NEW FRONTIERS IN LEGISLATIVE BLACKMAIL:

The Service Employees International Union is sponsoring ballot initiatives in California and Oregon that would cap executive pay at hospitals and limit how much customers can be charged. But what does this have to do with the workers? you will ask. The answer is nothing, directly. Instead, the ballot initiatives are bargaining chips. If the hospitals will “work with” the union, the SEIU will back off the ballot initiatives, which threaten hospital profits.

Hey, I have an idea: How about legislation saying that union officials can’t make more than 4 times the pay of their lowest-paid member? That seems fair — and, unlike rules for employers, it even polices a potential conflict-of-interest. Start pushing that one!

YEAH, BUT PEOPLE WHO USE THAT WORD LOOSELY ARE USUALLY IDIOTS: Stop Calling Superheroes ‘Fascist:’ Political attacks on the genre miss the simple fact that Batman and Superman fight against tyrants—and choose not to abuse their power. I mean, they dress up and aren’t afraid to use force — and that’s what fascism is all about, right?

AT AMAZON, Cyber Monday Deals Week in Toys.

Plus, pre-season deals on Tax Software. Be sure to click on the link, unless your name is Tim Geithner. . . .

And, today only: 50% Off Select Melissa & Doug Toys.

Also today only: Olympus E-PM2 16MP Compact System Camera with 14-42mm lens, $349.00 (56% off).

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Harry Reid Exempts Staff From ObamaCare.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: ObamaCare’s Credibility Problem.

UPDATE: Krauthammer: ‘It’s sort of touching the way Obama believes in the power of his rhetoric.’

[Krauthammer link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!]

THE HILL: Dem Proposes Taxing Drivers By The Mile.

Related: Don’t Track Me, Bro.

QUESTION: If Obama Ignores The Law, Why Shouldn’t The Rest Of Us? Because he took an oath to faithfully execute the law — and you didn’t, peons!

PROF. STEPHEN CLARK WRITES:

Behold! Obama’s RCP average approval rating has broken through the 40% barrier for the first time in his presidency.

For a long time it has lingered stubbornly at 40 point something. It’s as if there’s something significant about that barrier. He’s into uncharted territory before the real shocks likely to come early next year.

How low can he go?

We have some ideal morally. Now we’ll find out politically. . . .

NOW OUT ON AMAZON: Rand Simberg’s Safe Is Not An Option.

JAMES TARANTO: White House Furor: The Rosa Parks and #WHYouth kerfuffles.

Barack Obama probably should have known better than to honor the Parks anniversary by tweeting a photo of himself on an empty bus. At least the GOP tweet depicted Parks herself.

Which brings us to the furor we mentioned at the outset. It seems the White House held a “hangout on young people & ObamaCare” yesterday, which some aide had the bright idea of promoting with the Twitter hashtag #WHYouth. Hilarity ensued, as Twitchy demonstrates with its roundup of tweets (including one from yours truly, noting that the big loser is the Westney Heights Baptist Church in Ajax, Ontario, whose own youth program had the top spot in a Google search for “whyouth” until yesterday).

Evidently nobody at the White House anticipated the inevitable “Hitler Youth” jokes. That suggests not just political incompetence but a gross ignorance of history.

It’s clown shows all the way down.

FRATERS LIBERTAS: Free Saeed!

SURVEY SAYS: Dems Are The Out Of Touch Extremists. “The public overwhelmingly believes the country is headed in the wrong direction, that current economic policies aren’t working, that President Obama is doing a bad job, that government should be smaller and that ObamaCare should be repealed. But not Democrats. On issue after issue, in fact, Democrats are the outliers by wide margins, according to an analysis of the December IBD/TIPP survey.”

If they didn’t have the media flying cover for them, they’d be getting 30% of the vote. Which suggests where people ought to be focusing their resources. . . .

ANNALS OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Obama/Kerry’s State Department Walks Into A Chinese Trap.

THE MEAN STREETS OF DC: Daily Caller’s ‘Jim Treacher’ punched in face, placed in handcuffs. Get better soon, Jim.

SPYING: Some NSA Opponents Want to ‘Nullify’ Surveillance With State Law: Activists say legislation can cut water, kill snooping at Utah Data Center. “The National Security Agency has an Achilles heel, according to some anti-surveillance activists. The key vulnerability, according to members of the OffNow coalition of advocacy groups: The electronic spy agency’s reliance on local utilities. The activists would like to turn off the water to the NSA’s $1.5 billion Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah, and at other facilities around the country.”

Watch to see if mysterious revelations about key Utah legislators somehow find their way to the press.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Blame Colleges For Debt Woes.

Related: Study: Out-of-Pocket Costs in Most of Higher Education Rising.

WELL, THAT’S PRETTY MUCH THE GOAL: Chronicle of Philanthropy: IRS Plan on Nonprofit Political Work Undermines Democracy.

IT’S TRAIN WRECKS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Insurers wary of Obama admin claims about back-end website fixes.

Insurers still don’t know the full extent of the problems associated with back-end issues on healthcare.gov and are wary of Obama administration officials’ claims they are fixing the problem quickly and fully.

President Obama and other White House officials spent Monday and Tuesday trumpeting fixes to the healthcare.gov website, saying it met a self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline to deliver a smooth user experience to the vast majority of Americans trying to enroll in the federal exchanges online.

But they are providing few details about computer-generated errors that have affected roughly one-third of consumers who have signed up on exchanges over the last few months, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Whenever they clam up, it’s because the news is even worse than you think.

CHANGE: Young Women Are Driving Record Firearms Sales. Illustrated with pictures of gun-loving cheerleaders, etc.

ROLL CALL: Boehner’s New Immigration Policy Director Has Deep Experience on Overhaul Efforts.

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, is taking on a new and formidable immigration policy director, a sign that he could be more serious about passing immigration legislation than his critics suggest.

Rebecca Tallent, who currently serves as director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, will join Boehner’s staff on Wednesday. Before joining the BPC, Tallent held several senior staff positions with Sen. John McCain, including chief of staff.

During her time with McCain, she helped the Arizona Republican draft a handful of immigration overhaul measures, including the last big push McCain made with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., in 2007. In 2008, she was a policy adviser on McCain’s presidential campaign. Before working for McCain, she worked for former Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., a longtime advocate of overhauling the immigration system who was involved in immigration efforts before he retired in 2006.

So who has more influence with the GOP establishment? The GOP grassroots base, or the fatcat donor base?

JOE PAPPALARDO: SpaceX Satellite Launch Rewrites the Rules. “This marks an important milestone for the company, which had never before delivered cargo to this pivotal orbit. Even more important, it marks a new level of affordability for accessing space. Monday’s launch will cost SES about $60 million. That’s $200 million less than proven European provider Arianespace charges.”

Related: Video: Secretive Blue Origin’s Rocket Launch Test.

HEY, IF I HAD HILLARY — OR JOHN KERRY — AS A BOSS, I’D BE DRINKING MORE, TOO: “The Washington Times reports that the department spent about $180,000 on alcohol in September and $400,000 in all of 2012 — that’s three times the $118,000 spent in 2008.”

WHY DO DEMOCRATS KEEP SHUTTING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT? The Hill: Shutdown part 2? Dems vow to block stopgap spending bill.

YOUR CARING GOVERNMENT AT WORK: A Miracle Drug Cured Ed Levitt of Stage IV Lung Cancer. Then the FDA Withdrew it From the Market.

SHOCKER: Despite improvements, Obamacare website would still be a private sector failure. “Obama administration officials have spent this week touting a new and improved healthcare.gov website, boasting that it can now be accessed 95 percent of the time – but that still means that it would be down 18 days a year. . . . ‘To have the site totally inaccessible for a day and a half per month, that’s really bad,’ Noll said. ‘If that was a retailer, they would typically bring in a new VP of IT and chief information officer … I mean, if you’re selling something, that is a really horrible uptime.'”