For now, I’ll just have “put it out there,” so to speak, regarding two outrageous RINO-related items. Most readers here will already know that I’m really, really not pleased.

Do read what’s happening in Pennsylvania’s GOP, because it’s worse than what’s going on in Ohio.

_________________

OHIO

From, from the Cleveland Plain Dealer (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Ohio Republicans battle over proposed membership change for party central committee

The Ohio Republican Party chairman wants to change the rules for who can serve on the party’s state central committee, a proposal that comes about a month before GOP voters elect the next 66-member group.

The move could help Chairman Kevin DeWine fend off a challenge to his leadership. DeWine and Gov. John Kasich are locked in a messy election-year battle for control of the party.

The proposal also could create chaos, because the ballot for the 66 races across the state is already set. The rule change could make some of the winners of the March 6 primary ineligible to serve.

The current state central committee will vote at its Feb. 3 meeting on the rule change, which would require a registered Republican to have voted in each of the three most recent statewide GOP primaries. It’s unclear how many candidates such a rule would affect.

DeWine would not comment. His spokesman Chris Maloney said the change is not intended to fight off a challenge from the governor but to keep people from other political regimes from infiltrating the Republican party.

Bytor at 3BP reacts, with apologies for shamelessly appropriating the graphic at the top right:

Ohio Republican Party’s outrageous new tactic to keep the Tea Party out and Kevin DeWine in

Below is an excerpt of the memo sent out to committee members:

… Proposed Amendment*:

For the purposes of these Rules, to be qualified, and thereby seated and sworn in as a member of the State Central Committee, a person shall have voted in the three immediately preceding Republican statewide primary elections, including in the year in which the person was elected.

Talk about trying to protect their established incumbents! To be seated on the committee, a person will have to have voted in the Republican primary in 2008, 2010 and 2012. This is a pretty brazen move by Kevin DeWine and his allies. This rule, if adopted, is clearly intended to make it harder for outsiders to be seated on the State Central Committee, even if they are elected to the position.

The timing of this is no accident. There are two clear goals here.

1. Keep the Tea Party out. And this one isn’t new. Back in 2010, the ORP outraged many conservatives when it used the tea party brand and sent out mailers with a “Tea Party Values” logo that endorsed…Jon Husted.

2. To protect Kevin DeWine’s Chairmanship. The ORP knows that many of this years challengers to committee incumbents would vote against him in the next election for chairman.

Kevin DeWine … must resign.

_________________

PENNSYLVANIA

This one from Christopher Freind’s “Freindly Fire Zone” is much worse than Ohio’s mess, given that it involves fixing the party’s endorsement process for a U.S. Senate seat:

No Secret Ballot For GOP Endorsement Is Same As Union Card Check

… Common sense tells us that whenever a secret ballot is not employed, many people will not vote their conscience. Instead, they fall victim to intimidation and arm-twisting, and end up casting a ballot in favor of the person whom they are strongly encouraged —AKA “told” — to support. The result is a rigged, Banana Republic election, anything but “Free Choice.”

… Given this, it seems extremely hypocritical that the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania — while opposing Card Check — jettisons free and fair voting for its own members by refusing to allow secret ballot votes on important issues, such as Party endorsements.

… And now, on the eve of the meeting in which the Committee will vote whether to endorse a candidate for the U.S. Senate (or not endorse at all), that issue has become a firestorm that is only growing in intensity.

The big question centers on whether the Party will endorse millionaire Steve Welch, a favorite among several GOP leaders, including Republican Governor Tom Corbett. The problem many have with Welch is that he voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary and supported former Congressman Joe Sestak, a stalwart liberal consistently to the Left of Obama. Welch claims he left the GOP out of frustration that it wasn’t conservative enough, leaving more than a few Republicans perplexed.

… So would the Party really risk massive damage to itself by endorsing an Obama-voter, and make the sin mortal by doing so without a secret ballot?

They can’t be that dumb.

But this being Pennsylvania’s Republican Party, all bets are off.

Should they endorse Welch, it will be a double whammy, throwing the entire Party into a quagmire from which it would be difficult to escape.

State Committee would cement the perception that its endorsements are behind-the-scenes deals by inside powerbrokers hell-bent on executing individual agendas — the rank-and-file Party faithful be damned. More damaging, it would play out — in full public view — exactly how ruthlessly efficient Card Check tactics are, making unions blush with envy.

Like I said, Keystone State RINOs with the apparent full support of Governor Corbett are on the verge of engaging in something far more treacherous than we’re seeing in Ohio, something I hardly thought possible.

The irony in PA to me is that any conservative with a pulse should be able to beat prolife-betrayer Bob Casey. So why go with a guy with a ridiculously liberal voting record?

Gosh, “everybody” just “knew” that fourth quarter GDP growth was going to be 3% or more (See Update 2 — Some were even confident that it would be above 3% and speculated that it might really end up being 4%), and that there was soooooo much pent-up GDP growth left over from the third quarter’s disappointment.

Oops — and don’t forget that this is subject to two revisions, which in previous quarters during the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy have generally gone the wrong way.

From Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (bolds are mine):

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 1.8 percent.

… The increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter reflected positive contributions from private inventory investment, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, residential fixed investment, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from federal government spending and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

… The acceleration in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private
inventory investment and accelerations in PCE and in residential fixed investment that were partly offset
by a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment, a downturn in federal government spending, an
acceleration in imports, and a larger decrease in state and local government spending.

… The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents, increased 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of 2.0 percent in the third. Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 1.0 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of 1.8 percent in the third.

The change in real private inventories added 1.94 percentage points to the fourth-quarter change
in real GDP after subtracting 1.35 percentage points from the third-quarter change. Private businesses
increased inventories $56.0 billion in the fourth quarter, following a decrease of $2.0 billion in the third
quarter and an increase of $39.1 billion in the second.

Real final sales of domestic product — GDP less change in private inventories — increased 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of 3.2 percent in the third.

So companies added lots of inventories (seasonally adjusted, of course) in hopes that people will be buying stuff in early 2012 — while personal consumption expenditures only increase at a 2.0% annual clip.

About that “residential fixed investment” — The increase was an annualized $8.5 billion on a base of $337 billion (see Table 3 at the full release), which is really $2.1 billion for a single quarter. It contributed 0.23 points to the annualized growth of 2.8 points. No, this is not a signal that housing is back (and besides, most of that increase may have gone to apartments).

I deliberately haven’t looked yet, but I can’t imagine that anyone is going to be impressed with this — and I expect the press to whine that government “cutbacks” killed fourth-quarter growth (0.93-point decrement to GDP, with over 75% of that [-0.72] in national defense).

____________________________________________

UPDATE 1, 9 a.m.: Zero Hedge’s succinct summary (bolds original theirs)–

The US economy grew at a 2.8% annualized pace in the supposedly blistering fourth quarter, yet the number was a disappointment not only in that it missed estimates of 3.0% (and far higher whisper numbers) but when one looks at the components, where a whopping 1.94% of the upside was attributable to a rise in inventories as restocking took place. And as everyone knows in this day and age a spike in inventories only leads to sub-cost dumping a few months later. In other words, the economy grew at a 0.8% pace ex inventories. Yet for all intents and purposes, this is considered “growth.” Personal consumption was also weaker than expected coming in at 2.0% on estimates of 2.4%

UPDATE 2, 9:15 p.m.: Flashback, from the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger on December 23 –

Economists think the economy is growing at an annual rate of more than 3 percent in the final three months of this year. That would be the fastest pace since a 3.8 percent performance in the spring of 2010.

Among the positive factors are a brightening job market, strong holiday shopping, further gains in factory production and cheaper gas prices, which leave consumers with more money to spend on other items.

Later that day, Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner upped the enthusiasm ante by entertaining the possibility that fourth-quarter GDP might be an annualized 4%.

Today’s initial AP report from Crutsinger (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) gives absolutely no indication that this morning’s GDP release was in any way disappointing, and pretty much squares with how I predicted the press would handle today’s news:

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the fastest growth in 2011.

Americans spent more on cars and trucks, and companies built up their stockpiles. But growth in the October-December quarter – and all of last year – was held back by the biggest annual government spending cuts in four decades.

The Commerce Department said Friday that the economy grew just 1.7 percent last year, roughly half of the growth in 2010 and the worst since the recession.

Most economists expect businesses to ease up on restocking in the first three months of the year. That should slow first-quarter growth. And consumers may cut back on spending if their wages continue to lag inflation.

Note the clever use of “government spending” in the second paragraph. Crutsinger should know (heaven help him if he doesn’t) that the government-related figures in the GDP report only represent government purchases of goods and services, and is not at all evidence that there have been any real “cuts” in overall government spending. In the fourth quarter, the federal government’s portion of GDP in today’s dollars was an annualized $1.044 trillion, which is less than 30% of Uncle Sam’s $3.5 – $3.6 trillion in annual spending.

UPDATE 3: Ed at Hot Air notes that last quarter’s revisions shaved 0.7% from GDP. This has been the general pattern since Obama became president, so it certainly wouldn’t be a big surprise if 4Q11 ends up being 2.5% or lower.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

__________________________________________

From Rome:

Jan 26, 2012 / 05:59 pm

Today’s world can learn a lot from St. John of Avila, according to those who have studied the life of the next Doctor of the Catholic Church.

“St. John of Avila is far from us in time, but nearby for his figure, his life, his evangelizing witness and for his teaching,” Archbishop Juan del Río Martín of Spain’s Archdiocese for Military Services told CNA.

Archbishop del Río Martín was one of three experts on the Spanish saint who gathered in Rome on Jan. 20 for the presentation of a new book in Spanish that explores the writings of St. John of Avila.

The archbishop, who wrote his doctoral thesis on St. John of Avila’s teachings, believes that Pope Benedict made an investment in the future of the Church by choosing the 16th-century saint as the Church’s newest doctor.

The Pope has called the Church to a new evangelization, he notes, and in the “Apostle of Andalusia” she has a “model of how to evangelize.”
(more…)

Would someone please buy the Washington Post’s Josh White a clue? He can’t seem to get a handle on the “motive” for the actions of Yonathan Melaku (actually, I think White is pretending).

Melaku has just pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Authorities say he vandalized military grave markers, shot at the Pentagon and military museums, and was working on an improvised explosive device. But the headline to White’s story (HT Atlas Shrugs) and the reporter’s content act as if no one has the foggiest idea what drop Melaku to do what he did (words which betray motivation are bolded):

(more…)

Today’s report by Derek Kravitz at the Associated Press (also known to yours truly as the Administration’s Press) covering the Census Bureau’s December and full-year 2011 new-home sales release put a smiley-face on the “worst ever” year (the AP headline’s term) in the category.

I like the adjective used at Sweetness & Light’s related blog post to describe Kravitz’s crud: “unfazed.” The AP reporter follows four paragraphs of facts with three paragraphs of sunshiny “analysis” which are so wholly unsupported by reality that you would fall off of your chair laughing if you didn’t also realize that most readers, listeners and viewers who saw and heard this garbage today didn’t know any better than to believe it:

(more…)

So says Rush. More here.

The core argument by Team Romney that Newt Gingrich was not a Reagan true believer is Gingrich’s 1988 assertion that “If (George H.W.) Bush Runs as a Continuation of Reaganism, He Will Lose.”

Gosh, nobody beat up on Al Gore for not staking his campaign on saying “I’m going to keep on doing Clintonism,” did they?

Gore could have run on that basis and perhaps have won (well, he would have had to make an exception for avoiding repeats of the Lewinsky saga). Instead, he tacked so far to the left that George W. Bush got enough of an opening to win.

Nobody beat up on Dick Nixon in 1960 for failing to say that he would continue doing what the Eisenhower administration had done during the past eight years.

And it would have been really, really dumb for the vice-presidential candidate who ended up becoming Bush 41 to say that “I’m going to keep on doing everything Reagan did,” and offer nothing else, which was the true context of Gingrich’s comment. Why? He had to establish his own persona and identity. He did so, and beat Mike Dukakis. Whether “kinder, gentler America” was the way to go is highly debatable, but the fact that he did this to establish himself as an electable and qualified presidential candidate is not.

Similarly, Newt Gingrich in 1988 was telling George W. Bush to be his own man and not to merely pledge a continuation of Reaganism. There’s nothing wrong with that; he was not rejecting Reagan. Desperate Romniacs, whose candidate has pointedly rejected virtually every Reagan platform which ever existed, are acting as if Newt’s campaign-related strategy statement is a capital crime.

I can’t wait for Hugh Hewitt to denounce Romney’s gutter tactics. (/sarc)

Rush Limbaugh’s full defense is here (“Coordinated Avalanche Against Newt Doesn’t Match My Memory of Reagan Years”) at his place.

Based on Census Bureau data (today’s release; database detail link; keep in mind that at the time 2008 was considered an historically awful year, because it was):

Those wishing to take tiny comfort in the fact that the last six months of 2011 were slightly better than the last six months of 2010 should know that December’s sales of 21,000 were down from 23,000 in December 2010.

Here’s President Obama, in early 2009:

“If I don’t have this done in three years, then it’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

Not only hasn’t “this” not gotten “done” in three years, it’s worse. Far worse.

From the Department of Labor:

SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA

In the week ending January 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 377,000, an increase of 21,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 356,000. The 4-week moving average was 377,500, a decrease of 2,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 380,000.

… UNADJUSTED DATA

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 414,122 in the week ending January 21, a decrease of 112,817 from the previous week. There were 485,950 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.

Today’s number shows that last week’s number was indeed artificially low. After next week’s revision, this week will likely be about 380,000. Recall that if last week’s number had been seasonally adjusted using the same factor as the analogous week from a year ago, seasonally adjusted claims would have been 394,000. So today’s number, after revision, was actually a bit of an improvement over last week.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

__________________________________________

Saying so is factual, and certainly not racist.

_____________________

Note: This column went up at PJ Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Tuesday.

_____________________

Newt Gingrich has taken to characterizing President Barack Obama as “the food stamp president.” That description of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’s current occupant is factually correct, both narrowly and broadly. Stating that fundamental truth does not make Gingrich or anyone else a racist, as leftist smear merchants in government, the Democratic Party, and the establishment press want America to believe.

Participation in the food stamp program, technically known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), has increased by 44% from 32.0 million in January 2009 to 46.2 million in October 2011, the last month for which data is available. During that time, the average monthly benefit per person has increased by over 18% from $114 to $135, even though the costs of food eaten at home have increased by only 5%, and even though gross benefits before deductions for income and assets three years ago roughly approximated what was needed to maintain adequate nutrition on a “thrifty meal plan.” Monthly program costs have increased by over 70%, from $3.6 billion to $6.2 billion.

So-called “fact-checkers” in the press are of course focusing on Gingrich’s one slightly wrong (for now) statement that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” That’s not exactly a whopper, especially in comparison to Obama howlers like “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan” and “My mother, who was self-employed, didn’t have reliable healthcare,” or even “The detention facilities at Guantánamo … shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the (January 22, 2009) date of this order.”

The food stamp rolls indeed increased by 14.7 million under George W. Bush compared to “only” 14.2 million under Obama (so far). But Bush’s figure works out to an average of about 153,000 additional recipients per month during his eight years in office. Monthly additions during Barack Obama’s first 33 reported months have averaged 431,000. During the economy’s relatively strong years of 2005 through 2007, the food stamp rolls stayed relatively steady at 25-27 million. In the past fiscal year under Obama, while the economy added over 1.6 million seasonally adjusted jobs, the food stamp rolls still grew by over 3.3 million. Finally, food stamp program spending under Obama is on track to exceed all that was spent during Bush’s eight years by June, the administration’s 41st month.

More broadly, food giveaways under all guises have exploded under Obama. School food program costs have increased by 22% during the past three fiscal years, even though it should be obvious that the government is already paying many kids’ parents to feed them through food stamps. Women, Infants and Children? Up 16%. Other food distribution programs? Up 52%. With all of this spending, what’s the main nutrition-related problem facing the country, even more among those in poverty than among the general population? You guessed it: obesity.

When the first of the bogus “food stamp challenges” began appearing throughout the country about five years ago, Mona Charen wrote:

Why is it that whenever you listen to a Democrat you feel that the year is 1966? They seem to live in a time warp in which no progress has been made on race relations, poverty, childhood malnutrition, and on and on.

Indeed. The “food stamp challenges” still occur quite frequently — eight Democratic congresspersons participated in one late last year designed to “prove” that they could not feed themselves on $4.50 a day — even though per-person benefits are 50% higher than they were when the idea was conceived.

As to Charen’s reference to race relations, the biggest smear of all coming from defenders of the indefensible is that anyone who points out that federal food assistance programs are too expensive, duplicate services, lack appropriate controls, and have eligibility criteria which are far too generous must be a racist. NBC’s Ann Curry went after Gingrich with that arrogant assertion Thursday morning, asking him, in light of his “food stamp president” criticism, “Are you intentionally playing the race card to win votes?”

Gingrich’s answer was pretty good:

When conservatives care about the poor and conservatives offer ideas to help the poor, and conservatives suggest that the poor would rather have a paycheck than a food stamp, the very liberals who have failed them at places like the New York Times promptly scream “racism,” because they have no defense for the failure of liberal institutions which have trapped poor children in bad schools, trapped them in bad neighborhoods, trapped them in crime-ridden situations. Liberal solutions have failed, and their only answer is to cry “racism” and hide.

That said, Newt could have and should have gone farther and turned the racism charge back on Curry and the editorialists she quoted at the Times — as all sensible conservatives should when confronted with similar slime.

You see, Curry believed her question to be valid only because she assumed that blacks make up a wildly disproportionate share of food stamp recipients. They don’t. In 2010, the population living in poverty as defined by the Census Bureau was 23% black. In fiscal 2011, blacks who identified their race made up 22% of all food stamp recipients, and 30% of those who self-identified their race (27% of food stamp participants did not self-identify).

So, Ann Curry and all you other leftists, why do you assume that food stamp program participants are disproportionately black when it clearly isn’t so? It’s quite racist for you to believe that, and you wouldn’t have asked the question if you didn’t.

Criticizing the food stamp program and the president who has grown it like no other predecessor isn’t about racism. It’s about controlling its costs, making sure that benefits only go to those who need them, figuring out ways of getting people self-sufficient to the point where they no longer need to participate — and sending the guy under whom the irresponsible growth has occurred into retirement.

From Derry, New Hampshire (video at link; HT Daryn Kagan):

POSTED: 8:38 pm EST January 21, 2012
UPDATED: 10:10 am EST January 23, 2012

Fresh off a flight from overseas where she was recently deployed in Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Amanda Dawdy didn’t tell her dad she was coming home.

Instead, Dawdy’s sister picked her up Friday.

“I haven’t seen my dad in about 2 1/2 years, and my sister in about 2 1/2 to 3 years,” Dawdy said.

The two sisters beat their father to Mary Ann’s Diner in Derry on Saturday.

Dawdy put on a waitress uniform, and when her dad came to meet her sister and niece, Dawdy appeared at their table.

“She asked if we had been served, and I’m like, ‘I don’t see any food,” Philip D’Acunto Sr. said. “I looked at my other daughter, and I looked back, and I’m like, ‘Boy, she looks like my daughter,’ and she’s like, ‘Daddy,’ and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ It’s like, ‘What are you doing here?’”

There was a pause, surprise, a deep hug and tears.

”After that, it was just tears and just glad to see my dad and spend time with family again,” Dawdy said.

Go here for the rest of the story.