I first took note of Herman Cain back in September over at Noonan for Nevada – but now what was just a blogger idea is becoming a bit more real. From Daily Caller:

Former Godfathers Pizza chief executive Herman Cain says he’s definitely forming an exploratory committee — likely within the next several weeks — to test the waters for a possible Republican presidential run in 2012.

Cain, a radio talk show host and favorite of the Tea Party movement, confirmed the news in an interview with The Daily Caller. He suggested that a presidential campaign is likely, but said he hasn’t made a final decision…

“Longshot” doesn’t begin to describe this – but, also, it doesn’t really matter. The American people are hungry for a renewed America; genuine reform which will put the people in the driver’s seat and secure for ourselves and our children a nation strong in every respect. Herman Cain may or may not end up being the person to lead us there – but he’s a darn sight better than what we’ve got right now.

He’s a man who rose on hard work and strong faith – you can go to the Draft Cain website to see plenty on his background and his views. I wish him the best of luck in his effort – and we’ll see if he really has the stuff in him to be President.

Megan McArdle wants to know:

An interesting question emerges from one of my comment threads on whether or not congress should be able to use the taxing power to get over limits on its enumerated powers.

1) Can Congress enact a $50,000 tax on second term abortions?

2) Can Congress enact a $50,000 tax increase, which is then rebated to anyone who does not have an abortion?…

Like McArdle I don’t want to hear in this thread any arguments on the morality of abortion or the merits of “choice”: I only want to hear someone argue for or against the power of the government to tax such things as abortions under the inter-state commerce clause…especially since, as McArdle also points out, people do cross State lines to obtain abortions while you can’t even buy health insurance across State lines.

If the government’s power to tax is unlimited, then we can tax out of existence anything we like and, of course, tax subsidize in to existence anything we prefer. As a conservative, I hold that there are strict limitations on the government’s power to tax – but what of you liberals? You seem to have no limit to what cannot be taxed and what cannot be subsidized in the tax code. And if we were to follow your apparent lead in this matter, then a GOP Congress allied with a GOP President could impose a $50,000 tax on abortions and, poof, only the very rich would be able to afford them…whammo!, abortion is illegal without any of that tedious bit about the Constitution.

What say you, liberals? Will you, even now, retreat from your position? Remember, if you don’t we can tax you out of existence…on the other hand, if you retreat, then things like ObamaCare will become impossible. So, think carefully – and let us know what you believe.

From the Daily Mail:

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill…

…The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910…

There’s this thing called weather, boys and girls, and it is the result of an absolutely stupendous set of variables. Indeed, human beings cannot begin to calculate all of the parameters which go in to make, say, a day of 23 degree weather in London and 71 degree weather in Algiers. With all the variables available, if you figure you are seeing either a steady rise in average temperatures, or a steady decline, the first thing you must do is realize that you know so little that it will be impossible for you to pin-point one, single item which is the primary cause of the observed change.

And that is what is wrong with global warming – it asserts that one thing, man-caused CO2 emissions, are the primary factor in what some people say they observed as a rise in temperatures even though they lack sufficient data to even be sure that temperatures were rising, at all. The global warming theory wasn’t science – not in the least; it was guess which was taken over by people who wanted to obtain power and wealth without working for it. It was an absurd idea from start to finish.

Now, these frigid temperatures are being heralded by some as the precursor to some sort of global cooling trend. This is as dumb as the people who assert global warming. No one knows – no one can know. We can make some educated guesses, but nothing which anyone should set policy by more than a week out. Next winter might be mild – or we might be in for a long series of frigid winters. It will be what it will be – and nothing we say or do can alter what the weather will be like…not now, not 100 years from now.

But Democrats aren’t – from Byron York over at the Washington Examiner:

…A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether — while Democrats roll on…

York goes on to note how the Democrats refused to pass a budget before November 2nd – probably because of this continuing addiction to pork. They didn’t want it to show up in votes right before November – but now that November is over, all the pork was shoved in to the OmniWaste bill as Democrats tried to go on one, last binge of taxpayer dollars before they lose the House.

Now, the real battle will be keeping the GOP off the junk – addicts do have a problem with falling off the wagon, and we’ve got a couple of pork pushers in the GOP caucus (Cochran, we’re looking at you). But if we can keep the GOP on the straight and narrow, we’ll be doing what the people want, and we’ll reap the reward of public trust as we head in to 2012 – our grand chance to win full power, and thus reform America.

Just a great story for this time of year – and, indeed, for all times, from CBS Minnesota:

Christmas came early for a Twin Cities food bank struggling to keep up with the growing number of hungry families this holiday season.

The Emergency Foodshelf Network in New Hope stocks and serves more than 230 food pantries in Minnesota…

…Wednesday, a Christmas miracle arrived in a plain white envelope. Up front, administrative assistant Carol Deters opens up the mail. She just had a hunch.

“I said, I just love these mysterious envelopes because you never know what little goody you are going to find on the inside. And we opened it up and it was a check for $40,000,” Deters said…

God bless that generous person – remember, give what you can; even that extra dollar helps.

From SF Gate:

For the first time since 2008, inflation is hitting consumers in the stomach.

Grocery prices grew by more than 1 1/2 times the overall rate of inflation this year, outpaced only by costs of transportation and medical care, according to numbers released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics…

And, meanwhile, vast swaths of US agricultural land lie fallow – because our tax and regulatory system makes it unprofitable to farm. And, remember, farming isn’t just growing food – it also entails vast amounts of manufacturing to support the growing and transportation of the food. We’re killing our economy at the base – and now we’re starting to pay higher prices for the food (yes, I realize that part of this jump is the Fed printing money like mad – but as food prices have risen, there has been little or no discernible increase in the amount of land being farmed…in other words, even higher prices for the stuff isn’t encouraging expansion of the industry…so badly screwed up are our economic policies).

I know I keep harping on this – I know its got to be getting boring by now; I’m sure I’m starting to sound like a crank over it. But until we start making, mining and growing more of our own stuff, we’ll never get out of this. We can expect increasing scarcity and higher prices until we unleash our economy by removing the tax and regulatory penalties on wealth creation. We really have to tell the banksters, bureaucrats and, especially, the environmentalists to get stuffed. We’ve got more important things to worry about than “too big to fail” banks, government pensions and fricking guppies in a California river.

We can get serious, or we can continue to collapse. The choice is ours.

Here we go – from CNN:

…Parham, a 41-year old state employee, says her kids repeatedly ask for Happy Meals, mainly for the toys. “We have to say no to our kids so many times and McDonald’s makes that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat.”…

She’s being joined in the suit by the leftist group pressure group, Center for Science in the Public Interest – so, this is a very liberal thing to do. Want to know something? The lady has a point.

Let’s face this fact – McDonald’s relentlessly advertises their happy meals and other things in order to get kids to want them. The kids, in turn, pressure the parents in to buying the products. The parents, finally, give in because its easier than arguing. But here is what is being missed: in this oh, so liberal attempt to protect the kiddies from the nefarious effects of relentless propaganda, our liberals are entirely ignoring the fact that its not just happy meals being marketed.

In addition to the harmless-if-its-occasional happy meals, kids are being relentlessly sold on abandoning their religion, having sex at ever younger ages, obeying the dictates of an all-encompassing government (which will provide everything – education and housing and health care and abortions) and following slavishly the fashions put forward by corporate bosses. All of this is being done without parental permission, and with nary a peep about it from our liberals (or, indeed, by hardly anyone). What is at stake here, for our liberals, is just another idiotic attack on a particularly disliked corporation – what is missing here is the fact that if a McDonald’s happy meal was our primary problem, we’d have no problems, at all.

What would be the ultimate outcome of this liberal campaign if it won all down the line? I guess a ban on cheeseburgers – and liberals would probably feel pretty happy about that. But for people who are free of both the liberal as well as the corporate/government narrative, the reality is that we must shut off the anti-human propaganda before an entire generation of Americans are wrecked (though, of course, for a lot of liberals a wrecked generation is ideal – people who are moral ciphers are easily controlled by a Ruling Class). This is serious business – naturally, liberals concentrate on the trivial and don’t even consider the larger implications of their own words and actions.

We, as citizens, must address the real issue which liberals ignore. Do we want a society where parents, families and friends instruct the children, or a society where money- and power-grubbing elites create a mass of serfs ready for oppression? Without our leave, the youth of America is being taught to be lazy, indifferent, narcissistic and licentious. Do we have the courage to call a halt? Or will we, on our side, also miss the larger issue?

This is going to hurt, liberals – from Zogby:

Former Vice-Presidential candidate and Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin is the Person of the Year for 2010 according to a recent Zogby International survey. The poll, also names former President George W. Bush as the Person of the Decade (2000-2010)…

Obama pulled 16% against Palin for the year’s honors – and only 20% against Bush for the honors of the decade. This is a poll of 1,950 adults – so, just a poll of Americans.

So much for The One…lo, how the mighty have fallen!

Facing up to the fact that the times are, indeed, changing:

Democrats controlling the Senate have abandoned a 1,924-page catchall spending measure that’s laced with homestate pet projects known as earmarks and that would have provided another $158 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nevada Democrat Harry Reid gave up on the nearly $1.3 trillion bill after several Republicans who had been thinking of voting for the bill pulled back their support.

GOP leader Mitch McConnell threw his weight against the bill in recent days, saying it was in his words “unbelievable” that Democrats would try to muscle through in just a few days legislation that usually takes months to debate…

A bit of a triumph for fiscal sanity – as McConnell and other GOPers have suggested, what should happen is a “stand pat” continuing resolution to carry government operations through the next few weeks until the new Congress is seated and laws based upon the will of the American people can be considered.

UPDATE: Party like it’s 1773 – this is the anniversary of the Boston Tea party!