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Rep. Paul Ryan made absolutely clear that he is not now and never was interested in deficit reduction. After a couple of years of being lauded by deficit hawks as the man prepared to make hard choices, he proposed a budget that would not end deficits until 2040, but would cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over a decade while also extending all of the Bush tax cuts, adding another $5.4 trillion to the deficit. Ryan would increase military expenditures, and then eviscerate the rest of the federal government.

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Microsoft’s working quickly to counter backlash it’s receiving after denying a user who won a Windows Phone challenge his just reward. Yesterday, Sahas Katta won a “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge when his Galaxy Nexus displayed the weather of two different cities faster than the Windows Phone he was up against, but the Microsoft store claimed that he had to show weather from two different states. Microsoft has been roundly bashed for this technicality since then, so Windows Phone evangelist Ben Rudolph has just taken to Twitter to apologize and offer Katta a new laptop and Windows Phone, as well as an apology.

You could see this coming miles away. I mean, what marketing genius thought it was a great idea to set up a rigged “contest” where the whole point is to ridicule your potential customers one at a time? How is this supposed to make your potential customers feel good? And why do you thing that, in the age of the Internet, you can get away with cheating potential customers?

Well, many questions, actually.

Let’s start with What the Fuck?

And to think this guy was a supposedly serious candidate for President..

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The latest outing of Angry Birds – this time in spaaaace – has been downloaded 10 million times since it launched three days ago. The catapult-pinging galactic avian game was unveiled amid huge publicity on Friday. Rovio announced the expectation-smashing numbers on its Twitter feed this morning.

No wonder console builders are worried by iOS and Android.

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Auto makers are worried about the Millennials. They just don’t seem to care about owning a car. Is this a generational shift, or just a lousy economy at work? 

Kids these days. They don’t get married. They don’t buy homes. And, much to the dismay of the world’s auto makers, they apparently don’t feel a deep and abiding urge to own a car.

This week, the New York Timespulled back the curtain on General Motors’ recent, slightly bewildered efforts to connect with the Millennials — that giant generational cohort born in the 1980s and 1990s whose growing consumer power is reshaping the way corporate America markets its wares. Unfortunately for car companies, today’s teens and twenty-somethings don’t seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They’re not even particularly keen on driving.

The Times notes that less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998. The fraction of 20-to-24-year-olds with a license has also dropped. And according to CNW research, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985.

At a major conference last year, Toyota USA President Jim Lentz offered up a fairly doleful summary of the industry’s challenge.

“We have to face the growing reality that today young people don’t seem to be as interested in cars as previous generations,” Lentz said. “Many young people care more about buying the latest smart phone or gaming console than getting their driver’s license.”

The billion-dollar question for automakers is whether this shift is truly permanent, the result of a baked-in attitude shift among Millennials that will last well into adulthood, or the product of an economy that’s been particularly brutal on the young.

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Law enforcement forced entry into the home of Daisy Bram, then violently ripped her three-week old newborn from her arms because she is a medical marijuana patient.

At 8am on the morning of September 29, 2011, the Butte Interagency Narcotic Task Force (BINTF) forced entry into the home of Daisy Bram and her husband Jayme Walsh. Law enforcement officers arrested the couple and working jointly with Child Protective Services, seized their children — including their 3-week-old suckling newborn, Zeus, who was violently ripped from his mother’s arms.   He and his 15-month-old brother, Thor, were snatched and placed in a stranger’s home. Neither of these nursing babies had ever been away from their parents.

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Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly.
She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand.
She had already been to two other hospitals that week in September, complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle.
This time, she refused to leave.
A police officer arrested Brown for trespassing. He wheeled her out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.
Brown was 29. A mother who had lost custody of two children. Homeless. On Medicaid. And, an autopsy later revealed, dying from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.

A compassionate society cannot have a free-market health-care system.

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Last week a large, profitable company sued a small start-up business for patent infringement. As a non-legal person, I can only guess that this sort of thing must happen fairly often. I would also guess that the large companies, which have the means to hire crackerjack legal teams and drag cases out, must often win. And while I guess I feel bad for the small businesses, I’ve never really cared before now.

Because this time, the stakes are high.

This time, it’s my daughter’s voice on the line. Literally.

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Fox News Channel commentator Geraldo Rivera said Friday that the hoodie an unarmed black teenager wore when he was killed in Florida is as much responsible for his death as the man who shot him.

The veteran TV personality, speaking on “Fox & Friends,” waded in with an opinion on the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a story that has attracted national attention over the past month. He later acknowledged that his comments were “politically incorrect.”

People wearing hooded sweatshirts are often going to be perceived as a menace, Rivera said.

“I’ll bet you money that if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way,” Rivera said.

We’ve heard this before. Blame the victim. “If she hadn’t worn that short skirt, I wouldn’t have raped her.”