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Bowing Crashing Retreating - What's News Tonight

The core of the POTUS support is the hard Democratic base plus the near unanimous African-American vote. That is why POTUS polls will unlikely go below 40% even in the worst of times. John Fund noted that there is a surprise in that the Latino vote has sagged to 60% for a Democratic president; and the white vote overall is at 39%. What causes all this disconfort? Politicio's Mike Allen argues effectively that is it issue based following the long Asia trip and right at the eve of the Afghanistan speech. Perhaps too it is based on a perception that the White House is overwhelmed and undermanned. Karen Hooper, Stratfor.com, tells me that an explanation for the State Department's many mistakes on Honduras is that Latin America is a low priority for an overtasked Obama team. This is the same explanation I have heard when asking about the Korean peninsula and the Kim regime problem. The same explanation I have heard with regard the chilly treatment of India. And the same explanation I have heard about the unstable dollar. Excuses don't much work unless you are an infant or a puppy.

Welcome back John Batchelor to nightly programming.

9PM, WABC NY. (and others.)

Fouad Ajami: The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama - WSJ.com

We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference—the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations. The Obama approach is different.

Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine, and a policy, of American penance. No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and so dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, nay a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst, and in the lands, of others.

Defending Obama…Again | Cato @ Liberty

Let’s use an analogy. Obama’s FY2009 performance is like a relief pitcher who enters a game in the fourth inning trailing 19-0 and allows another run to score. The extra run is nothing to cheer about, of course, but fans should be far more angry with the starting pitcher. That having been said, Obama since that point has been serving up meatballs to the special interests in Washington, so his earned run average may actually wind up being worse than his predecessor’s. He promised change, but it appears that Obama wants to be Bush on steroids.

Climate change data dumped - Times Online

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

I think the term "sientists" would better be quoted in this article rather than all-caps.

New York Appellate Court Rules in Favor of Basketball Arena Developers - WSJ.com

"Instead, the majority argued that because the state had designated the area as blighted, the takings were therefore a 'public use,' and it was not the place of the court to interfere. Nevermind that the determination of blight was based largely on a study funded by . . . the aspiring developer."

Android News. The Googlephone: Google gears up for attack on mobile-phone market

Google sounded its intentions two weeks ago when it purchased a small company called Gizmo5, which had developed technology to connect Google Voice with voice-over-internet (Voip) networks such as Skype. Now Google has the means to offer a complete, end-to-end phone service, with which consumers can make and receive calls between the Googlephone and other phones or computers anywhere in the world, and often for nothing.

“We’ve never had this situation, where a single vendor controls the entire stack, from the operating system right up to Google’s cloud services,” says Kumar. “It changes the competitive and bargaining dynamics like never before.”

A Decade Later, FCC's E-Rate Program Still A Mess - Welcome to dysfunction junction... - dslreports.com

The FCC could take a new look at the program when new FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski finally gets Congressional approval. But any serious telecom reform may not happen until August, and USF reform may again be buried under the clamor surrounding the creation of a new national broadband policy. Even then, should lobbyists get their way, most of the USF "reform" could focus on ensuring that Verizon and AT&T get a broader slice of the USF pie, not on holding carriers and E-Rate money recipients more accountable.

Emphasis added.

And the band plays on.

Bloomberg.com: News

Peter Harvey, a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, who attended a Nov. 18 lawyer fundraiser for Cuomo and has been a supporter since Cuomo ran for attorney general, said that a contribution means “you get a meeting.”

No Special Treatment

“You get an opportunity to communicate your thoughts but that doesn’t mean the person listening is going to agree with you,” he said. In fact, he said, “because you are a supporter they will be careful not to give you any special treatment” so they can’t be accused of anything.

Uh, yeah, sure.

The Dodd-Frank Bills Leave No Bondholder Behind - WSJ.com

While most scholarly investigations of the too-big-to-fail phenomenon start from the premise that it's a problem, Messrs. Dodd and Frank appear to view it as the cornerstone of our financial system. This may not be surprising given their history. Mr. Frank is famous for saying he wanted to "roll the dice" with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Less well known is how Mr. Dodd has labored to make Wall Street increasingly eligible for the taxpayer safety net. By raising expectations that bailouts will be available, he has, as much as anyone in Congress, encouraged the risk-taking that took the financial system to the brink of ruin.

Driving in the Wrong Direction: The Sordid Details and Lasting Consequences of the Bush/Obama Auto Industry Intervention | Cato Institute: Policy Foru

According to their own interpretation of events, the Bush and then Obama administrations rescued the entire U.S. auto industry from imminent disaster and total failure. But in fact, a potential collapse only threatened General Motors and Chrysler, whose years of bad decision-making had finally caught up with them. Pouring cash into these two corporate clunkers may have "saved" them, for now, but in the process other companies were penalized, laws were circumvented, property rights were trampled, and America's tradition of free enterprise was badly damaged.

David S. Broder - David Broder: Fears of health-reform cost are justifiable

I have been writing for months that the acid test for this effort lies less in the publicized fight over the public option or the issue of abortion coverage than in the plausibility of its claim to be fiscally responsible.

This is obviously turning out to be the case. While the CBO said that both the House-passed bill and the one Reid has drafted meet Obama's test by being budget-neutral, every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters.

George F. Will: Fossil fuels belie environmentalism - washingtonpost.com

For many years, most oil was used for lighting and lubrication, and the amounts extracted were modest. Then in 1901, a new well named for an East Texas hillock, Spindletop, began gushing more per day than all other U.S. wells combined.

Since then, America has exhausted its hydrocarbon supplies. Repeatedly

The $100 Million Health Care Vote? - The Note

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

Cloward–Piven strategy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, then both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work, in a 1966 article in The Nation. The two argued that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would create a political crisis that would force U.S. politicians, particularly the Democratic Party, to enact legislation "establishing a guaranteed national income."

Change.