Blessed Be the Peace Makers

Richard Holbrooke the greatest diplomat of his era, has died. Like the American foreign policy he served all his life, he was arrogant, brave, and did more good than harm.

Actavist Judge!

Turns out, conservatives love judge who strike down legislation from the bench, if its legislation they don't want. Evil judges undoing the will of duly election representatives is great, if those representatives were D's.

Now this is not even close to being over, as a couple of judges have already ruled the other way. So look for this to end up with the Supremes sooner or later.

Oh and by the by, striking down the individual mandate won't undo HCR. It could very well undo the private health care sector if the rest of the reforms go forward, but plenty of HCR easily passes Constitutional muster.

Welcome to the Info Wars

Nobody dies, but reputations, finances, and long stretches in prison are all in play. Turns out, despite the hacker credo, some information really doesn't want to be free. Or will result in massive amounts of shit raining down on your head if it gets out.

Of course, for every action there is reaction, and the hacker do what they can to strike back, but in the end, lots of powerful people want their information private and will act to keep it so.

Bad Money

This isn't at all a metaphor:

A significant production problem with new high-tech $100 bills has caused government printers to shut down production of the new notes and to quarantine more than one billion of the bills in huge vaults in Fort Worth, Texas and Washington, DC, CNBC has learned.

You know in books, you get a creased page and can't read what going on for two pages. When that happens with money, big problem.