Booman:

There is going to be a lot of blame slung around next week, regardless of how these midterms play out. I know the administration owns a lot of the blame. But people can only control what they do. And too many progressive opinion leaders have spent the last year sniping and complaining when all the signs were there that the left was in the fight of its life with a new brand of vicious reactionary homophobic xenophobic racist politics. Why they chose to focus so much on our own shortcomings and not too much on the threat we have been facing, I will never know.

A week to go and Booman is focusing on the pre-blame? Shame, Booman! Let's GOTV! Fight! Fight! Fight! (Or whatever the "magic words" for acceptable election "focus" are.) What silliness.

Speaking for me only

I've not been a follower of the Tea Party, so I do not profess to know what they think, but I have studied the Constitutional debates, and feel confident that Peter Berkowitz is misstating the views of the authors of The Federalist Papers:

Whether members have read much or little of The Federalist, the tea party movement's focus on keeping government within bounds and answerable to the people reflects the devotion to limited government embodied in the Constitution. One reason this is poorly understood among our best educated citizens is that American politics is poorly taught at the universities that credentialed them. Indeed, even as the tea party calls for the return to constitutional basics, our universities neglect The Federalist and its classic exposition of constitutional principles.

It seems to me it is Mr. Berkowitz who has neglected the Federalist Papers and the thoughts of the authors. Indeed, I would think that a review of Alexander Hamilton's defense of the First Bank of the United States should be added to Mr. Berkowitz's reading material:

CNN.com:

Asked about a solution, [GOP House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor replied: "People have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don't need government intervening in every step."

(Emphasis supplied.) Assuming that's true, do you think Cantor will favor requiring the banks to follow the law of foreclosure, which in most states requires that the foreclosing party prove that it does in fact have standing to foreclose? See, there's the problem for Cantor and the bank defenders - if the Feds do not intervene on behalf of the banks, many banks are finding they can't foreclose, because they can't prove they own the mortgages they want to foreclose on. If Cantor believes what he is saying, then he should oppose any breaks being given to banks in the foreclosure process. But we all know Cantor is full of it.

Speaking for me only

Jon Chait writes, in the context of ironic GOP-nostalgia for Bill Clinton:

Right-wingers villified John F. Kennedy; now they revere him. One day, Obama will play the same role in the Republican imagination that Clinton does today.

You know the one Democratic President who is considered great historically that conservatives will never revere (nor should they) -- FDR. For all the talk of transformational Presidents, the truth is that in the past 100 years there really has been only one - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my first TalkLeft post, I discussed the revolution in government that FDR led:

Here is the text of the law I discuss below passed under extraordinary circumstances by the Congress that will make foreclosures easier:

The Beltway Bloggers can add this to the list of achievements by this Congress, via Eschaton, fast track foreclosures:

A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama's signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week. The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.

[. . .] The legislation could protect bank and mortgage processors from liability for false or improperly prepared documents. The White House said it is reviewing the legislation.

(Emphasis supplied.) This is a disgraceful outrage and I would like to hear from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid how in the f*ck this happened. And I want to hear from President Barack Obama what exactly he needs to consider about this bill. It should be vetoed immediately.

The Banks own this Congress.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This affects cases I am involved in. Speaking for me only

Twenty new grand jury subpoenas have been issued in the federal investigation into whether John Edwards violated campaign financing rules with respect to money the campaign provided Rielle Hunter.

The subpoenas were ordered at the behest of Main Justice:

According to our source, when that process wrapped-up, prosecutors in Raleigh sent the case to the Department of Justice in Washington for a review. The Justice Department then told prosecutors in Raleigh to interview more people and get more information about the people who donated money to help Edwards' former aide Andrew Young, his wife and Rielle Hunter live a life on the run.

It sounds like the investigation has moved from whether the payments to Rielle were legitimate to whether there was hush money paid afterwards. The relocation expenses were purportedly paid by now-deceased attorney Fred Baron, who was Edwards' campaign manager in 2004 and 2008. He told the Dallas Morning News: [More...]

As Atrios points out, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's looming decision to spike the new train tunnel from New Jersey to NYC under the Hudson River is so obviously bad policy that it does not even merit much discussion.(Here is an explanation if you need one.)

But politics is stupid. Even Chris Christie knows it would be stupid policy to kill the tunnel project, which gives New Jersey billions of dollars of FEDERAL money already and will give it billions more to come in the future. (Not to mention the jobs, economic growth that would be spurred, improvement of New Jersey as a business destination, etc.) From New Jersey's perspective, this is as big a no brainer as you can get. But New Jersey's highway funds are in a serious shortfall right now. Like most states, New Jersey funds it highways with tolls and a gas tax. But raising the gas tax apparently is a third rail in New Jersey, which has not raised the gas tax in 21 years (which amounts effectively to a huge cut in the gas tax):

[Zoe] Baldwin suggested that instead, Christie look at raising the state’s gas tax, which is the third-lowest in the country and hasn’t budged for 21 years. “We’ve raised all kinds of other fees and taxes, she said, but the gas tax and other transportation fees have been untouchable.” That’s led to a years-long crisis in transportation funding for the state.

Christie knows all this. He's not stupid. But some Democrat will be running against Christie in the next election and would no doubt run ads decrying 'the largest tax increase in New Jersey history!' Politics is stupid.

Speaking for me only

Just for sh*ts and giggles:

Some called a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton pairing the "Dream Ticket" in 2008. [That was me, BTD.] It didn't happen. But what about 2012?

"It's on the table," veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward told CNN's John King in an interview Tuesday on John King, USA. "Some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012."

That would stink for Hillary imo. She has the 2016 nomination if she wants it no matter what. Not being Obama's VP gives her some distance in case things go way south with his Administration. For Obama, I think it is a marginal plus, but what about Biden? Anyway, it will never happen.

Speaking for me only

Ok, maybe not breaking, but damned funny the way it was confirmed today by Tom Daschle. Glenn Greenwald was called a lunatic by the dishonest Jon Chait of The New Republic because Glenn pointed out what, Matt Yglesias now tells us, "many people have long suspected."

So apparently, the need for precision and accuracy is situational for the Beltway Bloggers.

Speaking for me only

That's the title of the panel now up at something called "America's Fiscal Choices: Strengthening The Economy And Building For the Future." The moderator is The American Prospect's Robert "American Taliban" Kuttner. The panelists are Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund, Maggie Mahar a TCF Fellow and Bill Hoagland of CIGNA. Of the 3, I'm betting Hoagland will have the most influence on "The Next Steps For Healthcare Reform."

You can watch the panel here.