WHAT MARCO RUBIO SHOULD HAVE SAID: “I’m not sure, but I think Helen Thomas was there when it started.”

JUDGE JUDY ON ENTITLEMENT.

WHEN REPORTING IS LYING IS JOURNALISM: “The Times leaves out the story’s single most relevant piece of information: Four senior Islamic Jihad terrorists were using the media building as a hideout. They were killed in the Israeli strike.”

The New York Times is actually less reliable than the interested parties: “Both Islamic Jihad and the IDF noted the presence of terrorists in the building, and that they were eliminated in the strike.”

BELLICOSE WOMAN UPDATE: Woman Pulls Gun On Flasher, Flasher Puts Penis Away And Runs.

THE PESSIMIST’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING THE FISCAL CLIFF:

If a country runs a deficit (as a percentage of GDP) that is equal to its growth rate, the debt level will remain constant. This year U.S. GDP will be a little less than $16 trillion, and its historical growth rate is 3.25%. That works out to what we might call a “safe” deficit of $520 billion, or even $600 billion if you allow for a little inflation. Last year, however, the U.S. deficit was $1.1 trillion — or roughly $500 billion too much.

That gap could be closed by ending all tax cuts, tax breaks and stimulus payments for everyone, according to the Tax Policy Center. But two-thirds of the burden would fall on the middle class — something both political parties want to avoid. All the proposed tax increases on the wealthy, however, even combined with the end of the payroll-tax cut, would raise only $295 billion. So unless there were spending cuts twice as big as the ones currently scheduled, the deficit would still be too large.

So make the cuts. Oh, and while you’re at it, Repeal The Hollywood Tax Cuts!

TEN SCIENCE FICTION WEAPONS that actually exist.

MAUREEN DOWD: Promoting White Nationalism?

Also, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: The Potato Gun.

AT AMAZON, new releases in Science Fiction & Fantasy.

Also: Planet Of The Apes: The 5-Film Collection on Blu-Ray for $22.99.

20 SMALL THINGS IN LIFE that are absolutely delightful.

ADVICE TO RUSH LIMBAUGH: If you really want revenge on the consultant class, start pushing for a ban on commissions for advertising buys. I’d be for that anyway.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Admin Won’t Criticize Turkey’s Accusation that ‘Israel Is a Terrorist State.’

WAGING A SCORCHED-EARTH BATTLE over the “Fiscal Cliff.”

Related: Fine Obama, let’s go. We’re waiting for you to lead and we can’t wait to hear your ideas.

OMG: Traditional Text-Messaging Is On The Decline.

THE LIFE OF retired Playboy bunnies.

A GALAXY THAT’S almost as old as the Universe.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Forget Secession, Try Federalism.

THIS DOESN’T SEEM LIKE MUCH OF A SURPRISE: I mean, we’re talking about a combination of Facebook and cats.

SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH CETACEOUS MARINE MAMMALS:  A big thanks to Glenn for letting me stay on an extra week and contribute the occasional Insta-post via the MS Nieuw Amsterdam’s tin can and string Wi-fi system during the National Review Cruise (or as Lileks dubbed it, the Voyage of the Damned). Watch for interviews from the cruise and plenty of other blogging this week at my usual haunt, Ed Driscoll.com.

STEROIDS AND BACK PAIN: Not so helpful? “Studies are at best inconclusive about exactly which groups of back-pain patients are likely to benefit from steroid shots. Though some patients clearly get much-needed relief, health researchers are nearly unanimous that the treatment is vastly overused in the United States. But Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti, head of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, said the increasing number of spine injections was just part of ‘an exponential increase in all interventional techniques’ and is a good thing, reflecting a better understanding of chronic pain and patients’ demands for improved pain relief.”

It seems like nothing works all that well for back pain, though.

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Steven Donohue writes: “With the impending move of the University of Maryland to the Big Ten later today, I thought it might be a good idea to try plugging my book on the economic history of college football.” The book is Spiral Revolutions: College Football’s Conference Warfare.

IN INDIA, politicians try to punish anti-corruption efforts. “In the current turbulent phase, stories about corruption no longer begin and end in TV studios and newspapers but they are picked [up] by activists and quickly snowball into street agitations.”

SPACE: New Satellite Will Be Space Mechanic, Gas Station.

A young spaceflight company is building what it hopes will be the ultimate space handyman, a combination repair droid and orbital gas station to serve ailing satellites around Earth.

The company, called ViviSat, is planning to launch a fleet of specially built spacecraft that will be able to attach to other vehicles in Earth orbit that need a pick-me-up.

“We call them Mission Extension Vehicles,” ViviSat chief operating officer Bryan McGuirk said Nov. 15 at the 2012 Satellite and Content Delivery Conference and Expo here. “Our job will be to dock with commercial satellites to extend their lives.”

Cool.

CLAIM: Human intelligence ‘peaked thousands of years ago and we’ve been on an intellectual and emotional decline ever since.’

His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence” genes.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues,” Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics.

Hmm. I’ve heard something like this before.