Amazing what you can do with a few old PCs and laptops.

Really this is your defense, Gingrich? Are people supposed to feel better about your qualifications for president because you can’t remember whether or not a company paid you $1.6 million? That sure makes you seem like a regular man of the people.

The government has pursued a wide range of policies over the last three decades that have had the predicted and actual effect of redistributing income upward. For example, it has adopted a trade policy that drives down the wages of much of the working population by putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in Mexico and China and other developing countries. By contrast, the most highly paid professionals, like doctors and lawyers, are still largely protected from the same sort of competition.

Republicans apparently just submitted a last-ditch effort to get agreement on the Super Committee. It was a $545 billion proposal, less than half of the minimum requirement to avoid all of the automatic trigger cuts. And it included $3 billion in tax increases.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s a ratio of about 181:1.

Democrats rejected it.

This is a victory for environmentalists who wanted to stop the fracking regulations from taking effect. The commission wanted unanimous support and Delaware’s announcement guaranteed a close vote. If New York and Delaware continue to hold out this will be postponed indefinitely.

Fringy Jesus-humpin’ Ann Barnhardt is totally going Galt from her cow/corn hedge brokerin’ job thing because she just figured out that the entire US economy WAS COMPLETELY FUCKING ANNIHILATED by the Muslim Kenyan (yeah, Ann’s a birther too) President’s BFF Jon Corzine, former CEO of Marxist front operation ACORN-Goldman-Sachs a couple of weeks ago.

It is a depressing statement on the state of our current democracy that any easily implemented policy change like moving cannabis from schedule I to schedule III so it can be legally prescribed by a doctor still hasn’t happened despite poll after poll showing the American public overwhelmingly supports the change.

Thursda,y in two separate actions, several hundred people participated in a march organized by Good Jobs LA, with folks from Occupy LA, SEIU and citizens joining in as part of a general day of action to protest police actions in New York and elsewhere; planned arrests went off without a hitch. Later in the afternoon, a large group from Occupy LA marched back to the Bank of America branch and some folks were arrested. There was no violence in either action.

It wasn’t clear if “direct Newt interaction” came with a happy ending.

Getting Burma out of the cold would mean that millions of Burmese citizens will be able to live with a modicum of freedom and dignity. The reconciliation process is moving forward there, and deploying smart power – the initial premise of the Clinton State Department – to support those efforts, not with sticks but carrots, not with bombs but words, should be the model going forward.