QUESTIONS: Graham, McCain, and Ayotte demand to know who altered Rice’s talking points.

MAKING DEATH IN GAMES more like the real thing.

BRYAN PRESTON: What If The President Isn’t Bluffing? “But what if the president isn’t actually interested in getting things done? Or, to focus in a bit, what if the things the president wants to get done are not the things presidents usually want to get done?”

COSTCO TO PAY MASSIVE SPECIAL DIVIDEND to beat Obama tax hikes. “The special dividend will be paid Dec. 18 to shareholders of record on Dec. 10. That will allow investors to pay the lower 15% tax rate currently in effect on dividends.”

This even though CostCo executives are big Obama supporters. Isn’t that kinda unpatriotic of them?

CHANGE: Catalonia Tilts Towards Independence As Madrid Spins. Stupid secessionist Republicans.

THIS WEEK ONLY: Cyber-Monday Deals On Watches All Week.

Also, new Lightning Deals every hour, so keep checking back.

And, today only: Dremel Three-Tool Combo Kit, $96.99 (62% off). (Bumped).

WHEN WORK IS PUNISHED: The Tragedy of America’s Welfare State. Read the whole thing, but note this chart in particular:

UPDATE: Reader Frank Stephenson writes: “Looks like the Obamaphone is left out of the chart. . . .”

It’s as if there’s some kind of Dependency Agenda at work here.

SHENANIGANS IN MICHIGAN: Extra Early Voting Opportunity in Heavily Democratic Area Raises Eyebrows. “One clerk decided the voters of one city would get a voting opportunity those in the rest of the state didn’t get.”

PETER INGEMI: Hey, when did “sequestration” go from a bipartisan accomplishment to a terrible threat?

So my question to the media is this: Harry Reid celebrated this agreement, Tim Geithner likes it, Nancy Pelosi voted for it and The President signed it. Yet now this deal is responsible for a fiscal cliff that is apparently a disaster for all America.

And moreover, the MSM is laying the blame for said potential “disaster” squarely at the feet of the same GOP who the very same media urged to make the deal in 2011.

Even more amazing this very same media is telling the very same GOP to make another deal, or ELSE face the consequences.

Yep.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE LIGHT BULB BAN. “These changes in the law are going to demand that we change the way we think about lightbulbs. We’re accustomed to a lightbulb being a minor expense, but the upfront cost of an energy-efficient one is much higher. Some might cost $30 or more per bulb.”

Hey, it’s still not too late to stock up. Quite.

UPDATE: 100-watt Bulb Alternatives Leaving People In The Dark. If only someone had warned them to stock up on incandescents!

ANOTHER UDPATE: A reader emails: “Friendly heads-up. You may want to point out that the 75-watt ban goes into effect in one month on January 1, 2013.” Well, it’s not too late to stock up on those, either. Quite.

DEMOCRATIC WHITE MALE SENATORS CONSPIRE to block a black woman’s committee chairmanship. In Wisconsin.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse emails a correction:

You wrote “DEMOCRATIC WHITE MALE SENATORS CONSPIRE to block a black woman’s committee chairmanship. In Wisconsin.” But they only blocked her continuing membership on the committee. Democrats are the minority after the recent election. She became the chair only after a recall earlier this year gave Dems the majority. In 2013, the chair will be Republican again.

Sorry, I misread that. Obviously hadn’t had enough coffee. Here’s Ann’s post on the topic.

FAILED LEGAL ARGUMENTS: “The Oxford-educated Louis D. Rubin Jr. Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, told investigators he was duped into unknowingly carrying the drugs after being lured first to Bolivia with a promise of meeting a famous bikini model.”

UPDATE: Everybody wants a pic of the bikini model, so here. The loss of rational faculties is perhaps somewhat understandable.

REGULATION: Feathers Flying Over Stench In La Jolla.

SHOCKER: Audit Finds Problems With Maryland’s Speed Camera Program. “At its outset in 2009, the program lacked measures assuring the accuracy of the speed cameras, according to a report by the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits. And for the first nine months Maryland SafeZones was in operation, there was never an independent audit of the speed-monitoring system. . . . And equipment used in the program’s infancy didn’t conform with the International Association of Chiefs of Police guidelines, a condition that was supposed to be followed in the contract, according to the audit.”

YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS: Gennifer Flowers: Bill Clinton Called and Wanted to Come Over to My House.

A LARRY HAGMAN STORY: “It’s…it’s a fourteen hundred dollar hat!”

A CALL TO RAISE TAXES ON THE MIDDLE CLASS. Personally, I think that everyone should pay at least some income tax. Having large numbers of voters who don’t pay income taxes creates destructive distortions in fiscal policy.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Desperate CNN Pondering Rush Limbaugh’s Programming Advice.

FISCAL CLIFF: Keith Hennessey: The President Is Bluffing. “President Obama’s veto threat decision is not just about fiscal policy, and it’s not just about who gets blamed for a legislative failure. It’s about whether the President wants to cause a recession in 2013 and hamstring his second term. No matter what he or his advisors say, he cannot afford to take that risk.”

MICKEY KAUS: “The NYT‘s Nicholas Kristof has come up with a breakthrough in pundit efficiency–a short, ass-covering phrase that works with virtually any argument, yet can be inserted without taking up valuable space.” Call the Nobel committee!!

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY: The nation-state is shrinking to just a flag, some sports teams and a pile of debts. Well, in some places.

“The hour has come to exercise our right to self-rule,” says Artur Mas, Catalonia’s president, sounding like a 19th-century statue of a nationalist hero on horseback. Catalans vote on Sunday in what amounts to a referendum on independence from Spain. Scots are galloping down the same road: they vote on independence in 2014. And Flemish nationalists won big last month in Belgian local elections that you may have missed. If these characters get their way, the map of western Europe will undergo its first changes since Ireland became independent in 1922. . . .

Many national governments in western Europe have forfeited their best tools: national borders, currencies and wars (no fighting in this region since May 1945). They committed to free trade. Inevitably, then, the nation-state began withering away. Belgium in 2010-11 went 541 days without a national government – effectively becoming a failed state – and hardly anyone noticed.

The nation-state is shrinking to just a flag, some sports teams and a pile of debts. Catalans, Scots and Flemings might as well get out. They just shouldn’t think their own little states will be more use. They appear aware of this. They game-plan is to couple glorious nationhood with the European superstate. When Scots and Catalans realised the European Union might not admit them, they cooled on independence.

In fact, the EU’s recent rise exemplifies the demise of nationalism. During the economic crisis, the EU has been morphing into something of a federal state: central control over national budgets, European bailouts, perhaps banking union. Europeans have sulked, but they’ve mostly accepted this.

That doesn’t mean they love the EU. Nobody ever ran into the street drunk, waving the European flag. The emotional choice now isn’t between nation and Europe. Rather, people are gradually replacing nationalism with an array of transnational loyalties.

What do things look like, in a world where people are willing to die for “an array of transnational loyalties,” but not for their country? In Europe, at least, we may be on the way to finding out.

UH OH: Dan Mitchell: The No-Tax-Hike Pledge Is an IQ Test for Republicans.

Eugene Robinson is one of the group-think columnists at the Washington Post. Like E.J. Dionne, he is an utterly predictable proponent of big government. So it won’t surprise you to know that he wants taxes to go up and he’s a big fan of Obama’s class-warfare agenda.

He’s also a very partisan Democrat and wants the GOP to lose. Again, that’s not exactly a stunning revelation.

So when someone like Eugene Robinson starts offering advice to the Republican Party about tax policy, a logical person instantly should be suspicious that he’s actually trying to advance his own ideological and partisan agenda. . . . In this spirit, Mr. Robinson wants the GOP to abandon the no-tax-hike pledge.

George H.W. Bush did that. He was hailed as a conciliator for a day, then savaged brutally by the same press until he lost the 1992 election.

That said, I’m prepared to forgive a lot if the GOP will get behind repealing the Hollywood Tax Cuts, and support my 50% surtax on “excess” post-government earnings by federal officials.

More here.

RON FOURNIER IS LEAVING NATIONAL JOURNAL BECAUSE HE WANTS TO “MOVE THE NEEDLE.”

Remember when journalism was about reporting when the needle moved? . . .

I’LL BELIEVE IT’S A CRISIS WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO TELL ME IT’S A CRISIS START ACTING LIKE IT’S A CRISIS: Obama quietly signs bill shielding airlines from carbon fees in Europe.