Spend, spend, spend.

In a rare early Saturday morning vote, the Senate passed a massive Pentagon spending bill that includes nearly $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a measure Republicans had tried to block as a means of delaying action on President Obama's health-care overhaul...Link

Soaring insurance stocks....................

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan shouted down Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) after she couldn't answer why insurance stocks have increased since major reforms have been stripped from health care legislation...Link

Change...............

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Dean says kill the Senate health bill......

WASHINGTON -- deanheated Dean says kill the Senate health bill: reportFollowing the jettisoning of both the public option and the Medicare buy-in provision, one of the nation's leading progressive voices on health care reportedly said Tuesday that the Senate bill is no longer worth supporting. "This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," former Gov. Howard Dean told political reporter Bob Kinzel of Vermont Public Radio. Kinzel relayed the news to The Plum Line's Greg Sargent, and the full VPR interview will air at 5:50 pm today...Link

Skip to 4 min for Music.............

Interest rates near zero.........

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it will shut down some of the emergency triage measures it put in place at the height of the financial crisis but will leave interest rates near zero out of continuing concern about the weak U.S. economy...Link

Iranian-Backed Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones.

WASHINGTON -- Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter...Link