My problem is that BHO has been using the same vague and portentious language about SocSec needing to be "fixed" that has been the foot-in-the-door of the Concord Coalition crowd for years, and seemingly uncritically. Sorry, but anything that gives David Brooks a hardon starts me a worryin'.

OK, so SocSec will soon start paying out more than it takes in; of course the demographic corollary is that it's been taking in more than it's been paying out for pretty much the whole working life of the Boomers, no? Most of the estimates I've seen say that if SSA was a stand-alone retirement plan it would be in perfectly good shape well into the 2030's or 40's. The real "crisis" is that in the much nearer term, SSA will have to start calling in it's debts to pay benefits -- i.e. cashing in it's T-bills, thus revealing the dirty secret that much of the government for decades has been funded by the super-regressive FICA tax, so as to keep regular income taxes, and the deficit, artificially low.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about all this; I don't have much time to research it at the moment. But if I'm not wrong, then we should stop saying that the problem here is with Social Security. It's not. The transparency and honesty Obama champions should go past conventional wisdom where CW is just an agreed fiction.

Personally I find Obama's bias so far toward bigshot legislators for executive positions somewhat troubling. I'm pretty confident he has both skillsets, but that doesn't mean they do.

Thus bullshit grows its wings.

It's a city with plenty of poverty, but it's much less reliant on industry than, say, Cleveland; or on trade than, say, New York.

That said, I suspect that survey is more or less bogus. People are always going to favor frugality in the abstract, but we're all suckers for pomp & circumstance.

Personally, as long as Obama is secure and nobody gets hurt (or dies of frostbite) in the crowds, I don't care what they spend.

Blago's brazenness and delusion is entertaining, but in the end I don't find him tragic, or even all that evil, so much as venial and pathetic.

Like I say, maybe a minor character, comic relief in, say, the inevitable Obama opera?

Still, Boxer isn't doing CK any favors with shit like that.

Our Shrub: classless to the end!

The Repubs are seeking to delay things because that's what they do. It's all they have to offer.

The tax thing is extremely arcane, and he's already made full restitution with interest. The housekeeper stuff is just as arcane -- he apparently did check her I-9, but didn't save a copy; and AFAICT he paid the proper payroll tax. She was legal when he hired her, then her visa lapsed; that happens to thousands of RI's every year, often through no fault of their own. I thought the Zoe Baird thing was fairly silly, but there she arguably engaged in a form of tax evasion -- basically paying her help "off the books".

Basically they're all guilty of being members of the American upper class.

All kinds of sensitive information is stored on servers and zapped through the web constantly these days. It should be possible to create relatively standardized model that's also secure, and drag our health IT out of the 19th Century.

The fact is that the permissible range of opinion in the Israeli press and the Knesset is much broader than in the US Congress and mainstream press. Here everybody seems to have to be Bibi Netanyahu, so they can claim to be a "friend of Israel". Of course that's bullshit; any rational consideration of Israel's long term interest -- indeed it's long term survival -- lands one squarely in Jimmy Carter territory, which in US politics gets you accused of anti-Semitism.

This does Israel no favors -- it strengthens the Israeli right's hand far more than their actual appeal at home would.

But I suspect others are right wrt the target figure; even in hindsight, noone will be able to put a number on it -- esp. since most of the jobs are supposed to be in the private sector, so by definition they'll be created indirectly.

Can people please take a moment and update their TPM profiles with a userpic? It's really quick and it really helps the conversation if folks have their own avatars. It's just hard to follow a discussion amongst an undifferentiated army of 18th-century scribes or whatever that guy is supposed to be.

Thanks. As you were.

Huh? Tweety can't make his own damn announcement?

I mean, what the...?

In the end Burris's argument wrt his appointment is unassailable: He personally hasn't been credibly charged with corruption; Blago's appt is, however annoying, legally binding; and Illinois deserves two Senators. (Burris has been smart in disavowing racial arguments and keeping his focus on the legal and fairness issues).

It'd be nice if Burris pledged not to run in 2010; barring that, IL Dems need to make sure someone better (and more electable) wins the nomination. Meantime, keeping him out is a losing course in every dimension -- legal, moral, and political. Get it over with already.