This:

...the very institutions that played such a critical role in the crisis -- Citibank and Bank of America -- are now using TARP funds they received not to extend more loans (the ostensible purpose of the bailout), but rather, to buy up more and more of the very distressed assets that Geithner insists they need to be relieved of, because they now know that, under Geithner's plan, they will be able to sell them at a substantial profit courtesy of public funds (i.e, the Government will buy those crippled assets at well above their current market price). As Smith puts it: "So not only are they seeking to extract far more than was intended even with the already generous subsidies embodied in this program, but this activity is also speculating with taxpayer money. . . .Welcome to yet more looting."

is what ought to bring the house of cards down, and revive the market for guillotines. One of the key, obvious takeways from our deepening disaster that I am FINALLY starting to hear on the teevee is that we should translate "too big to fail" as really meaning "too big, period." Yet the perpetrators of our financial undoing are using our money to buy their way to even greater size -- and doing so with the blessing of our government. We think we buy the risk down; they increase it. An honest economist would call that a market failure of epic proportions.

I was trying to come up with a snappy answer to the question "What's the difference between the U.S. Government and the mafia?". And then I remembered a story arc from "The Sopranos" in which a federal agent reaches out to Tony for help with an investigation of suspected terrorists, and how Tony's puts "patriotism" ahead of his normal antipathy toward the feds. And then I suddenly saw that arc in a very different light: it wasn't about how Tony rose in moral stature; it was about how we as a nation have fallen.

The answer to the question, of course, is "not much," but we'll torture and blackmail you to keep you from talking about it.

Gotta give Obama credit -- he is able to convince hoi polloi he holds a pitchfork at the same time he in fact stands with those who would (and should) be pincushions.

I guess that is what folks like Evan Bayh mean by centrism -- when you hold (or pretend to hold) both positions on an issue, it averages out to the middle ground.

It was revealed last week that the future President played another role as well: as a secret FBI informant, code name T-10. According to an article published in the San Jose Mercury News, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/14/ronald-reagan-was-a.html

Is it possible that if it keeps up like this that their heads will literally explode as a result of all the cognitive dissonance?

Seeing as how we are using the Wayback Machine, here's what Wrote back then:

Today Obama tried to explain his surrender on FISA, and just made things worse.

I don't blame Obama for wanting to put some distance between himself and the DFHs. Were I in his place I would indeed tack to the center. He should take us for granted. And he could have done it without significantly eroding his support among the (smarter) DFHs.

What I do blame him for is for putting real distance between himself and the Constitution.

There is policy (Social Security, universal health care, tax policy etc.), which you can horsetrade. And then there is bedrock principle. Or, at least, there should be. Today I learned that you can fit every Senator who feels that way in a single minivan. And the presumptive Democratic nominee ain't one of them.

...

Telecom immunity passed the House. Obama triangulated himself into going along with it, which likely means the Senate will seal the deal.

The very definition of "hopeless cause" seems to be "whatever I support."

I was initially baffled by the cave-in, but seeing Pelosi's incoherent Gingrich-like cheerleading made it clear: there must be buckets of blood on her hands, and a paper trail to prove it. There are enough Dems complicit in the warrantless wiretapping that there truly was bipartisan interest in making sure the truth stayed buried. She looked, to coin a phrase, terrified.

I watched "An Unreasonable Man" a few days ago. Paired with this sorry episode, it is hard not wonder if my contempt for Nader and his "not a dime's difference" perspective was unfair.

That was then. Now, the question is what the pretzel logicians of the teabag brigade will do. And how will Faux News play the story? Hypocrisy is inevitable -- which flavor will they choose?