Since the election, and in fact for some time before, pundits have been demanding that President Obama move to "the center." They don't have a lot of details, usually, about where that center is, and if they do suggest a detail it usually comes from one side of current debates, but they're all convinced that Obama needs to go there. But there's a reason that pundits can't describe this magical "center" better. It doesn't exist.

The decision by MSNBC and its owner GE (Comcast is currently finalizing the purchase of MSNBC) to suspend Keith Olbermann without pay signals the start of a purge of liberal-leaning commentators.  With an activist right-wing Supreme Court, corporate media owners can, without fear of successful legal suits, prune from their trees anybody who speaks for limits on corporate power and against the redistribution of wealth upwards.  With a blood red House of Representatives, the masters of media know that no legislative response to their fiat will be forthcoming.  Some have questioned the decisio

Nate Silver grades the pollsters and finds Rasmussen biased.

So the powers that be on the Federal Reserve Board have decided to engage in round two of their little quantitative easing experiment, basically agreeing to purchase $600 billion in government debt over the next 8 months in order to keep interest rates artificially low and hopefully juice the economy in the process.