So it will be Newt, Romney, Perry, and Doktor Kookoobananas. The guy whose pitches to readers and voters included gems like this:

Dear Friend. Will you survive the "new money"? You must be prepared, because within one year, the U.S. Treasury will impose a radically different currency on the American people. Government officials won't tell you the truth about this ominous new development and most of your neighbors will be caught napping.... I saw the ugly new bills, tinted pink and blue and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal threads and chemical alarms."

The government, Paul assured his readers, would be recalling the old currency at the same time, which would cause a real problem for "the underground economy," most of whose participants are doing "a very worthwhile thing" that's good for the country. Paul's June 1985 newsletter told of one Professor Claude Martin of the University of Michigan, who supervised consumer testing of the new money in 1983: "Today... the professor sounds frightened and refuses to talk. After muttering that he no longer is permitted to discuss the project, he hangs up." Professor Martin discussed the project at length with Barron's (the article notes dryly) and said he'd never spoke to Paul. When confronted with this discrepancy, Paul said he'd heard the story from another person, "who I choose not to name." Ten years later, of course, the Treasury did begin redesigning our paper money—minus, one presumes, the chemical alarms—but never recalled the old bills; civilization did not fall.

And yes, that's DKos, but it's still true. (Isn't that, by the way, another admission he wrote the thing, given he later defended his made-up-crap as being something he, personally, "heard" from someone he (dark glance around the room) could not name?

Anyway, it will be those three plus Trilateral Commission/Bildersbergs/Zionist Bankers guy.

@drewmtips notes that National Review's make-pretend endorsement of Romney, Huntsman, and Santorum is therefore down to -- surprise surprise! -- only Romney, at least if you're in Virginia, or otherwise wish your vote to have any effect on the outcome of the race.

Paranoid Personality Types

We're not crazy. Those are just Zionist lies spread by the CIA and utility companies.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (145)
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Obstructing justice has nothing to do with the job performance of someone in the Justice Department.

A career employee in the Voting Section of JusticeÂ’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector GeneralÂ’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all.

She leaked lots of documents to leftwing blogs and also left-leaning newspapers (like the WaPo).

During the course of [an investigation into harassment of other attorneys in the Voting Rights section, one of the individuals questioned was Ms. Gyamfi, a long-time civil rights analyst in the Voting Section...

Ms. Gyamfi made no secret of her hatred of conservatives and Republicans ...

According to numerous sources within the Section, Ms. Gyamfi had been asked in two separate interviews whether she was involved in the leaking of confidential and privileged information out of the Voting Section. Each time, she flatly denied any knowledge as to who was responsible for the leaks. In a third interview, she was once again questioned about her role in the leaks. At first, she adamantly denied involvement. Then, however, she was confronted with e-mail documents rebutting her testimony.

At that point, she immediately broke down and confessed that she had lied to the investigators three separate times.

...

Amazingly, despite Ms. GyamfiÂ’s admission of committing perjury not once, but three times, she so far has been neither terminated nor disciplined by the Justice Department.

One could almost begin to suspect that zealous commitment to Marxist ideology is of greater importance to Eric Holder than dispassionate administration of justice.

And of course Assistant AG Ron Weich authored a false letter to Congress, claiming there was no gunwalking in an operation that was all about gunwalking.

Gabe notes that lying to investigators, rather than lying to a court under oath, is obstruction of justice, not perjury, and so this guy should watch his language. Inaccuracy is not your friend.

Posted by: Ace at 01:23 PM | Comments (111)
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They've caved and will pass the 2-month payroll tax extension.

I know it's my job to read this crap, but I really never understood what great principle was in play, as we were conceding the major point (a cut in the payroll tax, thus depleting the Social Security funds) while arguing about whether we'd do it for 2 months or 1 year.

I guess the 1 year thing is tactically better for us, as we wouldn't have to go through this all again in a couple of months (and maybe it's improved Obama's poll numbers), but it's hard to get super-excited about mere tactical positioning.

If anyone with a clue can explain it in the comments, I'd appreciate it.

I know I "lost." I'm just not sure what I "lost."

Explanation: rockmom writes:

The reason this two-month extension is a big deal is because Harry Reid will drag out any negotiations until the day before this extension expires, and make sure Obama can use this to hammer Republicans in his State of the Union address. He will appoint useless clowns to the conference committee, just like he did with the Supercommittee, and they will come in and immiedtaley demand a one-year payroll tax cut extension to be paid for by raising taxes on the 1%. We'll be right back where we were a month ago, only closer to the election.

PLEASE do not blame John Boehner for this. He went out on a limb and then Mitch McConnell cut it off.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (352)
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Video and transcript at Hot Air.

Paul's story has changed on the letters, of course. First he defended them and offered the standard "taken out of context" defense, but did not hint that anyone apart from the signed author calling himself "I" ("I," as in "I, Ron Paul") wrote them.

In 1996, Paul told TheDallas Morning News that his comment about black men in Washington came while writing about a 1992 study by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank in Virginia.
Paul cited the study and wrote: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

"These aren't my figures," Paul told the Morning News. "That is the assumption you can gather from the report."

Nor did Paul dispute in 1996 his 1992 newsletter statement that said,"If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be."

Now, Paul says he had nothing to do with the contents of the newsletters published in his name.

"Why don't you go back and look at what I said yesterday on CNN and what I've said for 20-something years, 22 years ago?" Paul said on CNN Wednesday. "I didn't write them. I disavow them. That's it." Paul then removed his microphone and abruptly ended the interview.

Later more of this stuff (which had not been extensively archived; these were 8-page conspiratorial newsletters) emerged, and the new claim was that he hadn't written them at all -- he hadn't even read them! -- and he said some nonsense like "Of course I couldn't admit I didn't write them last time, that was during a campaign."

Oh. So, if I have this right, Ron Paul admits he lies about the newsletters in the midst of a campaign in which he cannot tell the truth for political reasons.

So I guess I'll just take this new claim to the bank and use it as solid gold collateral for a ten million dollar loan which I will use to invest in silver and gold mines.

Here are 50 scans of Ron Paul's newsletters. Scan down a bit and a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report will inform you that this handsome, dashing young upstart, name of David Duke, lately of the Klan and the Neo-Nazi movement, has some good political chops and is worth keeping an eye on. Kid's got a future in the Republican Party!

via @slublog and @alexrinkus

Posted by: Ace at 11:30 AM | Comments (230)
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Romney is really beginning to lose that credit I've been giving him as the smart, organized, disciplined, electable one.

I suppose it's wise to not debate Gingrich. But the fact that he doesn't suggests to me he imagines he'd lose. And I assume he knows himself better than I do. (I've reconsidered; see the quote and yap-yap after it.)

Wait, I just read his statement.

“We’ve had many occasions to debate together, and we’ll have more — I presume quite a few more — before this is finished,” Mr. Romney told the Associated Press. “But I’m not going to narrow this down to a two-person race while there are still a number of other candidates that are viable, important candidates in the race. I want to show respect to them.”

Okay, that makes a great deal of sense. No, I don't believe he's showing respect to the other candidates. But Romney of course does not want it as Romney vs. Gingrich, because all the anti-Romney vote tends to move to Gingrich.

I was wrong. There's nothing wrong with ducking this debate. Gingrich has invited him to commit a strategic error, and Romney, wisely, declines that invitation.

Oh, and Romney picked up the support of President Bush.

No, I mean the one whose endorsement tends to hurt him.

“I think Romney is the best choice for us,” former President Bush told the Houston Chronicle this week. “I like Perry, but he doesn’t seem to be going anywhere; he’s not surging forward.”

Bush said he had known Romney for many years and also knew his father, George Romney, a former Republican governor of Michigan who ran for president in 1968.

Bush said he supported Romney because of his “stability, experience, principles. He’s a fine person,” he said. “I just think he’s mature and reasonable – not a bomb-thrower.”

Bush denied that the latter label implied that the candidate field includes any bomb-throwers.

“I’ve got to be a little careful, because I like Perry; he’s our governor,” he said.

...

Choosing his words carefully, the former president said he knew Gingrich relatively well. “I’m not his biggest advocate,” he said.

“I had a conflict with him at one point,” Bush recalled, alluding to the crucial moment in 1990 when a recession drove him to renege on his “no new taxes” pledge. He needed a bipartisan group of party leaders, including then-House Whip Gingrich, to stand with him.

He criticizes Gingrich for agreeing to support the tax hikes, then, without warning, changing his mind and campaigning against it.

Perry's Not Going Anywhere?

Unlike Romney, who has surged all the way from 23% support to 23% support.

OCBill pointed that out.

via @tbflan

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (314)
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Stuff's coming.

I was just watching this, "Nostalgia Chick," a female Harry Plinkett type reviewer. I feel about her like I have never felt about any woman before: That she's funny.

No just kidding but it's rare enough that the joke flies. That's why I grabbed Laura, of course.

via @petitdov

Oh, less funny but more ridiculous, Obama's talking at us again on TV.

The good thing is that he looks haggard, so all of the hours he's spending doing nothing are really weighing on him.

Obama once again plays the card he loves: That Republicans have agreed to this before, so there is no possible reason they should balk now. Except for... that reason, is the implication.

Okay. Obama has not only agreed entitlement reform was necessary, but actively campaigned upon the promise to reform it; so what's the hold-up, Jack?

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (189)
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PSA: The Daily DOOM will be going on hiatus until after New Year's, my groovy babies. Do your best to ignore the foolishness and outrage, and focus instead on friends and family. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.

Jobless claims drop yet again, yet still GDP growth drops to 1.8%. We all know what this means: there is some job growth, but most of the "drop" is due to a number of other factors, like discouraged workers and retirees leaving the workforce altogether. Much of the actual job growth is probably due to seasonal work that will tail off after the holidays, but we'll see. I suspect that financial writers are going to be breaking out the "unexpectedly" adjective once again in the first quarter of next year to explain why jobless claims shoot back up.

Hollywood liberals can spout off about the rights of the poor and oppressed and then hide in their hillside mansions and gated communities when the sun goes down. Other people have to live in the world these liberals brought about. This is less a "California is boned" story and more an eyewitness report from a citizen who lives on the frontiers of the Empire and has to deal on a daily basis with the barbarian hordes. Let VDH speak:

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness? Do they vandalize the street lights in front of their own homes?

Ultimate statism equals ultimate poverty. This applies not only to Communist regimes, but to any overbearing Statist regime. Centralized control over something as complex as a national economy is doomed to failure, and this has always and forever been the case. This is simply a example of Hayek’s “knowledge problem”...only with real-world suffering, misery, and death.

I agree with Hertzel and Kling that a liquidity crisis is a completely mythical creature, at least when you are talking about sovereigns who have a monopoly over the issuance of fiat legal tender. I also argue that inflation, in real terms, has been badly understated in the current downturn. Inflation is not low; it is just hidden.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:47 AM | Comments (335)
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What the payroll tax holiday fight is not about: it's not about whether the tax holiday is a good idea. It's not about whether the tax holiday is going to create jobs or reduce the deficit or supercharge the economy or take money from the mythical Social Security trust fund or whatever.

Even if those objections to the payroll tax holiday are absolutely true, the House GOP already gave up on all that. They passed the one-year tax holiday. They say they're for it. So they can't very well come back now and say that it's horrible and penny-ante and no solution to anything. They can't anymore. They were against it for much of the last year. But now they're very publicly for it.

So get that right out of the way. This fight is not about the poor, beleaguered House GOP standing on principle to block a bad tax holiday. They passed it. The House GOP isn't opposing a payroll tax holiday for January and February. What they're opposing is a payroll tax holiday that doesn't go beyond January and February.

Folks keep asking if there was a communication breakdown between Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell. Indeed, that was one of my first questions when House rank-and-file started their protest. I was told that there was no such breakdown.

McConnell asked Boehner if the Senate plan would be okay on Friday. Boehner said yes, either not knowing the feelings of his members or not caring. There was much rejoicing in the kingdom and the Senators all went home for the holidays. Everyone did a victory dance.

It's not a bad deal. It was gonna be a tax holiday extension or get blamed for a tax increase and the Senate GOP came away with a tax holiday extension with an accelerated pipeline determination. That was a win. That was a clear victory. Don't you remember how demoralized the Democrats were on Friday? That Sierra Club guy or whoever was cursing Obama.

Saturday morning the grumbling started from House members. They were pissed over two things: (1) the Senate version didn't include some features of their version, mostly involving paying for it, and (2) having to debate the President and Democrats again on this in the new year would make them look bad at the start of the election year because they are still getting tarred for having opposed the payroll tax holiday from the start last year.

Both objections are fine, I guess, as far as they go, but the solution to their objection was an utter politically folly: (1) stop the Senate bill by a procedural gimmick, and (2) have the debate against the President and the Democrats now that makes them look bad over the holidays and create the very real possibility that the President and the Democrats can continue to make them look bad in the new year instead of . . . uh, oh yeah, in January and February.

Instead of agreeing to a very real, if only partial, victory, they said: screw it and screw you too, taxpayers. And they did it while professing the insane belief that if they only hold out a little longer they'll get a better deal.

Honestly, I'm still waiting to hear what the House GOP thinks it's doing; how their version of the one-year extension is so necessary that they will forgo a two-month extension (which was going to become a full-year extension in February anyway) with a pipeline concession and instead settle for nothing at all. Because that's what they're going to get. Obama and the Democrats are going to laugh their way into the new year while the House GOP insists that it's standing on principle.

Now, I say they stopped the bill by a procedural gimmick because, you may have noticed, they didn't actually vote on the bill. They voted on a motion to send it to conference. That's because if they'd have voted on the bill, all the Democrats would have voted for it, plus 20 to 30 Republicans and it would have passed. Only it would have passed with most of the GOP on the wrong side, providing even more fodder for Presidential speeches. So they stalled for time, essentially, hoping that their stall would be perceived as merely an attempt to pass a better bill, rather than an attempt to derail the payroll tax holiday.

There is no "conservative principle" at work here. What you've really seen is a whole bunch of ninnies climb out on a limb together and then demand that the Senate GOP save them from their own stupidity. The Senate GOP, I'm sure I don't have to remind you, is in the minority. McConnell can't come riding to the rescue. For that they've got to go to Senator Reid. But why in the name of all that's holy would Reid do that? The GOP is just about to get blamed for increasing taxes on the middle class in an election year.

How stupid could these House members possibly be? They are throwing a last-second tanty and expecting the Democrats to negotiate in good faith after they've already left town. That has got to be the dumbest, most amateurish, utterly imbecilic political expectation in the year 2011.

I wrote yesterday on twitter that I predict that the House GOP spends another day insisting that the Senate must act before panicking and passing the Senate bill. I stand by that prediction.

We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory (once again) and now it's an utter disaster. Because the House GOP got tired of getting kicked in the balls about opposing a tax cut. Which, let's be clear, they did, repeatedly and publicly. They handed the President the bludgeon that he's used against us for a year. And when they finally decided to take it off the table, they really, really wanted it off the table.

So much so that they've turned us into the evil Republican caricature that populates so many of the President's speeches. All because they didn't want to have to fight for a new deal in February. A deal that the Democrats will need as much as we do. A deal for which we could have gotten a second major concession. But instead: bupkis.

If the President is reelected despite the economy, this is how it's gonna be. Not because he ran against whichever candidate we finally pick. But because he ran against the EVIL, TAX HIKING GOP as a group.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:39 AM | Comments (137)
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This is guaranteed to send Ron Paul and the Ronulans into a frothing rage.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (120)
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Gallup: The 99% Is Really Only 34% At Best

One big reason the #Occupy movement failed to catch on is that the 1% they railed against actually makes up 58% of the country - at least in self-perception. Oops - that's a pretty big flaw in your revolutionary theory right there.

But the classic battle between the Haves and the Have Nots never materialized, and the Gallup Poll people found a reason for this: The overwhelming majority of Americans — 58% — say they are members of the Haves.

Only 34% believe they are members of the Have Nots.

Nope:

In every demographic group — race, education, sex, political leaning — the Haves outnumber the Have Nots.

Even among the unemployed, 52% say they are among the Haves. Only 41% say they Have Not.

In fact 2008 seems to have been the high water mark of class division in the US - since then the belief that America is divided into Haves and Have-Nots has only fallen. Not a very good indicator for Obama since that's his prime strategy for continuing the Beautiful Life come January 2013.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:09 PM | Comments (766)
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