasts her proud lesbianism, which is used to explain how she failed to "comprehend" this epic one-liner from Althouse's comments:

The commenter who wins the prize (trigger warning for real this time!!!) also lets you know — in case the others on Althouse allow you to forget — why we still need feminism. Here goes: “There is the question of whether one would want someone like Claire Potter for a friend, unless of course there’s a prospect of sex as a reward for mutely enduring the unendurable. The solution is to wait for the full and complete BJ then give her the unvarnished veritas right between the eyes.” It took me a minute to comprehend this, me being a gold star lesbian and all, but this commenter is fantasizing out loud about taking a money shot in my face. Nice, Althouse. Nice. Love your friends.

Now, what's interesting is the post is published at the "Tenured Radical" blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. I didn't know they had a "Tenured Radical" blog! And boy, they don't kid around with their radicalism! Here's the biographical info for Professor Potter:

I am Claire B. Potter, Professor of History and American Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. My specialties are feminism, political history and cultural criticism.

Translation: "My specialties are racism, sexism, post-colonial gender studies, Marxism, and cultural relativism." It's a wonder if any Wesleyan students actually learn American history. (And a quick Google search confirms it.)

Althouse has the response, and she's not pleased with this "sister": "'But why would anyone — much less a law professor — leave a comment like that up on her blog...'"

And here's Althouse's original post with the offending comment, which she has now removed: "'Feminist blogging is definitely not for wimps, which is why the vast majority of us do it pseudonymously'."

And note something: Althouse hadn't read the ostensibly offending comment, but she removed it when she found that Professor Potter thought it offensively sexist. And that's because Althouse is a good and decent woman. Progressives, on the other hand, are not decent. These sick f-king racists routinely attack conservatives with the most vile bigotry, and they twist contortions to deny the patently obvious racism spouted in their own comments. They sponsor racism, hatred, workplace harassment and intimidation, and make personal threats against those whom they despise. Yeah, progressives suck like that, and the news is spreading.

Death of Kim Jong Il Creates New Layer of Risk to East Asia

The Los Angeles Times examines the impact of Kim's death on the regional economy, "Kim Jong Il's death could upset regional economy in Asia."

And at New York Times, "In Kim's Death, an Extensive Intelligence Failure."

Also, this morning's Wall Street Journal has the don't miss lead editorial, "Breaking the Kim Dynasty":

Kim maintained power by promoting a sense of siege aimed at the U.S. and its "puppet regime" in South Korea. Demonstrating loyalty to reunification on Pyongyang's terms and to the Kim family that personifies this goal is the key to advancement in the North. Nuclear weapons are crucial to this agenda, both as a bargaining chip to seek cash from the West and as a deterrent to any attempt to promote regime change. That last point is a warning about the horrendous long-term cost of letting Iran get the bomb.

Kim's death is producing the inevitable hopes that his successors will change all this and seek an opening to the world. The immediate likelihood is remote. Power has been centralized in the Kim family, including Kim Jong Il's sister and her husband, who may play the role of regent during the coming years.

Kim only began to install his youngest son, the 20-something Kim Jong Eun, as successor in the last few years, but he has also quickly picked up the terror mantle. North Korean propaganda suggests that the youngest Kim was behind the unprovoked sinking of a South Korean navy ship and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island last year. A measure of the regime's danger is that South Korea went on high alert upon news of Kim's death, and the White House issued a sensible statement pledging to maintain stability on the Korean peninsula and support America's allies in the region.

Don't expect much change under Kim the Younger.

And more at Wall Street Journal, from John Bolton, "'The Great Successor'," and Melanie Kirkpatrick, "The World's Most Repressive State."

NewsBusted: 'A new poll shows that 52% of Americans now think President Obama should be voted out of office'

Via Theo Spark:

Three Cheers for PolitiFact!

I don't normally pay attention to the fact-checking websites, but if PolitiFact managed to piss off half the progressive job-killing entitlement-state blogosphere, it must be doing something right.

See: "Lie of the Year 2011: ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare’" (at Memeorandum).

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year....

With a few small tweaks to their attack lines, Democrats could have been factually correct, said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "I actually think there is no need to cut out the qualifiers and exaggerate," he said.

At times, Democrats and liberal groups were careful to characterize the Republican plan more accurately. Another claim in the ad from the Agenda Project said the plan would "privatize" Medicare, which received a Mostly True rating from PolitiFact. President Barack Obama was also more precise with his words, saying the Medicare proposal "would voucherize the program and you potentially have senior citizens paying $6,000 more."

But more often, Democrats and liberals overreached:

• They ignored the fact that the Ryan plan would not affect people currently in Medicare -- or even the people 55 to 65 who would join the program in the next 10 years.

• They used harsh terms such as "end" and "kill" when the program would still exist, although in a privatized system.

• They used pictures and video of elderly people who clearly were too old to be affected by the Ryan plan. The DCCC video that aired four days after the vote featured an elderly man who had to take a job as a stripper to pay his medical bills.

"Both parties use entitlements as political weapons," Ryan said in an interview with PolitiFact. "Republicans do it to Democrats; Democrats do it to Republicans. So I knew that this would be a political weapon that the other side would use against us."

Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Well, that's a who's who of the America-hating market-killing left.

And sooner than you can scream, LIAR!, Paul Krugman is off the blocks to smear PolitiFact as "useless and irrelevant."

And Krugman links to one of the left's premiere dishonest spin masters and lie merchants, Steve "Buttfreak" Benen, "PolitiFact ought to be ashamed of itself."

Right.

That's just the kind of faux outrage we can expect from the morally bankrupt losers of the left, now screaming like stuck pigs at being called out for their epic dishonesty and fear-mongering.

Three cheers for PolitiFact.