Digby:

Ed Henry just said that it's true that President Obama apologized for failing to be bipartisan and promised to work harder to find common ground.

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be absolutely funny.

Speaking for me only

Via Krugman's blog, David Dayen reports that OFA, the Obama organization, is asking supporters to write letters to the editor supporting the President's pay freeze initiative:

The economy is growing again, yet all across America families and businesses have been tightening their belts. The President knows their government must do the same. Yesterday, he announced a proposal to freeze pay for non-military federal employees for two years[. . . . W]e need your help to get the truth out there.

Will you take a few minutes and write a letter to the editor today to set the record straight?

I think that's dumb policy so I wouldn't write such a letter. But I would write one supporting school uniforms. That was pretty harmless I thought. Maybe Obama should adopt the physicians' code, first do no harm.

Speaking for me only

Jeffrey Toobin has a new article in the New Yorker on the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore.

This month marks ten years since the Court, by a vote of five-to-four, terminated the election of 2000 and delivered the Presidency to George W. Bush. Over that decade, the Justices have provided a verdict of sorts on Bush v. Gore by the number of times they have cited it: zero.

Jeffrey says the "echoes" of the case are "clearest when it comes to judicial activism."

Judicial conservatism was once principally defined as a philosophy of deference to the democratically elected branches of government. But the signature of the Roberts Court has been its willingness, even its eagerness, to overturn the work of legislatures.

...This, ultimately, is the tragedy of Bush v. Gore. The case didn’t just scar the Court’s record; it damaged the Court’s honor

Meet Keith Bulfin, an Australian stockbroker convicted for fraud and then recruited from an Australian supermax prison by the DEA for expensive and elaborate stings against the Mexican Cartels. His new book, Undercover: Story of a Life bills itself as "A true story of drug multi-millionaires, shoot-outs, executions, betrayal, armed car chases, assassins, double-agents, revenge, survival... and finally, redemption." From his bio:

Keith spent three years in a Supermax prison, where he was introduced by prison authorities to two Mexican fugitives. It was his friendship with them that led to his recruitment by the US Department of Justice to operate a covert banking operation in Mexico for the Mexico drug cartels. He was reassigned to Washington DC and the FBI to operate a covert bank, targeting Middle Eastern countries and terrorist organisations. He has worked as an expert advisor on money laundering with the National Security Council in Mexico, various foreign governments, policing agencies and multinational companies.

[More...]

Very clever post from Matt Yglesias:

Something that I think should be understood about the idea of “triangulating” via a proposal to freeze federal salary is that triangles are two dimensional objects. To triangulate properly you can’t simply occupy a point between where the left and right poles are, you need to also move off the line.

[. . .] Better triangulation requires a triangle. Liberals say spend more money on schools, conservatives say spend less. I say: School uniforms![. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) Heh.

Speaking for me only

The Great "Pragmatist" Revolution against Dems is in full bloom. I've always called myself a "Centrist" not for descriptive reasons, the term describes precisely nothing, but rather for posturing purposes (though to be fair to myself, I am a free trade/Afghan war supporting hawk, so there is some basis for my claim of "Centrism.") What always get me about us self proclaimed "centrists" and pragmatists" is how we always claim to be the moderate, centrist pragmatists and everyone who disagrees with us is an extremist. Funny how that works out. Anyway, I found this amusing from a "Pragmatist:"

Via John Cole, Ezra Klein writes:

[I]t'[s . . .] worth taking a moment to appreciate how far Democrats have backslid on th[e tax] issue since Bill Clinton. Clinton, of course, raised taxes in the face of large deficits. The Obama campaign, by contrast, swore not to raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000, and Democrats might now effectively raise that to $1,000,000. In setting up the expectation that taxes can't go up for anyone but millionaires, Democrats take most of them off the table. And given that Republicans have no interest in taxes, either, that basically removes them as a tool of fiscal policy going forward.

What Ezra does not mention is that Clinton cut taxes on the working poor by significantly increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit. As regular readers know, I have long believed that letting the Bush tax cuts expire was the most important issue of this Congress. For all the talk of the "most progressive legislation" in 50 years, I've always felt that the most important progressive achievement President Obama could present after this Congress was the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. But it appears that Democrats have retreated from Clintonism on tax policy.

Speaking for me only

Here we go again:

[A]t the end of the day, most trolls wouldn’t have the gall to say to another person’s face half the things they anonymously post on the Internet. Instead of waiting around for human nature to change, let’s start to rein in bad behavior by promoting accountability. Content providers, stop allowing anonymous comments.

Ironically, those words were written by Julie Zhuo, a product design manager at Facebook. Correct me if I am wrong, but my impression was that some of the nastiest online comments can be found at . . . Facebook. In any event, I tackled this nonsensical stuff back in 2007. For people who care about such things, I have a suggestion - don't read comments sections of blogs. Or only read them at blogs that take up one of Zhuo's suggestions. It's easy enough to avoid nastiness on the internet - don't get involved.

Speaking for me only

Surely there is a pressing need for school uniforms legislation, no? This is a mistake.

Speaking for me only

The Fed takes care of banks:

[B]anks have never acted as if they bear responsibility for the mortgage mess. They have pursued foreclosures in violation of borrowers’ rights to due process, as revealed by the recent robo-signing scandal. And, despite having been bailed out for their mistakes, they have pursued their self-interest, not the public interest, when it comes to modifying bad loans. They have resisted reducing principal balances for troubled borrowers, for instance, because that could force them to take losses they would rather delay.

Now, despite mounting evidence of borrower mistreatment, the Federal Reserve has proposed a rule that would disable the most effective legal tool that borrowers have to fight foreclosures. [. . .] Citing concern over banks’ compliance costs, [the Fed] would require a borrower to pay off the remaining principal before the lender gives up its security interest. That would be clearly impossible for troubled borrowers. So the Fed’s proposal would benefit the creditor who violated the law rather than the borrower, paving the way for foreclosures that otherwise could be avoided.

The Fed failed to protect consumers before the financial crisis, and is failing again. [. . .]

The entire government has failed consumers and is still failing. This is not new.

Speaking for me only

There really are good deals out there. I'm glad I have to go go to work, otherwise I'd spend the whole day buying things I don't really need but are just too cheap to pass up. The prices vary widely though. I recommend doing a google search for the exact item you want and finding the best price, and then checking it against Amazon. Then look for a free savings coupon for the seller and apply it.

If you found something awesome, let us know.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Paul Krugman:

What’s striking about Spain, from an American perspective, is how much its economic story resembles our own. Like America, Spain experienced a huge property bubble, accompanied by a huge rise in private-sector debt. Like America, Spain fell into recession when that bubble burst, and has experienced a surge in unemployment. And like America, Spain has seen its budget deficit balloon thanks to plunging revenues and recession-related costs. But unlike America, Spain is on the edge of a debt crisis. [MORE . . .]