YouTube video from the Republican National Committee:

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From a Politico item on the possibility that Ron Paul might win the Iowa Caucus: "if Paul were to finish first, many Iowa GOPers believe that would be hard for the Hawkeye State to recover from in terms of maintaining premiere status in the nominating process."

Previous Iowa caucus winners include Mike Huckabee (2008), Bob Dole (1988, 1996), and George H.W. Bush (1980).

The Telegraph has a story about a property rights revolt inside Communist China:

For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt.

The last of Wukan's dozen party officials fled on Monday after thousands of people blocked armed police from retaking the village, standing firm against tear gas and water cannons....

Wukan's troubles began in September, when the villagers' collective patience snapped at an attempt to take away their land and sell it to property developers.

Sounds like Kelo or Atlantic Yards. Not to blur the distinction between Communist China and America. But property rights are a pretty core issue.

China today said it will impose punitive tariffs of 12.9% on GM cars and 8.8% on Chrysler cars, on top of the 25% tariff that already applies to imported cars, in what a Bloomberg article says is seen as retaliation for President Obama's decision to impose "duties of as much as 35 percent in September 2009" on tires imported from China.

If nothing else, the Chinese understand the concept of state-owned enterprises and their political implications.

The Boston Herald has a news article about the Electronic Benefit Transfer cards that Massachusetts uses to provide welfare benefits being used to buy crack cocaine:

Undercover cops allegedly used EBT cards at the market on several occasions to withdraw $80 in cash at a time, which was used to buy $40 worth of crack. The other $40 would be kept by the store as a fee, Essex First Assistant District Attorney Jack Dawley said in Lynn District Court yesterday. An undercover state trooper also witnessed many "blatant drug deals using EBT cards" at the store, Dawley said....

In the wake of Herald reports that found EBT cards were used to buy booze, lottery tickets, jewelry and other luxuries, the Legislature created a panel to review the program. O'Connell, who chairs it, wants restrictions on what can be bought. Current rules allow welfare recipients to withdraw up to $300 in state cash per month, in addition to federal food stipends.

The Cato Institute's Daniel Mitchell deconstructs Senator Schumer's fiscal history: "Schumer said, "…Republicans came in and said, 'We can solve your problem by shrinking government'…We tried their theory."

Says Mr. Mitchell, "What's remarkable about this statement is that it's so inaccurate that we can't even decipher what he means. I've come up with three possible interpretations of what he might have been trying to say, and they're all wrong."

A Democratic congressman from California, Dennis Cardoza, has an op-ed piece that runs under the headline "Dem lawmaker blasts 'Professor Obama' as arrogant, alienating." He says, "Many on the Democratic side wish Hillary Clinton, Gov. Jerry Brown (Calif.), Gov. Martin O'Malley (Md.) or Gov. Andrew Cuomo (N.Y.) were running instead." Best line in the piece about Professor Obama is this: "Let me be clear — I'm not trying to disparage professors."

Clark Judge has an interesting take on President Obama's Osawatomie speech: "most Americans now work as part of — or in close proximity to — entrepreneurial teams. They live in an economy that is fundamentally different than the one of which TR spoke in 1910 (the year he delivered his 'New Nationalism' address)...Appeals born of those other times do not speak to our experience today. The tragedy of Barack Obama is that under the banner of' progressive,' he is the most backward looking political leader in memory."

Marco Rubio had an op-ed piece about a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that "I have joined all 47 of my Senate Republican colleagues in supporting." He says it includes "a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes, a three-fifths supermajority to increase the debt limit and a cap on all federal spending at 18 percent of gross domestic product."

Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were able to balance the budget without a constitutional amendment. It'd be nice if the current crop of politicians could do the same without a constitutional amendment forcing them to do so.

Mona Charen writes:

The headline reads like something from The Onion: "U.S. Navy Paying $15 a Gallon for Green Fuel." But it's real enough.

It seems that, fresh from its success with Solyndra, the Obama administration is slated to spend $12 million to buy a biofuel/gasoline blend that runs $15 a gallon to power a portion of the Navy's fleet in a demonstration project.

The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for a nationwide ban on use of cellphones while driving, including hands-free devices like speakerphones, Bluetooth headsets, and the like. What's next? Are they going to ban listening to conservative talk radio while driving? Drinking coffee kept in a car cup-holder?

I'm as annoyed as the next guy is by the car in front of me swerving or driving at an erratic speed while the driver (I'm not going to engage in any stereotypes about gender) yammers away at the phone held in the driver's hand to the driver's ear. But it seems to me the answer is in better enforcing existing laws against reckless driving, rather than taking away cellphone privileges from the rest of us who use them responsibly. As others have noted, there's been a tremendous rise in the number of drivers with cellphones over the past 20 years or so, without anything like a commensurate increase in highway fatalities. Another example of overreach in government regulation.

My Webster's Second Unabridged dictionary defines a millionaire as "a person whose wealth comes to at least a million dollars, pounds, francs, etc." Somewhere along the line, the New York Times, and President Obama, seems to have changed their definition from an asset-based one to an income based one. From an article in today's Times:

Under the Republican bill to extend a payroll tax holiday scheduled to be voted on in the House as early as Tuesday, those Americans with gross adjusted income over $1 million would no longer be eligible for food stamps or jobless pay...Yet as it turns out, millionaires on food stamps are about as rare as petunias in January.... some millionaires do indeed pursue unemployment pay when they find themselves out of job.

From 2005 to 2009, millionaires collected over $74 million in unemployment benefits, according to an estimate by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who has paired with Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, to push to end the practice.

The foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, is one of the smartest and best guys around. He gave a tremendous speech on November 28 in Berlin about the crisis of Europe that is worth reading in its entirety: the best explanation of what's going on in Europe and what should be done about it that I have seen.

To me the most interesting parts were those addressed to Germany:

as you know best, you are not an innocent victim of others' profligacy. You, who should have known better, have also broken the Growth and Stability Pact and your banks also recklessly bought risky bonds... because investors have been selling the bonds of exposed countries and flying to safety, your borrowing costs have been lower than they would have been in normal times, so you may be benefitting in the short term, but... if your neighbours' economies stall or implode, you will suffer greatly, too.

And the summation:

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