Methinks that the democrats have forgotten the line in the TV show West Wing where president Bartlett says that we do not only fight the fights that we can win but we fight the fights that are worth fighting for.

The Dems appear to have forgotten that principle. If Walker wins, then he becomes a Manchurian candidate for president in 2016 (sponsored by the Koch brothers).

I recommend that the ACLU (or Iran) hack into one of the drones and fly it into the DC circuits courtroom (with the appropriate disclaimers that no one be hurt in the process).

I hate tautologies, every single individual one of them.

I would like someone from Occupy the SEC to go on a show with Schneiderman and hand him an indictment for Vikram Pandit from Citibank for violating the Sarbanes Oxley Act. The OCC actually sent him a letter telling him that his failure to include the bailout money loans in his financial report is illegal. Vikram blew it off.

I would like to see Schneiderman tap dance around an actual indictment.

The more I hear these stories, the more I say, “SUPPORT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT.”

Is there any member of Firedoglake that did not see this coming. Oh, we hoped, prayed, and even fantasized that Wall Street would be held to account, but . . .

Our ruling class has absolutely NO credibility.

Tim Johnson should not be calling Dimon to testify but Bruno Iskil. Also, does anybody really think that any meaningful regulation will occur prior to the elections?

Thom Hartmann has been saying this for close to a decade. I guess it is hard to see the truth when your Congressional campaign fund says otherwise.

Big Waste Of Time. The ball is in Harry’s court and has been all along.

Although I applaud them for their effort (because Something has to be done).

Although I have not read the article (because I have to pay to see it), I offer these thoughts:

1. My mother made an astute observation 20+ years ago that has been supported by my readings of Robert Keagan (In Over Our Heads) and other sources. Emotional maturity is a learning process that occurs in steps. Screw up one of the early steps and mastery of the later steps is impossible. The key to understanding the issues is to understand the steps, find out which step was screwed up, change the screw up and carry the lessons forward. The challenge is in the change the screw up part. There has to be a real need on the person to change this aspect of their development.

2. In Anatomy of Evil, the author indicates that one common theme for the very worst of the killing sociopaths is a brain injury during their teenage years. Many of these sociopaths were clearly know to be off kilter in their early years. But the injury (car accident, sports, etc.) was one event common to the worst.

3. WRT Bush and some of his ilk, I suspect it is not his lack of empathy that is the problem, but it is his INappropriate empathy. As a result of experiencing empathy at inappropriate times, he has taken great lengths to switch off that capability capacity because he cannot process it emotionally.

If you then take this thought with item one above, I suspect that Bush’s screw up occurred right around the time he was developing empathy (i.e. his sister died and his parents then proceeded to deny the existence of the sister).

4. Finally, If we are not going to “cure” the sociopaths, we need to find a good job for them to contribute to society.

I wish the government would use this form of due process on Goldman Sachs, BofA, and JP Morgan.

The Republicans and Libertarians have made selfishness into a virtue. I met an elderly woman at WalMart the other day. She took one look at me and said that I must be one of them Obama socialist supporters. She then went on to complain that Obama had raised the costs of her Medicare copays. Apparently that Kenyan nazi would not be done until he had destroyed Medicare. I was so taken aback at her ignorance that I could not answer.

In her mind, she was entitled to her benefits and could not afford any sort of sacrifice. She was selfish. Raising taxes was out of the question. She had no idea how much better the 1% live than her because everything was through her own selfish prism.

$6 for a cup of coffee?? I remember going to the Wynn Casino in Vegas when it first opened (2005?). Coffee was $8 for a large.

three thoughts:

1. Obama’s campaign team won an award for the best marketing job of 2008. He thinks that he can repeat that effort.

2. My brother still tells me that he would rather have a Republican who is afraid of Democrats that a Democrat who is afraid of Republicans. I cannot argue with that.

3. If ever there was a time to demand something from Obama, the NOW is the time!

Most main stream TV Journalism is over. Over the weekend, I heard Howie Kurtz on his panel ask his group, “Isn’t it important to give a fair and balanced view of the issues.” Which I interpreted to mean that the truth does not matter.

There are fifty people working on the task force–if you total the number of supervisors, secretaries, janitors, cafeteria workers feeding the supervisor, etc.