Chicago Sheriff Thomas Dart’s refusal to enforce foreclosures was based on a sample of foreclosures he reviewed; he found that only 5% of them had all their paperwork in order.

• An end game for Afghanistan?
• I’m pretty sure this means: “we’re moving to the center.“
• Just how lame with the lame duck session be?
• Shorter Krugman: take a stand, Obama!
• Was the Decider responsible for anything?
• Rick Perlstein on the Teabaggers.

Why spend time on real problems, when we can ignore actual injustices and fixate on what some dipsh*t tosses out there for profit?

Solomon Burke – None Of Us Are Free

The fox isn’t guarding the henhouse anymore; corporate foxes have outsourced the hens, leased the henhouse in an interest rate swap to Dubai, collateralized the egg stream in a CDO with Singapore traders, and re-hired the egglayers into at-will employment.

The marijuana movement can chalk up one victory at the polls for the 2010 Election: Arizona’s Proposition 203 to bring medical marijuana to the state pulled ahead by 4,000 votes in last-minute counting. And as of last night, it’s official: medical marijuana is coming to Arizona.

Show me an enacted program to raise employment massively, and I’d be willing to talk about ways to fix the budget in a humane way, closing military bases, withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, raising taxes, and plenty of other wholesome devices. Until then, forget it. The notion that we have to do something “now” or else is just a flaming lie. We’ve been told this for twenty years. Who can still believe it?

John McCain is dishonest about DADT repeal: dishonest on television, dishonest at home, dishonest in the Senate. His fellow Senators need to stop attending to this bigot’s views. He’s lost any credibility he may have had on DADT repeal.

That is the only thing that readers can conclude from its heroic efforts to balance the budget in 2030. This exercise is utterly mind-boggling. We have more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up work altogether. This is a real crisis. Furthermore, it is worth noting that these people are largely suffering as a result of the incompetence of the budget balancers. (The budget balancers were the same people who dominated economic debate in the years before the crash and could did not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy and gave us the huge deficits that now have them so obsessed.)

Don’t Hope– Get Mad and Do Something!

The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell might struck you first, as it did me, as a sort of ‘path not taken’ over the past political cycle, but its also a path forward. Jamie Court understands the political landscape, exactly what happened, and how it could have been avoided. This is not a book that wallows in being right, but instead focuses on where to go next. Ballot measures play a large role. Many of the activists here, having just come out of activist participation in the Marijuana initiatives, will gain from the insights of this book.