Metaphorically speaking, of course:

The real security threat, internal or external, to the USA may not come from Osama bin Laden or WikiLeaks. The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says banks are undermining the rule of law in America and bad mortgages still fester. In 2009 Stiglitz had advocated nationalization of US banks. Yesterday, under the compromise contained in the Dodd-Frank Act, the US Federal Reserve Board released details...

Republicans have not been at all bipartisan on tax cuts (or anything else, for that matter), but, writes Ezra Klein, Democrats come in for their share of blame, too:

While there are lots of rumors circulating it sounds like we may be getting a reasonable compromise to extend all of the tax cuts but only for 2-3 years. The theory presumably being that in a few years that the economy might have recovered to the point that we could look at ending the higher income cuts. Personally I’ve always thought something along those lines made the most sense. While there are a few...

As I reported here Julian Assange told Forbes that his next target would be a large US Bank.  Raw Story reports that in October of 09 Assange said: “At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drives,” Assange told the technology site Computer World in an article published on October 9, 2009. The Wikileaks chief continued: “Now...

So: After regaling us with their unctious hopes that they and Democrats can now achieve “common ground” after the White House summit yesterday (was it just yesterday?!); after praising Barack Obama with sickening condescension (I saw the post-summit press briefing by GOP leaders on CNN while on my second day of jury duty yesterday, and the patronizing back-patting made me so ill I had to leave the...

Hello there, Dr. E. here. Our commenters at TMV occasionally leave long and interesting comments that read like a good opinion piece in and of themselves. This is one by commenter Leonidas that offers a thoughtful viewpoint. Most of the news media seems to be losing their minds over Wikileaks without actually reading these essays by Leonidas An interesting read on [the matter of] Wikileaks [here]: “To radically...

Easy answers to puzzling questions, via Steve King (R-Iowa):

by Walter Brasch Even the most casual observers would believe that the U.S. is making an economic recovery if they saw the hordes descend upon retail stores on Black Friday. Americans began lining up four hours before the stores opened as early as midnight. And they weren’t shopping just for necessities. Sale of large-screen TVs and video games were up significantly from two years ago. The consumer...

The feds are demanding that New Jersey return to them the $271 million that was spent on the aborted rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan before Christie pulled the plug on the project.

President Barack Obama has ordered a pay freeze for most federal workers for the first time in two years in a step aimed at helping stem the bloating federal deficit: The president’s proposal will effectively wipe out plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million civilian federal government employees, including those working at the Defense Department, but the freeze would not affect...

One major interpretation of the 2010 Midterm election results is that many progressive, liberal and Democratic policies have been generally discredited among the majority of the American electorate. So what can Progressives, Democrats and Liberals do over the next few years? The national rejection is not just a result of poor messaging, nuance, campaign spending, turnout, or anything else political. If the...

Note: This is a follow up to Joe Gandelman‘s post below. While we on this side of the pond worry about our debt crisis, things are really bad in Europe.  The Euro and the European Community itself are in danger of collapse. Another week, another crisis for the euro. In April, the single currency wobbled as Greece was rescued. This week and last, Ireland sparked the panic. Next week, if the markets...

This holiday season is looking more than a bit Dickensian:

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Thanks by Peter Funt I’m thankful that this year many merchants were considerate enough to begin Christmas sales shortly after Columbus Day to avoid interfering with Halloween and Thanksgiving. I’m also thankful that: …Starbucks managed to put the snowflake designs on its paper cups long before most of the country got any snow. …The Neiman Marcus Christmas Book – a catalog so lavish they...

CHARGE (it!)! Black Friday has begun and if you think the stampede in Cambodia was bad, and thought about two years ago the good news is: it’s more sedate this year (so far). And there are hopes retail sales this holiday season will be better than last year’s. Bleary-eyed shoppers lined up before dawn today to push their way into stores across the nation, kicking off the annual Black Friday retail...

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Thanksgiving is the only remaining levee to hold back the torrent of Christmas excess. Without Thanksgiving, the day after Halloween would most likely be the biggest shopping day of the year. In recent years, Thanksgiving has weakened, allowing Christmas to creep its way into November and even late October. When trick or treaters start caroling, we’ll know we have a real problem on our hands. Still, most...

Ron has had an increasing amount of posts about the coming energy shortages that are going to threaten industrial society. The estimates are converging across nations and social groups: we have already hit peak conventional oil and it is almost definite we will have sizeable overall oil shortfalls by 2015. Various agencies across the world project this to be around 10 million barrels per day or about 15% of...