ROGER KIMBALL: Obama’s Political Blitzkrieg. “The thing you have to admire about the Obama administration is its ability to fight furiously on several fronts at once. The economy. Individual liberty. The rule of law. National security. In his pursuit of ‘fundamentally transforming the United States of America’ (as he promised his followers in October 2008), Barack Obama has managed to undermine them all. It’s been an impressive, if also a depressing, performance.”

FRANK CAGLE ON THE IOWA CAUCUSES: A colossal waste of time.

PICTURES: How the FatCats Live.

Iain Murray, call your office!

RICK SANTORUM says he’s no Mike Huckabee.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Obama Fundraiser Guilty in $21 Million Bank Fraud Scheme.

THE HILL: Attacks from outside groups overwhelm Gingrich campaign.

AT AMAZON, end of year deals on Tools & Home Improvement.

Also, AmazonBasics accessories, HDMI cables, etc.

POLITICS TODAY: “Christopher Dodd, Sen. Lieberman’s former colleague, left office a pariah, statewide and countrywide, but quickly landed on his feet by becoming chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.”

PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The Year In Media Mythbusting.

ROGER EBERT ON WHY MOVIE REVENUE IS DROPPING. It’s basically because the movies suck, the tickets are too expensive, and the theater experience isn’t very pleasant. Plus, people have better things to do.

PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: Watching TV with Your Kids over the Holidays? Try Firefly. “That was three days ago. Now we’re five episodes in and we’re both loving it. Firefly is one of the best shows ever to be on TV, and almost certainly the best show ever to be cancelled. It works today as well as it did eight years ago, and my daughter and I are having discussions about morals and authority and even love in ways that the displacement of stories makes uniquely possible.”

WANT TO STOCK UP ON INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS? Better hurry.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE:

Huge excitement last week. Two Earth-size planetsfound orbiting a sun-like star less than a thousand light-years away. This comes two weeks after the stunning announcement of another planet orbiting another star at precisely the right distance — within the “habitable zone” that is not too hot and not too cold — to allow for liquid water and therefore possible life.

Unfortunately, the planets of the right size are too close to their sun, and thus too scorching hot, to permit Earth-like life. And the Goldilocks planet in the habitable zone is too large. At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it is probably gaseous, like Jupiter. No earthlings there. But it’s only a matter of time — perhaps a year or two, estimates one astronomer — before we find the right one of the right size in the right place.

I’d rather we didn’t find any other life, for reasons spelled out here.

UPDATE: Related item here.

ONCE, THEY ACTUALLY KIND OF MATTERED: Anonymous Trolls Turn Out To Be From The Brady Campaign.

WELL, THIS IS HOPEFUL: The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory.

THE LEFT-WING ORIGINS of Newt Gingrich’s attack on the courts. Yeah, when judges frustrated left-wing schemes, they were bad.

PAUL KRUGMAN PRAISES a raging anti-semite.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Sucker DJs, they get stopped by a single finger.

Plus, an early appearance by Megan McArdle.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in TV and Video.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Flag Burning At Occupy Charlotte.

REVISING MY VENN DIAGRAMS: I would have thought that the circles representing “people who have endorsed Ron Paul” and “people who defend the competence of Obama’s central economic planning” wouldn’t overlap. But I guess I should have known that if anyone were to fall in both, it would be Andrew Sullivan. So the Obama central planners spent nearly a trillion dollars based on their projections, and now we’re supposed to ignore their wildly erroneous forecasts because they just didn’t realize how bad the Bush economy was?

As Judge Spotswood Robinson used to say to lawyers in trouble, “what’s your next argument?”

UPDATE: Ouch. “I am surprised Sullivan has not blamed Trig Palin for these deficits yet.”

Plus: “I recall Andrew Sullivan arguing that George W. Bush’s out of control spending needed to be curbed. Funny, I have not heard Mr. Sullivan make that argument about Barack Obama. Despite the fact, the evidence of reckless spending by the Obama Administration is overwhelming. . . . Sullivan says these charts cited by Glenn Reynolds are all lies. Hmmm, pathetic. But it’s all Sully’s got. Especially since the chair of the DNC said that the Democratic Party owns this economy.”

And reader Bryan Farris twists the knife, emailing:

So, if I’m reading this correctly, Sullivan is okay with Presidents taking action based upon faulty intelligence that was “believed [by everyone] at the time”, no matter how that action turns out.

Good to know!

Heh.

CHINA: Chinese Manufacturing Continues To Shrink. “Weakening external demand is starting to bite.”

A WORDPRESS / BARENAKED ISLAM UPDATE: The PR folks for WordPress sent me a copy of the email that Matt Mullenweg sent the BareNaked Islam bloggers:

After reviewing this case I’ve turned your site back on. Even though this is the third Term of Service issue with your blog, you should have been contacted before your site was suspended by our Terms of Service team.

That said, publishing IP and email addresses of commenters with the invitation to harass them is a violation of our terms of service and your site harbors numerous examples that violate our ToS rule “does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities.”

Given that this has been an ongoing issue I think you should find alternative hosting. I realize that it is the holidays and happy to give you until Jan 6 to do so. You can use the “offsite redirect” upgrade to ensure all of your links continue to work and your visitors get redirected.

Finally although there was a press release from CAIR claiming to have been behind this I haven’t heard of them until today and as far as we can tell none of the ToS reports that caused the blog to be reviewed were from anyone involved with that organization. WordPress.com does not suspend blogs at the request of individuals or organizations, only for violations of our Terms of Service.

This sounds right. Is publishing commenters’ information wrong? Yes, unless the commenters have been threatening or abusive, in which case I think it’s fine. Were they? I don’t know — because when I went to the site it had been taken down. Anyway, WordPress seems to have done the right thing.

ANDREW CLINE: Letting Down The Tea Party. “This is a primary driven almost entirely by the nationally televised debates.”