A funny thing happened on the way to finding yet another year of media emphasis on the use of “holiday” vs. “Christmas” in describing the shopping season.

Google News searches conducted this morning at about 7:30 ET on “Christmas shopping season” and “holiday shopping season” came back with the highest percentage of “Christmas” results I’ve seen in the six years I’ve been doing these searches. Not that the result is yet impressive, but at least it’s an improvement:

• “holiday shopping season” (in quotes) — 4,040 (79.1%)
• “Christmas shopping season” (in quotes) — 1,070 (20.9%)

Compared to previous late-December results (“holiday” v. “Christmas”), that result is indeed a noticeable uptick:

- 2009 — “Holiday” 88.0%, “Christmas” 12.0%.
- 2008 — “Holiday” 89.9%, “Christmas” 10.1%.
- 2007 — “Holiday” 88.1%, “Christmas” 11.9%.
- 2006 — “Holiday” 88.7%, “Christmas” 11.3%.
- 2005 — “Holiday” 88.8%, “Christmas” 11.2%.

Readers who are gluttons for punishment can arrive at 2008′s result from that year’s three posts (here, here, and here).

Given that Google News searches go back 30 days, and that searches done two weeks ago were more heavily weighted towards “holiday shopping season,” it appears that references to “Christmas shopping season” in more recent stories might have occurred almost 30% of the time.

So what happened? Maybe the pushback by organizations like the American Family Association (AFA) is working, and that’s fine. But one only needs to recall a couple of items I noted two weeks ago to be reminded how out of sync the press treatment of the season remains:

• At Advertising Age — “This year’s NRF (National Retail Federation)/BigResearch survey found that 91 percent of consumers plan to celebrate Christmas, compared with 5% for Hanukkah and 2% for Kwanzaa.”
• As carried at an AFA blog — “”According to the most recent Rasmussen Poll on the subject, 72 percent of all Americans prefer the greeting “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays,” the greeting of preference for just 22 percent of us. This is up four percent from last year.”

Thus, the 20% result obtained this morning, even if it’s the new “normal,” or even the possible 30% achieved in recent weeks, is still a long, long way from reflecting public tastes and traditions.

It’s worth noting that there was a time many decades ago when media descriptions of the shopping season were mostly in sync with the public. The following groups of Google News Archive and New York Times searches (all using quote marks) demonstrate how the divergence progressed:

Readers wishing to replicate the results above can start here at Google News’s archive, go here for the earliest Times search, and begin here for the other four.

As I reiterated in a NewsBusters comment two weeks ago after a NewsBusters commenter pathetically tried to claim that changes such as those just noted might be explained by an increase in economic reporting over the past few decades: “There is no reasonable alternative explanation (beyond dogged insistence on political correctness) … why the press preference has changed so radically, while the public’s preference essentially hasn’t.”

The commenter involved has apparently forgotten (or never knew) that newspapers have had robust business sections almost as long as they’ve existed.

There is also no reason other than blind allegiance to political correctness why the establishment press can’t get its Christmas season characterizations in line with the rest of the public.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

At Hot Air — “Poll of eight states: Romney trails other major presidential contenders among conservatives.”

Corrected headline: “Romney trails other major GOP presidential contenders because he’s not a conservative”

In case anyone missed it, here is a smidgen of the relevant evidence:

• November 24, 2010 — “Not This Mitt Again” (photo at right created by an enterprising FReeper)
• March 31, 2009 — “Okay Romniacs, Explain THIS” (Romney praises Obama for demonstrating “backbone” as the President orchestrates a statist boardroom coup at Government/General Motors)
• December 6, 2007 — “The NY Times’s Accidental Journalism Reveals the Full Scope of Mitt Romney’s Same-Sex Marriage Deception, and His Unfitness to Be President”
• November 15, 2007 — “Ah the Wonders of RomneyCare” (including a $50 Co-Pay for Abortions)

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Herman Cain on “The Perfect Conservative“:

He was not born into a royal family, but He left a royal impression on the world.

For 30 years, He learned the ways of the world without becoming of the world. He then changed the world for the better.

… For over 2,000 years the world has tried hard to erase the memory of the perfect conservative, and His principles of compassion, caring and common sense.

His followers are now millions and millions the world over, as those who resent Him have intensified their attacks on who He was and what His followers believe.

The attacks are disguised as political correctness, or a misunderstanding of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Separation of Church and State does not mean Separation of Church from State. The State cannot impose Church on the people, but the people can display and say as much Church in the public square as they desire.

Our Founders recognized that distinction, which helped to inspire the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the founding of this nation – The United States of America!

We must be the Defending Fathers and the defenders of the perfect conservative.

That’s why I proudly wish one and all a very Merry Christmas!

You too, sir.

Read the whole thing. It’s a keeper.

I am happy to learn that Mr. Cain is forming an exploratory committee for a 2012 presidential run.

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Judith Miller, at the Wall Street Journal –

I went to jail in the summer of 2005 to protect the identity of a confidential source who spoke to me about Valerie Plame, the former CIA spy whose identity was disclosed after her husband publicly challenged part of the evidence that President Bush cited to justify his invasion of Iraq. I’m the only person to have gone to jail in what became known as Plamegate. But you wouldn’t know it from the recently released movie “Fair Game.”

Roger Simon at Pajamas Media (“The Most Untruthful Movie of the Year”):

Maybe I should call it the most biased movie of the year … There’s so much wrong with this movie it’s almost comical. It’s not even good propaganda. It’s just a dull semi-thriller filled with more lies than a bad game of poker.

Even the Washington Post’s editorial board can’t let the film’s fundamental dishonesty go by without commenting:

… the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it.

… “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. (Joe) Wilson and his wife (Valeria), is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false.

… an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger (the infamous “16 words” — Ed.) was well-founded.

“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. … (but) the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

… Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures.

I’d be more impressed if the Post editorial had called out its own reporters for their part in the press’s stampede to make an impeachment mountain out this fraudulently-based molehill.

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Other items of interest:

• Genuine Reality TV has dominated the ratings this year.
• Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s place picked up on yours truly’s NewsBusters post (originally here at BizzyBlog) about this weekend’s bitter Associated Press DREAM Act coverage (“Republicans block youth immigration bill”).
• Andrew McCarthy at the Washington Examiner (“America must wake up to threat of Sharia”) — “Islamists and Muslim terrorists agree on the goal: the implementation of Sharia to strangle individual liberty and foster Islamicized societies. … Our nation needs to understand the breadth of the Islamist challenge. President Obama instead accommodates it.”
• Relating to the previous item, implementing Sharia would ensure that acts such as those described here by pigs acting under the cover of “religion” would be outside of the reach of civil and criminal law. That cannot be allowed.

From Cleveland (HT WLWT.com):

Published: Sunday, December 12, 2010, 8:00 PM
Updated: Monday, December 13, 2010, 8:53 AM

Just in case the special guests missed the blow-up Santa or penguins marking the ticketing counter Saturday, a flashing sign alerted them that they had indeed reached “Elf Check-in.”

About 50 children and their families lined up under the sign at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport for the rarest of adventures — Flight 9900 to the North Pole.

Many of the children — most patients at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital or MetroHealth Medical Center — had never been in an airplane, let alone to such an exotic destination.

What would the North Pole be like?

“A cartoon,” yelled 3-year-old Connor.

“It’s going to be freezing,” hollered 4-year-old Hannah.

Soon after elves with red-and-white striped tights and green, curly-toed shoes helped the children board a Continental jet, the flight crew lowered the shades so the cabin lights wouldn’t hurt the eyes of reindeer.

Then, with a roar of the engines (they never left the ground), they were off to see Santa.

Volunteers at the North Pole were notified by radio the moment Flight 9900 left the gate so they could make all the last-minute preparations for their arrivals.

A North Olmsted woodwind ensemble warmed up on Christmas carols while about a dozen members of Westlake’s Key Club practiced painting snowmen and hearts on one another’s faces.

Both groups had arrived early to help Betty Prischak — a Continental ticket agent — who has served as Santa’s chief Cleveland organizer for three years.

It all started for her about eight years ago, Prischak said, after she saw the reaction of an 8-year-old girl arriving on the 9900 flight.

The girl, like most children who take this trip to the North Pole, was very sick. Her illness left her bald and a large jagged scar marked the place where a surgeon must have operated on her brain, Prischak said. But at the North Pole, none of that mattered.

“The trip happened to be on her eighth birthday,” Prischak said. “And she said it was her best birthday ever.”

Prischak has helped Santa ever since. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Nina Totenberg, NPR reporter: “I Was At – Forgive the Expression – a Christmas Party…”

Here’s a reminder, from December 7:

Media Emphasis on ‘Holiday Shopping’ Directly Defies Public’s Stated Preferences

… This year’s NRF (National Retail Federation)/BigResearch survey found that 91 percent of consumers plan to celebrate Christmas, compared with 5% for Hanukkah and 2% for Kwanzaa.

… According to the most recent Rasmussen Poll on the subject, 72 percent of all Americans prefer the greeting “Merry Christmas” to “Happy Holidays,” the greeting of preference for just 22 percent of us. This is up four percent from last year.

… Nine out of ten Americans celebrate Christmas, while almost nine out of ten news stories about the shopping season avoid the word. How obvious is that?

It’s just barely less obvious than Nina Totenberg’s status as a prisoner of political correctness.

As seen in the excerpt, you said nothing wrong and there’s nothing to forgive according to the vast majority of us, Nina. What season do you think it is?

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UPDATE, Dec. 23, 6:00 a.m.: Oh, the PC crowd is soooo clever — sorry, I get the distinct aroma of backing and filling, especially given that it took about three days for her explanation to come forth.

UPDATE 2, Dec. 23, 6:25 a.m.: Not that it’s proof of anything beyond irony, but here’s something from two years ago:

NPR’s Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg dropped by this week to help with our vlog, Open Mic. She didn’t come to talk about any of the great Supreme Court debates about church and state, or keeping religious displays out of public space, but about Christmas at the Totenberg household: “My mother always said that it didn’t matter that we were Jewish; Christmas was too good a holiday for kids not to celebrate.”

The title of the NPR segment is … (wait for it) … “Nina Totenberg Sings The Holidays.”

The what?

In the segment, she nicely sings a verse of “Silent Night.”

Maybe if she had been “gently mocking” her employer for dumb post titles like that one, I’d be more inclined to believe her.

Powerline goes back to a UK Independent item by the almost eponymously-named Charles Onians from March 2000 claiming that:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

… Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community.

… According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

East Anglia’s CRU was the source of the Climategate e-mails, including the smoking gun e-mail from Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to which yours truly devoted a column a bit over a year ago.

As to those predictions that kids would rarely see snow, that’s a big “Oops”:

Christmas travel plans ruined for half a million air passengers
The boss of Britain’s busiest airport was facing mounting anger after the Christmas travel plans of half a million air passengers were ruined.

… As passengers were forced to sleep in terminal buildings for a third night, there was mounting criticism of BAA, the airport operator.

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, rang Colin Matthews, the chief executive of BAA, to demand answers over why the airport had failed to cope.

Well, if you’re misled by a bunch of agenda-driven pseudo-scientists into thinking that snow is essentially a thing of the past, you don’t prepare for it.

Believing in globaloney (my shorthand for the belief that dangerous global warming is occurring, that human activity is its primary cause, and that only radical, statist controls on every aspect of our lives will prevent it) to the point where it’s “accepted as a reality” — even though it has long since been exposed as possibly the greatest hoax ever attempted on mankind, and definitely “the worst scientific scandal of our generation” — has painful real-world consequences.

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Statism on the march: “Chavez defends plan for Internet regulations.” –

Chavez’s congressional allies are considering extending the “Social Responsibility Law” for broadcast media to the Internet, banning messages that “disrespect public authorities,” “incite or promote hatred” or crimes, or are aimed at creating “anxiety” in the population.

Softer but still very real statism on the march, via Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell at the Wall Street Journal:

The FCC’s Threat to Internet Freedom
‘Net neutrality’ sounds nice, but the Web is working fine now. The new rules will inhibit investment, deter innovation and create a billable-hours bonanza for lawyers.

… It wasn’t long ago that bipartisan and international consensus centered on insulating the Internet from regulation. This policy was a bright hallmark of the Clinton administration, which oversaw the Internet’s privatization. Over time, however, the call for more Internet regulation became imbedded into a 2008 presidential campaign promise by then-Sen. Barack Obama. So here we are.

… Congress has never given the FCC the power to regulate the Internet.

… To date, the FCC hasn’t ruled out increasing its power further by using the phone monopoly laws, directly or indirectly regulating rates someday, or expanding its reach deeper into mobile broadband services. The most expansive regulatory regimes frequently started out modest and innocuous before incrementally growing into heavy-handed behemoths.

… On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The darkest day of the year may end up marking the beginning of a long winter’s night for Internet freedom.

Anyone who thinks that the ultimate agenda isn’t regulation of speech, or that McDowell is engaging in hysteria, clearly hasn’t followed the career of current FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. An Investors Business Daily editorial, also observing that the UN is again opportunistically making noises about getting its hands on the Internet in the wake of the WikiLeaks releases, describes what’s at stake:

America’s own Federal Communications Commission is days away — Dec. 21 — from voting on net neutrality, a policy in which the government dictates how Internet service providers handle the traffic that flows over their infrastructure.

This policy, as we’ve said before, would institute a dangerous system that would violate free speech and property rights.

To Genachowski, that’s a feature, not a bug.

An early December IBD editorial asserted that so-called Net Neutrality that the FCC’s intended moves are all about “silencing a conduit for the truth that keeps us free,” coming from “an administration intent on controlling the free flow of information that it views as a threat to its expanding power.” Exactly.

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This link is to the “Black Farmers Settlement” tag at BigGovernment.com.

Readers here will recall from this BizzyBlog post in July that Shirley Sherrod was a significant plaintiff in the relevant Pigford case, which started out being about compensating Southern black farmers for discrimination they allegedly suffered at the hands of USDA in previous decades, and turned into a feeding trough for fraudulent claimants and trial lawyers.

Sherrod and her husband Charles received almost $13 million in a separate settlement with USDA relating to their long-defunct New Communities “farming co-op” mere days before she was named Georgia Director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

In August, Ron Wilkins at Counterpunch documented “The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod,” which included (also documented by PJM’s Zombie):

• Paying farm workers as little as 67¢ per hour, far below minimum wage for the era.
• Employing underage children to perform hard labor.
• Compelling their employees to work in unsafe conditions, including getting sprayed with pesticides.
• Firing any workers who acted as whistleblowers.
• Forcing employees to work overtime in the fields at night with practically no advance notice.
• Having a capricious payscale under which employees doing the exact same jobs were paid different amounts according to the whims of the managers.
• Being unwilling to address the abuse even after it was raised by union representatives.
• Seriously mismanaging the farm to such an extent that it went bankrupt.

If anyone is owed settlement money, it’s the workers the Sherrods exploited in the name of their “community.”

Zombie got off to a head start on this in late July (“86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?”), but Big Gov has gone much further, exposing the Pigford effort and the case’s settlement as corrupt and scandal-ridden to its core. Some examples:

• Via Lee Stranahan — “Othello Cross, an attorney for Pigford claimants with about fifteen years of experience on the case, admits that he is personally aware of hundreds of cases of fraud in the state of Arkansas alone. Furthermore, he explains how easy it was to commit that fraud and receive a $50,000 check from the government; it’s appropriate to deduce from Cross’s revealing statement that the actual number of fraudulent claims is likely much higher than the hundreds he knows about.”
• In at least one instance, when the scam artists started fighting over divvying up settlement money, people were murdered.
• From Publius — “Pigford Witness Report: 700 Claims Filed with My Name on Them, Many From Hundreds of Miles Away”
• There’s also more than a little support for the notion (here and here) that the settlement is the result of political payoffs to presidential candidate Obama.
• Publius shows that on many Pigford applications, “the stories they write on the application are clearly boilerplate, probably done by the same paralegal. Some of the words are even misspelled consistently through the documents.”

There’s sooo much more at BigGov’s tagged stories. Meanwhile, crickets chirp in the establishment press.

Despite the mountain of evidence, President Obama says that the $4.6 billion Pigford settlement “closes a long and unfortunate chapter in our history … It’s finally time to make things right.”

The Pigford settlement does not “set things right.” It largely if not mostly rewards criminals.

From Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates:

Dec 16, 2010 / 01:47 am

The remains of an ancient Nestorian Christian monastery and church on Sri Bani Yas Island in the United Arab Emirates have been opened for public viewing, providing an important glimpse into the pre-Islamic history of the region.

The site was unearthed in the early 1990s and is believed to be the only permanent settlement ever established on the island, which is 160 miles southwest of Abu Dhabi.

A multi-building compound on the eastern side of the island, the site is the only known pre-Islamic Christian site in the United Arab Emirates. According to Archaeology Daily, the complex includes monks’ cells, kitchens and animal pens surrounding a courtyard dominated by a church. At least eight houses have been unearthed.

The monastery is believed to have been an important destination for pilgrims traveling along a trade route to India.

“Twenty years ago, we had no idea that Christians came this far south and east in the Arabian Gulf,” commented Dr. Joseph Elders, the archaeological director of the excavation project. “This shows that Christianity had penetrated far further than we thought before … We don’t have many monasteries from this period.”

Pilgrims could pray or leave gifts in a separate visitors’ room within the monastery complex itself. The church was built around the grave of the one body found at the site. Researchers said the body might have belonged to the saint who founded the monastery.

Peter Hellyer, the excavation’s project manager, said the site was “fascinating and really important.”

“It explains a lot more about the heritage of this country. Most people wouldn’t know that history, that there was Christianity here before Islam,” he added. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Congress’s attempt at a last-ditch spending spree is just the latest example of a dangerous Democratic Party habit.

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Note: This column appeared at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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No one who has watched Democrats in action over the past couple of decades should be surprised at the lame-duck Congressional majority’s omnibus gambit unveiled on Tuesday.

Soon to be former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid somehow couldn’t pass a fiscal 2011 budget when they were supposed to, i.e., before October 1, the beginning of the fiscal year. This craven accountability avoidance was deliberately designed to protect threatened Democratic incumbents ahead of November’s midterm elections. It probably worked in some cases; the last thing the dozen or so Democrats who barely survived would have needed was to be tied to a laundry list of porky pet projects like the 6,488-earmark monstrosity that was under consideration at the time of this column’s submission.

Nonetheless, the 63-seat swing to the GOP in the House, and to a lesser extent the party’s six-seat pickup in the Senate, have left Democrats deathly afraid that the new Congress might actually carry through with the wishes of its newly elected representatives and attempt to get a grip on out-of-control spending, stop ObamaCare from being funded, and end other senseless and ineffective initiatives. Faced with what may well turn out to be the end of an era, they’re attempting to do what soon to be out of office Dems have historically done — milking the remaining time for all it’s worth, and taking actions they would never dare if they had to face the voters again.

Lame-duck mischief is indeed a time-honored Democratic Party tradition.

In Ohio in late 1990, outgoing Governor Dick Celeste, who was about to be replaced by Republican George Voinovich, turned his attention to the crimes of others with the intent of minimizing convicted inmates’ well-deserved penalties for their heinous acts. Celeste granted a total of 68 clemencies. Among them were commutations of the sentences of eight death row inmates to life without parole, pardons for 26 women who blamed their crimes on Battered Woman’s Syndrome, and country singer Johnny Paycheck, who had received a seven-year sentence “for shooting a man in Hillsboro, Ohio after he fired a .22 pistol, grazing the man’s head with a bullet.”

The most notorious person spared the ultimate penalty was Debra Brown, the partner-in-crime of Alton Coleman. Together, the couple was responsible for seven murders in six Midwestern states during the summer of 1984. Brown’s excuse was that she was in a “master/slave” relationship. That’s an odd claim, because months after being separated from her alleged master, she wrote a note to her trial judge which read in part: “I killed the bitch and I don’t give a damn. I had fun out of it.” Dick Celeste still didn’t think Debra Brown deserved to die.

Another Celeste commutation beneficiary was Teresa Bickerstaff, who “shot her mother and two younger brothers, then torched the house.” As to the pardons, the left-leaning Akron Beacon-Journal wrote: “[P]rosecutors seem justified in complaining that Celeste overreached to let some out from behind bars.”

Celeste appears to have calculated that the fallout from his controversial moves would fade from memory. As far as Ohio’s Democrats were concerned, he was wrong. A turned-off electorate enabled Republicans to dominate the state for the next 16 years (in retrospect, they dominated too much, turning into complacent RINOs in the process). The next three Democratic candidates for governor were buried in landslides. If it weren’t for an overhyped Taft administration coin-investment scandal — overhyped because, as it turns out, very little if any money was ultimately lost — Democrats might still be in the Buckeye State wilderness. Perhaps that’s where they’ll return if just-elected Republican governor John Kasich legitimately turns around Ohio, something one-term embittered loser Ted “Shadow Government” Strickland utterly failed to do.

Getting back to Celeste — It took him a while, but he finally figured out that his leniency spree effectively ended his electoral career. He has since headed to academia as the President of Colorado College.

If Ohio’s Tricky Dick had done what he did a decade later, things might have turned out differently. After all, it was in January 2001 that outgoing President Bill Clinton issued hundreds of pardons and commutations, many of which had no basis in anything beyond pure partisanship, political payoffs, or both. Those who can remember the details of that sordid chapter in history will note that the most infamous pardons at the Justice Department’s link (e.g. Marc Rich) are the ones containing no descriptions of their nature. Instead of suffering any kind of political penalty, Clinton, correctly described as the ARIFPPOTUS (the Accused Rapist and Impeached Former President of the United States), is a Democratic folk hero, a millionaire many times over, and the darling of a still-fawning establishment press.

Thanks to this year’s crop of lame-duck Dems, the normally slow-news final weeks of December will require vigilant attention. In between sips of eggnog, yours truly will be keeping one eye on the “earmarks gone wild” goings-on in Washington, where Congressional Democrats and a few RINO Republicans seem determined to administer a fiscal death sentence to the nation, and the other on the aforementioned Strickland, who has received 1,200 requests for clemency.

Having been given the power to rule by decree for 18 months, Hugo Chávez appears to be in the midst of completing a de facto statist takeover of the country institutions and levers of power.

No journalist is daring to directly call it dictatorship. You won’t find any form of the word at a December 15 New York Times story by Simon Romero (“Chávez Seeks Decree Powers” — which, by the way, appeared at Page A13), or at a December 17 Associated Press item (“Venezuela congress grants Chavez decree powers”) by Fabiola Sanchez.

In a Reuters story (“Venezuela assembly gives Chavez decree powers”), reporters Daniel Wallis and Frank Jack Daniel took note of outraged “opponents who accuse him of turning South America’s biggest oil producer into a dictatorship,” relieving them of the responsibility for stating the obvious themselves.

Romero’s item at the Times is particularly galling in its borderline admiration for the tactics employed by the man who is now Venzuela’s virtual dictator (bold is mine):

The move was not unexpected. Legislators have granted Mr. Chávez decree powers three times during his 12-year presidency. He used a decree in 2008 to name regional political leaders with separate budgets, offsetting gains by the opposition in state and municipal elections.

Mr. Chávez said the decree powers, which would last one year, were needed to quickly address floods and landslides that had left tens of thousands of people homeless in Venezuela. Facing criticism over the move, he suggested on state television that his opponents needed to take “a Valium, or something like that.”

“Otherwise, they should see a psychiatrist to get some recommendations,” he added.

The timing of the request suggests that the political sagacity that has served Mr. Chávez throughout his presidency is not waning. Venezuelans are preparing to go on vacation this month, when many businesses and institutions virtually cease operating. Mr. Chávez has used such lulls in the past to announce measures aimed at weakening his opponents.

The lame-duck Chavista-dominated legislature also has a sense of timing, saving its final vote for a slow-news Friday, while pretending that the lengthening of the rule-by-decree time frame from 12 to 18 months was their idea. Sure.

Fausta’s blog (cross-posted at Hot Air, originally at the Caracas Chronicles (despite the date of the post, the info appears to be current) outline the powers Chávez requested, and presumably received. A December 15 post at venezuelaanalysis.com goes into further detail about the “enabling law,” which grants Chávez specific powers the legislature cannot override for the specified period:

The areas in which special powers will be granted to the President include: infrastructure, transport, public services, housing and habitat, land use planning, comprehensive development and use of urban and rural lands, finance and taxes, people’s security and legal security, defense, international cooperation and the nation’s socio-economic system.

Article 1.1 of the Enabling Law, for example, grants Chávez full authority for “addressing the vital and urgent human needs resulting from the social conditions of poverty and from rains, landslides, floods, and other events produced by the environmental problem.”

Meanwhile, Article 1.4 grants the President decreeing powers “to design a new geographic regionalization that reduces the elevated levels of demographic concentration in certain regions, to regulate the creation of new communities and…to establish a more adequate distribution and social use of urban and rural lands that have the conditions to install basic services and habitat that humanizes community relations.”

The law also says that the president can pronounce norms that regulate the procedures of authorities in the face of emergencies, and other “natural” events that require an immediate response to “vital” human needs, as well as relating to prevention and follow up in declared emergency zones, and norms promoting the “rights of the Venezuelan family”.

The president will also be able to pronounce or reform norms regulating aspects of infrastructure, communications, and transport, as well as norms that “regulate the behavior” of private and public entities in the construction of housing in order to “guarantee the right to adequate, safe, comfortable and hygienic housing”.

In the area of finance, Article 1.5 says the president will be able to pronounce norms that update the “public and private financial system to constitutional principles” as well as to create special funds to attend to the results of “natural and social contingencies”.

Other norms the president will be able to pronounce relate to the police and civil protection sector for the purposes of citizen identification, migration control and the “fight against impunity” as well as anything “concerning arms… and their regulation and supervision”.

Finally, Chávez will also be able to pronounce norms “aimed at strengthening international relations” or that “develop the consecrated rights in chapter VI of the Constitution”.

The list of what Chávez can’t do without legislative permission would have been shorter.

In a vaguely-headlined follow-up AP item yesterday (“US, Venezuela at odds on ambassador, Chavez powers”), the highest-level government spokespersons quoted are U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela and U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. No Hillary Clinton, no Barack Obama, no mention of “Venezuela” or “Chavez” in the last two White House press briefings (here and here) and not even a White House blog entry No one in the press appears to have sought a reaction from higher-ups in the administration. I wonder why?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

If you look at the description of yesterday afternoon’s U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote Number 278 (“A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to clarify and improve certain provisions relating to the removal of litigation against Federal officers or agencies to Federal courts, and for other purposes.”), you’d never know it had anything to do with illegal immigration.

But it did. It was a cloture vote (60 needed to get the measure to the Senate floor) about about the so-called “DREAM Act,” granting de facto amnesty to a vast number of illegal immigrants for entering college or joining the military. It has been a Democratic Party-”inspired” initiative with heavy Republican opposition from the get-go. It could easily have passed if the Democrats had been able to hold their membership together while picking off a couple of squishy Republicans.

They got their squishes: Republicans Murkowski (AK), Lugar (IN), and Bennett (UT) voted yes. That should have given the measure 61 votes. But Democrats Baucus (MT), Hagan (NC), Nelson (NE), Pryor AR), and Tester (MT) voted no, while Manchin (WV) did not vote. The measure’s 55-41 support was not enough to move it to the next step.

So whose fault was it that the DREAM Act failed? A bitter, unbylined Associated Press report give us the wire service’s “objective” take:

Republicans block youth immigration bill

Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military.

Sponsors of the Dream Act fell five votes short of the 60 they needed to break through largely GOP opposition and win its enactment before Republicans take over the House and narrow Democrats’ majority in the Senate next month.

President Barack Obama called the vote “incredibly disappointing.”

“A minority of senators prevented the Senate from doing what most Americans understand is best for the country,” Obama said. “There was simply no reason not to pass this important legislation.”

Dozens of immigrants wearing graduation mortarboards watched from the Senate’s visitors gallery, disappointment on their faces, as the 55-41 vote was announced.

“This is a dark day in America,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles. “The Senate has … thrown under the bus the lives and hard work of thousands and thousands of students who love this country like their own home, and, in fact, they have no other home.”

Hispanic activists and immigrant advocates had looked to the bill as a down payment on what they had hoped would be broader action by Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress to give the nation’s 10 million to 12 million illegal immigrants a chance at legal status.

It targeted the most sympathetic of the millions of illegal immigrants – those brought to the United States as children, who in many cases consider themselves American, speak English and have no ties to or family living in their native countries.

… Critics called the bill a backdoor grant of amnesty that would encourage more foreigners to sneak into the United States in hopes of being legalized eventually.

There’s a great deal of nonsense and misdirection in the AP’s characterization of the bill. Posted at Michelle Malkin’s blog, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama punctures it nicely with ten clear points. Here are a few of them:

1. The DREAM Act Is NOT Limited to Children … H.R. 6497 includes a requirement that aliens be under the age of 30 on the date of enactment to be eligible for LPR (legal permanent resident) status. … The bill’s 30 year old age cap on “children” only applies to date of enactment, and the registration window will remain open indefinitely regardless of future age.

3. The DREAM Act PROVIDES SAFE HARBOR FOR ANY ALIEN, Including Criminals, From Being Removed or Deported If They Simply Submit An Application … , amazingly H.R. 6497 still protects ANY alien who simply submits an application for status no matter how frivolous.

6. Conservative Estimates Suggest That At Least 1.3 Million Illegal Aliens Will Be Eligible For the DREAM Act Amnesty. In Reality, We Have No Idea How Many Illegal Aliens Will Apply … It is highly likely that the number of illegal aliens receiving amnesty under the DREAM Act will be much higher than estimated due to widespread fraud and our inherent inability to accurately estimate the illegal alien population. Estimates also fail to account for the chain migration which will inevitably occur once these illegal aliens are naturalized, and for children who will be eligible years down the road.

7. The DREAM Act Does Not Require That An Illegal Alien Finish Any Type of Degree (Vocational, Two-Year, or Bachelor’s Degree) As A Condition of Amnesty … the bill is careful to ensure that illegal alien high school drop-outs will also be put on a pathway to citizenship – they simply have to get a GED and be admitted to “an institution of higher education.”

Points 1 and 6 directly refute the AP item’s claim that the DREAM act only involves “hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.”

For those who need reminding, the AP’s irresponsible take on yesterday’s result is what most news readers, listeners and viewers will see, as its local and regional news, TV, and radio subscribers heavily rely on it to deliver content their staffs do not have the time or resources to assemble. The 85% of the population that is relatively disengaged (maybe, thanks to the Tea Party movement, it might be down to 80% ) will likely swallow what they see and hear, making Republicans look like the meanies who killed the bill.

The fact is that in the final analysis, it was six Democrats who appear to be deeply concerned about their political survival — three of whom must face the voters in 2012 (Manchin, Nelson, Tester) — who stopped the DREAM Act from becoming a nightmarish reality.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: Rick Moran at American Thinker — “Run away! Manchin AWOL for DREAM act and DADT votes.” It seems like Manchin’s “No” on the DREAM Act would have been at least as easy as the others, given that Manchin’s predecessor, the later Robert Byrd, was, for all his shortcomings, a strong illegal immigration opponent.

From New Orleans:

Dec 18, 12:47 AM EST

Drew Brees has New Orleans swinging, singing and trumpeting their Saints like never before.

When the Rebirth Brass Band tears it up during one of their late night shows at a funky old neighborhood bar, the tin-walled place bounces to a drum beat and a tuba’s bass line.

Their song goes like this: “We used to say ‘Who dat’ since way back when / Now we’re saying ‘We dat’ every time we win / You can write it down, take a picture, tell a friend / We already done it. We’re gonna do it again.”

Brees is a big reason New Orleanians can smile and boast. Not only did the reigning Super Bowl MVP turn around the Saints’ football fortunes and bring the city its first NFL championship in February, he’s become a civic leader as his adoptive hometown recovers from a time of turmoil and suffering.

That record of accomplishment is why the down-to-earth quarterback was voted the 2010 Male Athlete of the Year, chosen by members of The Associated Press.

… The place Brees finds himself now is even more remarkable when you consider that he came to New Orleans having been unceremoniously discarded by the San Diego Chargers after a career-threatening injury to his throwing shoulder. New Orleans was at its nadir in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Saints needed a lift and their new, undersized quarterback was looking for a second chance.

Brees embraces the chance to talk about those moments, because in his mind, they are linked with the success that followed.

“I believe that 100 percent. New Orleans is the last place I ever thought I’d be,” Brees said. “The Saints organization and team didn’t have that great a reputation prior to (2006) and so it was probably not the most attractive place for anybody to come. Then right after the storm, the city’s destroyed and everybody’s displaced and I look back on those times and it was like we were really starting over.”

… Since 2006, he has thrown for more yards (22,153) and touchdowns (150) than any NFL quarterback and in the process set club records in both categories. His 70.6 completion percentage in 2009 set a single-season NFL record.

He took the Saints to their first NFC title game in his first season with the club and to a championship in his fourth with a 31-17 win over the Indianapolis Colts in Miami. Brees completed 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards and two TDs in the Super Bowl without an interception. Now the Saints are 10-3, hitting double-digit wins for the third time in five seasons and in another playoff race.

Go here for the full story.

Did you know that the “big new tax law” signed by President Obama yesterday “will save taxpayers, on average, about $3,000 next year,” and that it will have “tax breaks for being married, having children, paying for child care, going to college or investing in securities”?

Don’t spend that extra $3,000 yet, because it mostly won’t be there. With the only major exception being the 2-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, and of course barring new legislation the next Congress may take on, the tax laws for the next two years will essentially be the same as they have been since 2003, when Congress lowered marginal income, capital gain, and dividend income tax rates.

This lack of major change didn’t stop the Ministry of Propaganda — er, the Associated Press — and reporter Stephen Ohlemacher from calling the new legislation “the most significant new tax law in a decade,” when there’s almost nothing “new” about it, or from trumpeting how much certain American families will “save” as a result.

Here are a few paragraphs from Ohlemacher’s report:

What will the big new tax law mean for you?

It’s the most significant new tax law in a decade, but what does it mean for you? Big savings for millions of taxpayers, more if you have young children or attend college, a lot more if you’re wealthy.

The package, signed Friday by President Barack Obama, will save taxpayers, on average, about $3,000 next year.

But many families will be able to save much more by taking advantage of tax breaks for being married, having children, paying for child care, going to college or investing in securities. There are even tax breaks for paying local sales taxes and using mass transit, and a new Social Security tax cut for nearly every worker who earns a wage.

Geez, Steve, everything you just mentioned has been there for eight years, and you’re treating the ideas as some kind of new, wonderful tax-saving opportunities.

It isn’t until the fourth paragraph that Ohlemacher owned up to the reality:

Most of the tax cuts have been around since early in the decade. The new law will prevent them from expiring Jan. 1. Others are new, such as the decrease in the Social Security payroll tax. Altogether, they provide a thick menu of opportunities for families at every income level.

This is very “clever” writing by Ohlemacher. He and his AP bosses know that the story will stop at the second or third paragraph when read over the air at many if not most subscribing AP radio and TV outlets. This will leave relatively disengaged viewers and listeners with significant misimpressions about what has just occurred, including a key one: that even though everyone is somehow better off (mostly not true), “the wealthy” (really those with high incomes) are somehow disproportionately benefiting.

This second item is definitely not true. Had income tax rates gone up, the hits to middle and upper middle income taxpayers as a percentage of their take-home pay would have been higher than the hits on the highest income earners. Additionally, the Social Security tax reduction is capped at 2% of the first $106,800 of earnings, so the maximum savings is $2,136, even if you earn a million.

In later paragraphs, Ohlemacher used tax estimates from The Tax Institute at H&R Block to show how much four example taxpayers would “save” as a result of the new law, even though, again with the exception of the 2-point Social Security tax break, essentially nothing changes. His constant reference to “lower rates” when there won’t be any beyond Social Security justifies my Ministry of Propaganda reference at this post’s introduction. Income tax rates won’t be lower next year, Steve, no matter how many times you type “lower rates.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Los Angeles:

Dec 16, 2010 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Dr. Rich Meehan asks, “Did you want to see it?” about the molar he’s just extracted. His voice is matter-of-fact husky but at the same time compassionate over the Supremes’ golden oldie coming from a radio.

“Um hum,” says Tabia Salimu.

Meehan chuckles.

Now the 47-year-old woman is laughing, too. “It’s the only tooth I’ve got, yeah.” She shows him the sports section of the Los Angeles Times with a story about her 17-year-old son Yohance, a defensive end at Crenshaw High school with a 3.8 grade-point average, and says he has his sights set on going to the Air Force Academy.

“You’re not proud or anything?” quips the dentist. “How many at home?”

“I’ve got three at home now. We’re at the shelter. They hate when I call it home.”

“I’ll wrap the tooth up.” And Meehan, 76, glances down at the foam ball his patient is squeezing. “Boy, you getting ready to strangle somebody?”

This breaks her up again. “Pain management tool.”

“Now a couple things.” He explains how she can’t rinse her mouth out or brush her teeth on that side today because there are deep holes where the tooth’s roots were, which need to form a “nice blood clot.” Also, he says, she should eat and drink on the other side. Then he gives her some pressure bandages and tells how to put one back where her molar was and to bite down to help stop the bleeding.

“I’ve been eating on this side for about two weeks now because the pain has been so bad.”

“So wait till this heals up,” he says, adding, “Well, that’s about it. Thanks for being so patient. I know you had a long wait.”

“Well worth it!” she exclaims with a thumbs up, stepping down from the ancient dental chair patched with tape.

Bare-bones practice

The dentist from the South Bay has been driving down to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker’s dental clinic at Sixth and Gladys once a week for 18 straight years. He started while he still had a thriving practice in Torrance and just continued after he retired 12 years ago. It’s a bare-bones operation tucked back of “The Hippie Kitchen” soup kitchen and St. Francis Peace Garden with picnic tables among tall palms and leafy shade trees. The clinic is on the bottom floor of a nondescript cinder-block two-story with a multi-color mosaic of four big daisies on the front.

Meehan usually sees at least eight patients from 9 a.m. until about two o’clock in the afternoon every Friday. “We either do extractions, cleanings or fillings – and that’s it,” he reports. “We don’t do anything real heroic. If it’s a difficult extraction, like an impacted wisdom tooth, I refer them to County-USC Medical Center. They have some really good oral surgeon residents there. For dentures, they go to the Union Rescue Mission.”

Most of his patients are locals. They’re either homeless or live in nearby SRO (Single Room Occupancy) cheap hotels. But some come from far away, like Tabia Salimu, who took two buses and the Red Line train, a three-hour trip, to get here from a family shelter in North Hollywood, where she’s been living for almost two years. The need for dental care is so great on Skid Row that his patients are picked days before by a lottery. …

Go here for the rest of the story.