The Republicans Have a RNC Chairman To Make Them Proud

This from the Washington Post:

Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors.

Federal agents in recent days contacted Steele's sister, a spokesman for Steele said yesterday.

The claim about the payment, one of several allegations by Alan B. Fabian, is outlined in a confidential court document. Fabian offered the information last March as he was seeking leniency for himself during plea negotiations on unrelated fraud charges. It is unclear how extensively his claims have been pursued. Prosecutors gave him no credit for cooperation when he was sentenced in October.

Fabian's claims emerge as Steele begins his new role at the RNC, where he oversees the raising and spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in party money. The former Maryland lieutenant governor has faced questions about his handling of campaign money in prior elections and was twice fined for missing filing deadlines.

Reported by Washington post staff reporter Henri E. Cauvin

Almost Blue

I know, you've heard it before, but I am...

Don't Know Why

This is a song that reminds me of the girl/woman I was. The girl who always left. I was always on the run one way or another. I sure hope I've stopped running.

I'm a bit melancholy today. Don't know why. This is the ugliest time of year here. Where snow hasn't quite melted, it's covered with bits of dirt and debris. Walkways are filthy with winter-fall--the bit's and pieces that continue to drift down from the canopy of trees during winter storms but are hidden until most of the snow melts. And all my walk ways sink a little deeper into the ground each year so that now they are a boggy trail--wet and muddy. It was just like this when I moved back here from Santa Barbara. I cried as I drove into Salt Lake and then got to the house. Compared to Santa Barbara this is a very ugly city and this is it's very ugliest season. It's overcast today, and I'm tired.

I feel kind of sad. Don't know why... Maybe it's just the anger and helplessness I feel about the mess we're in and the idiocy of the party out of power, working so damned hard to make sure we can't climb out of the hole they dug for us. I'm not sure why I feel this way.

Paul Krugman: My Favorite Blogging Economist

Today in his blog at the New York Times Krugman says:

Appeasing the centrists

Atrios is right, though I’d put it a bit differently: centrism is a pose rather than a philosophy. And to support that pose, the centrists are demanding $100 billion in cuts in the economic stimulus plan — not because they have any coherent argument saying that the plan is $100 billion too big, not because they can identify $100 billion of stuff that should not be done, but in order to be able to say that they forced Obama to move to the center.

Which raises the obvious question: shouldn’t Obama have made a much bigger plan, say $1.3 trillion, his opening gambit? If he had, he could have conceded to the centrists by cutting it to $1.2 trillion, and still have had a plan with a good chance of really controlling this slump. Instead he made preemptive concessions, only to find the centrists demanding another pound of flesh as proof of their centrist power.