This probably was like the first underwear bomber: a messed up guy given a fake bomb and put on the plane. BTW, if you’ve never read passenger Kurt Haskell’s description of that flight and how the bomber got on the plane without going through security, you should read this:

http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2012/02/victim-impact-statement.html

$850M divided by an average principal reduction of $150,000 is 5,667 principal reductions. That’s equivalent to buffing the scratches out of a 1 sq inch section of a totaled wreck.

We got a long way to go.

Occupy losing the PR battle over at Yahoo! So far, I’ve seen the arrests (aka entrapment) of “anarchists” who wanted to blow up a bridge in Ohio, a report of white powder being sent to numerous banks with suspected “Occupy links”, and a reported riot in SF by anarchists using “crowbars” to smash windows (although all I’ve seen is a picture of a police station hit with paint balls).

The powers that be are really doing a number on May Day. Nothing about the numbers of people in the protests…all a bunch of “hey, look over there” reports.

Reminds me of the AIG reporting…put the focus on $300M of executive bonuses and forget about the $180B bailout. Classic.

The trustees seem fairly neutral and actuarial and probably can’t propose simple solutions to the problem like raising the income max on Social Security payroll taxes at something like twice the rate of inflation for 10 years.

totally agreee, spanishinquisition. Is the Urban Institute just carrying the admin’s water here with those weak arguments? Many of those who qualify for the subsidies may still not be able to afford the payments. The mandate does affect much more than 2%-5% of the population.

somebody please find a photo of the protesting Native Americans in a cage. Sheesh! There wasn’t a picutre in those links.

Protecting the 1% is a non-partisan task.

The 24% correlation on results between different grade is pretty bad. If you read the source article, there was also a same grade math and language graph where the results looked slightly better.

It should be emphasized that in any social science, correlations and R-squared metrics are terrible. A correlation about 50% would be damn near a miracle (in a simple one variable regression, a 50% correlation means one variable could explain 25% of the total variability in the other variable, i.e. R-squared). There is simply too much variation in life and results to be explained well by one or two metrics. All the graphs will continue to look like crap and have small correlations.

It still could be a long, hot summer.

From the CNBC article, the objective of the bailout is to “avoid a sovereign default that the government feared would throw Greek society into turmoil”

NEWS FLASH: Greek society is already in turmoil! Default already!

“the top political and military brass are so spooked by the prospect of “losing” a war that they will sacrifice lives and treasure on an ongoing mistake”…I’d view it from a slightly different and more jaded perspective. I think most pols and generals aren’t concerned with losing a war (they can manage that perspective through PR) but losing a revenue stream.

higher dividend taxes will affect our 83-yr old mothers more than it will affect the hedge fund owners who pay 15% on their capital gains and don’t give a crap about dividends

Harris and Schneiderman still operate in the Democratic party. It’s like a corporation where you have to work up the ladder, and all these AGs are desperate to get up the ladder to Governor, Senator, etc.

The pressure on Harris and Schneid comes from Democrats. “We won’t support you next election”, “you’ll be locked out”, “you won’t get funding”–these two AGs don’t have the courage to break ranks because their livelihoods as extroverted money and power whores are at stake. When you prostitute yourself for a living, you need your clients (donors) and your pimp (Democratic party). Without either one, you can only get so far.

OT (and maybe covered a lot already), but why has firedoglake.com switched to have one story on its front page when I type it into MS IE Explorer? I liked being able to scroll through all the previous 10 or so posts.

I get the latest story and then nothing else but an ad.

“The $8 billion is being dangled in front of Harris.” Harris could turn into the Mortgage Settlement’s version of Ben Nelson on the healthcare bill. Holdout and holdout and then get exactly what you want.

do not stay home on election day! if you’re over 35 (minimum age for prez), and don’t see anyone appropriate on the ballot, vote for yourself instead of these clowns. cthulu probably won’t get counted. writing in a real registered voter’s name probably will.

McDonalds and Chuck E Cheese are already on Sesame Street at least in the beginning. Oh for the days of the 2-week pledge drives with posterboard goals.

BTW, as the father of 2- and 4-year old boys, I can say Sesame Street is not looking so hot. Here’s your basic show: 1 long intro segment that’s a little dull, 1 long Murray Had a Little Lamb Segment, 1 loooonnng Abby’s Flying Fairy School (computer animation) segment, and an Elmo’s World re-run segment from five years ago. And you’ve got Murray always telling you what’s coming up next. That’s it folks. Where are the puppets? Where is the spontaneity of “I wonder what comes next” that used to exist? It’s gone. Sesame Street is fairly weak and uninspired–hmmm, just like it’s corporate sponsors.

Instead of goofing around with payroll tax cuts, they should have let the Bush tax cuts expire and submitted legislation just before 2011 to roll back the tax rates to the 2010 levels for all _but_ the $250K+ crowd.

Then watch as the R’s squirm to defend the mega-rich while refusing to cut (or really maintain) tax rates on the less than mega-rich. That would require some real negotiating skills, though.