A laceration to the hand. I'm guessing this was due to cops shutting down Zucotti -- no one in or out -- because the guy doing this Livestream said there were two arrests during the park shut-down.

There are no riots that I can see in the feed, though. I put the feed back up (after shutting it down, because it was boring) looking for breaking riot footage, and instead got the videographer saying he was going to take a break and get a smoothie.

So, if he's getting a smoothie, there aren't any riots. Only, as JammieWF would say, mostly peaceful sporadic assaults.

Related: Via RD, who says this is brutal, a reporter from Jon Stewart reports on the hypocrisy of class divisions in the OWS movement.

The reporter asks an upper-crust "economically downtrodden" protester about "those shiftless hoboes from BumTown."

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Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (320)
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Newt's time at the top.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers shows Gingrich with 32% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 19%. Georgia businessman Herman Cain, who led in Iowa last month, drops to third with 13% of the vote. Texas Congressman Ron Paul draws 10% of the vote in Iowa, while Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann each grab six percent (6%).

I know people are sick of the Cain-bashing, but this is a character flaw. I'm sorry, if you're running for president, a good man takes that seriously and bothers to read a briefing book.

"Gotcha"?

Cain, who last week stumbled over questions about what he would do in Libya, seemed to know little about Cuba. His campaign kept reporters at bay, and when asked about the Cuban Adjustment Act and the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cain seemed stumped. The policy allows Cuban immigrants who have made it to US soil to stay.

“Wet foot, dry foot policy?” Cain asked. His press handlers interrupted as Cain diverted his course and ducked back into the building. Later, when he emerged, he was asked again by another reporter. Cain wouldn’t answer. …

Cain, though, wouldn’t talk to reporters there, either. A FOX reporter asked Cain what he thought of President Obama’s easing of travel restrictions to Cuba. Cain said that was a “gotcha question.”

Wet foot/dry foot refers to our odd stance on Cuban refugees: We interdict them if found at sea, on boats, heading towards America, and turn them back ("wet foot"). But if they make our shores ("dry foot"), we grant them asylum.

It doesn't make a great deal of sense but then politics generally does not make a great deal of sense. It's filled with compromises and half-measures and odd gestures towards favored constituencies.

But the point is, like "Right of Return," this is no frigging obscure point of foreign policy. This is in fact something any reasonably well-informed citizen would know. Even if you just watch the presidential races every four years, this comes up. Especially in Florida, for obvious reasons.

Well, those reasons are obvious to me. Not so Cain, who thinks a question about the wet foot/dry foot Cuban refugee policy asked in Cuban-heavy Florida is a "gotcha." He doesn't even know what he doesn't know -- that is, this is all such terra incognita to him he doesn't distinguish between common knowledge and esoterica. It's all esoterica to him.

He canceled his scheduled meeting with the editors of the New Hampshire Union-Leader, after imposing a series of demands that seem designed to make the Union-Leader itself cancel the interview. They obliged him.

A scheduled meeting with the New Hampshire Union Leader's editorial board was canceled about an hour before it was to begin. There was disagreement over whether the meeting would be videotaped. The Union Leader typically allows filming of its meetings with presidential candidates; Cain's campaign refused to allow it.

The newspaper is an influential voice among New Hampshire conservatives.
The development came several days after Cain appeared to struggle to respond when questioned about Libya during an interview with a Milwaukee newspaper, which was videotaped and went viral after it was posted on the Internet.

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said the Union Leader canceled.

Dennis Miller is off the Cain Train, saying he can't win after the Libya befuddlement.

This is from the New York Times, so I understand if you discount it. However, it is sourced to ex-aides of Cain -- well, I guess you can discount that too.

But this rings true to me.

And is it any wonder that Herman Cain has shed a lot of high-level campaign staff members, both within his national organization and in crucial early states like Iowa and New Hampshire? Most of these former staff members have signed nondisclosure agreements, and others would speak to me only off the record. None of them recall their former boss as a sexual harasser. But they do speak of a man so egotistical that careful self-policing would never really enter into the realm of consideration.

They also speak — bitterly — of a candidate with zero interest in policy. They speak of events canceled at the last minute to accommodate any available television interview. They speak of unrelenting self-absorption, even by the standards of a politician.

It's the "zero interest in policy" thing I zero in on. Cain is not an unintelligent man -- former math whiz and CEO? He's got brains.

Which is why I put this down to a character problem. If you're running for president, and it requires, as it does, essentially cramming for One Big Test for a month, studying briefing books, etc., and you don't do that, what can I say?

If you haven't taken the candidacy seriously enough to do something you did 40 times before in college, then why should anyone else take it seriously?

Cramming for a test is not exactly climbing Mount Kilamanjaro. It's a pain in the ass, but it can be done. It's done every single day.

To just blow off that basic homework? I don't get it.

This is where I start respecting the character of Mitt Romney for at least taking the job seriously enough to do some homework.

But hopefully it doesn't come to that. Hopefully Perry will start hitting the books himself.

Hey, don't get mad at me. You're either going to hear this now from conservative agitators or you're going to hear this like gangbusters in August 2012 from liberal agitators in the Newspeak Media. Either way, you are going to hear it.

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Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (301)
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The Prop 8 litigation drags on. Today, the California Supreme Court ruled that the proponents of ballot initiatives have special authority under state law to represent the state of California when the governor and attorney general decline to do so.

The official site is having traffic difficulties, I'll get a link up to the decision when I find one that works. Here (PDF); and a mirror (PDF).

The case now goes back to the 9th Circuit, which was stuck on whether the Prop 8 proponents even have standing to appeal. I raised that issue the day of the district court decision and it turned into such a mess the 9th Circuit had to ask the California Supremes for help.

Did this help? Probably. The hold-up for the 9th Circuit was whether the proponents had any injury or interest in the outcome of the litigation that sets them aside from the population at large. The California Supreme Court is saying that they do have such an interest under state law. It is likely that the 9th Circuit will find that they therefore have such an interest under federal law.

It's big news if the 9th Circuit decides to go ahead on the merits of the constitutionality of Prop 8. If the proponents didn't have standing, the case would have been done. California would have gay marriage, but there would be no binding precedent in the 9th Circuit and no chance for possible binding precedent from the Supreme Court.

Both sides, by the way, are saying that they're pleased with the decision.

Oh, and the other litigation is still alive: There are two other parallel track Prop 8 appeals in the 9th Circuit and they don't suffer from any standing questions. They are: (1) whether Judge Walker's decision finding Prop 8 unconstitutional should be stricken entirely because he failed to disclose that he was in a committed same-sex relationship while he was ruling on whether same-sex couples could get married; and (2) whether the video tapes of the trial should be unsealed and available for the public to see.

Proponents very much want the decision below to be voided. They also want to keep the trial videos sealed.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:11 AM | Comments (36)
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MORE.

It just keeps coming out, bit by bit.

Back to the GM bankruptcy again. Think the bondholders and taxpayers were the only ones that got boned? Oh, no, no no.

Is there a single instance where this administration, when faced with a choice, did not default to screwing people and then giving the proceeds to their friends?

How is this not a brazen daylight robbery?

DAYTON — The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded answers in a local hearing Monday on why pensions for salaried retirees of Delphi were treated differently than pensions for other company retirees.

At issue is the fact that salaried Delphi retirees saw cut their pensions cut by 30 to 70 percent when the pensions were transferred to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 2009, while General Motors elected to support or “top off” the pensions of retirees represented by three large unions.

Many of these folks worked their whole lives for GM/ Delphi and their pensions were nearly wiped out during the bankruptcy proceedings, while the union folks' were actually enhanced.

Please read the whole article. It helps to have something to bite down on, like a strip of tree bark, or a leather wallet.

From Darrell Issa's Twitter feed; he refers to this event as the Delphi pension "heist." There is no more apt description.

Everything this administration does is of a piece. Remember: "...we're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends."

Suckers of cock.

Posted by: LauraW at 08:43 AM | Comments (76)
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Previously you were expected to lose $14.33 billion on paying off Obama's union clients, but that's now been upped to $23.6 billion.

It is important to note that these figures do not include the apparently unprecedented tax treatment GM is receiving from the IRS with regard to its 'tax-loss carry forwards,' something restructured companies never get to take advantage of.

In other words, Obama granted Government Motors some kind of Get Out of Paying Taxes Card, too, on his own authority. That unprecedented tax treatment robbed the nation's coffers of another $15-20 billion, The New Editor says.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (135)
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Well! I guess he "blended in" even better than ABCNews thought.

Video here. Yes, this happened.

I don't even want to write the obvious words, but I'll do it: If anyone in the Tea Party expressed solidarity with Jared Loughner (and if a group of Tea Partiers than bowed their head in respectful silence for him), do you imagine the media would have been interested?

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (170)
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Via Ben Domenech, Daniel Henninger identifies a fault-line within the Democratic coalition Republicans would be wise to exploit.

No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion.

This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted.

You would think someone in the private labor movement would wake up and smell the tar sands. Last week's Big Labor "victory" in Ohio was about spending tens of millions to support state and local government workers. Many union families attached to the state's withering auto plants no doubt voted with their public-sector brothers in solidarity. But why? Where the rubber hits the road—new jobs that will last a generation—what does this public-sector vote do for them?

The hook to Henninger's column is Obama's decision to delay any decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and the tens of thousands of jobs it would have created.

30+ years ago "Reagan Democrats" abandoned their traditional party in droves pushing Reagan to two landslide victories. We don't need a landslide next year (though one is always welcome) we just need enough in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania and maybe even Michigan.

Is anyone in the GOP field up to making the case?

Posted by: DrewM at 07:21 AM | Comments (91)
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$15 Trillion worth of DOOM. The truth is our debt is far larger than that number if you count all the promises the government has made to its citizens in the form of entitlement programs. If you count all those promises as debt (which I argue that you should), the number triples (or maybe even quadruples). Now, everyone who thinks that this vast ocean of debt will actually be repaid, raise your hand.

The light dawns: CBO director says stimulus spending hurts long-term growth. (Via rdbrewer.)

HereÂ’s your horrifying chart-fu of the day.

...and even more horrifying chart-fu.

PIMCO chief Bill Gross: the world has a flawed business model. Well, yeah. Spending money you don't have to (mostly) buy s**t you don't need is almost always a bad idea. Debt-driven “growth” really isn’t growth at all -- it’s just feeding off the wages of the future.
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Posted by: Monty at 05:05 AM | Comments (165)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (247)
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He's rolling the dice here. I like that.

But, we'll see.

"I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

I think it would be a tremendous service to the American public to see a public airing of those differences. Let the people decide.

If Monday doesn't work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America's heartland."

I have a theory that Perry's a little flat-footed because he's unprepared to be attacked from the right, and by multiple opponents. If that theory is true, Perry would be fine in his natural mode of hippie-bashing.

I doubt Pelosi would take him up on this. She can only lose, after all, and probably doesn't seem any value in beating Perry, even if she could. He's down in polls, after all.

Still... if she did...

Via @soopermexican.

Posted by: Ace at 07:41 PM | Comments (159)
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