Given our recent discussions of Westen's OpEd and Chait's response, last night's episode of Charlie Rose with Drew Westen, Jonathan Chait and Fareed Zakaria is well worth watching. ~30 minutes

Charlie Rose - a discussion about President Obama's leadership

While I was away from the internet last week, some suit on CBS said that once an entity was downgraded, they stayed downgraded. I bought a Washington Post to read more about the crappy debt ceiling agreement. I read the whole damn thing, then put some recycled wood trim on top of it for scraping, cleaning and restaining. Our old trim is hard, or heart, pine, and is much harder than the soft pine they sell now. You can dent soft pine with a fingernail.

A NY Times chart reposted and discussed on Econbrowser.

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher due for sentencing
 

An activist who disrupted a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry by bidding $1.8m (£1.1m) he did not have for the right to drill in remote areas of Utah is due to be sentenced on Tuesday.

As Bidder No 70, Tim DeChristopher put in bogus bids and won drilling rights to 14 parcels of land at the auction, seen at the time as a last scramble by the Bush administration to open up wilderness lands to oil and gas extraction.