Blueberry Ricotta Pancakes

The coffee’s freshly ground, there’s a wide variety of teas and the sticky buns are homemade.

Economic offerings. The administration will attempt to convince us that we’re looking better on the economic front. They’re gonna need a huge dump truck if they wanna spread that horseshit around.

• “Tax cuts for low and middle-income families in April will be dwarfed by hidden reductions in tax credits, according to a study for The Independent. The analysis found that the £1bn of tax cuts in April will be outweighed by reductions of more than £2.5bn in the complex tax-credit scheme. Most of the cuts to credits, which top up the wages of low-income families in work, will take effect from April and could catch families unaware.”

• “The European Central Bank (ECB) has reported receiving record cash deposits of 412bn euros (£344bn; $539bn). The total beat the previous record of 384bn euros set in June 2010. The rising usage of the ECB deposit facility since the summer reflects nervousness among Europe’s banks about lending the money to each other.”

• “‘The bond markets don’t like this, the bond markets don’t like that.’ As the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis has raced out of control in the last few months the ‘bond markets’ likes and dislikes have become a journalistic cliche. But is the market for European sovereign debt really a monolith with a mind capable of liking or disliking anything?”

• “Albemarle & Bond today hailed ‘the age of the pawnbroker’ as it unveiled plans to create 300 jobs by opening 25 new stores next year. The group, which has 169 stores and 38 gold-buying ‘pop-up’ shops, said it will take advantage of lower high street rents to open the outlets in 2012. Albemarle said it has benefited as banks tightened their lending criteria, ‘failing to provide people with straightforward and inexpensive ways to borrow’.”

Had enough on teh economy?

• “Thousands of Israelis have rallied in the town of Beit Shemesh against ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremism. The protest follows two days of clashes after an eight-year-old girl said she had been harassed on her way to school. Some ultra-Orthodox in Beit Shemesh are seeking to segregate men and women.” Gee, isn’t this what Muslims are vilified for? What is it with these patriarchal fenderheads, no matter what faith they call their own?

• “Although the Serbian parliament guaranteed the country’s LGBT citizens protection in 2009 by passing the hard-won Anti-Discrimination Law, gay Serbs say their day-to-day reality is a nightmarish diversion from that egalitarian legislation.”

• “Peaceful, laid-back, green-minded Costa Rica has long been an oasis in an otherwise-tough neighborhood — the ‘Switzerland of Central America,’ as the country’s tourism boosters like to boast. One Costa Rican security expert said that when his colleagues travel on business to El Salvador or Honduras, they say they’re going to ‘Central America,’ as if their own country weren’t even part of the isthmus.” President Laura Chinchilla on the drug-cartel threat to Central America’s “pura vida” state.

• Glenzilla. “American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation’s airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one.”

• From Real News: “America Beyond Capitalism. Gar Alperovitz describes a model that challenges private monopoly ownership without a powerful bureaucratic state.”

Editorial cartoon.

The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.

Update: Me Tarzan, you Jane. Cheetah has gone to Rainbow Bridge.