Here's a quote from a December 6 report from NPR: "Since the beginning of the Obama administration, Republicans have escalated the use of the filibuster to historic levels and have blocked nearly 20 percent of Obama nominees. . . . "*   Alas, no fact-checking over at NPR, unless by "historic" you mean "nonexistant".  The truth is, at least as far as judicial nominees go, Bush faced much worse obstructionism.  Some useful facts from Ed Whelan at NRO Bench Memos:

• Obama's has an 81% confirmation rate for appellate judges compared to Bush's 66% (oddly enough, for district court judges Bush did slightly better than Obama, but not by such a large margin).
• There were no successful filibusters in 2009-2010 against Obama's appellate nominees.  In 2011, there were two (nominees Goodwin Liu and Caitlin Halligan).  In 2003 - Bush's third year in office - there were nine, with Democrats beating back "cloture" petitions 19 times. 

If anything, the Senate GOP needs to get tougher with Obama.

The other interesting graph is from James Montier at GMO, and is even funnier.  This graphs the average estimate, from the experts, for the coming year's GDP against the actual GDP:

Of course, it isn't news to us -- or it shouldn't be -- that the consensus estimates of approved experts is often, maybe even mostly, wrong.  

But it always seems to take them by surprise.  

Why is that?

Those of you who hang around here occasionally know I'm a libertarian leaning Austrian.  One of Von Mises main points was his insistance on "the knowledge problem" - that gubmint can't POSSIBLY have the knowledge to correctly plan an eceonomy or, if it did, would be unable to do so.  So it was with great relish (and a little mustard on the side) that I read a recent article by Hernando De Soto in <gasp> the New York Times,

intro:

Here we are, three years into the global financial crisis, and we’re still flying blind. We don’t even know what we don’t know. What we do know is that we’re stuck in a huge contraction of private credit; no one is making enough loans and investments to expand or start businesses and get the economy growing. The remedies applied by U.S. and European governments tried to treat the symptoms — bad debts, shaky banks, floundering businesses, people losing their homes, rising unemployment, currency wars — and not the disease.

Had those symptoms been the real cause of the crisis, “vulture capitalists” should have swept in by now. They should have spotted the signals that send knowledge of who is in trouble and — following the laws of supply and demand — picked up on the cheap the potentially lucrative remains of the nonperforming assets and transactions, correcting the deficiencies that led to them.

go read the whole thing.  It won't make you feel better.  That's the idea.

or .... going downhill fast and unable to stop.

More GM recalls. “New GM Success Watch! The new, bailed-out, supposedly chastened but still UAW-organized General Motors is recalling 4,000 of its new small Sonics because of a potential brake defect. It’s not that a few of the car’s brake pads might malfunction. It’s that they forgot to put them on! Yikes. … P.S.: At least there’s been no UAW-management strife at the Orion Township plant that makes the Sonic, so we can rule that out. … Oh, wait. …”

it seems I jumped the gun with my optimism regarding the bulb ban.

GOP Fail: Light Bulb Ban Still Set for January 1st

Elizabeth Warren was not saying anything new.

Striking examples of such views may be found in the recently published book by Burton Folsom and Anita Folsom, FDR Goes to War. There the Folsoms present a meaty discussion of the congressional debate that occurred in 1943 in regard to bills eventually enacted in compromise form as the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943—the statute that, among other things, established income-tax withholding at the source. In that debate, the following statements were made in Congress:

Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.)—The government can at any time make income taxes as thumping big as the necessities of war require. Thus, if any plan does not raise enough money, taxes can at any time be increased. The government always has a moral if not actual lien on all our income. (p. 200, emphasis added)

Sen. Happy Chandler (D-Ky.)—[A]ll of us owe the government; we owe it for everything we have—and that is the basis of obligation—and the government can take everything we have if the government needs it. . . . The government can assert its right to have all the taxes it needs for any purpose, either now or at any time in the future. (p. 200, emphasis added)

Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.)—The public, with money in its pockets, will inevitably try to use this money to buy what it wants, what it may need. . . . [T]o check the forces making for inflation, we must direct our tax policy toward diverting an ever larger part of the funds of persons above subsistence levels into the Public Treasury. (p. 201, emphasis added)

So, lighten up, small-government friends. Be grateful that you must contend only with Warren, and not with the likes of Celler, Chandler, and Mills. Maybe there is progress after all.

Forbes has done a nice job bringing down Dingy Harry's whopper.

Here's the Q&D:

Reid said

“Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist… Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1 percent, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators…Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They don’t do much hiring and they don’t need tax breaks.”

Taking their cue, National Public Radio launched a search for one millionaire job creator. They triumphantly announced:

“NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.”

And now the math:

236,883 tax files with income of over $1 million.  Reid sez a "small %".  Is 5% small enough?  That leaves 236,765.  

Reid sez they're lawyers and hedge fund managers.  Actually only 16k are.  Down to 236, 867.  And according to Reid they bring in $221 BILLION dollars on there own - without hiring anyone!

 Really, Harry?  REALLY?