Another reason to vote for Ron Paul: “See this
room – two thirds of us laid off when Ron Paul’s president, ” says

establishment media humanoid: 

Employment Green Shoots! ADP National
Employment Report has 325,000 private-sector jobs
created in December, double some estimates, and up from 204,000
jobs added in November.

Meanwhile, Department of Labor says

new unemployment claims dropped 15,000 to 372,000 in the final
month of 2011. Both figures are subject to year-end accounting and
holiday distortions and are expected to be revised. 

Chevy Volt recall: Government-run General
Motors is asking
8,000 owners to return their Volt electric cars to Chevy
dealerships for structural work around the vehicles’ batteries. The
move is “considered a step below a recall, which would be issued by
a car company and the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.”

Another group of winners in redevelopment ban:

California counties benefit as moribund redevelopment agencies
stop siphoning property taxes. (Now how about giving back some of
the wealth to property owners who pay the taxes in the first
place?) 

Union man takes sick time: Bruce Dow, chief
executive of Screen Actors Guild pension fund, takes a health-related
leave of absence as embezzlement scandal (which involved a
former fund executive) heats up. 

Another superstore on the ropes:
Barnes Noble considers selling off its Nook e-reader. The
once-feared brick-and-mortar bookselling giant cops to having
“over-anticipated the growth in consumer demand for single purpose
black-and-white reading devices this holiday.” That’s
because they weren’t reading Reason. 

NFL Wild Card Weekend coming up. Prophecies
from
ESPN,
Times of New York,
USA Today,
Montreal Gazette.