That’s apparently the word from The Hill, but…umm, yeah, it’s been 10 days folks.
The scoop…
Republicans wrapped up their retreat Friday by signaling they are losing patience with President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) criticized the new administration on Friday, saying it had promised to reach out to Republicans on [...]

While the Repubs in the House are all saying no to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, their counterparts in the state houses are singing a much different tune.
From AP:
NEW YORK (AP) — Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid [...]

The PJM Ad Network is no more, and when you do the math it doesn’t really make sense.
First, to understand why people are so upset right now you have to know that PJM forced their bloggers to accept NO other advertising dollars if they wanted to be part of their ad network. So BlogAds, AdBrite, [...]

I can understand forgetting that the use of a car is considered income, but note that Daschle didn’t even report earned income too.
From ABC:
ABC News has obtained the Senate Finance Committee Report on Tom Daschle’s nomination to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which indicates that Daschle’s tax problems were even [...]

I think it might be helpful to put a stake in the ground about what is and what isn’t bi-partisanship early on in this administration so we won’t be arguing about it constantly.
To me, the passage of SCHIP by the Senate this week is a good guide. Because when more than 20% of the opposition [...]

Yes. If we catch MS earlier, it may be reversible.
From New Scientist:
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the fatty myelin sheath that wraps around nerve cells and speeds up their rate of transmission comes under attack from the body’s own defences. [...]
For the first time, some of the disability associated with the early [...]

Some tough cuts and tax increases are coming to The Big Apple.
From WCBSTV.com:

“This is a very tough time for our city and nation,” Bloomberg said. “We have a $4 billion budget gap. It is serious, I think it is manageable.” [...]
For now, Bloomberg is proposing $894 million in new sales taxes, including:
-Increasing the sales [...]

The Republican National Committee has elected Michael Steele as chairman. In addition to being the RNC’s first African American chairman, Steele’s moderate leanings also represent a break from recent Republican ideology. In his brief acceptance speech, Steele said he wants to expand the party:
”We’re going to say to friend and foe alike: We want you [...]

If you thought $700 billion was a lot of money, well..
It is.
But $2 trillion is.. ridiculous.

This is Danielle Ivory from ANP.
Congress and the new administration have been focusing their attention on strengthening oversight for the Treasury’s TARP program, but meanwhile few are paying any attention to the Federal Reserve.
Since September, [...]

A spending bill as enormous as the current stimulus package is going to include its fair share of expenditures that have nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Our representatives can’t help themselves. They’ll use any spending bill as an excuse to fund pet projects. The AP details some of the non-stimulus related projects lurking [...]

Liquidity Crisis 2.0 is right around the corner.
From WSJ:
Nearly $750 billion of option adjustable-rate mortgages, or option ARMs, were issued from 2004 to 2007, according to Inside Mortgage Finance … Rising delinquencies are creating fresh challenges for companies such as Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. that [...]

I strongly support a massive fiscal stimulus to restore an atmosphere of confidence, avert a continued, severe downward spiral, and give the economy a big enough jolt to jump start a recovery.
But the $819 billion plan (really a $1.2 trillion plan including interest on the debt) adopted by the House of Representatives yesterday isn’t it. A large [...]

Apparently everybody is tightening their belts.
From Wash Post:
In testimony before a Senate subcommittee yesterday, Postmaster General John E. Potter said the post office may be forced to cut back to five-day delivery for the first time in the agency’s history, citing rising costs and an ongoing decline in mail made worse by the global recession. [...]

The blame for this is on both sides.
The House Dems shouldn’t have put in provisions that were easily targeted as appearing to be non-stimulative and the Republicans are being the party of no.
But is this more dangerous for Dems or Repubs?
From WSJ:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has talked often about working toward a new bipartisanship [...]

That was the buzz yesterday.
In fact, the numbers guy himself Nate Silver pointed to a Gallup post today that shows a surprising picture when looking at party ID.

That’s right Dems! Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and South Carolina are turning blue!
Now, to be fair to Nate, he was skeptical, but didn’t say what I think [...]

In this economy, would you pay $149.99 for a Bernie Madoff action figure?
Would your answer be influenced if you knew it was a limited edition action figure?
Herobuilders.com is no stranger to controversy, brazenly giving G.I. Joe collectors the meanest enemies possible to wage war on — Saddam, Osama, Hugo Chavez.  Without bad guys, who are [...]

A U.S. combat outpost in the endless mountains of Afghanistan
President Obama said in his campaign that he would shift U.S. attention to the war in Afghanistan and rethink American strategy there.  It’s clear he intends to do just that.  But according to a New York Times story sourced to “senior administration officials,” in a somewhat [...]

Looks like the cramdown provisions will be taken out of the stimulus bill, but this is frankly puzzling to me. Because Americans need to have mechanisms to renegotiate the values of their homes, and thus their mortgages. And every single person I’ve read on this subject has said that this will result in fewer foreclosures [...]

One day after a Republican Congressman criticized Limbaugh, well, I think you know where this is going…
From Politico:
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) apologized Wednesday to “my fellow conservatives” for comments critical of talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh – saying he sees “eye-to-eye” with Limbaugh and that his remarks defending House Republican leadership came across more harshly than [...]

In a last-ditch effort to influence the stimulus package, Republicans have proposed an alternate bill focused predominately on tax cuts.
“If government spending was going to get us out of this mess, we’d have been out a long time ago, because that’s all we’ve been doing,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. “This is not going to [...]