The Hollywood Liberal

What’s Dick Durbin’s role in talks over fate of Social Security?
Senator Dick Durbin has been taking a beating in the liberal blogosphere from people who worry that he’s going to sell out Social Security in the “Gang of Six” talks on their forthcoming deficit reduction proposal.

AP News in Brief
Obama to supporters: I understand your frustration over compromises with GOP

White House tech boss backs Obama’s IT comments
Jules AmeelAPThe government’s technology “is horrible,” according to President Obama and his top tech guru.The top White House technology guru is supporting claims made last week by President Obama that the government’s information-technology “is horrible.”

Runoff elections necessary in unions race to represent TSOs
The largest federal union organizing election is not over yet.

How to debate President Obama
Continetti is guest-blogging for The Post.

Governing Drunk on Partisanship
Tony Blankley, Washington Times
If future historians look back on the ruins of the American economy after a U.S. bond crisis struck in the second decade of the 21st century, many causes will be noted. Obviously, it will be seen that for decades before the catastrophe, the U.S. was spending vastly more than it could afford on government health and retirement programs. And, just as after the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, 2011, blue-ribbon commissions will be incredulous that all the telltale signs of the coming disaster were in plain view, yet were ignored. Receive news alertsBut the central indictment for the…

Republicans Sharpening Online Tools for 2012

He Worked for Obama. Can He Beat Him?
Jeff Zeleny, New York Times
Three months before President Obama nominated Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as ambassador to China, Mr. Huntsman arrived here to introduce himself to three dozen influential Republicans and talk politics with them over dinner at the Palmetto Club. Mr. Huntsman, then serving his second term as governor of Utah and prospecting for his political future, worried aloud that Republicans were growing out of touch with a generation of Americans. If the party wanted to win national elections again, he argued, Republicans needed to broaden their appeal to young voters, Hispanics and independents.

Stuck in a “McJobs” Style Downturn

Keynesianism’s Systemic Failure
Peter Foster, National Post
While the United States has been hit with a prospective debt downgrade in the wake of President Obama’s defiant statism, the even more statist European Union is trying to keep the lid on the consequences of its own regulatory pretensions and its members’ fiscal fecklessness.Greece denies any need to restructure its debt, but the market doesn’t believe it, and has forced its borrowing rates to junk levels. There is backroom panic over the recent Finnish election results, which saw the rise of an anti-bailout party called True Finns. Since EU bailout…