HCR is still in peril. Global warming isn't being addressed, although there was some cheerful news last week about gobs of methane being released from the Siberian Tundra or some shit, one of those escalating feedback loops of doom, not much new is going on.

Biden is in Israel trying to cajole the Israeli's towards peace. Maybe the eight or ninth VP to do so in the last 50 years. There are "indirect" negotiations going on with the concomitant and obligatory announcements of new settlement activity that was "in the works before" they agreed to the "indirect" negotiations, which were themselves contingent upon a freeze in new settlements, and so it goes.

Meanwhile the insurance monopoly is jacking up prices, and plans are afoot to take away social security to pay for tax cuts for the rich in order to reduce the deficit and free our children from being burdened by a national debt.

Meanwhile, in the lives of these children who we're trying to protect from being burdened by debt, around the country schools are reducing hours and packing more kids into less space with less supervision let alone instruction. In Texas that instruction might include a creationist curricula anyway, so there's that.

I'm just realizing I have a blog and a dashboard at TPM. This is my first entry, and today HCR is in peril by Sen. Nelson, and Obama is in Copenhagen manufacturing a "deal". These events are typical of this period in time, in that they are efforts to solve bigger problems that go beyond the next election cycle, and you have to be pretty well informed to be able to make any sense of what the hell is going on. If you are informed, then you just might realize how fully inadequate we are as a people, or a species, to respond to the issues of our time. Have a nice day.