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James Taranto uncovered some monkey business at Chimpy McBushitler Hatred Headquarters.

GOP and the City and GOP and College found more monkey business on the MoveOn Web site.

Michelle Malkin rounds up reaction.

Michael Hiltzik, at the L.A. Times' Golden State blog, takes issue with an earlier post of mine on Black Friday performance (not before speculating about whether I’m a Trust Fund Baby, which didn’t seem entirely on-topic, but we’ll let that slide). My take is that the press was looking through its Gloomy Gus lens onto good Black Friday numbers—-a symptom of the press’ gloomy overall reporting on a good economy. His is that the gloomy reporting was warranted because Black Friday turned out not to be all it was cracked up to be. His source is the International Council of Shopping Centers:

The council’s Thanksgiving week snapshot is here: black_friday_sales.pdf. It shows that, for all the hoopla, chain store sales actually fell last week from the week before—-a week without a fancy moniker to make people think it’s something special. Sales were considerably higher last week than for the same week a year earlier, but the council cautions that last year’s post-Thanksgiving shopping days were a disappointment (bad weather in the Northeast creamed sales on Saturday and Sunday), making this a deceptively "easy" comparison.

So, admittedly, sales were “considerably higher” this year than last year, but we’re asked to ignore that because sales last year weren’t all that good anyway, and this year’s sales increase may not keep pace with the rate of inflation. All right, but it’s worth pointing out that the 3.5% projected increase Michael scoffs at would outstrip 2000 (2.4%), 2001 (2.2%), 2002 (.5%), and 2004 (2.4%), according to the same report. Only 2003 increased more, with 4%, just for perspective.

Michael doesn’t mention that the National Retail Federation says sales went up 22 percent this weekend compared to last year (though, to be fair, some are saying that number sounds so high as to be suspect). Or, that Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club are happy with their sales, projecting 4.3% gain over last year.

He also fails to mention online sales, which are going to be a huge story this year. The Washington Post has these tidbits:

Non-travel online retail sales rose 22 percent to $1.89 billion for the week ending Friday, compared to year-ago period, according to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm.

Nielsen/NetRatings said traffic to online shopping sites grew 29 percent year-over-year on Friday.

Yahoo! Shopping reported that the number of visits to its site rose 52 percent on Friday, better than the 30 percent jump expected.

"Cyber Monday" numbers are still being crunched, but Visa USA reports that folks spent $505 million online using their cards Monday, a 26% increase over last year.

From the WSJ Holiday Sales Tracker (subscription):

Amazon.com reported one million items were ordered from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. yesterday, compared with 660,000 items during the same time on Sunday. Online bag and shoe seller eBags announced that its sales jumped 60% on Monday from a year ago.

Nielsen/NetRatings reported that its holiday eShopping index, which tracks visitors to online-shopping sites from both home and work, saw 15% more traffic on Monday than on Friday. Online auctioneer eBay was the most visited site in the index on both days, logging over 9,000 unique visitors on Friday and more than 11,000 on Monday. Amazon had over 4,000 and 5,000, respectively.

The increase in online sales is pretty mind-blowing and a huge part of the holiday shopping season story, but it’s not a part of Michael’s assessment. He accuses non-gloomy folks of drawing economic conclusions from a "very limited perspective," and putting too much stock in one set of numbers—-a strange accusation in a post which relies on exactly one set of numbers for its "uh oh" headline and ominous warning of an obscured "dark reality." His post seems to enforce my original point about the press, which was that it tends to emphasize bad economic news at the expense of good economic news and perspective.

Michael's right that we can’t tell everything from one day of shopping. The picture will become clearer when everyone turns in their November sales numbers on Dec. 1. Until then, I’ve got one day and an entire trust fund to drop so that I can single-handedly boost the season’s numbers and prove the Gloomy Guses wrong. Whew, I better get to work.

UPDATE: Some more perspective on the overall economy, here, here, here, and here. Especially in the NYT piece, the tone is a bit gloom and doom, but the news is good.

UPDATE: More good economic news here, and here.

The Rumsfeld defense briefing was a lively one this morning, with Rummy getting raw on a couple of reporters with that "don't get stuck on stupid" tone he gets sometimes. His comments are all over the cable news networks right now, but "quitting is not an exit strategy" is the quote of the moment.

Rumsfeld also laid out some progress numbers, a good handful of which the AP, to its credit, lists in bullet points:

• U.S. forces have turned over control of about 29 military bases to the Iraqis.

• Baghdad's once-violent Haifa Street is now more peaceful and under the control of an Iraqi army battalion.

• The Iraqi army has seven division and 31 brigade headquarters in operation, compared with none in July 2004.

• The number of Iraq army battalions "in the fight" has grown to 95, compared to five in August 2004.

On Monday, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the number was 100, plus 30 battalions of Iraqi Special Police. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Todd Vician said the 100 total includes five Iraqi special forces battalions.

Four Western peace activists taken hostage in Iraq have been identified. The Jawa Report is, as usual, on top of the story with video translations and identifications:

American Thomas Fox of Clear Brook Virginia, Canadian Harmeet Singh Sooden, who lives in Auckland, New Zealand, Briton Norman Kember, and a man whose last name on the video is unclear, but sounds like James Loni of Canada.

More background, here. We can hope and pray that the story of these hostages ends in the same way Roy Hallums' did.

Lorie Byrd has an idea what it should be, and Republicans would be wise to listen:

A few months ago, I wrote that the president should be making the argument Dick Cheney made in a brilliant speech in July 2003 to the AEI. He said that knowing what we knew then, prior to invading Iraq, and looking at it in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks, it would have been irresponsible NOT to take action to remove Saddam Hussein:

"Now the regime of Saddam Hussein is gone forever. And at a safe remove from the danger, some are now trying to cast doubt upon the decision to liberate Iraq. The ability to criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy. But those who do so have an obligation to answer this question: How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?"

Zarqawi disowned again:

"We, the sons of the Bani Hassan tribe in all its branches in the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, support and express solidarity with our cousins, the al-Khalayleh clan, and their decision to sever relations with the terrorist Ahmad Fadheel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, who calls himself Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

Lieberman encouraged in Iraq:

Two-thirds (of Iraqis) say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

Hastert renames the Capitol "Holiday Tree" a Christmas Tree:

"The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.

PM Paul Martin on Canada's "alliance of Neo-Conservatives,":

"The Canada that is imagined by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives is starkly different from the Canada that we want to build... Stephen Harper sees no positive role for government, not in improving the lives of Canadians, not even in standing up for Canada."

Instapundit reader reaction to the fall of the Liberal Canadian Government:

Conservative bloggers have now taken down Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, and the fricken Canadian Government.

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham on pleading guilty to taking bribes:

"In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame."

Bush on Alito:

Judge Roberts is going to make a great Chief of the Supreme Court. And Sam Alito is going to make a really fine replacement for Arizonan, Sandra Day O'Connor. And Jon Kyl is going to be one of the leaders in making sure that Sam Alito gets confirmed in the United States Senate.

Captain Ed is watching the story, and remains ahead of the BBC and the American MSM.

Background on Adscam and the no-confidence vote Paul Martin will face, here.

UPDATE: From AP:

TORONTO - Canadian politicians will hit the campaign trail this holiday season after opposition parties seized upon a corruption scandal to bring down the minority government of Prime Minister Paul Martin in a vote of no confidence.

Monday's loss means an election for all 308 seats in the lower House of Commons, likely on Jan. 23. Martin and his Cabinet will continue to govern until then.

The Conservative Party teamed up with the New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois parties to bring down the government, claiming the ruling Liberal Party had lost its moral authority.

Ed Morrissey looks at what the collapse of the Liberal government means for Conservatives in Canada, here and here.

Bush is speaking live on immigration. You can watch, here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is live-blogging it.

Amnesty or no? K-Lo's take.

And Republican Robert McDonnell was named the winner in a close race for Virginia State Attorney General over Democrat Creigh Deeds. He won by 323 out of 1.9 million votes.

The Washington Post has a good, investigative piece today on a contractor who fleeced the city of Washington, D.C. and its taxpayers out of millions of dollars for doing next to nothing.

The headline, "Lavish Spending, Little Reward," says it all. This is the kind of thing that turned me into a small-government conservative. Just a few tidbits from Archie Prioleau's dealings with D.C.:

Archie Prioleau's finances were in shambles when District officials entrusted him with $1.7 million in grants in 1998. His mission was to outfit a state-of-the-art computer center in Southwest Washington to train needy city residents, then place them in jobs.

That's $1.7 million to a man who was just emerging from bankruptcy. Anyone know of a loan officer who would be just half that nice to me? I could really use a house in the D.C. area, and I'm not even bankrupt.

With the District's approval, he gave himself an $82,000 salary and paid his brother $8,000 as a consultant. He spent $25,000 for signature artwork and a matching stainless steel table. He bought $6,000 chairs, a new blue sport-utility vehicle and a silver van, personalized with vanity tags. He spent $143 to settle debts at a florist and rush a "Happy Birthday" bouquet to the D.C. Council member who approved his grants. He billed taxpayers for it all.

Over seven years, District officials sank nearly $5.4 million into his projects. Three city agencies gave him multiple contracts, and four others had a role in making sure he was paid.

But when Prioleau's foundation collapsed last year, the city's investment evaporated. Most of the furnishings had been sold at public auction after languishing in a warehouse for almost two years. About $195,000 worth of equipment was sold for slightly less than $9,000, just to pay a storage bill. Prioleau closed his training center.

But surely the city got something for all those years of investments in "DC Link and Learn."

Victor Selman, chief operating officer for the housing agency, said he believes the District got its "money's worth" but said there is no way to verify Prioleau's figures.

The Department of Employment Services, which paid Prioleau $3.1 million to train disadvantaged youths, said his nonprofit organization found entry-level jobs and other placements for 136 youths between 2000 and 2004.

$3.1 million to place 136 youths in entry-level jobs. That's $22,794 to place each person. That's also just a few thousand less than an entry-level salary on the Hill. Using roughly a year's entry-level salary to place someone in an entry-level job doesn't seem like the wisest of investments to me.

But Victor Selman feels the city got its "money's worth." Yes, Mr. Selman, it's easy to say that when the money you're talking about isn't yours.

Which reminds me of Larry Reed's Fifth Principle of Sound Public Policy:

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

The list of Prioleau's abuses is 7 years long, and the District's complacency about it lasted just as long. It took the Washington Post's investigation for city officials to notice the problem, even though a simple search of GuideStar would have shown his non-profit hadn't filed an IRS Form 990 recently, as required by law. Prioleau was "politically connected," "gregarious," and made all the right donations to the right campaigns.

He was not beholden to any constituents, donors, or city officials-- he just buttered up the right folks, picked up a check, and got busy helping no one. And the District's government is so busy running a thousand similarly unhelpful programs that it can't even be bothered to do the one thing a government should do-- protect its citizens by being good stewards of their money.

As a conservative, I just believe there are better ways to help people than this. More and bigger government programs inevitably mean more money for leather chairs and custom artwork, not for the people who really need it. Sadly, those who profess to be most interested in helping people also seem to be the most willing to give government a free pass and a blank check when it shows no progress at all.

The Washington Post does just that with its subhead on the Prioleau story: "Good Intentions Gone Awry." Good intentions, you say? Well, by all means, give the gregarious man another grant! We laugh now, but it could happen.

50 Cent wants to meet George W.

"He’s is incredible… A gangster. I wanna meet George Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him."

He already publicly disagreed with Kanye West's "Bush is racist" comment in early November. I don't know what to make of it, but there it is. I wonder when Fiddy will next be praised as a "powerful political voice" now that he's taking these kinds of positions.

Someone was asleep at the switch over at Camp Casey and let these pictures of Cindy Sheehan's dismal book-signing get out.

And, my favorite dark horse candidate for '08, Mark Sanford, fared better (90 votes) in Hugh's online poll than Majority Leader Frist. In the words of Lloyd Christmas, "so, you're tellin' me there's a chance!"

I just finished watching the second part of the Thomas Sowell interview on Fox, and loved his closing quote.

"Why are other people bound to do for you what you won't do for yourself?"

He always covers so much ground in one short quote or one short column. I could have used this exact quote a couple times this weekend when I was trying to explain to a childhood friend why socialism remains a terrible idea despite the fact that he thinks "Hugo Chavez has some pretty good ideas." Arrrggghhh, you gotta love a liberal college town.

Speaking of economics, Thomas Sowell is on Fox News tonight at 5:30 p.m., the first part in a two-part interview with Fred Barnes. There's lots of football on, but the miracle of DVR will allow me to watch both.

Click here for much more from Sowell.

You can always count on the press to put a gloomy tone on bright economic news. Check out these Black Friday headlines compared to the news inside the stories:

Big Sales Lure Reluctant Holiday Shoppers

Several major retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Macy's, as well as mall operator Taubman Centers Inc., estimated they drew bigger crowds for the official holiday season launch than last year.

Sure, there were a lot of shoppers, but they were very reluctant.

That Black Cloud Over Retail Has Brightened

An uptick of 7.2 percent in consumer spending in September and October, combined with falling prices at the pump, is providing "strong momentum" for the holidays, said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation.

Because, you know, what's an economic headline without "black cloud"?

The Baltimore Sun says, "although retailers face a challenging economy, early reports yesterday indicated a strong first day for the official shopping season."

The L.A. Times has more on the "challenging economy":

Broad stock market indexes posted their seventh consecutive daily advance Friday, eking out small gains in a half-day session on Wall Street.

The buying was enough to lift several indexes to multiyear highs, building on November's strong rally in share prices.

I would humbly suggest that several indices being pushed to multiyear highs is perhaps the lede instead of the "small gains" they "eked" out.

This Associated Press story runs under the headline, "Stocks Get Modest Retail Push":

NEW YORK -- Wall Street finished the week with moderate gains Friday, extending a November rally in light post-Thanksgiving trading amid signs of a strong start to the busy holiday shopping season.

The major indexes closed out their fifth straight winning week and remained at four-year highs. Stocks continued their monthlong advance, fueled by an improving economic backdrop and high hopes for solid retail sales that helped cast aside fears of a downturn.

Are four-year highs really modest? Here's hoping the rest of the Christmas shopping season is marked by such "black clouds," "modest gains," "reluctance," and "challenge."

I've been away all day, shopping with my family at the local mall. It's my first shopping outing ever on the day after Thanksgiving. My family generally spends the biggest shopping day of the year in front of the TV, but I have one brother who feels differently about Black Friday than the rest of us. To quote him:

"I like a crowded mall. It's a happy place."

He convinced us all to try it this year, and after stalking a couple bag-laden families through the parking lot to their cars, we swung into a space and spilled out of the car. He's right, by the way. It was a happy place, though I didn't get much done other than window shopping. I got one pair of jeans for myself because I wasn't mentally prepared this early in the season to buy for anyone else.

But while I've been eating cornbread stuffing, trying on jeans, and hanging out with my brothers for the past couple days, I've been absent from the blogosphere. I thought the same might be true of y'all, so here's an in-case-you-missed-it round-up of Turkey-weekend blogosphere activities:

Michael Jackson thinks "the Jews do it on purpose."

Daily Pundit discovers that CNN not only needs a new switcher, but some new customer service representatives wouldn't hurt.

Bare Knuckle Politics covers the Oakland liquor store attacks.

Gov. Bill Richardson has been fibbing about his baseball career.

Michael Barone on the plight of General Motors:

Throughout much of the 20th century liberals created adversarial institutions to rein in the power of large corporations: government regulation, labor unions, trial lawyers. All these impose costs on consumers and, it is now clear, ultimately on employees.

There's progress at the UN, brought to you by John Bolton. H/t Protein Wisdom.

Darleen Click finds that the U.S. Post Office won't be issuing any of those beautiful Madonna and Child stamps anymore.

Michelle Malkin reports on public school indoctrination in Vermont.

And, a Wizbang! reader sends a picture of another attack in the war on Christmas.

Don't forget to vote, below, if you haven't yet.

On a segment of "Your World with Neil Cavuto" tonight, Alan Colmes and Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) were arguing about Hugo Chavez's well-known generosity, which has recently been extended to the people of Massachusetts.

Mack suggested that the U.S. shouldn't accept such aid unless Chavez can back up his seeming altruism by being a little more giving with things like freedom of the press and speech in Venezuela.

Colmes: "No one is a saint, including many in our own government." (quote paraphrased, but that was the gist)

Ahh yes, Bush=Chavez.

Scott Ott spoofs Chavez, here.

I'm not much of a gamer. I still have an original Nintendo sitting next to my TV (complete with "Duck Hunt" and gun), which may actually be old enough to be cool and retro by now. Maybe?

But I'm intrigued by the Xbox 360, mostly because it appears to be the next in a generation of "electronic Swiss Army knives," as the Washington Post calls them. Your Blackberry/PDA makes calls, sends e-mails, and takes photos. Your iPod plays music and video. Now, your Xbox does this:

Broadband subscribers with an Xbox 360 in their homes will have options for free or for-pay access to Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, where they will be able to download movie trailers, arcade games and demos of the next cutting-edge titles...

The machine also can host video conference calls online and trade files with other computers in the home. Xbox 360 also is designed to exploit the dramatic resolution of high-definition television, and industry watchers are hoping it can spur sales of HDTVs.

That's what I'm talking about. Already, my DVR behaves in so many ways like my computer that I've begun to expect Internet capabilities from it. More than once, I've been trying to place an actor on TV and feel like I should be able to look him up on IMDB without switching from the remote to the mousepad.

Looks like it won't be too, too long before I'll be doing that. The Post's story says the new features have the potential to reach more women:

The fact that the Xbox 360 is being sold as more than a game machine is a risk, "but it's a risk that will likely benefit Microsoft in the long run," said Shannon Cusick, president of the Austin-based Orbis Games LLC, publisher of online games aimed at women.

"This will sound kind of silly, but telling women that they can do all these other things -- play DVDs, play solitaire, play their iPods -- in this game machine is a very good selling point."

Will the new Xbox succeed? The buzz right now is really tremendous, but it will probably take some time to determine whether Microsoft's shift of focus loses them the allegiance of pure gamers or earns them converted consumers.

As for the women question, I haven't been interested in a gaming system since about 1987, so I guess that's a good sign for Xbox. I'm also digging the design and the interchangeable faceplates, like classy woodgrain.

The Post's Style section took a break from bashing Bush-- err, I mean cultural criticism-- to do a really interesting story on the Xbox's designer, who works for Microsoft but is less of a techie than I am. The design is based on this sculpture.

I'm just eagerly awaiting the day when my geeky family can sit around and read blogs together on TV.