THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† Obama - Not McCain - Will Be Bush III: This is what democracy looks like? Occupy Wall Street protesters have finally figured out that President Barack Hussein Obama is owned by the corporate donors who feed his campaign coffers, and mobilized to protest one of the three – count ‘em, three – fundraisers he attended in NYC last night, The New York Times reports:

More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama. …

Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.

One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”

Ben Campbell, 28, one of the march’s organizers, said he hoped to prove to skeptics of the protests that the demonstrators were political critics of equal opportunity.

“President Obama is coming to town solely to raise money from the richest of the rich,” Mr. Campbell said.

Just before Obama’s scheduled 9 p.m. arrival at the Sheraton hotel on Seventh Avenue and 53^rd Street police declared the area a “frozen zone” and held the protesters – some against their will –behind the barricades until the president left.

† There’s Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And Lip: Some legal and policy experts think ObamaCare is a zombie that will be difficult to kill – even if the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate and/or the provision that expands Medicaid to cover a larger number of people. “[T]here may be no going back,” according to The New York Times:

No matter what the Supreme Court decides about the constitutionality of the federal law adopted last year, health care in America has changed in ways that will not be easily undone. Provisions already put in place, like tougher oversight of health insurers, the expansion of coverage to one million young adults and more protections for workers with pre-existing conditions are already well cemented and popular.

As The Associated Press explains, “[s]ome legal disputes, like the 2000 presidential election, the court can settle. Others rage on, such as abortion”:

"Either way it rules, the Supreme Court decision will not end the debate on health care," said former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, an influential Democratic adviser. "It is, and will largely remain, a debate on the role of government." …

If the court strikes down the law's unpopular linchpin – the so-called individual mandate requiring most Americans to carry health insurance – the administration would take whatever's left and try to put that in place. That includes a major expansion of Medicaid for low income people, a host of new rules for insurance companies, and cuts for hospitals, drug companies and other providers serving Medicare recipients. …

The demise of the mandate to carry coverage would create a real crisis for the insurance industry. Insurers may be forced to accept patients who apply after getting sick, but at the same time deprived of a larger pool of insured people over which to spread their costs.

Administration lawyers maintain that if the mandate is struck down, the requirement that insurers accept people in poor health should also be invalidated. But the justices don't have to follow that advice.

Sooner or later, the whole muddle could wind up back in Congress.

Or, a Republican can win the White House and sign an executive order to nullify key portions of the bill by exempting states from them. Maybe not, says the Congressional Research Service, in a report that was issued in response to a request by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). The Washington Times reports:

Courts likely would view an executive order to block new initiatives mandated by the law – such as insurance exchanges and a massive Medicaid expansion – as massively overstepping a president's constitutional boundaries, the agency concludes.

"Such an executive order would likely conflict with an explicit congressional mandate and be viewed 'incompatible with the express ... will of Congress,' " says the report.

But Mr. Coburn, a strident opponent of the health care law, said the report still leaves open many opportunities for executive orders to be used to hinder the law.

The agency concedes that executive orders could be used on discretionary pieces of the law, where decisions about developing guidelines or implementing a program are left up to the Department of Health and Human Services.

"You can't get rid of the exchanges, or the Medicare cuts or the Medicaid expansion," Mr. Coburn said. "But you could absolutely gut the vast majority of it."

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Between 2008 and 2010 one in five Americans became “economically insecure,” as measured by the Economic Security Index, and a poll by CBS News finds that 33 per cent will not have enough money for holiday shopping, The Daily Mail of London reports:

The report, compiled by Yale professor Jacob Hacker's Index team, evaluates census data and looks at a family's income, savings, and medical bills when determining who is considered economically insecure.

Unemployment rates are clearly linked to the figures, and are similarly grim. The national unemployment rate is currently 9.1 per cent.

In a sign of the times, The New York Times reports that at the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School in Midland, MI – “the nation’s oldest, most celebrated, school for would-be Santa Clauses” – would-be Santas are being taught to “swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency – ‘Can you bring my parent a job?’”:

Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. On the flip side, some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item – a pair of sneakers that actually fit.

“In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Mr. Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures here. He has devised his own tale about a wayward elf and slowed toy production at the North Pole for children who are requesting a gift clearly beyond their family’s price range. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors

† Imported From Detroit: After one of its electric cars caught fire as a result of crash testing (related article, sixth item on the page), General Motors has been contacting Chevrolet Volt owners to tamp down fears about the vehicle’s safety. For those who refuse to be mollified, GM will provide a standard gas-guzzling loaner car until the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concludes its formal investigation into the incident involving the $39,995 car, USA Today reports.

† “Daddy, What Causes Global Warming?”: Commenting on the latest batch of private e-mails between several prominent climate scientists to be leaked anonymously onto the Internet in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, James Delingpole notes that like the original Climategate e-mails leak of 2009 (related article, seventh item on the page) these show them “fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.” Those who are particularly invested in the myth of man-made global warming are apoplectic:

The new release of emails was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the original Climategate leak and with the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa.

And it has already stirred strong emotions. To Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), for example, the leaker or leakers responsible are attempting to "sabotage the international climate talks" and should be identified and brought "to justice."

One might sympathize with Mr. Markey's outrage if, say, the emails were maliciously rewritten or invented. But at least one scientist involved – Mr. Mann – has confirmed that the emails are genuine, as were the first batch released two years ago. So any malfeasance revealed therein ought to be blamed on the scientists who wrote them, rather than on the whistleblower who exposed them.

As have others before him, Delingpole, author of "Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors" (Publius Books, 2011), asks a question for which climate change believers have no satisfactory answer: “If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the Climategate e-mails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view?”

† A Post-Coital Cigarette (last item on the page): This orgasmic hagiography by Politico's Jennifer Epstein rivals a similarly climactic effort in 2009 by The Associated Press's Liz Sidoti:

President Barack Obama has plenty of critics – Republicans, liberals, the media – but the person hardest on the president, his administration and the Democratic Party is, at times, Barack Obama.

Obama has admitted that he’s “screwed up,” is “frustrated” and might only deserve one term in the White House. He’s acknowledged that he hasn’t fulfilled campaign promises and has admitted that the change he vowed to bring to Washington hasn’t arrived.

Whether the self-critiques are born of political savvy, humility or candor, they help establish the president as an honest, sympathetic figure heading into the 2012 election, a leader willing to acknowledge that the sky-high expectations for his 2008 hope-and-change campaign have fallen short in reality. …

Obama’s self-critiques began early in his term – a notable departure from his predecessor, George W. Bush, who wasn’t known for his introspection.

Several sycophantic Obama supporters attribute his “public self-doubt” to his “honesty” and to his being “relentlessly honest” but others view his “self-flagellation” as “prebuttals to criticism from opponents and acknowledgments of Americans’ suffering during a prolonged economic downturn.”

Here’s another possibility: The narcissistic Obama is just fishing for compliments. When he says, “I screwed up” the listener is supposed to immediately respond, “You did better than anyone else could have. It’s Bush’s fault things didn’t turn out as we all hoped.”

[Hat Tip: OpinionJournal]

† Affirmative Action Is Antithetical To A True Meritocracy: The Washington Times took note of an observation about Michelle Obama by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that The Stiletto made in a different context (emphasis, The Stiletto):

How about connecting with the American people about being Americans? I don't think she's happy. I don't think they like being in the White House. The American people can tell that. They don't seem thrilled at the fact the American people have selected them as our first family. I don't sense the gratitude, the happiness level, the thrill of being president."

† BHO Blooper Reel: After Iranian protesters overran the British Embassy in Tehran, President Barack Hussein Obama condemned the outrage in a press conference, during which our geographically challenged president (related article, third item on the page) kept referring to the “English Embassy” – which would have been front-page news, had Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain made the gaffe. The Heritage Foundation blog The Foundry reports:

In case the president is unaware, England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. There is no such thing as an “English” embassy anywhere in the world, and there hasn’t been one for several centuries. …

[I]t would be nice if the leader of the free world bothered to look at a map once in a while.