Max Sawicky is not the biggest fan of the Netroots.

Welcome to the new American economy: general consumer activity down, sales at Saks Fifth Avenue up. Jared Bernstein on signs pointing toward recession.

Will Univision determine the 2008 elections?

Bloomberg has a long and fascinating piece on who "Obama's people" (on economics, anyway) are:

Obama's economic brain trust -- a blend of up-and-coming academics and former officials in President Bill Clinton's administration -- displays a fondness for backing innovative solutions to the nation's problems. [...]

Three academics -- Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times, Jeffrey Liebman, 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist -- form the core of Obama's economic team.

The article goes on to list issues in which this group of young wonks and Obama's policy team more broadly are trying to build non-traditional solutions on the auto industry (see Monday's speech in Detroit), trade and health care. If Clinton was trying to find a creative middle ground between Right and Left, these folks look to be trying to find a creative middle ground between Left and Center. The Fourth Way, you might say.

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Rep. Conyers is getting things started, and it looks like it's going to be a long day for the AG. Check out TPMMuckraker for updates throughout the day.

Predictions? Impressions?

Update: Check out TPMtv today. If TPM were somehow elected to Congress and given a seat on the House Judiciary, these are the questions we'd ask with our five minutes.

Rep. Jane Harman: Gitmo Must Go.

A TPM reader offers a powerful reminder from the war's home front: there is nothing romantic about death and suffering.

BlogAds is running its fourth annual reader survey. The information you provide creates a demographic profile of our audience which in turn helps sell the ads that keep TPM and other blogs online. Check it out here.

If you're a denizen of the blogosphere you've heard all the arguments about the democratization of the public sphere, the ways in which blogs like this one are breaking down old boundaries, the way Wikipedia is creating a free and massive database of human knowledge through radically new forms of mass collaboration, the ways in which the non-profit and political sectors are able to grow their fundraising and organizing base with little or no start-up cash. It's only just beginning, and my guess is we'll still be sorting it all out for decades to come.

But as some of us experiment and dream of these possibilities, a majority of the country, and a vast majority of the world, have seen little or nothing at all of this radical new future.

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Angry wonk alert!

Two of TPMCafe's distinguished wonks-in-residence Jared Bernstein and Greg Anrig, Jr. take down this morning's Washington Post piece on John Edwards and poverty.