He works for the bankers - the people bought the oval office and installed him there as their employee. (and yes, I'm a little cynical)

It is Obama's continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation's economic well-being. There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings every single month that Obama has been president, and as The New York Times editorialized, "Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Obama administration's efforts to address the foreclosure problem will make an appreciable dent."
[...]
The ugly reality that only 398,198 mortgages have been modified to make the payments more reasonable can be traced to the program being based on the hope that the banks would do the right thing. While Obama continued the Bush practice of showering the banks with bailout money, he did not demand a moratorium on foreclosures or call for increasing the power of bankruptcy courts to force the banks, which created the problem, to now help distressed homeowners.

Fortunately there are some judges who see things a little differently than Obama does.

Fed Up Judges Invalidating Mortgages Over Fraudulent Paperwork:

..a Long Island judge decided that he had enough. He found that the mortgage companies paperwork was so flawed and their behavior so repugnant (the judges word not mine) that he voided the mortgage and gave the house to the family.

OR

It's good because the Obama Administration says so.

OR

It is good because I trust the President.

OR

This is the 11th dimensional chess that we've all been waiting for!

OR

It is a very complex issue and people just don't understand how great this will turn out for everyone in the end.  We just need to be patient.

OR

I heard that they will probably change it pretty soon and isn't Obama great!?!  He really cares.  {insert pretty Obama family photos posted by the White House here}

TRENTON, N.J., (AP) -- NJ Transit owes the federal government at least $271 million for the Hudson River rail tunnel that Gov. Chris Christie scrapped last month, a federal official says.
...
The Federal Transit Administration on Monday sent the railroad the bill for the so-called Access to the Region's Core project.

"NJT must immediately repay all the Federal financial assistance expended for ARC under the (work agreement) which is currently estimated to be $271.091 million, plus reasonable interest and penalty charges that will be determined by FTA," regional administrator Brigid Hynes-Cherin wrote in the letter to James Weinstein, executive director of NJ Transit.

FTA also said it would launch an audit of the project to determine how much federal funds have not yet been spent. link

WASHINGTON -- In what may be the first major move of the forthcoming Social Security debate, the Peterson Foundation launched on Tuesday a $20 million TV ad campaign to promote the need for a major discussion on debt and deficit reduction.
...The Peterson Foundation, for one, has never shied away from its push to reform the entitlement program. And in introducing the $20 million effort, the organization's founder, former Nixon commerce secretary and fiscal conservative Pete Peterson made it abundantly clear that Social Security is in his sights.

Perhaps the most frightening part of the unveiling, however, is that Peterson -- long a scourge of progressives for having earned hundreds of millions in the hedge fund business while preaching financial sacrifice for others -- has prominent Democrats backing his latest campaign. Appearing alongside him at the Newsuem on Tuesday morning was outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Budget Committee Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

"People on the left who don't want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic," said Conrad. "I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality. On the right, those who say no new revenue, I believe, are also in denial." link

Comment from Jim Webb quoted by David Sirota (from the sidebar):

"People look up say, what's the difference between these two parties? Neither of them is really going to take on Wall Street. If they don't have the guts to take them on, and they've got all these other programs that exclude me, well to hell with them. I'm going to vote for the other people who can at least satisfy me on other issues, like abortion. Screw you guys. I understand that mindset."

Full Disclosure - I've spent part of the week dealing with these policies for clients.

Boehner will fail, and Democrats will pounce in 2012

Republicans didn't sweep these elections for grand ideological reasons, but because not enough of the Democratic base showed up to vote. Exit polls also show that angry voters who flocked to Republicans will end up disappointed in their actual policies. And in 2012, Democrats will be ready.

The statute of limitations on criminal law covering the tapes' November 2005 destruction expired this week, making future prosecution impossible.

It was simple and brilliant play by the football team of Driscoll Middle School from Corpus Christi, Texas. The quarterback took the ball and casually strolled forward, acting as though the play hadn't started. But it had, and he passed the opposing team's defensive line before they realized it.

Clearly, the hopes and dreams that propelled Obama to the White House are in disarray. The social movement politics that some of his most fervent followers ascribed to him--the idea of electing a "post-partisan" president as the leader not of a nation or even of a political party but of a personalized social movement--has failed.