“To be truly free, and truly to appreciate its freedom, a society must be literate.” Who said it? The answer is at the end of this post. Now on to the links! … “The class war is over—working people lost” … “We’ve had issues with them hiding the mail” … “Whatever happened to kids spending quality time in the real world?” … “Where Moscow has faltered, Beijing has succeeded, wielding its influence in the form of its enormous cash reserves” … “When people would ask me if I could guarantee their safety, I would say, ‘Unfortunately, I cannot‘” … “‘You’re screwed,’ he told his friends in the House” … “I underline the perverse way that cartels are empowered—and thus their violence enabled—by our continuing an outdated, ridiculous ban” … “When you look at the sky with new sensitivity, you’re going to find new things that you didn’t know were out there” … “We expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy” … “There are still those members of the general public and even some experts who ignore women’s capacity for sexual abuse” … “Manually controlling volume levels with the remote control remains the simplest approach to reducing excessive volume levels” … “The problem is that this is a bivariate type of economy” … “I told you insulation is sexy!” … “There are as many as 1 million fake bills in circulation” … “A cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks is fuelling the obesity crisis” … “I am just over the moon to be making this film with Mel, Leo and Bill” … “When that coalition fails, we’ll be back to calls for bombs” … “We’re unlikely to see a Karl Rove frogwalk any time soon” … “This has been a year of unprecedented devastation for the world’s media” … “Students told us that counselors used a variety of questionable tactics to reel them in” … “I knew if we could hurt the box office receipts here, it might put the brakes on the next movie” … “I am beyond disgusted at many of the putrid, spineless, stupid quislings who call themselves progressives” … “Who is a Jew?” … “It is the place where people go” … “The effort has been successful in the overall fight against terrorism” … “If there is no action taken to bring them down, ‘the federal government will go bankrupt‘” … “You may use the Web, but at the end of the day it is you who is really being used” … “During the worst recession in more than a quarter-century, it’s a disgrace” … “This was an extremely irresponsible thing to do” … “Intervention needs to happen now” … “I’m proud of being an ex-con” … “We have stopped worrying about this and Russia should stop worrying about this as well” … “I am not trying to promote an ideological fight within the Democratic Party” … “Junker said he has made personal contributions to legislators to ‘protect‘ the Fiesta Bowl” … “The time has come for a British Bill of Rights” … “The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back” … “Maybe they should fire the lobbyists” … “Just who’s running this nuclear-armed country is unclear” … “Unfortunately I’m hopeless with children” … “I call the Republicans a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America, but now Obama is not far behind” … “Here are the 10 biggest debacles of the decade” … “An extraordinary recent statement has stunned his coal-dependent home state” … “Firefox has become an unstable mess of add-ons, plugins, and other hacks that chew up memory like a fat kid with a chocolate-dipped corn dog” … “They get their giggles from sitting in the backseat and bitching” … “For some 40 years, he lived the Mother Road’s itinerant ideal, defined its congenial ethos and left a body of art as iconic as the route
that inspired it” … “We are done, we are tired, we are hungry, we still put you ahead of us, and yet that is still not good enough for some” … “Yoshida is famous for her baffling knuckleball” … “The resolution recognizing the album’s 50th anniversary passed on a 409-0 vote” … This issue’s quote was from William F. Buckley, Jr. … And finally, the title of this post is Klingon for “Merry Christmas.” ∞