Maybe you think those leading Democrats aren’t being sincere about this. I actually am fine thinking that they are. Because this has now become the dividing line in American politics: one side wants to destroy the safety net, privatize everything, kill the unions, cut taxes for the rich and drown government in the bathtub. The other side doesn’t want to end Medicare. They don’t really want to expand it, they don’t even mind cutting it, hopefully to make it more efficient. They just don’t want to end it. Clearly you see how far to the right that dividing line has moved.

Remember that swipe fee measure that passed the Senate twice? It lowered the amount credit card companies can charge merchants to $.12 a transaction. It was a stunning victory that retailers (which admittedly includes WalMart but also includes your locally owned business struggling to stay in business) won that battle twice.

Well, lucky for the banksters, they had one more ace in their pocket: The Federal Reserve, which just cut the baby in half and set transaction fees at $.21 plus some anti-fraud amounts.

Ezra Klein cautions his readers not to get too attached to the idea the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on questioning the US debt might offer a way out of, or at least some leverage on, the debt limit hostage taking. And the alternative is…?

A recent report by the Arizona Republic, which reviewed audits, correspondence, and interviews from the Department of Corrections reveals that many of the security lapses that led to the escape of 3 murderers from the MTC facility in Kingman last year have not been resolved.

President Obama was asked today about the decision by the National Labor Relations Board with respect to Boeing, and you can see his answer in the video. He said that the NLRB is an independent agency and that there’s a pending judicial matter. “So I don’t want to get into the details of the case. I don’t know all the facts. That’s going to be for a judge to decide.”

However, he then spoke broadly about the fact that corporations need to have the “freedom to relocate,” although they have to follow the law, and that if that relocation occurs in the United States, “that’s a good thing.”

It should be no surprise that our older government officials harbor, let’s call them outdated, ideas and stereotypes. That does not mean they should be shooting their mouths off with these old bigoted ideas. Sec. State Clinton, STFU! Oh! And Happy Pride Day!

Bank of America settled some of their mortgage problems today, but now all. Even then they got off very cheaply, a mere 8.6 billion.

At a time of high unemployment, it’s difficult to fathom why the President would be fighting to increase our trade deficit and ship tens of thousands of jobs overseas by pushing his NAFTA-style trade deal with Korea. Even more stunning, however, is the loophole in the Obama deal that will hand billions over to North Korea to spend on their nuclear weapons program.

The debate about Tasers has always been that they don’t do as much harm as a bullet. Too bad that is mostly marketing hype. When used on children and pregnant women they can be devastating.

Labor is fired up for this fight. As with the recalls in Wisconsin there is going to be a lot of money and effort poured into defeating this bill at the ballot box. It should be a good indicator of which way the wind is blowing heading into 2012.