Just keep moving along… I admit I raised an eyebrow when I first heard the suggestion that the President may have made some dramatically new pronouncements with respect to a purported overall settlement between Israel and its Palestinian houseguests, but Jeffrey Goldberg writing in Atlantic correctly observes that the basic policy is… unchanged from prior understood policy. Indeed, this piece by Aluf Benn in Haaretz observes that Obama actually handed Netanyahu a major diplomatic victory, rather than any kind of snub to Israel (whose leader visits the White House today). The reason is that while many sound-bite fed Americans will...

Nothing to see here… just a bunch of elderly Midwestern folks getting mace in the face because they had the audacity to protest J.P. Morgan Chase and its foreclosure policies (in Columbus, OH). It wasn’t just Glenn Beck who called an organizer of a protest based on withholding of mortgage payments an “economic terrorist”– the authorities would characterize any activity threatening the bottom lines of our beloved financial institutions (and the bonuses of their beloved executives) to be, well, terrorism. Naturally, this is why right-wing groups likely to threaten people, be they members of minority groups, gays, or even politicians,...

This Grey Lady Op Ed suggests that not merely college grads, or even Americans, but 80% of humanity is “irrationally exuberant,” or “optimistic” about their own personal prospects, despite significant evidence to the contrary. The highly simplistic article assumes that uniquely American acts of stupidity (such as profligate spending, short-term thinking and refusal to take basic lifestyle precautions) are the result of “optimism” rather than… stupidity… and hence, misses the mark (just saying)… it also overlooks the fact that the happiest people on Earth according to surveys– the Danes– do not seem so optimistic, and are so happy precisely because...

And so, it seems, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has given us his “grown-up” perspective on the imminent financial apocalypse financial apocalypse looming, by saying he (too) will demand spending cuts and entitlement “reform” as his price for agreeing to increase the federal debt ceiling. Naturally, any solution to debt based on actually paying for it increasing taxes, is right out, but any reduced social spending is certainly within the realm of discussion. Of course. And so, the chicken game goes on unabated. Present drop-dead date seems to be August 2nd… but as we know, nothing really happens in August....

Evidently, not parents of college graduates, some 85% of whom move back in with Mom and Dad after graduating college, according to a recent survey. I readily concede that, in the typical superficial American way, the Time piece gives us insufficient context, to wit, are we talking about a few months before graduate school or full-time employment?, what is the percentage of grads going home in a typical year?, and so forth. Still, the staggeringly high over 5 out of 6 number does jump out, and certainly provides strong anecdotal support for the obvious point that our economy just isn’t...

Speaker of the House John Boehner addressed a group of plutocrats at the Economic Club of New York, promising trillions in spending cuts to offset any raise in the federal debt ceiling. I realize I was a tad blog-negligent by not talking about the debt-ceiling in my own take on the capitulation “compromise” that led to the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts in exchange for… in exchange for… well, that’s just it… a very minor extension of unemployment benefits that seems asininely picayune in exchange for what Obama gave up on this (i.e., everything). I both read (and anticipated)...

I’ll keep this short, as it’s really early and I’ll be running today (and I hope not to run LATE!)… but say what you will about legislative priorities, the Florida legislature passed bills banning children from wearing their pants too low and banning bestiality. [The latter bill had been the personal pet-cause (as it were) of a legislator named Nan Rich of Sunrise, FL, perhaps the ultimate name for a Republican these days, reflecting both the Nanny State for your personal affairs that non-bat-shit-crazy people think are none of the state’s business AND the GOP’s real constituency… the rich.] The...

It should come as no surprise that the “budget negotiations” have, rather quickly, shown us that the Republican House Majority quickly figured out that they had no chance of holding most of their seats unless they backed off on their plan to destroy Medicare, and so they did. The fact of the matter, of course, is that Medicare (unlike its companion program, Social Security) is unsustainable currently, because Medicare taxes plus Medicare premiums barely cover half the cost of the program, the rest coming from “other general revenues,” which these days means borrowing from China. Popular or not, Medicare is...

Taking a break from all OBL all the time, I bring you this good-sentiment-bad-idea proposal from the Obama Administration to tax automobiles based on miles traveled. It would be collected at gasoline filling stations based presumably on some kind of electronic tracking device. Er, no. Best just raise the current gasoline excise tax, based on actual fuel usage. Someone with an extremely efficient vehicle should not have to pay more than someone who may use more fuel to travel shorter distances. And speaking of taxes, I propose a small (say, 1%) income tax on virtually all earners at virtually all...

To give credit where due, and notwithstanding that he is going to make going to work in Lower Manhattan a living hell tomorrow, nonetheless, I really do commend the President on the sober and measured tone he has taken since announcing the successful hit execution mission to kill [or capture, of course] Osama bin Laden, resulting in the accused terrorist mastermind’s death. Alas, it had to come to something like that… public trials would have denied OBL, KSM and the other accused masterminds of the one thing they wanted more than anything else– martyrdom. They would also have demonstrated actual...