Eric Schneiderman, co-chair of the newly titled “RMBS working group” investigating financial fraud, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show last night (the interview starts around the 5:00 mark), and there were a few interesting moments. First you have his assessment of the the fraud involved here, which he definitively cast as a pre-crisis issue. Schneiderman, from his public statements, is less concerned with the faulty documentation used to foreclose on borrowers; I would imagine he sees this as the cover-up for the initial crime of securitization fraud, and going back even further origination fraud. He sees that as where the banks’ real exposure lies. And so the working group will look at “all of the conduct that blew up the economy,” not the conduct being engaged in to paper over (literally) all that.

If the US fought for the post-carbon economy the way it fights for nebulous state-building goals in foreign wars, the future would be brighter, cleaner, safer and cheaper, with more jobs and perhaps – because it would need to secure less of that foreign oil -fewer wars. If the country built new classrooms with the same urgency it built armored vehicles, more American teens could be choosing between colleges instead of choosing between minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs – and fewer would eventually need public assistance. If the government spent more on blackboards and less on bullets, it would create more jobs today and more innovation in the future.

So begins a November 3rd story from Reuters assessing the potential political fallout from an administration decision to green-light the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada Corp’s plan to move crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries in Texas. Reading the whole piece, one can’t help but feel that Obama is still of a mind to go ahead and OK this dangerous and much-derided plan, it is just the Obama 2012 campaign that’s agonizing over how to spin it.

There’s a misconception about what constitutes “hard left” and “hard right” positions about fixing the housing mortgage problem. But the “hard left” position is nothing more than following the rule of law, as New York’s AG, Eric Schneiderman explained on Maddow last night (video)

Why won’t Crazy Allen answer Ms. Nicole’s question? Why won’t he invite everyone he represents to ask him a question? It’s not like they are going to pretend to kill him just to get him to answer. They wouldn’t do that, they want him to tell the truth, not make up a lie just to get them to stop.

The reaction among liberals to the President’s speech Wednesday reminds us how thirsty liberals/progressives have been for President Obama to show the slightest hint of courageous, progressive leadership. So when Obama, who has repeatedly betrayed liberal values cherished by the Democratic Party since FDR, finally said what liberals/progressives have been saying for months, much of the liberal community cheered or at least said, “finally!” But this was easy.

Feeling poleaxed by the audacious hopes it raised during the ‘08 campaign, Team Obama will attempt to lower expectations going into 2012–and nothing lowers expectations like proving yourself irrelevant.

Uterus is not a dirty word! It’s the house where I grew up.

Get big gubmint out of my wallet and back into my sister’s uterus where it belongs!

They’re quiet, because it’s a mixed bag.