Google's 2012 year in review video, released today.

Open thread below.

What a great concert! I saw Bruce, Bon Jovi, Roger Waters, The Stones and Eric Clapton in between working so far. There's still a lot of great music left.

You can donate here. The link is a bit slow to open so hang in there.

Watch a livestream of the concert above, and donate to Sandy relief efforts below; proceeds will go to the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Relief Fund to aid hurricane victims across the tri-state area.

Shortly after the show, 24 live tracks will hit iTunes for $12.99, with proceeds from sales also going towards the Robin Hood Relief Fund. A physical album release is in the works.

Update: The Who rocked the Garden!

To donate you can also call 1-855-465-HELP website www.121212concert.org

Absurdity Today for CrooksandLiars.com : the independent news parody series hosted by political satirist Julianna Forlano.

This Week's Top Stories Include:

The FCC Working to Change Longstanding Anti-Consolidation Legislation; The Federal Reserve Bank may now read your emails; Barack Obama Wins an Oscar and much more.

So Chris Christie's business-loving policies will put people's homes directly back in harm's way. After all, he's got an election to win! And developers are known to be very generous campaign contributors, so it's a win/win for everyone -- except the people who will be traumatized the next time around:

How this exclusive beach club came to be constructed and expanded here, in one of the highest-risk flood zones in the state, offers testament to how New Jersey now finds itself seeking nearly $37 billion in federal disaster relief funds to repair the ravages of Sandy. It also highlights why the state appears uniquely vulnerable to rising sea levels, future hurricanes and their attendant storm surges, with federal taxpayers on the hook for many of the costs.

New Jersey's coastal land-use regulations are conspicuously lenient compared to other states, an investigation by The Huffington Post has found -- so lenient that authorities permitted the Cabana Club to adopt its precarious location between the seawall and the beach. Based on current state law -- the fruit of a political compromise crafted nearly two decades ago -- the club can fully rebuild here, in exactly the same spot. In New Jersey, owners of coastal developments possess unique rights to rebuild in the wake of storms. Whatever nature removes, and at whatever cost to taxpayers, property owners are free to put it all back.

Sandy is now testing the merits of the absolute right to rebuild like never before, resurrecting long-expressed concerns that it sets up homeowners and the government for future disasters. As New Jersey confronts the question of how and where to reconstruct its battered shore, experts warn that the state's land-use laws are likely to perpetuate what has played out here for decades: cycles of reckless development followed by storm-inflicted devastation.

"The status quo is that you just put everything back," said Mark Mauriello, a former commissioner for New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection, who worked in the agency's coastal program for two decades. "Looking ahead, we shouldn't be surprised when we see areas damaged again, people hurt, and the same kind of misery we've seen here. Clearly, I hope people realize that's not a good plan for the future."

If New Jersey is to forge a different path, it may require a change in philosophy from its famously pugnacious Republican governor, Chris Christie. Since taking office three years ago, Christie and his appointees have altered the composition of the state's Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees shoreline land use, replacing several credentialed experts in environmental science and coastal management with people drawn from the business world.

The department's current commissioner, Bob Martin -- an advisor to Christie's 2009 campaign, and previously an energy and utility consultant at Accenture -- has urged the agency to adopt a "customer service focus" while serving as "a driver for economic growth." He has marginalized the authority of scientists and coastal policy experts, critics say, primarily by transferring them to other offices.

"[Christie has] done the exact opposite of what's needed to be done," said Bill Wolfe, a former Department of Environmental Protection planner and policy analyst who now leads the watchdog group New Jersey Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "He has been affirmatively promoting regulatory relief and taking away any development, land use planning and infrastructure expertise at the department."

Majority FM's Sam Seder and our friend Digby from Hullabaloo discuss the trial balloon on raising the Medicare age that was thrown out there by the administration this week, whether the administration still wants a "grand bargain" and what a bad idea it would be for them to give in to Republicans and their hostage taking by agreeing to raise that age.

As we've already discussed here over and over again, partially privatizing Medicare and throwing seniors to the mercy of the private insurance industry does nothing but shift costs and as Sam and Digby discussed, it's not even a smart move politically for the Democrats to consider making. They wrapped things up discussing what we might be in for with these debt ceiling negotiations after we get through the current round of hostage taking by Republicans.

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Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona today, discussing the ongoing fiscal bluff negotiations between President Obama and Speaker John Boehner:

I think the Speaker is at a profound disadvantage in the negotiations as it is ... simply because he's got a recalcitrant Senate and a president that simply is out of touch with reality.

Hm. And which reality is that? Maybe the reality on Planet Wingnut, where up is down, trickle-down succeeds, tax cuts create jobs, and the Rhythm Method works. And the public secretly supported Republicans in the last election.

Over here in our own little Planet Earth, the public resoundingly approves of Obama's approach to the negotiations -- and even a majority of Republicans agree that Obama has a mandate to take away those huge tax breaks Bush handed the wealthy. The crushing reality here is that Boehner and Co. are negotiating with their asses in their hands.

Of course, the current majority of members of the House happen to reside on Planet Wingnut. So that's a problem.

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As Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was about to sign their union-busting right-to-work-for-less bills into law, Chris Matthews spoke to UAW President Bob King and the State Director of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity's Scott Hagerstrom. Matthews attempted to get Hagerstrom to come clean about who "signs his paycheck" and despite repeated badgering from Matthews, refused to acknowledge that AFP is just a front group for the Koch brothers.

He just works for a grass roots organization, like the Red Cross don't you know! And they have lots of donors. He didn't want to talk about their one big one though. Here's more on Hagerstrom and his remarks back in February of 2011 from Think Progress: Koch Front Group Americans For Prosperity: ‘Take The Unions Out At The Knees’:

In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual conference, Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and its allies like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) efforts. Speaking at CPAC’s “Panel for Labor Policy,” Hagerstrom said that AFP really wants to do is to “take the unions out at the knees”:

HAGERSTROM: It’s easy to go out there and fight taxes and increased regulation, you know we send out an action alert on taxes to AFP and we get thousands of people to respond. You send out one on a more complicated issue and it just doesn’t quite resonate…We fight these battles on taxes and regulation but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.

Taking “the unions out at the knees” has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country. Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to the well-oiled corporate machine.

Sadly they managed to succeed in that goal today in Michigan. Sourcewatch has more on Americans for Prosperity here and the fact that they are indeed just a front group for the Koch brothers here.

This interview has a bunch of right wing blogs worked up of course, the usual suspects that I'm not going to link to, calling Matthews "unhinged" and claiming he "berated" Hagerstrom because he asked him time and again who funds AFP. If they think this is Matthews coming "unhinged" they must not watch the show much, because this is pretty mild by his standards. There are times that stuff can be annoying out of him. This wasn't one of them.

The AFP chair was on there pretending he's got the interest of those workers in Michigan at heart and that they're just some grass roots organization instead of an AstroTurf front group who only care about a race to the bottom on wages so their rich donors can squeeze some more blood out of the working class.

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Atrios was right the other day -- wingers have a rage addiction. So here we have Dick Cheney's cabana boy outraged that Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday this year. That means Obama is being sworn in on January 20th, in a private ceremony, and they'll be a public ceremony on the 21st. Just like Eisenhower did it.

The 20th Amendment to the Constitution set January 20th as the official inaugural date. Because January 20, 1957 fell on a Sunday, President Eisenhower took the oath of office for his second term in a private White House ceremony.

But to be fair to Christie, Eisenhower was a Republican, which obviously makes all the difference.

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Gee, I wish someone would let me know when it's OK to have a national conversation about the mass proliferation of guns in American society and the inevitable slide to lethal violence that creates. Because, you know, it's obvious that now is not the time:

The masked gunman who opened fire in a crowded Oregon shopping mall, killing two people and wounding a third before taking his own life, appeared to have acted in a blind rampage with no known motive, authorities said on Wednesday.

The Tuesday afternoon shooting frenzy at the Clackamas Town Center in the Portland suburb of Happy Valley triggered pandemonium inside the mall at the height of the busy holiday season, sending thousands of shoppers streaming out of the complex as authorities arrived on the scene.

We know precious little right now about the gunman or his motivations:

Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, was the masked man who stormed into Clackamas Town Center Tuesday afternoon, fatally shooting two people and wounding another before turning a gun on himself, police said.

Roberts does not appear to have a criminal history in Oregon, according to court records. He had two speeding tickets earlier this year.

Court records show that Roberts and a woman, Hannah Shoemake, were evicted last summer from their Happy Valley apartment.

Roberts' mother answered her door at her Portland home, but declined to comment to an Oregonian reporter. "I loved my son very much,"she said.

There isn't really a lot to say that hasn't already been said before. But it's worth noting the terror and chaos that these scenes inspire:

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is insisting that a so-called "right to work" law which restricts unions' ability to collect dues is not "anti-union" at all.

Speaking to MSNBC on Wednesday, Snyder said his move to sign the legislation into law and join the 23 other "right to work" states where workers make $1,500 less on average was actually "pro-worker."

But MSNBC's Richard Wolffe wondered how the governor could defend calling unions bad for business when the auto industry in Michigan had been very successful in recent years.

"I've never said unions are bad for business and I don't believe this is actually anti-union," Snyder asserted. "I believe this is pro-worker."

"Are you serious?" a stunned Wolffe replied. "Are you serious this is not anti-union? This, at its core, actually undermines the ability for unions to organize."

"This does not deal with organizing at all," Snyder declared. "This does not deal with collective bargaining at all. This is nothing to do with the relationship between an employer and a union. This is about the relationship between unions and workers. And this is about giving workers the freedom to choose, and unions have to be in a position to present a good value proposition."

"This should make unions more effective in terms of having to put a value proposition to workers," he added.

Scarborough explained that while he did not support requiring workers to pay union dues, he would "not go so far as to say what you’ve just said, which is that this helps unions."

"I mean, it undermines unions’ ability to stay vibrant, right?" the MSNBC host observed.

"It really leaves it up to the union to decide and innovate as to what their value proposition is," Snyder insisted.