Tonight’s fun facts relate to the strike by the group a Reuters report describes as “500 clerical workers at the ports, members of the relatively small Office of Clerical Union Workers” at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The strikers’ picket lines have been honored by “some 10,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.”

These fun facts are rarely mentioned, but readers will want to learn them, and the rest of the country also should be quite interested. Though they could conceivably be elsewhere, I only found them mentioned in one Associated Press item from two days ago currently carried at Google News. It’s a good thing it’s there, because it appears to be gone from the AP’s national web site. In fact, a search there at 11 p.m. ET on “Los Angeles ports” (not in quotes) came up empty. The fun facts are not in the aforementioned Reuters story, a very long AP story from November 28 found at the San Jose Mercury News, or a related November 30 New York Times story. The fun facts, and a link to the AP story, are after the jump:

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The economy was on its way to a budgetary balance five years ago, but leftists want us to remember otherwise:

The first two charts are from a Friday Investor’s Business Daily editorial. The third is from Reason (HT Instapundit).

You might think I will argue that if it weren’t for the Democratic Congress’s spend-happy cadre taking control of Congress in 2007 and beginning serious budgetary damage at the beginning of fiscal 2008, the nation might have seen a balanced budget within a year or two.

I’m not going to argue that. I will instead argue that it weren’t for the Democratic Congress’s spend-happy cadre taking control of Congress in 2007 and beginning serious budgetary damage at the beginning of fiscal 2008, the decades in the making blowup in housing and mortgage lending brought by Democratic Party legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act and hundreds of billions of dollar of fraudulent misrepresentation of loan quality made to ratings agencies by Democratic Party crony-driven “government-sponsored enterprises,” the nation might have seen a balanced budget within a year or two.

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

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From Bogota:

Nov 30, 2012 / 04:03 pm

A study revealed that the vast majority of young people in Colombia reject abortion, “gay marriage” and the legalization of drugs, as the country debates measures on all three issues.

The Nov. 23-25 analysis was carried out by the Ipsos Napoleon Franco firm and published by Semana magazine.

Among 18-24 year-olds, 74 percent oppose abortion and the legalization of drugs, while 68 percent those aged 25-34 oppose both issues.

The study also showed that 58 percent of young people aged 18-24 do not agree with same-sex “marriage” and that 56 percent of those aged 25-34 also disagree with the practice.

A total of 1006 Colombians from thirteen different cities took part in the survey.