Thursday, December 30, 2010

Money Making



One of the most discouraging things about the last two years was seeing swing voters in focus groups, when asked what President Obama's economic strategy was, repeat different versions of "Well, I know he said we needed to save the banks. Beyond that, I'm not sure." When Obama in his first State of the Union gave a vigorous defense of bailing out the banks, saying he knew it about as popular as a root canal, and saying "I get it", it was very memorable to voters. But when his predictions about what would happen when the banks were stabilized -- they would start making loans to businesses, and businesses would start hiring -- didn't happen, and instead the banks gave themselves record breaking bonuses, voters turned on Obama fast. In exit polls on Nov. 2nd, when asked who was most to blame for the bad economy, voters by a wide margin said Wall St. was most to blame, and the voters who said that went Republican by a 14-point margin.



Obviously, saving the banks hasn't been the President's only economic strategy. The stimulus bill, while too small, was an important job creator/saver. Saving the American auto industry was an incredibly important thing to do. Health care reform was in part a long term economic strategy. The infrastructure bank idea is a great potential job creator. Extending unemployment insurance helps keep money in the economy. And all the tax cutting going on is clearly meant to have some stimulative effect, although how much is highly debatable.



However, there have certainly been times where Secretary Geithner, who has been the main driver of the economic strategy, seems to think and act as if helping the big banks and helping the economy amount to the same thing. The tepid reaction to the foreclosure crisis has sure felt that way -- apparently we can't freeze foreclosures or do much to help homeowners because it might "endanger" the banks. In fact, I would argue the exact opposite: that our number one economic strategy right now should be to shift money from the big banks to the real economy, to Main Street businesses and workers and consumers. The big banks are hoarding extraordinary amounts of money, and they are clearly not investing it in job creating businesses. They are speculating with it, they are trading with it, they are investing in complicated financial instruments that do nothing to create jobs- in fact, they are sucking capital out of the real economy that might actually create jobs. These massive financial conglomerates have way too much concentrated wealth and market power, and that is weakening the rest of the economy.



This is one reason why, as I wrote a couple of times last week, it is so important to write down the mortgages of homeowners who are underwater. Taking that money out of the bankers' hands and putting it in the hands of the hard pressed middle class would do more to stimulate the economy than any other thing the President could do right now. This is also why the Federal Reserve's new proposed rule, out last week, on swipe fees is so good. It would generally limit swipe fees to 12 cents per transaction. Right now the average is 44 cents, and with most small businesses it's quite a bit higher. If this rule is upheld, this is money that will go straight from the big banks' profit margins into the main street economy -- all told, probably a $15 billion boost going back to retailers, restaurant owners, taxi cab drivers, and hopefully consumers. $15 billion going from Wall Street, speculative economy into the real economy is a nice lift right now. This is why I have been working with retail business leaders and consumer groups to support this new regulation.



Unfortunately, not all Democrats see it this way. Tom Carper and Mark Warner tried to head off the amendment that made this regulation happen in the Senate, and have been lobbying the Federal Reserve against a strong regulation on the subject ever since they lost the legislative fight. And Barney Frank, who is a great liberal on social issues but spends way too much time with bank lobbyists, was whining on Friday how unfair the proposed rule was to the poor bankers.



Barney, you got this one wrong. Democrats should not be looking out for the bankers, we should be looking for every single opportunity we can to drain the Wall St. swamp. The big banks are hoarding money. They have way too much market power, and when their profits expand, they put that money into the speculative economy rather than the real economy that manufactures goods, sells products and services, and creates jobs. When we take a dollar away from them, and put it into the real economy, there is actually a multiplier effect as people on Main Street spend or invest the money in real products. When mortgages get written down, it helps the real economy. When swipe fees on credit or debit card transactions get lessened, it helps the real economy. If we instituted a transactions tax on every trade made on Wall St, and put that money into a jobs program, that would help the real economy.



The big banks are hoarding our money. Our best economic program right now is to shift money from the banks, and put it into the hands of consumers who might actually buy products and businesses who might actually hire more workers.








Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don't be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations -- thanks to massive government largesse -- to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down, and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.



In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin's actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.



As Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Rubin presided over the dismantling of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal legislation that would have prohibited the creation of the too-big-to-fail Citigroup. He was rewarded with a $15-million-a-year job at Citigroup, where he became a leader in the bank's aggressive move into high-risk ventures. An SEC report in September claimed that Rubin as Citigroup chairman was aware that the bank failed to disclose $40 billion it held in subprime mortgages before the collapse.



During those years at Citigroup, Rubin financed the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, an economic policy program, and named Orszag, a Clinton economic adviser, as its director. The Hamilton Project continued to celebrate Rubin's deregulation philosophy up to the point of utter embarrassment. Clearly, Orszag is not easily embarrassed, for upon taking his new job recently he boasted "I am pleased to be joining Citi, with its unmatched global platform and dedication to providing clients with service and advice."



The most damning comment on this corrupt syndrome was offered by former Citigroup co-chief executive John Reed, who had worked with Rubin to get Glass-Steagall reversed and now is a sharp critic of the result. "We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem," Reed told Bloomberg News. "I'm astounded because we basically dropped the world's biggest economy because of an error in bank management." Reed estimated that the financial deregulation proposals contained in the Dodd-Frank bill and other reforms of the Obama administration represent only 25 percent of the change needed.



The failure to provide serious regulation of the financial industry to avoid future downturns is documented in devastating detail in that Dec. 28 Bloomberg report, written by Christine Harper:

"The U.S. government, promising to make the system safer, buckled under many of the financial industry's protests. Lawmakers spurned changes that would wall off deposit-taking banks from riskier trading. They declined to limit the size of lenders or ban any form of derivatives."



The reason for that failure is obvious from the president's choice of advisers featuring Rubin acolytes from the Clinton years. Harper writes: "While Obama vowed to change the system, he filled his economic team with people who helped create it," referring to, among others, Timothy F. Geithner, who had gone from the Clinton Treasury Department to head the New York Fed, where he presided over the salvaging of Citigroup and AIG. As Obama's treasury secretary he was quick to appoint a Goldman Sachs lobbyist as his chief of staff. Geithner's subservience to Wall Street was reinforced by White House top economic adviser Lawrence Summers, Rubin's deputy and then replacement in the Clinton administration who pushed through the repeal of Glass Steagall and fought against the regulation of derivatives.



And with the decisive assistance from both a Republican and Democratic president, all has worked out just as planned for the banks. Harper reports: "The last two years have been the best ever for combined investment-banking and trading revenue at Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and Morgan Stanley, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."



It's all wonderfully bipartisan. Recently it was announced that Carlos Gutierrez, commerce secretary under George W. Bush, had been named to a high position at Citigroup. For President Obama, there's no cause for worry about the loss of indispensable talent from his administration. Orszag's replacement as head of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob J. Lew, was both a member of Rubin's Hamilton Project and a former Citigroup executive -- thus insuring that government of the banks, by the banks, for the banks shall not perish from the earth.













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<b>News</b> - Queen Elizabeth Welcomes First Great-Grandchild! - Moms <b>...</b>

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People are getting lazy about forming their own opinions.


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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Making Money Program


Jesus’s birthday is coming up. And you know what he wants for his birthday? Nothing more than for you lose weight and become more attractive. As C.S. Lovett helpfully explains in his 1979 book, Help Lord … The Devil Wants Me Fat!, there’s a simple way to not be so fat: stop eating. Just completely stop. See, it’s not hunger that causes you to eat delicious holiday treats, it’s Satan.


Maybe that seems extreme to you. What about clean, natural, whole foods in their purest forms? you might ask. I eat a raw, macrobiotic, vegan diet, and I feel fantastic, you say. Yap, yap, yap. All I hear is Satan telling filthy lies.



Not convinced? People who own the book and have followed the instructed fast simply rave about it!


This book has to be one of the greatest books written concerning weight loss and how to tear down strongholds that the enemy has built in one's mind by causing one to overeat. By putting thoughts in one's mind to eat when one is not really hungry, the devil deceives unsuspecting Christians by the bondage caused by overeating and not being able to serve the Lord, as one would if he was in better shape. (I didn't word that right but you will understand what I mean if you will buy the book.) … fter reading the book I fasted for 11 complete days and there was nothing to it.

—Ndubusi, on Amazon


Some readers feel so passionately about how this book has changed their lives that they even blog about it on SparkPeople.


Most do not think of overeating as a sin but it's the devil's way of getting control of otherwise good Christians who would never think of sinning in other ways, to destroy themselves, bite by bite. It really doesn't matter whether we are bound by drugs, sex or money, the chains still chain us. In reality it wouldn't matter if we were bound by rope, iron or real chains, if we're bound, we're bound…When you look at it as a battle with Satan, it perks up your soul and helps you to determine not to let him win anymore.


Lovett and his wife, Linda, who did the book’s illustrations, encourage you to win your battle with the devil by thinking of your brain (soul?) as a computer that you can program with visualization. Like this:



Like any war with dark forces, this one will require constant vigilance. Much like Santa Claus, Lucifer sees you and what you eat not just when you are awake, but even when you are sleeping.



So now our plan is in place. Let’s make Jesus happy and stick to our inevitable New Year’s resolutions. Just remember, if you break this diet, there's more at stake than skinny jeans and self esteem. There is your immortal soul.


Merry Christmas!


Previously: Looking Pretty for the Holidays.


Obama is only pro-choice on abortion and infanticide. On everything else, there is no choice, from the car you drive to the food on your plate to education. Failure is a feature, not a bug, of public schools. Keep the public dumb. Needy. Wanting more government that Democrats are only all too willing to provide. Voucher systems have been successful wherever they have been honestly tried. Which is why the Democrats have killed such programs. What the MSM has done its best to do is to lose this down the memory hole, and the above CNN clip is emblematic of that, as it is an utterly shameful act by Obama and Congressional Democrats in deep-sixing the successful voucher program in D.C., dooming 1,800 low-income mostly black students to one of the worst educational systems in the country (the worst is DPS -Detroit Public Schools, which I have bogged about ad infinitum here):



  • It's official: Democrats kill successful DC voucher program, resegregate DC Public Schools 

  • After hiding the data and dumping the successful DC voucher program, the only thing Obama should tell students today is "I'm sorry"

  •  Freep: Public Schools Are Crap - Let's Remold It!  

  • Detroit News: DPS FAIL!!! 

  • Vouchers vs. D.C. public schools 

  • WaPo: Voucher Subterfuge

Education secretary Arne Duncan referred to DC public schools as a district with “more money than God.” More than $28,000 per student. Failing miserably. The only success in that district was a voucher program that Obama attacked, even though vouchers cost a quarter (that's right - 25%) of the $28,000 number and helped the students. Should Obama get his head screwed on straight (good luck with that one), he will announce today to all students that since vouchers have been a smashing success in D.C., proved by concrete educational data, they should be a smashing success elsewhere. I mean -wouldn't that be a move to "restore scientific integrity in governmental decision making?" Especially since vouchers are proven to help students and drive down costs?



But that is not what anyone will hear. That's because Obama and his administration hid data indicating the program's successful educational results as they pushed Congressional Democrats to scrap the program. After all, they have the teachers unions to protect. The WSJ published an article a while back about the shenanigans:

It's bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.



Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.



Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.



Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.
The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren't worried that school choice doesn't work. They're worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.
Ouch. Read the whole thing as it is a very worthy read. There's more and it is equally devastating. There is not enough shame to be heaped on the heads of Democrats for this obscenity of a decision. In Arizona, the school choice program there has been targeted for termination as well: Video: Arizona School Choice Fight Goes to U.S. Supreme Court


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Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

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&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

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Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Alfred Kahn, &#39;Godfather&#39; of Airline Deregulation, Dies at 93

Tagged: airline deregulation, airline industry, airlines, alfred kahn, civil aeronautics board, cornell university, m i economic economic indicators inflation, national news. Related Searches: air travel, airline news, ...

Phila. Gay <b>News</b> Editor On Elton John: &#39;Couldn&#39;t Find A Better <b>...</b>

After struggling to adopt for years, one of music's most influential men is now a dad. Sir Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, now have a son, born to a surrogate in California on Christmas Day.

&#39;NBC Nightly <b>News</b>&#39; Wins 4th Quarter Ratings

"NBC Nightly News" continued its long-running ratings streak in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating its rivals at ABC and CBS by substantial margins. The Brian Williams-hosted program drew 8.72 million viewers in the fourth quarter.


bench craft company scam

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Help Making Money


Jesus’s birthday is coming up. And you know what he wants for his birthday? Nothing more than for you lose weight and become more attractive. As C.S. Lovett helpfully explains in his 1979 book, Help Lord … The Devil Wants Me Fat!, there’s a simple way to not be so fat: stop eating. Just completely stop. See, it’s not hunger that causes you to eat delicious holiday treats, it’s Satan.


Maybe that seems extreme to you. What about clean, natural, whole foods in their purest forms? you might ask. I eat a raw, macrobiotic, vegan diet, and I feel fantastic, you say. Yap, yap, yap. All I hear is Satan telling filthy lies.



Not convinced? People who own the book and have followed the instructed fast simply rave about it!


This book has to be one of the greatest books written concerning weight loss and how to tear down strongholds that the enemy has built in one's mind by causing one to overeat. By putting thoughts in one's mind to eat when one is not really hungry, the devil deceives unsuspecting Christians by the bondage caused by overeating and not being able to serve the Lord, as one would if he was in better shape. (I didn't word that right but you will understand what I mean if you will buy the book.) … [A]fter reading the book I fasted for 11 complete days and there was nothing to it.

—Ndubusi, on Amazon


Some readers feel so passionately about how this book has changed their lives that they even blog about it on SparkPeople.


Most do not think of overeating as a sin but it's the devil's way of getting control of otherwise good Christians who would never think of sinning in other ways, to destroy themselves, bite by bite. It really doesn't matter whether we are bound by drugs, sex or money, the chains still chain us. In reality it wouldn't matter if we were bound by rope, iron or real chains, if we're bound, we're bound…When you look at it as a battle with Satan, it perks up your soul and helps you to determine not to let him win anymore.


Lovett and his wife, Linda, who did the book’s illustrations, encourage you to win your battle with the devil by thinking of your brain (soul?) as a computer that you can program with visualization. Like this:



Like any war with dark forces, this one will require constant vigilance. Much like Santa Claus, Lucifer sees you and what you eat not just when you are awake, but even when you are sleeping.



So now our plan is in place. Let’s make Jesus happy and stick to our inevitable New Year’s resolutions. Just remember, if you break this diet, there's more at stake than skinny jeans and self esteem. There is your immortal soul.


Merry Christmas!


Previously: Looking Pretty for the Holidays.



It looks like Shep Smith isn't the only person on Fox News that was shamed by Jon Stewart into getting a bit tougher on these Republicans for filibustering the first responders bill. Chris Wallace brought up Stewart's interview with first responders to Jon Kyl, and in response we just got more sorry excuses as to why he still would not support the bill.


Kyl Denies Health Care For 9/11 Rescue Workers Because He Doesn’t Want To ‘Hurry’:


Last week, an incensed Jon Stewart invited 9/11 first responders to the Daily Show to offer their thoughts on this callous behavior. “Disgusted” and “hurt” by their actions, the rescue workers admonished Republicans for using the holiday schedule and Senate process as an excuse to block desperately needed help. Recounting their criticism today, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) why he couldn’t “find a way to give these heroes peace of mind when it comes to health care.” Ignoring their emotional pleas, Kyl insisted that, while he didn’t want to deny care to those who desperately need it, he just refuses to do so “in a hurry”. [...]


Kyl’s excuses fall flat in the face of fact. Any cries for more time ignore that both the Senate and House version of the Zadroga bill have been available to Kyl since 2009. If a year with the text wasn’t enough, Kyl was free to attend the bill’s June 2010 Senate hearing he insists never happened. Had he shown up, he would’ve learned that the bill is very clear on who is eligible for funding. First responders can pursue compensation established by the Zadroga bill to bolster any coverage already received from the current health fund set up in New York City.


As Jon Stewart pointed out earlier this week as well, after refusing to give these first responders health care, none of these birds should ever be allowed by our media to invoke 9-11 for political purposes ever again. Let's hope this thing gets passed despite the continued obstruction by the likes of Kyl and his fellow shameless Republican cohorts.


Transcript via Nexis Lexis.


WALLACE: Joining us now, two Senate leaders, the number two Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and his Republican counterpart, Jon Kyl of Arizona.


And, Senators, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."


KYL: Thank you, Chris.


WALLACE: Senators, before we talk about issues that have gotten a lot of attention, I want to ask you about one that hasn't, and let me begin with you, Senator Kyl.


Will you vote this week for the 9/11 bill that would guarantee health care for the first responders who went to Ground Zero?


KYL: I don't know if that bill is going to come before us, but Dick tells me just a moment ago that he thinks that it will. First question is, is it amendable, or is it a take it or leave it proposition? The bill hasn't been through committee. There are problems with it.


And I think the first thing Republicans will ask is do we have a chance to fix any problems that may exist with it. And it's a lot of money, and so I -- my early response is that I am skeptical about that bill.


WALLACE: Senator Durbin, Republicans in addition to Senator Kyl say - - Republican critics say that you're creating a $7 billion entitlement, and that the way you pay for it is a corporate tax increase.


DURBIN: Chris, I can tell you that Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer have been working nonstop for the last several weeks with Republicans to try to find the best way to approach this. These first responders literally risked their lives when they went to Ground Zero. They came from all over the United States. And now many of them are struggling with health problems that are clearly directly related to that experience. To turn our backs on these brave people is the wrong thing to do.


Will it cost money? Yes. Is it the right thing to do? Yes. We've got to find a way to fund it that's acceptable to Republicans and Democrats.


WALLACE: Well, but let me ask you about that, Senator Durbin. If this 9/11 bill is so important, why is it that the Democratic- controlled Senate never held a vote on this bill until the lame duck session and that President Obama, the best we can tell, has never said a word about this bill in public?


DURBIN: I can't tell you where the White House stands. I hope they support it. I will just tell you this. This is like an airport that has a runway closed down. We have aircraft stacked up trying to land. We have bills stacked up over the Senate because of the nonstop filibusters that we faced this year.


I wish we could have done things more efficiently and more directly. But we've lurched from one 30-hour delay to another 30-hour delay to more Senate quorums. This Senate could be much more efficient. It should be. And it should be much more bipartisan than this.


WALLACE: Will this bill pass?


DURBIN: I think this bill will pass, and I do believe that Senators Gillibrand and Schumer are working night and day to make that happen.


WALLACE: Senator Kyl, one of your objections is -- he was blaming you for the filibusters. One of your objections is that Harry Reid put too many items on the agenda in this lame duck session.


I want to play what you said and then how one of the first responders who now has cancer reacted. Let's watch.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)


KYL: It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out without doing -- frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians.


(END VIDEO CLIP)


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)


(UNKNOWN): I'm here to say that you won't find a single New York City firefighter who considers it a sign of disrespect to work in a New York City fire house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.


(END VIDEO CLIP)


WALLACE: Senator, everyone -- everyone -- praises the first responders as heroes. You say you're skeptical about this bill. Why not find a way to give these heroes peace of mind when it comes to health care?


KYL: Well, first of all, they should have peace of mind when it comes to health care. The question is what and how.


And when you try to do it, as you said in your introduction, in a hurry, in the lame duck session, without a hearing, without understanding what the ramifications are and whether we can amend the bill, you're doing it in the worst way.


For example, there's already been a settlement for a lot of these people, a fund that has been set up for them to receive funding. Will the people that are supporting this legislation be able to participate in that fund? Nobody has been able to say. Why $7 billion? What will the requirements for qualification be for the money?


Nobody wants to deny care to people who -- and by the way, these are primarily people who helped to clean up the site in the aftermath of 9/11, and there weren't adequate precautions taken in some cases to deal with potential health issues. And to the extent that they've become ill, they do need to be taken care of.


It's one thing to make an emotional appeal, to say we need to care for somebody who did something good. It's another to do it in a sensible way. And that's all we're asking for. You bring it up in the lame duck session with no opportunity to amend it, and you're probably going to make bad legislation.


WALLACE: Let me move to...


KYL: All of this could have been done earlier, I might add.




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Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


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Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


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Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


bench craft company scam

Assange: Republicans, Democrats, Fox <b>News</b> conducting terrorism <b>...</b>

Assange counters 'high-tech terrorist' label by accusing his critics of terrorism.

Obama <b>news</b> conference: liveblog – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama held a news conference Wednesday to discuss the lame duck session of Congress and plans for the upcoming year.

Facebook Makes <b>News</b> Feed Filters Available To All

It looks like Facebook has made its revived news feed filters available to all users, after initially made them available selectively last week.


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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Making Money Ebay



acquired a stereo microscope from eBay, and decided to save some more money by designing, machining, and assembling his own arc reactor ring light to go along. After finding an LED driver board sitting around as well as ordering some surface mount LEDs, he set about using a lathe to cut away a block of lexan, making sure to include slots for the lights as well as the microscope mount point. Follow the link to see the detailed build photos, as well as some comparison shots with and without the ring light.


A month or two earlier though, and would have had a fantastic start to an Iron Man costume.

by BBG



Broken Bells (more by Amanda Hatfield)



Broken Bells who recently lauched a 3D interactive video for "October", kick off a string of dates tonight (12/1) at Irving Plaza. The NYC show is part of the 101.9 RXP "Yule Rock Holiday Concert Series". The band will hit select cities from coast-to-coast, eventually landing in LA by the middle of the month. Updated tour dates are below.



And Broken Bells member Danger Mouse just wouldn't be himself if he didn't have his hand in another 10000 projects. His latest is "Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi present: ROME":

Brian Burton [Danger Mouse] and Daniele Luppi met in Los Angeles in 2004... Luppi, a composer from Italy, was receiving acclaim for his album An Italian Story, which revisited the cinematic sounds of his childhood. (He has also written music for the screen - Sex and the City, Nine - and later worked with Burton on arrangements for Gnarls Barkley, Dark Night of the Soul and Broken Bells.)



United by their shared passion for classic Italian film music, ... after an intense songwriting period - writing separately at first, and then together as the songs evolved - they travelled to Rome in October 2006. Luppi made some calls and they assembled the original musicians from films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West - including the legendary Marc 4 backing band and Alessandro Alessandroni's 'I Cantori Moderni' choir. Most of the musicians were in their seventies and hadn't worked together for several decades.



They booked time in Rome's cavernous Forum Studios - formerly Ortophonic Studios, founded, amongst others, by the great Ennio Morricone... Every effort was made to replicate the recording practices of the 1960s/70s golden age, recording live and straight to tape, with overdubs but no electronics, computers, 21st-century effects or studio trickery.

In addition, Jack White and Norah Jones each lend their voices to three tracks on the forthcoming LP, due in March 2011 via Capitol Records.



In other Jack White news, the White Stripes frontman/Third Man Records honcho is taking some fire for deciding to put up some limited edition Third Man material up for auction on ebay:

Paid subscribers of Third Man Records' The Vault were directed to an eBay page with open auctions for copies of the limited edition vinyl version of the self-titled White Stripes reissue. Within an hour, all 5 auctions were above $100 each, and a small shitstorm of comments began to erupt on The Vault, when, suddenly, Jack White joined the site's chatroom with a handbasket-gripping introduction of "See you in hell?" and explained, quite simply, why the hell there were people paying 500 bucks for a record you have to crack open to listen to: "Supply & demand.... nobody told them to buy it with a gun to their head."



...When a fan tried to argue that people with "more money than sense" were to blame, Jack retorted: "Or are they just paying what the going rate is?" White explained: "We sell a Wanda Jackson split record for 10 bucks, the eBay flipper turns around and sells it for 300. If 300 is what it's worth, then why doesn't Third Man Records sell it for 300? If we sell them for more, the artist gets more, the flipper gets nothing. We're not in the business of making flippers a living. We're in the business of giving fans what they want." -

Reggie Watts auction coming soon? And the attack on the eBay record microeconomy is on. All Broken Bells dates and a video is below.



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Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

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Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


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Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


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Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


bench craft company scam

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Business Of Social Media

Are you in the business of social media? If you are involved in almost any business today you really should be or at least you should have a social media.

Saudi Arabia - Fox <b>News</b> - David Letterman | Mediaite

Here's an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American ...

More App Store <b>News</b>: No Mac App Store Promo Codes, iOS/Mac App <b>...</b>

In addition to today's news that promo codes for applications in Apple's iOS App Store are now valid worldwide, several other items of interest related to the iOS and Mac App Stores have surfaced yest.


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Making Money With Options




We won't know until Friday whether the final proposal from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles can attract the votes of 14 of the commission's 18 members. Right now, the outlook is doubtful. But we do have the final proposal, so we know the policy options they're offering. Here are the four best and five worst parts of the plan:



The good:



A payroll tax holiday in 2011: Simpson and Bowles embrace the Bipartisan Policy Commission's proposal for a payroll-tax holiday in 2011. Actually, "embrace" might be a strong word. They say Congress should "consider" it. Still, a nod toward the need for policies speeding recovery is better than ignoring that need altogether.



Process, process, process: The Simpson-Bowles recommendations correctly identify congressional inertia as the central impediment to deficit reduction. And so they try to address it. To enforce discretionary spending cuts, they make spending that busts the caps ineligible for the reconciliation process, demand that Congress take a separate vote, and then instruct OMB to cut appropriations spending across-the-board by the amount that Congress has overspent unless Congress takes another vote to stop them. Inertia, in this case, is on the side of the deficit hawks.



On the health-care side, they strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board by applying it to all health-care providers sooner. They push tax reform through a "failsafe" that automatically increases taxes if Congress doesn't rework the system by 2013. They also include rules forcing different bodies to watch over health-care spending and the full government budget and automatically offer recommendations for reform if costs exceed preset limits. Whether these are the exact right procedural reforms is up for debate -- and probably doubtful. But the commission is right to emphasize the need for procedural reforms.



Defense spending and tax expenditures are major problems: The most positive impact the commission has had on the debate has been to move two formerly sacrosanct categories of spending onto the table. There's a lot of money in the defense budget, and much of it is wasted, but when Washington talks about cutting spending, it usually talks about "non-defense discretionary spending." The commission cuts equally from defense spending and non-defense spending. Tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction also tend to get a pass, but here they come under the knife. It's very difficult to imagine any budget deal that isn't aggressive on both these fronts, so kudos to the commission for adding them.



A two-sided deal on Social Security: I don't particularly like the commission's Social Security recommendations, but I do like their vision of a deal that's more than just cuts and taxes. Their proposal sharply increases Social Security's minimum benefit, making it a better deal for poor retirees, if not for the average retiree. It also increases benefits for very old retirees, who may have outlived their savings. That's a good addition to the eventual debate over the system's solvency and sufficiency.



The bad:

The tax section: In an odd bid for Republican support, the commission caps revenues at 21 percent of GDP. That's higher than they are now, or than they've been historically. But we're also a larger, older country than we've been historically, with more social spending to support. The commission's mandate was to balance the budget, not decide the size of government. This overstepped it.



But at least that made some political sense. Simpson and Bowles's timidity on tax options is odder. They correctly emphasize the need for tax reform, but they limit themselves to the design of the current system -- a system which almost all experts agree is flawed. No mention of a carbon tax or a value-added tax, both of which are preferred by many, if not most, tax-policy experts.



The 2012 start date: Simpson and Bowles start their cuts in 2012, as they assume the economy will have recovered by then. But what if it hasn't? A better approach would've been using an economic indicator as a trigger. For instance, we could've held stimulative measures like unemployment insurance and a payroll-tax cut until the unemployment rate dipped to 6.5 percent and then, when that milestone was hit, moved to austerity. As it is, there's no real guarantee we'll be recovered by 2012, and if we're not, then we shouldn't start cutting.



Raising the retirement age: If we want to cut Social Security benefits, we should cut Social Security benefits. Raising both the early and full retirement ages mainly penalizes those who hate their jobs or can no longer physically fulfill them. That's not the right way to reform Social Security.



Hobbling government: Among the plan's worst ideas is to cut congressional and White House budgets by 15 percent. Given the role of government and the complexity of modern life, members of Congress are probably understaffed even now. Taking staff away from them just means they'll either be more ignorant about the bills they're voting on, less responsive to their constituents or more reliant on lobbyists and outside players. That's a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach: The small short-term savings will probably be dwarfed by the deep long-term costs.



The same goes for the plan's other aggressive cuts to the government. One proposal, for instance, relies on "attrition" -- not to mention a three-year pay freeze -- to sharply cut the federal workforce by 200,000. "Washington needs to learn to do more with less, using fewer resources to accomplish existing goals without risking a decline in essential government services," the report says. But that's magical thinking. Companies and governments typically do less with less, and though having less saves some money on the front-end, too few banking regulators with too low pay, for instance, might end up costing us a lot of money later on. I'm for smart and targeted reforms to the federal workforce, but these aren't them.



Cowardice on health-care reform: The plan's health-care savings largely consist of hoping the cost controls (IPAB, the excise tax, and various demonstration projects) in the new health-care law work and expanding their power and reach. But the commission "does not take a position" on the new law. In the event that more savings are needed, they throw out a grab bag of liberal and conservative policies, ranging from a public option and government purchasing to Medicare privatization, but don't really put their weight behind any of them. Given that health-care costs are the single most significant driver of our long-term budget problem, the commission's decision to hide from the big questions here is quite disappointing, particularly given their self-styled focus on making hard decisions and telling unpopular truths.



In the never-ending search for bigger and faster storage options, Mac users have a number of sources for hard drives, but OWC has been a favorite for many Apple fans since the late 1980s. Now the company is offering a set of turnkey eSATA add-ons and upgrades for mid-2010 27" iMacs that should make almost any space-challenged Machead happy.


The upgrade paths are all outlined on a special configuration web page on OWC's site. It all starts with an internal boot solid-state drive. If you already have the 256GB internal SSD option installed in your iMac, then you're ready to go -- if not, then you move on to the next step, which is to add either an eSATA port or an internal SSD.


You then have the option of adding more SSDs (up to a total three 480GB drives) and/or a big 7200 RPM hard drive. Adding the "last" SSD disables your internal SD card reader, but never fear -- OWC throws in a USB card reader to replace it. The capacity of the 7200 RPM hard drive can be up to 3TB, making for a lot of built-in storage.


My personal dream configuration, if money was no object (and it is), would be to get a 480GB SSD installed for a boot and applications drive, a second 480GB SSD for mirroring the first drive, and a 3TB drive for all of my data. Then I'd have the eSATA port installed and put my original 2TB internal drive into an OWC eSATA enclosure for doing some backups. Throw in a 16GB RAM upgrade, an external Blu-Ray read/write drive, and a three-year extended warranty, and the cost would be right around $3,000.


It is great to see these kinds of storage options available for iMacs, and tremendous fun to price out the different configurations. If money was no object, what would you have OWC install in your 27" iMac?


[via Electronista]



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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We won't know until Friday whether the final proposal from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles can attract the votes of 14 of the commission's 18 members. Right now, the outlook is doubtful. But we do have the final proposal, so we know the policy options they're offering. Here are the four best and five worst parts of the plan:



The good:



A payroll tax holiday in 2011: Simpson and Bowles embrace the Bipartisan Policy Commission's proposal for a payroll-tax holiday in 2011. Actually, "embrace" might be a strong word. They say Congress should "consider" it. Still, a nod toward the need for policies speeding recovery is better than ignoring that need altogether.



Process, process, process: The Simpson-Bowles recommendations correctly identify congressional inertia as the central impediment to deficit reduction. And so they try to address it. To enforce discretionary spending cuts, they make spending that busts the caps ineligible for the reconciliation process, demand that Congress take a separate vote, and then instruct OMB to cut appropriations spending across-the-board by the amount that Congress has overspent unless Congress takes another vote to stop them. Inertia, in this case, is on the side of the deficit hawks.



On the health-care side, they strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board by applying it to all health-care providers sooner. They push tax reform through a "failsafe" that automatically increases taxes if Congress doesn't rework the system by 2013. They also include rules forcing different bodies to watch over health-care spending and the full government budget and automatically offer recommendations for reform if costs exceed preset limits. Whether these are the exact right procedural reforms is up for debate -- and probably doubtful. But the commission is right to emphasize the need for procedural reforms.



Defense spending and tax expenditures are major problems: The most positive impact the commission has had on the debate has been to move two formerly sacrosanct categories of spending onto the table. There's a lot of money in the defense budget, and much of it is wasted, but when Washington talks about cutting spending, it usually talks about "non-defense discretionary spending." The commission cuts equally from defense spending and non-defense spending. Tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction also tend to get a pass, but here they come under the knife. It's very difficult to imagine any budget deal that isn't aggressive on both these fronts, so kudos to the commission for adding them.



A two-sided deal on Social Security: I don't particularly like the commission's Social Security recommendations, but I do like their vision of a deal that's more than just cuts and taxes. Their proposal sharply increases Social Security's minimum benefit, making it a better deal for poor retirees, if not for the average retiree. It also increases benefits for very old retirees, who may have outlived their savings. That's a good addition to the eventual debate over the system's solvency and sufficiency.



The bad:

The tax section: In an odd bid for Republican support, the commission caps revenues at 21 percent of GDP. That's higher than they are now, or than they've been historically. But we're also a larger, older country than we've been historically, with more social spending to support. The commission's mandate was to balance the budget, not decide the size of government. This overstepped it.



But at least that made some political sense. Simpson and Bowles's timidity on tax options is odder. They correctly emphasize the need for tax reform, but they limit themselves to the design of the current system -- a system which almost all experts agree is flawed. No mention of a carbon tax or a value-added tax, both of which are preferred by many, if not most, tax-policy experts.



The 2012 start date: Simpson and Bowles start their cuts in 2012, as they assume the economy will have recovered by then. But what if it hasn't? A better approach would've been using an economic indicator as a trigger. For instance, we could've held stimulative measures like unemployment insurance and a payroll-tax cut until the unemployment rate dipped to 6.5 percent and then, when that milestone was hit, moved to austerity. As it is, there's no real guarantee we'll be recovered by 2012, and if we're not, then we shouldn't start cutting.



Raising the retirement age: If we want to cut Social Security benefits, we should cut Social Security benefits. Raising both the early and full retirement ages mainly penalizes those who hate their jobs or can no longer physically fulfill them. That's not the right way to reform Social Security.



Hobbling government: Among the plan's worst ideas is to cut congressional and White House budgets by 15 percent. Given the role of government and the complexity of modern life, members of Congress are probably understaffed even now. Taking staff away from them just means they'll either be more ignorant about the bills they're voting on, less responsive to their constituents or more reliant on lobbyists and outside players. That's a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach: The small short-term savings will probably be dwarfed by the deep long-term costs.



The same goes for the plan's other aggressive cuts to the government. One proposal, for instance, relies on "attrition" -- not to mention a three-year pay freeze -- to sharply cut the federal workforce by 200,000. "Washington needs to learn to do more with less, using fewer resources to accomplish existing goals without risking a decline in essential government services," the report says. But that's magical thinking. Companies and governments typically do less with less, and though having less saves some money on the front-end, too few banking regulators with too low pay, for instance, might end up costing us a lot of money later on. I'm for smart and targeted reforms to the federal workforce, but these aren't them.



Cowardice on health-care reform: The plan's health-care savings largely consist of hoping the cost controls (IPAB, the excise tax, and various demonstration projects) in the new health-care law work and expanding their power and reach. But the commission "does not take a position" on the new law. In the event that more savings are needed, they throw out a grab bag of liberal and conservative policies, ranging from a public option and government purchasing to Medicare privatization, but don't really put their weight behind any of them. Given that health-care costs are the single most significant driver of our long-term budget problem, the commission's decision to hide from the big questions here is quite disappointing, particularly given their self-styled focus on making hard decisions and telling unpopular truths.



In the never-ending search for bigger and faster storage options, Mac users have a number of sources for hard drives, but OWC has been a favorite for many Apple fans since the late 1980s. Now the company is offering a set of turnkey eSATA add-ons and upgrades for mid-2010 27" iMacs that should make almost any space-challenged Machead happy.


The upgrade paths are all outlined on a special configuration web page on OWC's site. It all starts with an internal boot solid-state drive. If you already have the 256GB internal SSD option installed in your iMac, then you're ready to go -- if not, then you move on to the next step, which is to add either an eSATA port or an internal SSD.


You then have the option of adding more SSDs (up to a total three 480GB drives) and/or a big 7200 RPM hard drive. Adding the "last" SSD disables your internal SD card reader, but never fear -- OWC throws in a USB card reader to replace it. The capacity of the 7200 RPM hard drive can be up to 3TB, making for a lot of built-in storage.


My personal dream configuration, if money was no object (and it is), would be to get a 480GB SSD installed for a boot and applications drive, a second 480GB SSD for mirroring the first drive, and a 3TB drive for all of my data. Then I'd have the eSATA port installed and put my original 2TB internal drive into an OWC eSATA enclosure for doing some backups. Throw in a 16GB RAM upgrade, an external Blu-Ray read/write drive, and a three-year extended warranty, and the cost would be right around $3,000.


It is great to see these kinds of storage options available for iMacs, and tremendous fun to price out the different configurations. If money was no object, what would you have OWC install in your 27" iMac?


[via Electronista]



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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We won't know until Friday whether the final proposal from Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles can attract the votes of 14 of the commission's 18 members. Right now, the outlook is doubtful. But we do have the final proposal, so we know the policy options they're offering. Here are the four best and five worst parts of the plan:



The good:



A payroll tax holiday in 2011: Simpson and Bowles embrace the Bipartisan Policy Commission's proposal for a payroll-tax holiday in 2011. Actually, "embrace" might be a strong word. They say Congress should "consider" it. Still, a nod toward the need for policies speeding recovery is better than ignoring that need altogether.



Process, process, process: The Simpson-Bowles recommendations correctly identify congressional inertia as the central impediment to deficit reduction. And so they try to address it. To enforce discretionary spending cuts, they make spending that busts the caps ineligible for the reconciliation process, demand that Congress take a separate vote, and then instruct OMB to cut appropriations spending across-the-board by the amount that Congress has overspent unless Congress takes another vote to stop them. Inertia, in this case, is on the side of the deficit hawks.



On the health-care side, they strengthen the Independent Payment Advisory Board by applying it to all health-care providers sooner. They push tax reform through a "failsafe" that automatically increases taxes if Congress doesn't rework the system by 2013. They also include rules forcing different bodies to watch over health-care spending and the full government budget and automatically offer recommendations for reform if costs exceed preset limits. Whether these are the exact right procedural reforms is up for debate -- and probably doubtful. But the commission is right to emphasize the need for procedural reforms.



Defense spending and tax expenditures are major problems: The most positive impact the commission has had on the debate has been to move two formerly sacrosanct categories of spending onto the table. There's a lot of money in the defense budget, and much of it is wasted, but when Washington talks about cutting spending, it usually talks about "non-defense discretionary spending." The commission cuts equally from defense spending and non-defense spending. Tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction also tend to get a pass, but here they come under the knife. It's very difficult to imagine any budget deal that isn't aggressive on both these fronts, so kudos to the commission for adding them.



A two-sided deal on Social Security: I don't particularly like the commission's Social Security recommendations, but I do like their vision of a deal that's more than just cuts and taxes. Their proposal sharply increases Social Security's minimum benefit, making it a better deal for poor retirees, if not for the average retiree. It also increases benefits for very old retirees, who may have outlived their savings. That's a good addition to the eventual debate over the system's solvency and sufficiency.



The bad:

The tax section: In an odd bid for Republican support, the commission caps revenues at 21 percent of GDP. That's higher than they are now, or than they've been historically. But we're also a larger, older country than we've been historically, with more social spending to support. The commission's mandate was to balance the budget, not decide the size of government. This overstepped it.



But at least that made some political sense. Simpson and Bowles's timidity on tax options is odder. They correctly emphasize the need for tax reform, but they limit themselves to the design of the current system -- a system which almost all experts agree is flawed. No mention of a carbon tax or a value-added tax, both of which are preferred by many, if not most, tax-policy experts.



The 2012 start date: Simpson and Bowles start their cuts in 2012, as they assume the economy will have recovered by then. But what if it hasn't? A better approach would've been using an economic indicator as a trigger. For instance, we could've held stimulative measures like unemployment insurance and a payroll-tax cut until the unemployment rate dipped to 6.5 percent and then, when that milestone was hit, moved to austerity. As it is, there's no real guarantee we'll be recovered by 2012, and if we're not, then we shouldn't start cutting.



Raising the retirement age: If we want to cut Social Security benefits, we should cut Social Security benefits. Raising both the early and full retirement ages mainly penalizes those who hate their jobs or can no longer physically fulfill them. That's not the right way to reform Social Security.



Hobbling government: Among the plan's worst ideas is to cut congressional and White House budgets by 15 percent. Given the role of government and the complexity of modern life, members of Congress are probably understaffed even now. Taking staff away from them just means they'll either be more ignorant about the bills they're voting on, less responsive to their constituents or more reliant on lobbyists and outside players. That's a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach: The small short-term savings will probably be dwarfed by the deep long-term costs.



The same goes for the plan's other aggressive cuts to the government. One proposal, for instance, relies on "attrition" -- not to mention a three-year pay freeze -- to sharply cut the federal workforce by 200,000. "Washington needs to learn to do more with less, using fewer resources to accomplish existing goals without risking a decline in essential government services," the report says. But that's magical thinking. Companies and governments typically do less with less, and though having less saves some money on the front-end, too few banking regulators with too low pay, for instance, might end up costing us a lot of money later on. I'm for smart and targeted reforms to the federal workforce, but these aren't them.



Cowardice on health-care reform: The plan's health-care savings largely consist of hoping the cost controls (IPAB, the excise tax, and various demonstration projects) in the new health-care law work and expanding their power and reach. But the commission "does not take a position" on the new law. In the event that more savings are needed, they throw out a grab bag of liberal and conservative policies, ranging from a public option and government purchasing to Medicare privatization, but don't really put their weight behind any of them. Given that health-care costs are the single most significant driver of our long-term budget problem, the commission's decision to hide from the big questions here is quite disappointing, particularly given their self-styled focus on making hard decisions and telling unpopular truths.



In the never-ending search for bigger and faster storage options, Mac users have a number of sources for hard drives, but OWC has been a favorite for many Apple fans since the late 1980s. Now the company is offering a set of turnkey eSATA add-ons and upgrades for mid-2010 27" iMacs that should make almost any space-challenged Machead happy.


The upgrade paths are all outlined on a special configuration web page on OWC's site. It all starts with an internal boot solid-state drive. If you already have the 256GB internal SSD option installed in your iMac, then you're ready to go -- if not, then you move on to the next step, which is to add either an eSATA port or an internal SSD.


You then have the option of adding more SSDs (up to a total three 480GB drives) and/or a big 7200 RPM hard drive. Adding the "last" SSD disables your internal SD card reader, but never fear -- OWC throws in a USB card reader to replace it. The capacity of the 7200 RPM hard drive can be up to 3TB, making for a lot of built-in storage.


My personal dream configuration, if money was no object (and it is), would be to get a 480GB SSD installed for a boot and applications drive, a second 480GB SSD for mirroring the first drive, and a 3TB drive for all of my data. Then I'd have the eSATA port installed and put my original 2TB internal drive into an OWC eSATA enclosure for doing some backups. Throw in a 16GB RAM upgrade, an external Blu-Ray read/write drive, and a three-year extended warranty, and the cost would be right around $3,000.


It is great to see these kinds of storage options available for iMacs, and tremendous fun to price out the different configurations. If money was no object, what would you have OWC install in your 27" iMac?


[via Electronista]



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



pennis enlargement

Scripting <b>News</b>: My JSON River of <b>News</b>

My JSON River of News. By Dave Winer on Monday, December 06, 2010 at 9:45 PM. First a few preambles... Permanent link to this item in the archive. 1. I'm a big believer in the River of News style of feed reader. Reverse-chronologic. ...

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Small Business Samba

From the slow dance Republicans and Democrats have been doing in Washington the last few weeks over tax cuts and jobless benefit extensions approved earlier.

Breaking <b>News</b>: Watch A Gigantic Looping Solar Prominence

The Solar Dynamics Observatory never fails to deliver absolutely stunning images from the Sun: as of 18:49 UT today, the above picture is what the Sun looked like in the ultraviolet spectrum. The prominence that you are seeing looping ...



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