"Where is the Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom?"

Expect more like this:

Plates Keep Shifting

Tonight NBC/Wall Street Journal released a major presidential poll showing the President has improved his margin against his probable opponent, Mitt Romney. This comes after a string of other polls showing improving numbers for the president, as well as another group of polls showing that most voters believe congressional Republicans are focused on stymying the economic recovery to better their party’s chances against the president next November.

I'd argue that the odds of the economy being noticeably better a year from now are better than even.

The Latest Positive Divergence in the SPY

Strength into November (one-month bounce for a two-month divergence)?

Listen to the Sound of My Big Black Capitulation

Not the first by any stretch of the imagination, though I anticipate an arms race on the Left to see who can go the farthest to provoke a candidate to actually accept the errand.

"What Democrats Can Do About Obama"

Obama has ruined the Democratic Party. The 2010 wipeout was an electoral catastrophe so bad you'd have to go back to 1894 to find comparable losses. From 2008 to 2010, according to Gallup, the fastest growing demographic party label was former Democrat. Obama took over the party in 2008 with 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democrats. Within just two years, that number had dropped to 31 percent, which tied a 22-year low.

Songs from the Belly of the Beast

Listening all day to financial pundits on TV putting the "baby" in Baby Boomer has me remembering one of my favorite lines of poetry of all time from Karl Shapiro in a poem called "Ruby Bates."

"The Reds are virgins
They wear suits and talk a shrapnel-proof ideology
They will all die
Of biology"

The New Republic Publishes Two Jonathans

And both of them are brilliant. Here's Chait.

The Two Crises and the Triumph of Magical Thinking

This morning, listening to Diane Rehm, I heard the host ask her guest what President Obama should do to fix the ailing economy. Her guest expert tried to answer, but did not point out that any proposal to address the economy would require passage by the House and Senate. It struck me, again, that our political discourse is consumed by magical thinking.

"Magical thinking" is exactly how I've been characterizing a lot of "Ess muss sein!" talk that I've been hearing over the past year - and not just in politics.

But that has only modest bearing on my conviction that J. Chait is a very sharp man.

Unintended Consequences of a Generational Bear Market: Japan Edition

Japan's 'herbivore men' -- less interested in sex, money

They are young, earn little and spend little, and take a keen interest in fashion and personal appearance -- meet the "herbivore men" of Japan.

Author and pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa coined the term in 2006 in a series of articles on marketing to a younger generation of Japanese men. She used it to describe some men who she said were changing the country's ideas about just what is -- and isn't -- masculine.

Courtesy of a jiu jitsu teammate and training partner who's spending some time in Japan. Wild extrapolations are entirely those of the blogger.

Made in the USA, Bought in the USA

Yglesias is swiftly becoming my favorite blogger. Counter-intuitive without being too clever about it.

‘Made In China’ Accounts For Less Than 3 Percent Of American Personal Consumption Expenditures

In part, this reflects the fact that 67 percent of spending is on services rather than goods, and services are 96 percent made in the USA. But even durable goods, which only account for about 10 percent of total spending, are mostly made in America — 66.6 percent to 12 percent for China with the rest coming from the rest of the world. In fact the only category of spending in which Made in the USA doesn’t account for the majority is clothing and shoes. What’s more, even a lot of the spending on imported goods actually reflects the cost of shipping them around the United States.

About That Professional Left

I prefer the Leninist term "ultra-left". But John Cole's analysis of the continued immaturity of the left wing of the major American left wing party is worth reading.

Obama is Picking on Romney

I fully expect by the end of the week to hear Halperin and the other bobbleheads decrying this outrageous attack on Romney’s religion. If any of you were wondering what the upcoming election was going to be like, this should be a healthy primer for you. In order to win the WH in 2012, we are going to have to beat back the wingnuts and the GOP, Wall Street and the Banksters, the Chamber of Commerce, a worthless media, and our progressive betters.

Bardo Demons

London Riots Roundup Birmingham-Liverpool

Several large fires engulfed the centre of Croydon on Monday night as the unrest that has gripped London spread to one of the capital's most southerly boroughs.

Residents said the trouble started in outlying neighbourhoods at about 7pm with 200 to 300 youths rampaging through the streets looting and setting fire to shops.

At about 9pm, the trouble had spread to the centre of Croydon where the hundred-year-old Reeves furniture shop was set alight sending flames high into the night. Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell said: "I'm sickened to see this happening in my town. My first instinct is sympathy for the businesses and residents who have been directly affected by what's happened.