Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again (The Onion)
'From now on, just tell me the bullshit I want to hear,' one Ohio resident said. 'Tell me my savings are safe, everybody has a job, and we're No. 1 again.'
Do I have to tell you it’s a satire? I get in trouble when I don’t. But then, I get in trouble a lot, anyway.—Caro

Jamiol’s World

Vote Highlights Tension For Senators Between Constituents, Funders (by Michael Beckel at Capital Eye, OpenSecrets.org)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the all-time top spender on lobbying, [vowed] that senators who voted for Durbin's legislation will pay a financial price… A dozen [Democrats], including newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), appear to have bent to the pressure, according to the Huffington Post, which surmised, using CRP data, that these senators did not want to rock the boat for some of their biggest campaign contributors. Indeed, the finance, insurance & real estate sector has been the No. 1 career contributor to half of these lawmakers, and near the top of the list for almost all of the rest.
Click through for a chart. Not a whole lotta tension there, though, constituents almost ALWAYS lose.—Caro

Congress Does Exactly What They Want To Do (by Natasha Chart at Open Left)
[E]ach new 'moderate'-led defeat under the glorious Democratic trifecta leaves me freshly wondering how much it's possible to reform such lousy human beings through public pressure… They are independent moral agents and when they keep doing bad things that they bleeping well know screw over their constituents, they're responsible for those actions. Not me and you for failing to call their office or send them that email. Not the soulless mortgage banking lobbyist they had lunch with. Not consumer advocates for somehow failing to make a dent the last dozen times they briefed congresscritters and their staff on the Very Dire Straits of ordinary Americans. It isn't that they have no principles. It's that they have bad ones, and they're doing exactly what they want to do.

They Just Don’t Care (by Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
What Natasha said. [See above.] You know, I really didn’t think I was going to spend the next four years trying to mobilize people against a Democratic-controlled Congress.

In Their Own Words: Why Dem Senators Screwed Homeowners (by Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post)
Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.): "A number of things. I thought the 31 percent is an arbitrary number. I think there are a whole lot of folks, are likely folks, out there who have little debt outside their home who could -- I just thought it was an arbitrary number and I didn't like the way it was constructed."…
Ben Nelson (D-Neb.): "I've not supported the cramdown for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I hate to see that authority to determine what the future contract is ceded to the court."
Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who ultimately voted yes: "My concern about this is that in our appropriate zeal to help the four or five percent of Americans who might be faced with bankruptcy, we don't unduly raise the costs of homeownership on the 95 percent who never will."
Tom Carper (D-Del.): "One of the reasons why usually mortgage rates are cheaper for primary homes is that the markets have the certainty that the judge won't be invited to come in and change the terms of the mortgage."…
Jon Tester (D-Mont.): "I just think a deal's a deal. I have a lot of empathy for folks who tend to get led astray, but I just think it's going to create some problems -- pretty obvious, actually. I don't have to list them. I'm generally opposed. I don't think it works well."
Click through for more.—Caro

Bank objections delay stress tests (Financial Times, U.K.)
US regulators will delay the release of stress test results for the country’s 19 biggest banks until next Thursday, after some lenders, including Citigroup and Bank of America, objected to government demands that they needed to raise billions in fresh capital.

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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com