What a silly person this John Larson is, thinking that Congress would create a jobs supercommittee. Why, what would that have to do with the deficit?

Time to beat up on really really bad news reporting. The stock market doesn’t tell people why it does what it does. We have commentators who bloviate on what they think caused the market to rise or fall, but they don’t really know and they could be completely wrong.

I guess news outlets are still pushing the line that the S&P debt downgrade is what has driven the stock market volatility over the past week or so. They have to neglect that the market was falling before the downgrade to come up with this rationale, but no matter, I guess.

Four nights of riots in the United Kingdom (the first three primarily in London) have given way to calls for the arrests of those who have used mobile technology or social networking to “incite violence.” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh said some messages on Twitter related to the riots have been “really inflammatory” and “accurate” and that officers should consider arresting those who sent incitements to violence on Twitter.

What we learn from this polling is that when you spend almost three years with unemployment at an elevated level, the public tends to get the message that government isn’t able to help alleviate the problem.

For the record: I just want to point out that, for all of my Tebow funnin’ (which is mainly aimed at sportswriters and sports commentators who turn into 12-year old girls at their first Beiber concert at the mere mention of Tebow. See: Forde, Pat) I think Tim Tebow is probably a hell of a nice guy who sincerely believes that Sky Quarterback watches over us all. Good for him. Whatever.

American still demands not to care about Reince Priebus — your vowel orders may differ.

The Chinese State Circus — Swan Lake.

Say what you like about the things the the US is no longer great at, we still are the Big Dogs when it comes to building and running long term space missions. Today the Opportunity Mars Rover finished a two year trip to the Endeavour Crater. There it will look for signs that water persisted on the surface of Mars for long periods of time. Not bad for a probe with a 3 month estimated mission life, eh?

The Senate Banking Committee claims to be gathering information on S&P, but as Manns says this is an industry-wide phenomenon. Long ago, the government gave the rating agencies a good deal of power, and now they’re using it to protect their core business. I’d love to see Congress defy the rating agencies and reduce their role in bond deals (through mandating AAA securities in them), but I don’t see it happening.