America has a Credulity Crisis. It’s not that we have too little of it, it’s that we have way too much, and a credulity glut is the last thing a democracy needs.

Yves Smith has a post laying out one of the most troublesome aspects of the response to the revelation of foreclosure fraud. As she explains, to conduct an “independent review” of its PR-servicing “review” of its own servicing practices, GMAC picked the lawfirm that has been in charge of its national counsel on servicing issues.

Ben Bernanke absorbed a couple weeks of shots from hard-money Republicans desirous of stopping any growth-inducing monetary policy. Friday, he struck back – not necessarily by just defending his monetary policy, but by calling for fiscal policy enhancements and hitting China for endangering world economic growth.

TSA Administrator John Pistole, America’s surveillance meister, will be on CNN’s State of the Union this morning. In Germany, the Pirate Party organized a protest against porno scanners. Protest here, start by signing the petition demanding Congress investigate the TSA’s porno scanners.

Riki Ott hosts FDL’s Book Salon this afternoon. This evening, DDay and Bobblespeak’s Culture of Truth appear on Jay Ackroyd’s Virtually Speaking.

Humphrey the Bear — In The Bag. This Walt Disney cartoon was released on July 27, 1956.

Via Susie, enjoy the spectacle of Outrage at the Notion Expressed By Matt Taibbi that The Tea Party Baggers are “crazy,” and “vote without acting on the evidence.” It is hardly “elitist” to point this out, though. It’s accurate. Liberal socialists like Obama have conspired to deprive Americans of Liberty by, say, doing science. Republicans [...]

This week, there have been several days of protests in Haiti against the presence of UN troops in the country. The immediate catalyst has been the widespread belief among Haitians that UN troops are responsible for the outbreak of cholera in Haiti – a belief for which there is considerable evidence, which the UN has encouraged by its refusal to support an investigation into the causes of the cholera outbreak, ignoring calls from Haitian officials and international public health experts for such an investigation. Why are there UN troops in Haiti? What is the timetable for their withdrawal?

The Congressional Research Service report on robo-signing and foreclosure fraud does a pretty good job of laying out the stakes, which it agrees are completely unknown at this point. It reiterates that the servicers believe they have performed lawfully and not wrongfully foreclosed on anyone, but that the robo-signing problems could be masking more substantive issues around the true ownership of the mortgage and the property. The hopeless compromised Treasury Department can continue to turn a blind eye. But this will not go away, and it will remain a lead weight on top of the economy. Nothing will change that outside of a significant turn in how regulators and policymakers approach this crisis.

Everyone’s looking to the debt limit vote next year as the opportunity for the GOP to shut down the government. However, that may come a whole lot sooner.

In recent days several center-left blogger/columnists have suggested that progressives should be happy to cut a deal now on Social Security and other issues related to the budget. The argument is that the cuts being put forward by the commissions are not that onerous, they don’t involve privatization, and we could be facing much worse in the future.