Hold Fast

Via Paul Krugman, it looks like Rep. Darrell Issa is seeking to investigate the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission for corruption, citing high staff turnover and conflict of interest. Monday is the deadline set by Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, for Phil Angelides, chairman of the commission, to provide financial information [...]

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As the world watches massive demonstrations in Egypt, the Egyptian government has shut down the internet. There are also reports that Syria has done the same. These are desperate acts from governments that are terrified of their citizenry. Killing the internet is an effort to silence their citizens. With that as a background, let’s take [...]

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Not terribly surprising, but there won’t be major Senate rules reform, let alone filibuster reform, this session. David Dayen has a post up about the deal, which can only be viewed as an early sign of the sort of fecklessness we’ll see from Democrats in the 112th Congress. Sen. Reid thanked his colleagues in the [...]

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Matteo Pistono has a good piece in the Washington Post about the subtle acts of civil resistance Tibetans inside of Tibet have been taking. Pistono writes: While authorities and security personnel in Lhasa on July 6, and other dates, keep a keen eye open and the detention cells ready for use, a quiet event occurs [...]

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Jonathan Singer is right to say that last night’s State of the Union did the job for President Obama, in that it laid out clear contrast between him and the Republican Party. If I was struck by anything, it was that Barack Obama set the stage to come off as unreasonable [sic] as his political [...]

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In 2006 I started a site called The Right’s Field (now offline) with my friends Kombiz Lavasany and Matt Ortega. We wanted to have a place that was dedicated solely to covering the 2008 Republican presidential primary. While many liberal blogs covered the 2008 Democratic primary in full or had the occasional post about Republicans, [...]

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Matt Bai has always held a special hatred for the online left, from bloggers to the politicians who appeal to voters through blogs. As such, it’s not shocking that he writes a misleading and factually inaccurate column like the one today titled, “For Obama, Getting Message Out Online Is a Challenge.” No, it’s not. Obama [...]

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Good stuff from Mike Konczal on Third Way’s proposed bank bailout around fraudclosure. He concludes with a very loose prescription for a real solution, contra Third Way: I’ll have more about what an alternative solution should look like, but this isn’t it. We need to remove servicing from loan modification process. That involves canceling the [...]

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I want to highlight this response by Yves Smith to Third Way’s prescriptive policy proposal as to how to respond to Ibanez and move forward to a ‘solution’ on the foreclosure crisis. This is some truly dangerous, insidious stuff and it would be poisonous for any Democrat elected official or Democratic spokesperson to further it. Unfortunately, that’s [...]

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Yves Smith has a must-read post responding to some ridiculous comments by Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond. Smith highlights the dynamic the banks have set up, namely “Heads We Win, Tails You Lose”: Diamond’s presentation was yet another reminder of the banking industry’s continued extortion game, namely, that they can take outsized, leveraged risks and when [...]

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