bringiton's blog

Speaking Wednesday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she will act next week to begin setting up an investigatory committee to examine and document what went wrong with economic policy and practices.

Pelosi stated that her decision was the result of persistent complaints from citizens about the collapse and bailout. Read below the fold...

It is all about the dirt.

For years I’ve kept a big garden, and supplied family members as well as neighbors with assorted fresh and tasty veggies. Last year, one thing and another, I scaled way back to just tomatoes and cucumbers and in consequence my brother decided to put in a vegetable garden of his own.

Things went OK for his tomatoes but not for anything else, and so I’ve offered to work with him and start over this spring – a twofer, teaching little brother while scratching my gardening jones in some one else’s yard and on someone else’s dime. Read below the fold...

Well, no.

But if he was, and a practical sort of Socialist at that, he might be saying things like this and saying them to Bill Moyers:

[special for Lambert] Read below the fold...

If the door breaks, nobody out here can afford to get it fixed.

Hillary Clinton has picked BFF Ellen Tauscher to be the new Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, and Tauscher’s Fellow Traveler Barack Obama has agreed. Read below the fold...

Speaker Pelosi gives an interview. Nice get for Maddow. Read below the fold...

This stimulus act isn’t all it should be, maybe five-eighths of a loaf, but it is better on close examination than first appearance and media reports had suggested. Read below the fold...

A small number of legislators, the BlueDogs, have conspired with the repulsive Republicans to try and destroy the American economy and the economic future of American workers for the sake of political gamesmanship. They must be punished. Read below the fold...

I am not an economist, but I can do arithmetic.

Please read first. Read below the fold...

The lines of battle over the economic salvation of America and our working class are now crystal clear. It is Republicans and BlueDogs together on one side, acting in furtherance of the same Corporatists who ran public policy under Reagan and the Bushs, versus the rest of us.

What was a back-room systematic undermining of anything remotely effective in the way of an economic stimulus bill is now an open threat: Read below the fold...

One of them has come forward to identify himself and his cadre.

Jeff Pete Sessions, (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, answering a question from a National Journal Hotline editor: Read below the fold...

Less than all-encompassing, subject to revision, but some think it is a big deal. Read below the fold...

Because having her in the Senate would have been truly awful. Read below the fold...

A lot is being made of the symbolism attached to Rick Warren, in giving the Invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Much less has been said about the symbolic importance of Joseph Lowery giving the Benediction. Read below the fold...

A long piece, in Rolling Stone. I won't try to, ahem, summarize him here, the work is very dense and any attempt to condense it I fear would leave out something important. Go and read, please. Read below the fold...

All in one post; how could I possibly go wrong? Read below the fold...