MICHAEL BARONE: Obama riles Dems by spurning New Deal complacency. “Perhaps the president is learning that you can’t plunder the private sector endlessly, Chicago-style, without ill effects.”

THE HILL: What Happens Next In The Tax Standoff: Three Scenarios.

AT AMAZON, recommended gifts for gadget lovers.

THE SHAME OF BEING JONATHAN TURLEY: Wait, Birmingham, Alabama is now run by black people? Why wasn’t I told? Well, maybe not shame. But at least deep embarrassment.

THE GROWTH OF Chinese inflation?

TOM MAGUIRE: Running On Empty. Heh.

SCIENCE: The George Clooney Effect – High-Earning Women ‘want Older, More Attractive Partners’, Research Finds.

MARK TAPSCOTT: Can You Guess Which Voice of Moderation On The Left Said This?

DAN MITCHELL: Killing Obama’s ‘Build America Bonds’ Is a Big Reason to Like the Tax Deal.

MICKEY KAUS: Obama An Unconvincing Triangulator:

If you suggest, as the president did, that the seemingly moderate plan you agreed to is awful and you’ll try to rescind it in two years, you won’t leave the center thinking, “He’s our guy!” You’ll leave them thinking, “Note to self: Remove Obama in two years.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: Mickey emails: “The sentences you generously excerpt from my triangulation item are, alas, from Peggy Noonan’s column. The problem is that the Newsweek layout software eliminates the indent that is there to indicate it’s a quote. This only seems to happen when it is next to an ad, making the column narrow.” Oops. Oh, well, they’re still good sentences.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Iran’s Other War.

25% OFF WOMEN’S INTIMATE APPAREL. You know what’s better than women in “intimate apparel?” Women out of “intimate apparel.”

UPDATE: Reader Charles Hill writes:

This reminded me of something I found in one of James Lileks’ books:

“Let us be frank about the purpose of lingerie…. It is not normal clothing. It exists for one purpose: to be, eventually, visible for a very short time. If it is visible for a very long time – and I am trying to be delicate about this – then it is not doing its job.”

Heh. Indeed.

ANN ALTHOUSE: A Columbia professor is arrested for incest — but isn’t there a constitutional right to incest between consenting adults?

Also, why are they only charging the man in what’s said to have been a consensual relationship between adults? Isn’t that an equal protection violation? Where’s the civil rights community on this?

RAND SIMBERG IS DISAPPOINTED: “Kristi Noem hasn’t even taken office yet, and she’s already defending home-grown pork as ‘stimulus.'”

THE EDUCATION BUBBLE AS A DEBT TRAP: “I’ve long thought that history would view the modern debt trap as a more sophisticated indentured servitude, and higher education is a central gear in that machine, with paper and plastic credit as the oil that makes the crank easier to work than it ought to be.”

AT AMAZON, Top Christmas Deals.

ED DRISCOLL: Rage Inside The Machine.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Explosions in Stockholm: Suicide Bomber Threatened Swedes, “Pig” Mohammad Cartoonist.

UPDATE: Christmas Jihad in Stockholm.

FEDERAL RESERVE: To the Cayman Islands, with love.

CHANGE: Law School Transparency group gets U.S. News to reform its disclosure of surveyed employment information.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS being held hostage. “With rising gas and food prices and the holidays quickly approaching, the Democrats zeal for taxing the rich has eclipsed the need to stimulate the economy and create jobs with unemployment compensation. As Pelosi states, it is ‘cruel’ not to extend the benefits and typically the Republicans are blamed for this cruelty. But, now it is the Democrats holding up the unemployment benefit extension. And no one seems to even notice.”

WHAT EVERY MAN NEEDS: Star Trek-style bedroom doors. I’m sure the chicks dig ’em.

16 UNEXPECTED health and beauty benefits of sex.

TIM NOAH: Ban The Benjamins! Hundred-dollar bills are for criminals and sociopaths. Why do we still print them? Actually, a lot of people use them. And when inflation takes off soon, we’ll be using them for Big Macs. We already quit making $500 bills for Noah’s reasons. But they make 500-Euro notes. And why is it the government’s business how we spend money?

UPDATE: Reader Daniel Maher writes: “I am a cashier at a supermarket. I see the $100 bill all the time. They are quite useful, actually, for families buying groceries. Two bags full of groceries and you’re almost at $100.00. We use the $20, $10, and $5 bills for change. It may be that some writers at Slate are so embedded in environmental chic that they see people who have children as criminals and sociopaths.” Or maybe they’re just big credit/debit card users. Not many Dave Ramsey cash-envelope budgeters at Slate, I’d guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails:

In monetary theory land, there’s a steady drumbeat of efforts to force all transactions into electronic form, for obvious surveillance and reporting reasons.

A cashless society would cut millions of people out of the economy…those who live the fringe, working “underground”. Folks like Noah will literally have blood on their hands if they get their way, and our poorest folks are simply severed from the economy.

They won’t be severed from the economy. They’ll be forced into dependence on the government. To the gentry class, that’s not a bug, but a feature.

MORE: Reader Jeff Brown notes another downside of a cashless economy:

For days, perhaps even a couple of weeks, after Katrina you couldn’t get make a charge purchase or get money from an ATM on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. It was cash on the barrel head if you wanted to buy plastic to cover exposed roofs, food, beer, etc. Unless of course, you just sat around and waited for the government man to come around and put you on the list for some help in a week or ten.

And from what I heard, if you banked at one of the local banks you were out of luck for quite a while since their processing centers were flooded.

Electronic money means you have to have the network, the bank and the transaction terminal all working at the moment of purchase. Cash requires the presses to work when the money is printed but after that it is asynchronous and fungible. Quite useful in a rough and tumble world.

I remember as a kid, when my grandmother would go to the bank only to be unable to make a withdrawal because the computers are down or having to go back in to reconcile her bank book with their computer for deposits.

Good point.

IS GETTING DUMPED EASIER, when your partner is gay?