Company	Action	Cowards?	Explanation
Amazon	Removed WikiLeaks cables from its “cloud” data service.	Yes.	Only 612 cables (out of a quarter-million) had been released, and Amazon was hosting the redacted versions already published by the New York Times and other newspapers.
Tableau Software	Removed charts illustrating statistical summaries of WikiLeaks cables.	Yes.	Never hosted the cables themselves.
EveryDNS	Removed “wikileaks.org” from its free DNS service, which translates domain names to numeric Internet server addresses.	No.	Attacks on system threatened entire service.

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Title: “Millie’s Book”

Authors: Barbara Bush & Millie Bush

Rank: 166,729 (#27 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( B ) > Bush, George)

Blurb: “The Bush’s dog, Millie, describes a day in the life of George Herbert Walker Bush and family, discussing morning briefings, deliberations in the Oval Office, and short breaks for squirrel hunting.”

Review: “I’m Millie’s son, Ranger. I think that ‘Millie’s Book’ is truthful, and beautifully written. My mother had incredible courage to write this book and I’m very proud of her.”

Customers Also Bought: “Keeping Up With the Kardashians: The Complete Second Season”

Footnote: Speaking of Amazon’s Long Tail… Okay, no, we won’t go there. But between the Fetus Jar and Talibunny calling Babs a Blue Blood, we just got curious. For the record, Millie ascended to Doggie Heaven in 1997, while Ranger made a quick exit in 1993.

Millie’s Book [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Friday’s Nice Liberal Thought for the Day, from Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly:

President Obama established the Democratic baseline on tax policy quite a while ago — permanent cuts for those making less than $250,000; Clinton-era top rates for the wealthy — and he’s stuck to it for nearly two years, including through the election season. The president appears poised to yield to GOP demands now, which is unfortunate, but is largely a reflection of what transpired on Capitol Hill, where Dems chose to stray from the baseline Obama had already set.

Well, that’s certainly a perfectly reasonable explanation.

So, how’s this for a perfectly reasonable response:

We don’t care.

That is to say, we hold Democrats collectively responsible for the most colossal squandered opportunity of our adult life.

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“The Library of Congress has blocked access to the Wikileaks site on its staff computers and on the wireless network that visitors use, two sources tell TPM.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UQ2vqFJvpA

One of the enduring frustrations of our childhood is that we could never get the damn Hot Wheels track to work. We now recognize that this was a monumental failure of imagination.

Chris Burden’s latest project “a portrait of LA” [Kottke]

In one of the greatest works of American Letters, Sylvester McMonkey McBean markets Star-On and Star-Off machines to unwitting Sneetches, who pay him for one or the other service until they’re all broke.

Kind of like billboard companies:

Atheists and Catholics have posted dueling billboards in New York City, creating a metaphysical face-off near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. One, put up by the group American Atheists, proclaims that Christmas is a “myth.” The other, posted by the Catholic League in response, urges commuters: “You know it’s real. This season, celebrate Jesus.”

A word to our Comrades in Hell: Lay the fuck off. You can enjoy the snow, gifts, carols, even Linus reading the Gospel without fearing for your intellectual integrity. Joy to the World, assholes.

Atheist ad campaigns stir the pot during holiday season [Yahoo]

“Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at the anti-graft agency said.” [BusinessWeek]