In my last career I was fortunate to be able to get to know Barry Ritholtz.  I reviewed his excellent "Bailout Nation" back in 2009 and did a nice Q&A with him soon after.  But enough about me and Barry.  I really want you all to read what he has to say here:

We are looking at the beginning of a new era, which we could call "post-everything". We have found our limits... beyond this point we cannot go. If something isn't done about global warming soon, with its shortages of water, food, air and energy, it is going to lead to unheard of levels of worldwide instability producing endless conflict. If not arrested, the trend of climate change will lead to a multiplication of the sort of failed states that provide refuge for "non-state actors" (read Al Qaeda).

Rep. Levin (D-Mich) suggested we ask the government of Iraq to pay $1 billion of what is calculated to be $2 billion of training and equipment planned by the Pentagon for Iraq in the next fiscal year. A recent study by the GAO found that Iraq had $11.8 billion in the bank and was running a surplus. So with both Republicans and Democrats worried about OUR deficit, its a slam dunk we will ask Iraq to help out, right?

 The American left, which is afraid to touch "class politics" has gotten lost in issues of race and gender.

When President Carter returned from his well earned obscurity to again ruin my weekend, a blog post to that effect resulted in some bewilderment about why an argument from 1980 should be so important today.  To me, and I think to others who remember those days, what this twerp, who I voted for twice (holding my nose the second time) said about one legislative battle over health care insurance said so much about today, and why things seem so bleak, that a fuller explanation seemed to be required for those who think that if only Senator Reid would allow the Senate to vote on the extension of

                      THE NEW WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

I am having trouble concentrating today because my attention has been redrawn to the first year of the previous Presidential Administration.

I watched Stephen Colbert's opening statement today on Capitol Hill and it was, as usual, very funny.  In my opinion the man is a genius at satire.  He skewered all the hypocrites in both parties and in the media without fear or favor (as usual) while standing beside and standing up for the lowly migrant farmworkers.  Farmworkers are people who are nearly powerless in our country because they have no legal rights.  They and those who came before them have been exploited mercilessly, brutally treated, grossly underpaid and ultimately physically broken by the extreme working conditions that a

 
El Diario de Juárez, having lost another journalist to a retaliatory slaying by the drug cartels, released an issue with a direct question to the cartels (Translation):

In this week's "New Yorker" former Vice President Walter Mondale, who has a book out, draws comparisons between Obama and Carter (ultimately concluding that Obama has many political strengths Carter lacked) and says something interesting (paraphrase): "When people lose their jobs or can't keep their house they become irrational.  They lash out. They expect the president to do something." The whole, short article is here.

Five months after the confirmation of army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander to be the head of the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command, it would appear that the first evidence of active cyber warfare has appeared. Ars Techica summarizes emerging consensus.

William K. Wolfrum posted in his blog William K. Wolfrum’s Morning — Don’t Panic at Dagblog, a youtube video of Dan Savage and his husband Terry talking to LGBT youth about how things do get better and not to panic. 

…Our imperial endeavors alone, if Chalmers Johnson is right, “will, sooner or later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency.”[1] And even if that fear is overblown – and it probably is not – there is certainly trouble looming at home, trouble for which we all need to be prepared, and trouble that we would do well to avert by systematic and extensive social reform before it occurs.[2] For if the challenges abroad are linked to empire, at home they are linked to poverty.

At the Atlantic, Joshua Green suggests that Obama's policy wins seem to be addressing the working poor, rather than the middle class. And he quotes Senator Charles Schumer to support his position:

The Angry Middle Class

Deadpan actor and pitchman Ben Stein feels put upon.

Ben Stein: Raising My Taxes Is a Punishment