Formal announcement is scheduled for 11am.

All I'll say for now is, he should have been The One. It just didn't happen for him. I'm sure they'll be a lot more written on that in coming days.

Oh by the way, Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, won Iowa.

I hope the Iowa GOP at least sends Santorum a nice sweater-vest that says, "I'm Rick Santorum and I won the 2012 GOP Iowa Caucus".

Why do we let them go first again?

Added: I think the biggest benefit to Newt is that Perry's endorsement will help bury the ABC rehashed ex-wife story.

Update: Interesting news from Erick Erickson.

IÂ’m told reliably that Governor Perry will head up a 10th Amendment project for Speaker Gingrich to rally Governors and state legislators toward a plan of devolving power from Washington. This project will include helping shape the Republican platform for the general election, something small government conservatives have been concerned about.

Nice idea and good policy might come from it. Also, Texas is winner take all with almost 150 delegates.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:30 AM | Comments (690)
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Do not question the motives or actions of His Majesty the King Barack Hussein Obama, you worthless peasants. He knows what is best for his people. It's not as if this action will harm the economy or lead to higher gas prices or anything. That's just anti-Royalist crazy talk right there.

The engine of creative destruction is always running. The real worry is not that it runs too fast; the real worry comes when it stops working.

The “Kansas City” school of economics. Uncle Sugar can just hire anyone who wants a job! Anybody! Jobs for everyone! Where does the money to pay them come from? Printing! Taxes! Who cares? It’s not like money means anything, right?

This notion that the Federal Government is somehow immune from the financial pressures that face any other entity is just pure, babbling madness. more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:55 AM | Comments (95)
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Gah. You're on your own this morning. Take it away, Vic!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (171)
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On this date – 1803 – Thomas Jefferson requests funding for the Lewis and Clark expedition.  Democrats immediately oppose on the grounds that someday someone may want to build an economically viable oil pipeline that will decrease AmericaÂ’s dependence on Middle-Eastern oil and create thousands of jobs.

1896- The first X-Ray machine is demonstrated by TSA agents intent on eye-rape while irradiating steamship passengers' testicles.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (1056)
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It could happen.

"I had no intention of escaping," Francesco Schettino, 52, said during his first court hearing Tuesday, according to Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"I was helping some passengers put the life boat to sea. At a certain point the mechanism for lowering it, blocked. We had to force it. Suddenly the system unblocked itself and I tripped and I found myself inside the life boat with a number of passengers."

That happened to me once, but it I slipped and fell into some vag.

Posted by: Ace at 04:14 PM | Comments (162)
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"Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband's career with a single interview.

Earlier this week, she sat before ABCNEWS cameras, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned... MORE... Developing..."

Old speculation was that it was about this frigging idiot.

Posted by: Ace at 02:26 PM | Comments (755)
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All about the Gold Standard.

“The very purpose of founding the Constitution was landowners and property owners who did not want inflation. And they felt that under the Articles of Confederation they were increasingly getting inflated paper money.

“Hard money is a discipline. It means you can’t just hide from your problems; you’ve got to solve them. And you can’t inflate away your difficulties; you actually have to work them away. But I think it is very important for us to understand in finance that the entire contraption that has been built up over the last thirty or forty years has so much paper in it, so much debt, so much leverage, that we probably have a fifteen or twenty year period of working our way out of it.

“And yet, the alternative is to get sicker and sicker and sicker.”

I completely believe he was won over on that in the past three weeks.

Meanwhile, he's all about Secretary Sarah Palin.

"Gov. Palin is somebody who I think was a very good reform governor. She was extraordinarily effective negotiating with big oil. She did a good job in the state of Alaska. I think sheÂ’s a very articulate leader of the tea party conservative movement. I was honored and delighted last night when she said if she were in South Carolina, sheÂ’d vote for Newt Gingrich. I hope everybody who likes her decides sheÂ’s right. And I hope they vote for me.

"Certainly, sheÂ’s one of the people IÂ’d call on for advice. I would ask her to consider taking a major role in the next administration if IÂ’m president, but nothing has been discussed of any kind. And it wouldnÂ’t be appropriate to discuss it at this time."

Another bold decision.

Newt Gingrich 2012

I'll also learn Chinese, if you like.

Via @allahpundit

Posted by: Ace at 01:21 PM | Comments (236)
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Wow! Obama finally respects state's rights! That's why he's keeping out of this thorny, controversial, no-federal-involvement issue, I think!

The countdown is on. The nationÂ’s first welcome home parade for Iraq war veterans will take place on January 28th in St. Louis, Missouri.

Some good news for parade organizers. Union Station has opened up its doors for an event before and after the parade, says Craig Schneider, Welcome Home Parade Organizer. “Union station has opened their doors so our dream of this veterans resource village where we can get people and groups together that are welcoming them back and kind of helping them out, Union Station has opened its doors. So it’s all going to be inside at Union Station now.”

Now, maybe Obama doesn't have time to honor these so-called American heroes, but take heart, he did manage to pin a ribbon on Sgt. Pepper.

Thanks to Truman North, from the sidebar.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (29)
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Heeee's Back!

How can we tell?

First, he's back within 3% of Mitt nationally according to Rasmussen (warning, there's an annoying auto-play video at the link) and CNN has the race in SC tightening. It could just be a one day thing but coming off his debate on Monday and now the sort of endorsement by Sarah Palin, Newt's clearly on a roll.

Most tellingly, Mitt Romney sent his attack poodles after Newt again. Last time he was doing well Mitt dispatched John "Sure David Souter Is a Conservative And Where's My Government Jet?" Sununu after him. Now it's former Congresswoman Susan "72% Lifetime ACU Rating" Molinari doing Mitt's dirty work.

Molinari did serve in the House with Gingrich but there's a lot of backstory here involving her husband, former Congressman Bill Paxon and her dad, Guy, who held the same House seat before she took it over.

Judge accordingly.

“Newt Gingrich had a leadership style that can only be described as leadership by chaos,” said former Rep. Susan Molinari, who was a centrist Republican from New York, in a Romney campaign web video. “The last time Newt Gingrich was the head of the Republican Party as speaker, he became so controversial, he helped re-elect a Democratic president.” She referred to the re-election of President Bill Clinton in a 1996, at the peak of Mr. Gingrich’s stormy tenure as speaker.

I'm not even remotely going to deny Newt has problems but blaming him for Bob Dole's defeat? That's a special kind of stupid. But it's what Team Romney has so they are using it.

To be clear, I support Newt. Yes, I'm fully aware of his many, many, many faults. In an ideal world the thought of him being the nominee would be laughable but it's not an ideal world. It's a world in which the other choice is Mitt Romney.

I think supporting Mitt means overlooking just about everything he's ever done or said in politics before 2008 while giving him credit for the lip service he's paid to conservatives since then. Supporting Newt does require overlooking a lot of liberal things he's said but I think too many have totally ignored a lot of conservative things he's actually done and is proposing to do.

When Romney took Gingrich down in Iowa, they did so with a sustained barrage of ads (as did Ron Paul). It also coincided with a long, for this cycle, break in debates, which have been at the core of Gingrich's strategy all along. Well there's another one tomorrow. If he has as good a showing and Mitt and Ron Paul are as weak as they were on Monday...South Carolina and the nomination fight might not be over just yet.

Below the fold, Newt's newest TV ad featuring some of his greatest hits from Monday night. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 12:38 PM | Comments (190)
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In her radio show, Dana Loesch had the same reaction a lot of us did to the Afghanistan Urine Massacre. She said something like "I would have dropped trou and joined in," or something like that.

Media Matters and the rest of the "Ooh She Said a Dirty Word!" brigade is on a hate-jag on her. This is the most important story in the world for our very, very serious left-wing.

Their real goal here is to raise enough of a stink that CNN fires her or won't renew her contract.

Because, you know, she said she didn't really care if Marines pissed on terrorists' dead bodies.

The same as I don't. Oh, I think it has to be punished, for reasons explained by Dale Franks long ago, regarding a different situation.

But ask me if I care...?

No, I do not care.

My two jokes about this are:

I think it's just a horror that Marines urinated on those terrorists after shooting them to death with high-powered rifles.

And:

"Honey, what a bear of a day I've had! First, a Marine sniper shot me in the head and ejected one third of my brain-matter on to the ground. And then... things took a dark turn."

But let's pretend we all really, really care about Corpse Handling Regulations. Because you know the Hard Left is so all about religious ritual and the soul and stuff.

Dana and Breitbart discuss the left's latest Two Minute Hate on a podcast.

Over at PJ Media, J. Christian Adams writes about the nontroversy.

Never mind the fact that most Americans could hardly care about what the American soldiers did. There is a common sense understanding in our land that war is a rough affair. We share an unspoken recognition that previous American wars saw cruelty far more gruesome than urination unleashed on our living fathers, brothers and sons. More to the point, Americans understand that we face an enemy that tortures and beheads American soldiers. Nobody wants to see American soldiers urinating on these slain monsters, but few really care.

The few who profess outrage at Loesch — particularly those on Soros salaries — exhibit no sense of proportion. Either they have not heard of places like Malmedy or Mukden, and the fate of American heroes like Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, or their hatred of the American military makes the history irrelevant.

But history isnÂ’t irrelevant to those with a sense of proportion. Compared with the vile brutality American soldiers have endured in the last century, the video that has Loesch the target of organized leftist scorn, is, shall we say, a drop in the bucket.

Well, their target audience is not the public, but the soft-bellied starched-shirts in CNN's bien pensant management.

And their ultimate goal, of course, is to drive every single contrarian voice out of the wildly-inaccurately-named Mainstream Media. One at a time. Gin up the hate for Breitbart and get him kicked out of ABC's coverage. Now take aim at Loesch and get her booted from CNN.

Media Matters

...but does it?

Oh, Right: My other joke was that if your "war crime" can be completely undone and fixed with a ShamWow, it's not a war crime.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (167)
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