It’s Friday, December 16th, 2011….but before we begin, a sobering reminder, courtesy of Carl Polizzi and John Cotton, that a strong national defense in general, and a U.S. Navy of unquestioned superiority in particular, is essential to freedom, both at home and abroad.  Meet the Varyag, formerly of the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Fleet; now, though not yet fully-operational, a critical component in the ChiCom’s question for a blue-water navy:

No worries; any exposure created by Team Tick-Tock’s dramatic cutbacks in defense spending will be more than offset by a dutiful Defense Department’s dedication to diversity!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, as the WSJ details, John Boehner’s played his hand well to date; the only question now is whether he has the intestinal fortitude to call The Obamao’s bluff:

The Keystone Ultimatum

Will Obama veto a tax holiday to stop a job-creating pipeline?

We’ve largely ignored the not-so-great payroll tax debate on the assumption that it would pass in any case and won’t matter much to the economy. But now things are getting interesting: If Republicans hang tough, they might even get a useful policy victory in return for giving President Obama his political fillip.

Keep in mind that the payroll tax “cut” is nothing more than a tax holiday. All the political palaver is about extending it for one more year, through 2012, so Mr. Obama can claim he did something for middle-class voters before Election Day. Because it is temporary, the tax holiday will do little to change employer incentives to hire.

The best one can say for the payroll reprieve is that individuals will better spend the money than the government would. The problem is that government will keep spending anyway, borrowing the money instead. The one-year payroll extension will take something like $121 billion from Social Security revenues, which means about 10% to 15% of the entire federal budget deficit expected for this fiscal year.

Congress is now fighting over the details of how to “pay for” this lost revenue with spending cuts. But the only certainty is that most of those cuts will be either notional or pulled from the later years of the 10-year budget window and thus never happen. The real news in this end-of-year political rush is that total federal spending in fiscal 2012 will increase—notwithstanding all the posturing about a new era of spending restraint. Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have blunted House GOP efforts this year and largely preserved the government they grew so rapidly in 2009-2010.

Which makes it all the more important for Republicans to show some achievement for their first year controlling the House. They’re trying to do that now with a series of policy riders in the spending and payroll-tax bills, and two in particular are worth stressing because they have considerable Democratic support.

One provision would force a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days. This is the most shovel-ready project in America, as the TransCanada company has already made plans to buy the steel pipe to carry crude oil from Canada and the Upper Great Plains to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would create thousands of new jobs, both immediately and downstream, which is why the Teamsters and other unions support it.

But Mr. Obama’s green financiers see the pipeline as a conveyer of evil carbon, and so the President recently postponed any decision past the election into 2013. Now, that’s economic leadership.

To give Mr. Obama a spinal implant, the House passed a provision that would give TransCanada a permit to start building in 60 days if the President does nothing. He can still kill the pipeline if he objects. But at least Hamlet of Pennsylvania Avenue would have to make up his mind.

The Keystone codicil is now being negotiated in the Senate, where at least eight Democrats have said publicly they hope the project goes forward: Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Lousiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Perhaps they’re among the few Democrats who still care about blue-collar voters, as opposed to public unions and Mill Valley hedge-fund greens. (No, they’re just all worried about getting reelected!)

The other provision passed by the House would give companies five years to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s onerous boiler rule. That rule would impose vast costs on industries that burn oil or coal, such as manufacturers and utilities.

Senators Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) introduced a bill in July telling the EPA to repropose the rule in less costly form. Their bill has 40 co-sponsors, including a dozen Democrats, which counting 47 Republicans would put it very close to the 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Here is another case in which Mr. Obama’s green dreamers are clashing with the blue-collar industrial workers that he claims his payroll tax holiday is so desperately needed to help.

White House aides have been working behind the scenes to strike both of these provisions from the payroll tax bill. Spokesman Jay Carney even offered the amusing note that Republicans shouldn’t get anything in return for passing the bill because everyone favors tax cuts. So Mr. Obama’s view of bipartisanship is that Republicans give him what he wants and he gives them nothing except more denunciation for not raising taxes on millionaires.

Republicans are in a strong bargaining position, and there’s no reason for them to give in to the Senate or the White House. We doubt Mr. Obama is willing to see the payroll tax holiday die in the name of stopping regulatory relief and a pipeline that will create more jobs. Republicans will have a great election issue if he does.

As he just demonstrated with his retreat from a threatened veto of the Defense Appropriations bill, The Obamao’s bluffing; will Boehner raise, call….or fold?

In a related item, Kimberly Strassel calls it as we see it when she writes:

Why Ron Paul Can’t Win

The candidate’s problem isn’t better-funded opponent or media bias—it’s his own views on foreign policy.

Ron Paul is, in many ways, the ideal candidate for a conservative electorate hungry for a principled GOP nominee. Ron Paul will never be the GOP nominee. For this, Mr. Paul has himself to blame.

In his third run for president, and only a few weeks out from the 2012 Iowa caucuses, the Texas congressman has become the sleeper news of this nomination fight. Polls show him with real strength in Iowa, and stories are brimming with speculation about how the ardent libertarian might pull off a victory there, or how he might command crucial support in Western states, or how all this might upend the Romney-Gingrich narrative.

It’s fun as far as it goes, but it misses the world. Or, rather, it misses Mr. Paul’s unpopular foreign-policy views, which make him the ultimate self-limiting candidate. And what makes those views more notable is the candidate’s stubborn refusal to modulate them—an obstinacy at odds with the rest of his 2012 campaign.

Mr. Paul was largely written off in the past as an ideological crank, a man who ran primarily to have his views heard, and many political watchers have made the same mistake this time. But if there has been an overlooked theme in this race, it has been Mr. Paul’s new seriousness about winning the nomination. The Ron Paul of 2012 is a different candidate from the Ron Paul of the past. Aware that his absolutist positions worry voters, the libertarian has been conducting a far more mainstream campaign.

Not that he’s flipped on any major positions. The Paul campaign knows that its greatest opportunity is attracting voters who are dissatisfied with the other front-runners’ policy timidity or lack of consistency. Mr. Paul is neither timid nor inconsistent, and it ought to make him a star.

Nicknamed the “intellectual godfather” of the tea party movement, he’s held the same views about limited government since before his first election in 1976. Those views are behind his platform today to slash $1 trillion from the federal government, to eliminate five federal cabinet agencies, to cut the corporate tax rate and get rid of taxes on capital gains and dividends, and to repeal everything from ObamaCare to Sarbanes-Oxley.

The difference in the 2012 Paul campaign is instead one of a maturing tone and emphasis. Consider: The Ron Paul who in 1988 ran for president as a Libertarian spoke pugnaciously of abolishing “unconstitutional” entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. The Ron Paul of 2008 acknowledged these entitlements could not go away overnight and argued for an opt-out. The Ron Paul of today still holds those positions but is now at great pains to stress that his budget plan is in fact the only one that would “save” entitlements like Social Security and Medicare for current retirees.

He’s toned down his calls to legalize drugs. He wrote an October USA Today op-ed reassuring parents they’d retain (in the near term) student loans. Whereas Mr. Paul still despises income taxes and wants to kill off the IRS, he now concedes this might require reform of the existing system, and he promises to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Organizationally, the 2012 Paul campaign has also sloughed off its 2008 disdain of the establishment, and in Iowa at least Mr. Paul is engaging in retail politics, sitting down with party elders and activists. These are the efforts of a candidate newly willing to work within a certain framework, if it means a shot at the White House.

Except on foreign policy, where Mr. Paul does himself in. In discrete areas, Mr. Paul’s “noninterventionist” approach resonates with those weary of war, or with the populist sentiment that we spend too much on foreign aid. And note that Mr. Paul has made small stabs at reassuring voters of his patriotism, as with a big national TV ad that highlighted his own military service and commitment to veterans.

But none of this has addressed voters’ big concern over a Paul philosophy that fundamentally denies American exceptionalism and refuses to allow for decisive action to protect the U.S. homeland. Perhaps nothing hurt the candidate more in 2008 than his declaration that one reason terrorists attacked us on 9/11 is because “we’ve been in the Middle East.”

Far from toning down such views, Mr. Paul has amped up the wattage, claiming this year that 9/11 prompted “glee” in a Bush administration looking for a pretext to “invade Iraq.” He’s condemned the Obama administration’s killings of terrorists Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and he insists the U.S. is “provoking” Iran.

For foreign-policy hawks, this is a disqualifier. It explains why a Washington Post-ABC poll in late September showed that Mr. Paul drew some of his weakest numbers from his own base. Of the 25% of voters who viewed him favorably, nearly two-thirds did not identify themselves as Republicans. Among self-identified “conservative Republicans,” only 8% gave him a “strongly favorable” rating. You don’t win a GOP nomination with figures like this. Even mainstream Democrats and independents have no time for Mr. Paul’s brand of isolationism, which is why his national numbers remain stuck around 10%.

Mr. Paul’s new strategy has been to assail opponents like Mr. Gingrich, hoping to remind voters of his rivals’ flaws. But the bar to Mr. Paul’s campaign is not his opponents, or their money, or (a frequent Paul complaint) media bias. Because he can’t, or won’t, accommodate his own foreign policy views to those of the nation, there is only one bar to a Ron Paul victory: Mr. Paul.

And since we’re on the subject of some of the wildest shots in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, as Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner:

Poll: Dramatic Drop in Gingrich Support in Iowa

A new survey from pollster Scott Rasmussen shows support for Newt Gingrich in Iowa has fallen sharply in recent days.  The poll shows the former House speaker with the support of 20 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers — down from 32 percent in the last Rasmussen survey released November 15.

Gingrich has now fallen into second place in the Iowa race, behind Mitt Romney, who is at 23 percent, up from 19 percent in the last Rasmussen survey.

The complete poll results are: Romney, 23 percent; Gingrich 20 percent; Ron Paul, 18 percent; Rick Perry 10 percent; Michele Bachmann, 9 percent; Rick Santorum, 6 percent; and Jon Huntsman, 5 percent.  Ten percent of likely caucus-goers said they support some other candidate or are not sure how they will vote.

Meanwhile, as this next item from Bill Meisen describes, back in Washington, despite no end in sight for a continuing recession, the First Family still considers life in the White House one big vacation….on US!

Michelle’s Solo Hawaii Trip Likely to Exceed $100,000

First lady Michelle Obama’s separate voyage to Hawaii promises to cost taxpayers tens of thousand in extra dollars, as her separate entourage and hefty flying costs pile on the costs. The military jet flight alone is priced at more than $60,000, according to government estimates. But that’s only the beginning. The additional cargo flight that often accompanies the first lady on such a trip must also be paid for, as well as the limos and other accoutrements it will contain.

As she will be separated from the presidential security bubble, Michelle will require her own entourage of Secret Service protection, in addition to the staffers who will be leaving early to go to Hawaii with her.

The total tab will certainly be in excess of $100,000, and possibly quite a bit more.

Try more….a LOT more!

Speaking of things that will cost more….a LOT more, the WSJ details California’s….

High-Speed Railroad Job

California voters turn against the train to nowhere.

If politicians are good for anything, it ought to be reading polls. Yet there was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last week telling Congress that California’s high-speed railroad is “not a cheap project” but “the people in California want this.”

What people would that be? According to the latest Field poll, two-thirds of Californians want a new referendum on the project. And by a two-to-one margin, they say they’d vote to kill it.

In 2008 voters approved a $10 billion bond to fund the 500-mile bullet train, but cost estimates have since exploded to $100 billion from $33 billion and the mirage of federal government and private funding has disappeared. The high-speed rail authority has reduced its ridership estimates to 37 million from 90 million. Oh, and the train won’t connect San Francisco with Anaheim for another 30 years, if ever.

Mr. LaHood is nonetheless demanding that the state use $3.9 billion in federal money to build the first 130-mile segment in the Central Valley, where there’s supposedly less local resistance. However, no one is sure when the first segment running from Merced to Fresno would be operable since the state lacks the money to build and electrify the tracks. The authority’s back-up plan is to run Amtrak trains on the track, but the state’s watchdog Legislative Analyst’s Office questions their claim that the tracks would improve Amtrak service.

Another unanswered question: how the authority plans to raise the $90 billion or so to finance the rest of the train. The state has no money, Republicans in Congress have refused to appropriate funds, and private investors want a revenue guarantee, which the 2008 ballot measure prohibits. “As a result,” the watchdog agency writes, “it is highly uncertain if funding to complete the high-speed rail system will ever materialize.”

California Governor Jerry Brown is fond of putting questions to the voters these days, at least to raise taxes, so how about putting this railroad job to a new vote too?

And in the Environmental Moment, as John Ransom reveals in Townhall.com….

Science Settled: New Report- Hurricanes, Global Warming Not Linked

One of the of the most popularized predicted effects of global warming from the models given us by the climate change clowns, increased hurricane and tropical storm activity, has recently been shown to be without merit according to the science and operations officer of the National Hurricane Center, Dr. Chris Landsea.

In a work published in late November and carefully labeled an “opinion” piece on the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- which is quick to distance itself from the conclusions reached by Landsea,  who makes very clear that he subscribes to the theory man of man-made global warming- concludes that “the overall impact of global warming on hurricanes is currently negligible and likely to remain quite tiny even a century from now.”

In the rarefied atmosphere of climate politics this is enough to get you labled as a “climate skeptic,” perhaps enough to get you excommunicated as a “climate denier.” Landsea resigned from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005 because he felt it had become politicized and was ignoring the science.

Yet somehow he remains the leading hurricane expert in the US, despite his “shoddy” science.

Landsea attacked three specific datasets that are often used by global warming alarmists to show that the warming of the earth will have terrible consequences for human-kind: 1) the frequency of storms; 2) the intensity of storms and; 3) the economic damage of storms. In each data subset he showed that apparent increases in storm activity or effect can be ascribed to advances in technology or development that skew the data rather than a real increased frequency or effect of storms.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2011/12/15/science_settled_new_report_hurricanes_global_warming_not_linked/page/full/

Next we turn to Tales From the Darkside, and yet another example of Liberal hypocrisy, courtesy of NewMediaJournal.com….

Facing Corruption Charges, Dem State Rep. Slurs GOP Governor

A Democrat state legislator in New Mexico lashed out at a Republican colleague, attacking her as acting as a minion of the state’s Republican governor, Susana Martinez, and referring to the governor in questionable terms. Calling Martinez “the Mexican,” Democratic state Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton reportedly shouted at Republican state Rep. Nora Espinoza.

The source of the dispute was an investigative news report that suggested Stapleton had behaved unethically. The piece aired on KRQE-TV in October, reporting that “for years, Stapleton did not take leave from her job as an administrator at the Albuquerque Public Schools system and received pay while attending legislative sessions.” Espinoza commented in the report.

Stapleton shouted at Espinoza during a committee break, according to Capitol Report New Mexico, and accused her of “carrying the Mexican’s water.” Stapleton told Espinoza that she had been waiting for her and said, “I’m pissed,” later adding, “You said I’m corrupt. Prove it!” “I’ve been falsely and biasly accused,” Stapleton told reporters afterward. “It was a biased story and my colleague added to it by saying I committed corruption.”

“Biasly” accused….committed “corruption”; doesn’t it figure she works for the Albuquerque public school system!?!  By the way, we were particularly touched to learn Stapleton declared herself half-Black/half-Hispanic….which is to say she’s incapable of uttering anything remotely racist.

On the other hand, Dave Chappelle isn’t….

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this beauty from Newt:

Gingrich has two options; specify two of those wives belong to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul….or just tattoo a scarlet “A” on his forehead.

Finally, we’ll call it a week with the “Pot Calling The Kettle Black” segment, brought to you today by one of the most overrated, self-impressed media personalities in history:

Barbara Walters to Kardashians: ‘You Don’t Have Any Talent!’

The psychological term is “transference”, we believe….demonstrated here by Baba Wawa in textbook fashion.

Magoo