David Dayen

Most first-time candidates would give almost anything for the kind of reception his campaign announcement generated last week. Small donations from all over the country flooded into his ActBlue account. The support was overwhelming.

Not long ago a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll asked respondents about their own incumbent Member of Congress: "In the next election for U.S. Congress, do you feel that your representative deserves to be reelected, or do you think that it is time to give a new person a chance?" Only 35% thought their Member had earned reelection. 57% said it is time for a new person.

Paul Ryan sold the Omnibus by promising the radicals in his conference a much harsher attitude-- complete with much harsher actions against working families-- next year, which is-- buried beneath the silken, inspiring tones-- trumpeted in the very slick video he released yesterday (above). It looks like every member of the Freedom Caucus voted NO anyway, even if it was just a carefully choreographed little dance that was done for the sake of whomever is taken in by this kind of bullshit.

The Omnibus budget is going to look very ugly under the deft hand of Paul Ryan. And there's only so much Pelosi, Reid and even Obama can do to stop it.

Greg Sargent raised the warning signals, based on a new poll released yesterday by Stan Greenberg, that core Democratic voters-- particularly millennials (but also unmarried women and minorities-- are not as energized by the 2016 elections yet as core Republican voters.

Hillary Clinton & Cheryl Mills-- not enemies of Wall StreetYesterday was all about Hillary Clinton testifying at Trey Gowdy's taxpayer-funded partisan witch-hunt which brought her an awful lot of sympathy and gravitas.

An army of lobbyists knocking down the doors of Congress (source; click image for the full effect) by Gaius Publius Fast Track is not just a path to TPP ... it's evil all on its own. There's now another leaked "trade" deal, called TISA, and Fast Track will "fast-track" that one too. Want your municipal water service privatized?

by Gaius PubliusI can't take credit for this, though I wish I could. David Dayen, who writes at Salon, has been reading Barney Frank's new book Frank and also its reviews. Dayen is one of the most knowledgeable writers on the mortgage and financial crises — both. (Note to readers: It's not a financial crisis if there's no mortgage crisis.

In a USAToday OpEd yesterday, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, urged Obama to reach across the aisle for his next Attorney General.

Do you notice that it isn't just conservatives who don't care about protecting the planet but that there's also a fault line between young people-- who believe in a future-- and lots of old people, who just don't get all that worked up over the future? For the record, I'm old-- and I very much do care about preserving our planet.