and the sun rises in the East.

Here's today's installment.

From Brad Delong quoting Kevin Drum  describing the misleading  Social Security “statistics” used by  Alan Simpson.

Drum points out that , since 1940 

 For men, life expectancy at age 65 has gone up   from 78   to 83 .. Since retirement age has gone up from 65 to 67, this means that over the past 60 years the expected payout period has increased by about three years. …….. Alan Simpson  …. has no clue about this.:

The above video from Dylan Ratigan’s Friday show was really interesting.  I couldn’t find any direct links to Geithner’s ‘austerity move’ to stop low-interest loans to cities and states, but it sounds enormously counter-productive since most of those governments (if not all) are required to balance their budgets.

I’d run into this piece by Marshall Auerback a few days earlier touting some of James Galbraith’s ideas that would be of help to Obama and the nation; he thinks Republicans could buy into them, given that Nixon used some of the same ideas through community block grants.  He/they are promoting ‘revenue sharing’ with the states, and focus on Medicaid as one helpful vehicle.

Fed up with drone attacks that (per our government statements) kill only "suspected militants" regardless of the age or sex of those incinerated, the hitherto complaisant guardians of our supply routes across the Durand Line finally declare that they have had enough.

Personally, I applaud them for doing only what we would if random missile strikes were periodically raining down hellfire (not just a metaphor) on guilty and innocent alike with no discrimination.

 of reading TPM was  being exposed to people who actually knew what they were talking about..

The collapse of the housing market in 2008 was much less of a surprise to any of us who had for years been reading Dean Baker’s  repeated  explanations that housing had become a bubble which would go the way of all bubbles For example , in 2006.

Returning to the alternative universe in which Obama has balls, we find the following:

Since a US default would be catastropic, and Prez has independent control only of the military, he announces the closure of all bases in Repugnant represented states and congressional districts, so that the necessary cash may be re-directed to default prevention pending raise of debt ceiling.

Does anyone feel sorry for these folks, perhaps of the Republican tribe, and likely believers in the magic and morality of unfettered capitalism, for being sucked into expensive real estate deals where they lost lots of money, buying into the image inspired by the name 'Trump'?

Raj's conviction , will change nothing, is a waste of money and effort and is completely divorced from the  sub prime / CDO financial crisis. With respect to that  I agree with Des and others who complain about the fact no legal action has been taken against anyone- despite acknowledging Gillian Tett's (FT) theory that lhe brilliant people on Wall Street particularly use their billiance to find a way to just avoid acting illegally.

here's part of what bitterlemons was debating this week.

http://www.bitterlemons.net/     

 Members of the Hamas leadership also publicly mourned and eulogized assassinated al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, in sharp contrast to statements made by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and others in the West Bank. 

                                   Capture Team Stood

                                      By for Bin Laden

...............senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on stand by:One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers,interrogators and translaters in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship........