INSTAVISION ON PJTV: I-Spy: Who’s spying on your Internet Activities? I talk with Jim Meigs of Popular Mechanics, who explains the creepy side of the information age. Corporations compile information on you. Can this information be used for nefarious purposes? What happens if a stalker gets a hold of your information? Find out by clicking here:
(Bumped).
SEN. BEN NELSON (D-Neb): “I think we can hold off on START.”
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Lame Ducks Should Stop Quacking And Go Home.
FROM MICHAEL YON, A WIKILEAKS UPDATE: PFC Bradley Manning’s Charge Sheet.
NICK GILLESPIE: Fareed Zakaria’s Right to Pay Higher Taxes Stops at My Right Not To.
We are in debt because we spend too much, not because we make too little as a country. Let’s say it again, this time in bold: We are in debt because we spend too much, not because we make too little as a country.
Fareed Zakaria, who surely makes well north of $250,000 a year, is welcome to give all his income to a government that has only managed a nominally balanced budget a handful of times since we beat the Axis powers.
But can he have the generosity not to include the rest of us who make far south of a quarter-mil a year in his delusion that higher taxes will mean smaller deficits?
Hey, Fareed: The Treasury accepts donations. Make one, and post the receipt.
FILED: Motion Asking Judge Reinhardt to Recuse Himself from the Prop. 8 Case.
UPDATE: Reinhardt’s response. (PDF).
UNDERMINING BIG GOVERNMENT: Wikileaks Sheds Light on Government Ineptitude.
WHY THE TEA PARTY resonates with human dignity.
POLITICO: GOP To Upend Spending Process. “The plans include slicing and dicing appropriations bills into dozens of smaller, bite-size pieces — making it easier to kill or slash unpopular agencies. Other proposals include statutory spending caps, weekly votes on spending cuts and other reforms to ensure spending bills aren’t sneakily passed under special rules.” Sounds good to me.
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Democrats’ Diversity Problem. “Republicans are making significant inroads in recruiting minority officeholders with crossover appeal.”
FEDERAL RESERVE BAILED OUT FOREIGN BANKS. “Foreign banks also benefited from the Fed’s aid. They included Swiss bank UBS, which borrowed more than $165 billion, Deutsche Bank ($97 billion) and the Royal Bank of Scotland ($92 billion). Many of the individual loans the banks took were worth billions and had short durations but were paid back and renewed many times.”
It was good practice for the coming EU bailout.
CAPTAIN’S JOURNAL: Iran busy inside Iraq? Why not get busy inside Iran?
THE PROGRESSIVE JOHN BOEHNER: “For some reason it took a male Speaker of the House to accomplish this: The nearly six dozen female members of the incoming House of Representatives will have a new restroom just as close to the chamber’s floor as their male colleagues. A sometimes significant comfort, given legislators’ propensity to blather.”
REBRANDING: President Obama: ‘I’m a Blue Dog Democrat.’
HMM: Obama backtracks on plan to open more Gulf waters to offshore drilling. “It also hints at what could be a new method of governing for President Obama in the wake of last month’s midterm elections, with the president attempting to set energy policy himself rather than incorporating Congress.”
PRO-PORK FALLOUT: Republican Earmarkers Already Enabling Higher Government Spending.
NO CHANGE: Report: Giant life insurance lobby key force behind estate tax. “The report highlights the contrast between the public perception of estate tax proponents as fighting to break up wealthy, almost oligarchic families and the reality that a key force behind the tax is an industry for which ten percent of its revenues depend on maintaining the status quo. One of the most outspoken voices urging a higher estate tax, Warren Buffet, owns six life insurance companies, the report says.”
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