I think you can read Sen. Chris Dodd’s comments as desperate bargaining against a CFPB nomination for Elizabeth Warren. Yet even Dodd has to announce support if she gets the call.

There was always a problem with Obama’s “post-partisan” positioning and it had nothing to do with whether he had to be a “legislative president.”

Rolling Stone has a big new article in this month’s issue about the push to legalize marijuana in California and across the country. The title of the article may sound familiar: it’s called “Just Say Now.” And our campaign gets an impressive plug.

If schools across the country received aid checks from the federal government in March or April, they would have torn up the pink slips they put out in a preliminary fashion and planned for the school year ahead. But the state fiscal aid bill didn’t pass until August, just a month before the new school year. As a result, school districts have to scramble — and many of them won’t rehire until later in the year.

At the NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) conference yesterday, regulators approved the medical loss ratio “blank” — the form that will get sent to health insurers to determine how much of their premium revenue gets spent on medical care. And in an unexpected early victory, the NAIC rejected many of the procedures that the insurance industry wanted to include as counting under the MLR.

If the Obama administration and Congress wanted to avoid a double-dip recession and spur job creation, then they should focus on fixing fraud and abuses in federal small business contracting programs. These contracting programs can be used as a means of driving demand to small businesses that create over 90 percent of net new jobs.

• By the hair of his chinny chin chin.
• Can’t put the bigotry back in the tube.
• Picking a lunatic to run for the Senate proven unwise.
• Can’t believe we’re losing to these guys.
• No one could’ve predicted that Faux has an alliance with the GOP.
• Good news.
• Oopsie.

Somebody should just give John Bolton a map, some firecrackers, and a deserted distant island.

Johnny Does Walter — Johnny Carson skit spoofing Walter Cronkite on The Tonight Show.

The Senate Republicans have made it clear since the beginning of 2009 they had no desire to reach bipartisan compromise with the Democrats. Instead they choose the surprisingly successful strategy pure obstructionism using a set of broken and arcane Senate rules. By effectively preventing the Democrats from governing (or preventing the Dems from governing effectively, take your pick), the Republicans have been able to tarnish their opponents in the eye’s of many voters, and therefore improve the GOP’s own election prospects.