Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: the drama-smashing machine.

U.S. State Department releases volume confirming American involvement in the overthrow of the democratically-elected leader of Iran in 1954, Dr. Mosadegh, which sparked that country's quarter-century slide into Islamic fundamentalism. This has, of course, been an open secret for decades, and you may recall Ron Paul bringing this up in every 2008 Presidential debate, but it's still good to have it from our government's own mouth.

I fancy myself an optimist, but I don't know that it's true that "A Progressive Electoral Wave is Sweeping the Country." It's a big country, with over half a million elected offices, so even citing 10 recent elections won by actual liberals doesn't necessarily describe a "wave" -- even if you add in the Democrats' surprisingly good showings in two recent Congressional special elections, good showings they owe to the actual liberals who ran in them. Paragraph 8 at least reminds us that most significant electoral change starts a long way away from Washington, which is likely why our "liberal" media don't see it until very late.

Kathryn Milano at the Roosevelt Institute informs us that, contrary to what right-wingers tell you, Dodd-Frank isn't "killing" community banks. Key takeaways: community banks are loaning and making more money than they did last year, and Dodd-Frank has always had tiered regulatory structures that demand more from big banks than the community banks. Really, big banks, not big government, are holding community banks back, and I can't see another way to keep big banks from distorting the economy than through vigorous regulation (including anti-trust regulation). File this one under "big corporations using small businesses as a human shield."

Homeowners sue Wells Fargo for modifying their mortgages without the homeowners' permission -- adding 10 years to the length of the mortgage in some cases. Doesn't matter if their monthly payments went down a bit, because people get to make that decision, not banksters, and people might not make that decision if it extends their mortgage well into old age -- a move which would, of course, also make the bankster a lot more money in interest. Boy, it sure is a good thing the House just passed a bill that would cripple the ability of federal agencies to root out this kind of corruption.

Finally, some House Reps, who imagine they really went out on a limb to pass Trumpcare, are supposedly very upset that President Trump has called the House bill "mean" and asked Senators to make it more "generous" -- and even say Mr. Trump could have trouble working with Congress on tax cuts and infrastructure as a result. Uh, no, he won't -- since they all want the same thing (i.e., tax cuts for the rich, and damn everyone else), no "negotiation" over these matters will be necessary. It's drama, people! So treat it as such.

Around the table: underwater homeowner relief, at last! And other stories.

Federal Housing Finance Agency finally grants mortgage reductions to more than 30,000 homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. Sen. Warren promptly (and rightly!) reminds us that "(t)he big banks got their money immediately" while homeowners had to wait damn near eight years. And if underwater homeowners had received the help they needed back in 2008 instead of 2016? They would have detoxified all those toxic securities that crashed the economy. But then, certain politically well-connected banksters wouldn't have been paid. No, really, that's what stopped our government from doing the right thing -- certainly banksters didn't get a mandate from the voters in 2008!

Ho hum, Adam Johnson at FAIR finds the "liberal" media gives more space to Verizon than its striking workers when covering the strike. (The score was 31-13 quotations from four news sources -- two traditional, two "new" -- over the first week of coverage; that score isn't even symmetrical, let alone fair.) I do appreciate Mr. Johnson's generosity in allowing that Verizon's "highly-sophisticated public relations machine" would overwhelm even the best journalists, but maybe basing the proverbial first draft of history so much on quotations isn't the best way to go.

Sir Elton John secures an injunction from a British court that could actually put journalists in jail for mentioning his or his husband's names in a story -- which, given the sexual imbroglios both men have been accused of lately, journalists will be tempted to do. We have to remind ourselves that Britain really doesn't have a First Amendment, which would prevent this kind of high-handedness in America -- and make those well-to-do folks who are guilty of extramarital transgressions, or far worse ones, work considerably harder to hide them.

A Consumerist investigation finds that, surprising as it may seem, it is Dunkin' Donuts' national policy to prompt consumers to enter the three-digit CVV code "for transactions that meet certain criteria" when using their credit cards -- but it is not their policy for clerks to demand that you say these numbers out loud so everyone can hear them, as clerks at upwards of two New York locations seemed to think. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think you shouldn't be ashamed of paying for things like that with cash -- save your credit cards for larger or remote purchases. Just because it's easy doesn't mean you should do it.

Finally, the Tennessee state legislature withdrew its notorious "bathroom bill" earlier this week -- congratulate yourselves if you worked against that bill, and then get ready for them to bring it up all over again later on this year -- and now some state legislators are riding the waaaambulance about it, with the state Senate Speaker Pro Tempore warning that business interests that opposed the bill should maybe think twice next time about asking the legislature for corporate incentives. Which is worse: that legislators would unfairly and unlawfully withhold corporate welfare goodies from organizations that advocate against these bills, or that legislators hand out corporate welfare goodies in the first place? I'm honestly not sure.

Around the table: the real relationship between Barack Obama and banksters, and other horrible truths.

Part two of Chris Hedges's Days of Revolt interview with economist Michael Hudson covers, at length, how much dirty work the Obama Administration has done on the banksters' behalf. Among their ill deeds: stopping any effort at mortgage write-downs, funneling trillions of dollars to banksters instead of writing down debt, preventing the IMF from writing down Greek debt, and worst of all, pretending to understand the people's needs and desires and then "delivering" them to his real constituents, the banksters. I sure do feel a lot better about not voting for him twice.

Mississippi's state legislature passes the mother of all "religious liberty" bills. You name it, this bill does it: clerks won't have to issue marriage licenses to gays, businesses can fire people for being gay or transgendered, adoption agencies won't have to place children with couples they think are having premarital sex, doctors won't have to counsel anyone who offends their "religious" sensibilities, and, well, you get the picture. And whereas Indiana and North Carolina suffered corporate backlash for their pro-discrimination bills, I don't presume the home state of Jr. Food Mart, C Spire Wireless, and MCI-surely-you-remember-them will feel that sort of pain. Southerners like talking about secession all the time; how about we start talking expulsion?

Dan Fischer writes a lengthy report at Counterpunch regarding the reflexively pro-gas drilling policies of Connecticut's Governor, Democrat Dannel Malloy. Connecticut doesn't even have shale gas to drill, but the Malloy Administration has funded plenty of pipeline projects -- including one a mere 105 feet from the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which is rather like putting a bomb right next to another bomb -- and fracked-gas power plants that suspiciously sit in low-income neighborhoods of color. Attend well the lies Gov. Malloy employs to justify what are essentially kickbacks to large contributors, beginning in the "Cooking the Climate" section. Spoiler alert: they're the same lies Republicans tell to accomplish the same ends.

Obama Administration pardon attorney resigns, claiming that President Obama isn't "following through" on promises to grant early releases to low-level federal drug offenders serving long sentences. The main problem? So many petitioners (wouldn't you be one, if you were in that situation?), and not enough workers to process them, just like with every other government agency since the early 1980s. Racism also rears its ugly head, as white petitioners are four times more likely to get early releases than people of color. Maybe this is why Barack Obama gets no love from right-wingers -- even when he outdoes Republicans at withholding mercy, it's obviously because the whole process is farkakte.

Finally, the Engage! blog describes a sort of extended Milgram's experiment which finds that "agreeable, conscientous" people are more likely to follow orders most of us would find evil (like delivering electric shocks to an innocent person) while "more contrarian, less agreeable" folks would more likely refuse to follow such orders. "The irony is that a personality disposition normally seen as antisocial -- disagreeableness -- may actually be linked to 'pro-social' behavior," says one observer, but that's likely no surprise to you if, like me, you think real compromise can't happen between people who won't stand their ground, and that being "agreeable" is worthless unless you're willing to be disagreeable.

Around the table: includes reason 424 why wireless broadband doesn't compete with Comcast no matter what Comcast says.

Today begins a 12-state "Moral Week of Action," an extension of the "Moral Monday" protests that have followed the wave of reactionary laws from the North Carolina government. Seven of the 12 states are Southern; the others are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New York; the first four of these have seen similarly reactionary state governments, while the fifth can claim to be merely disappointing. I wish the Moral Monday protestors luck, but more than that, I wish them faith.

Trumpets are blaring about the $16.6 billion settlement between our government and Bank of America, but David Dayen at the Guardian reminds us not to expect too much good to come of it. Our government has mandated that out of the $16.6 billion, about $7 billion of that money actually go toward reducing homeowner principals or interest payments -- and if the JP Morgan Chase settlement is any guide, that money will come out very, very slowly. Banks can weasel out of helping homeowners in other ways, too -- by the time you read about them, you might well think our government and the big banksters have rigged these settlements to benefit the banksters.

Yet another data point in our ongoing effort to slam the Comcast meme that merging with Time-Warner is OK because the real competition comes from wireless: Kate Cox at the Consumerist finds that streaming the entire series Breaking Bad over one month's time would cost $1200-$2200 -- if your wireless provider doesn't hit you with the data-throttling stick first. You already knew (if you've ever used your laptop in a Starbucks, for example) that wireless broadband is slow, unsteady, and insecure; now you know it's also pricey as hell. Some "competition."

Remember the wealthy teenager who drunk-drove four people to death and got probation because his lawyer argued his wealth hadn't taught him enough responsibility? The kid's pa is in the news now, for impersonating a police officer. Why was he posing as a reserve police officer at a disturbance call? The world may never know, as Mr. Couch hasn't commented since the arrest. In any case, it looks like "affluenza" either runs in the family or is very contagious.

Finally, Larry Klayman says President Obama and Attorney General Holder "jump to judgment, on a consistent and regular basis, against 'whitey' and in favor of their black brothers." I'm sure glad he said "consistent" and "regular," or I would have had no idea what he meant. Seriously, passages like "racist hacks who should be removed from office and banished to hell by whatever legal means are appropriate" more accurately describe a writer with anger-management issues than they describe his targets. And if he thinks Messrs. Obama and Holder have created "a huge racial divide" in America, he must not be acquainted with slavery or Jim Crow or redlining.

Action: mortgage modification for underwater homeowners, and standing strong for school lunch nutrition standards.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell FHFA Director Mel Watt to make it easier for underwater homeowners to modify their mortgages, then Color of Change still helps you do that. I brook no silliness about how the folks who now owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth are entirely to blame for their predicament, as if the people who sold them the mortgages and lied to them about how well the mortgages would fit their finances are somehow blameless. Our sick, immoral, and decadent society spends far too much time blaming the victims while excusing the real evildoers -- usually, in my experience, because "evildoers are always going to be with us," as if civilization has ever advanced out of such abject complacency. I also brook no silliness about mortgage modification being a "moral hazard" -- after all, Our Glorious Elites have apparently decided it's not a "moral hazard" for folks who own more than one home to cram down the mortgages on their second homes, which they can already do under the law. And, at the risk of repeating myself: where's the "moral hazard" crowd when the banksters use complex "financial instruments" to crash an entire economy? I'll tell you where: they're telling us that's just the nature of the free market. And they're wrong about that, too -- in a Libertarian "free market," banksters would not rely on big government handouts the way they do.

Meanwhile, the House still hasn't voted to gut the school lunch nutrition standards the USDA just put in -- partly out of shame, I hope! -- but that doesn't mean they won't vote to gut the standards when they think we're not looking, so Moms Rising helps you tell Congress you're watching and you want them to take care of childrens' health before their own twisted priorities. And their priorities are twisted -- the USDA standards don't make it hard for schools to comply, not when 9 out of 10 school systems already comply and the rest can get subsidies and training, and if Republicans want to make a big fiscal statement, why aren't they going after bigger targets, like the oil corporations and their handouts? Or the banksters and their handouts? Or the big health insurance corporations and their handouts? I'm just kidding; these questions all pretty much answer themselves. (Hint: it's the money!) But we have a choice: we can keep the junk food out of our schools and get our kids to eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains and make them into healthier adults who don't suffer from obesity and diabetes and heart conditions and who thus won't cost our economy a whole lot more money in health care and missed work -- or we can let school districts continue to pound out pizza and french fries and hold their kids back from being the best they can be. Like a lot of moral choices, it really ain't that tough.

Around the table: gay marriage wins another round! But that's all the good news we have.

U.S. District Judge strikes down Wisconsin's gay marriage ban, though her refusal (for the time being) to instruct municipalities how to proceed with gay couples who want to marry now causes some confusion. Naturally, Gov. Walker, who lately couldn't say whether gay marriage bans violate the Constitution, enthusiastically supported his Attorney General's plan to appeal this decision.

Billionaire S.C. Johnson heir gets a mere four months in jail and $6,000 fine after molesting his quite underage stepdaughter. Admittedly the prosecution had rather serious problems collecting evidence -- the perp confessed the crime to his therapist, but the therapist wouldn't cooperate, and victim herself wouldn't testify or turn over health records -- but why do I get the feeling that the "moral values" crowd doesn't care so much about child molestation when it's a man with money doing the molesting?

Surprise, surprise: a New York Times blogger reviews an Economic Policy Institute study and wonders why economic growth hasn't reduced poverty -- when the EPI report in question actually comes out and tells you that's mainly because of declining union power and declining minimum wage-purchasing power in America. How is it that a reporter can report on a report without reporting what the report says?

Ex-Clinton/Obama economic advisor/not-Fed-Chief-thank-God Larry Summers says he argued against relief for underwater mortgage holders because he thought it would hurt the banks. He further suggests that people who would have preferred bailing out homeowners to bailing out banksters are "naive." People who call doing the right thing "naive" are telling you not only that they can't win the argument on the merits, but that they're willing to cut you down to achieve the mere appearance of victory. And people who do that are evil, simple and plain.

Finally, in my hurry yesterday to slam the masturbatory self-pity of racists during this clip, I neglected to mention that none other than John Bolton makes an appearance, offering another version of that tiresome plaint that liberal intellectuals look down on other people. Maybe people look down on you, Mr. Bolton, because everything you've ever touched you've turned to dung -- or maybe because even Fox News has you doing "analysis" on the freaking overnight shift.

Action: smarter sentencing, mortgage modification, and antibiotic abuse.

Word on the street is that Senate Majority Leader Reid would like to bring S. 1410, the Smarter Sentencing Act, up for a vote this year. S. 1410 would cut federal drug-related mandatory sentences in half, give federal judges more flexibility in sentencing drug offenders, and make the Fair Sentencing Act's new mandatory sentences for crack cocaine-related offenses retroactive. The whole mandatory minimum sentencing push was like a collective fever dream for Americans -- if we just make sentences absurdly heavy, we'll win the war on drugs! -- but it was a nightmare for small-time drug offenders, and folks across the ideological spectrum have begun to see what Justice Kennedy saw many years ago, when he declared that mercy was, in fact, a valuable quality for a civilized society to possess. S. 1410 doesn't do everything you might like it to do -- it doesn't actually repeal any mandatory minimums, and adds new ones for sexual abuse and domestic violence, which victims' rights groups in both areas have opposed -- but the bill does represent progress. Families Against Mandatory Minimums provides more information here, and you can use the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page to call your Senator, or use FAMM's email tool.

Meanwhile, you may know that the Federal Housing Financing Agency has blocked home mortgage modification for Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed mortgages for many years, largely because its old "acting" director, Ed DeMarco, appeared ideologically predisposed against using government power on behalf of government's owners, the American people. He actually said that mortgage modification -- a tool folks can use to write down the principal on their second home, by the way -- represented a "moral hazard," though banksters crashing an entire economy by issuing bad mortgages and then lying about them was, apparently, not a moral hazard. Anyway, Mr. DeMarco's been out of his job for almost five months, and his successor, ex-U.S. Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina, still hasn't allowed homeowners to negotiate their mortgage down to market value, stay in their homes, and provide a stable source of tax revenue to localities, among other benefits. I thought this was a priority of the Obama Administration -- but then again, so were net neutrality and GMO-labeling. All together now: it doesn't matter what they want; it matters what we want. Color of Change helps you tell FHFA Director Watt to allow mortgage writedowns for needy families.

Speaking of food labeling, Dave Molidor has provided a petition via change.org that helps you tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to mandate that food-processing corporations label meats made from animals fed with antibiotics. Yes, good Americans, we have opened another front on our battle against antibiotic abuse, and though I doubt Mr. Vilsack cares very much what anyone other than his corporate cronies think -- this, after witnessing his approval of the "Roundup-Ready" Frankenseed, his opposition to genetically-modified food labeling, and his attempts to injure organic labeling standards, among other sins -- we still might as well fight the good fight, and force him to come up with some flatugasm about why he won't do it. Now with four out of five antibiotics in America going to nominally-healthy feed animals trapped in factory farms, you might protest that it's not likely that folks will be able to find antibiotic-free meat. Except that we already do -- and once we can get the meat clearly-labeled, food producers will find it more desirable to earn the label, thus earning more customers, thus earning more money. At least, that's how the free market's supposed to work, right?

Action: unemployment insurance, help for underwater homeowners, and that dreadful Comcast/Time-Warner merger.

The Senate plans to (finally!) vote this week on an unemployment insurance extension; S. 2148 isn't a bad bill, which is a wonderful surprise, since the Senate couldn't agree to a considerably worse bill the previous month. Of course, House Speaker John Boehner has already readied a new excuse: that it would be too "difficult" and "costly" for states to backdate unemployment insurance to late December. Always the whining with these Republicans! They whine and they whine about how hard everything is and then, when we try to clean up the mess they constantly make, they accuse us of whining! How do Republicans ever appear tough to anyone? Would it be too much to ask that the "liberal" media finally stop treating John Boehner like he's a Serious Person? All he ever does is say "no" to everything; at least Newt Gingrich, flights of fancy and all, took governing more seriously, but the only thing John Boehner takes seriously is crippling our government so it can't respond to the needs of its owners, the American people. Hence, of course, his latest attempt to run out the clock. The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to extend unemployment benefits already. Feel free to use words like "excuses" and "whining" in your letter to your House Reps, particularly if they're Republicans or Blue Dogs.

Speaking of things Congress has lately failed to do, the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act expired at the end of 2013, likely unrenewed because Barack Obama is a Socialist Communist Nazi Kenyan Anti-Colonialist and nothing that does any good for anyone can ever happen while he is President. What does the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act do? Well, when good folks get mortgage modifications, the banks holding the mortgage reduce the principal part of their loans (the principal being, essentially, the agreed-upon sale price of the house; not counting interest). But the tax code ordinarily treats that principal reduction as a huge chunk of income, and would tax it as such. Thing is, it's really not a big chunk of income, because -- unlike, say, the hedge fund "carried interest" rate or the lower rates for dividends and capital gains -- it doesn't put a big chunk of money directly into your hands; but merely reduces the amount of money you've already borrowed. The Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act would fix this state of affairs, but the longer Congress waits to act, the fewer homeowners will take a mortgage modification -- and given how many homes are underwater these days, that's a big deal. Hence Americans for Financial Security helps you tell Congress to give underwater homeowners the help they need to stay in their homes.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Justice and the FCC to reject the proposed Comcast/Time-Warner cable merger, Consumers Union still helps you do that. You need not agree (as I know few folks do) that one corporation should never be able to buy or own another to oppose this merger. You need not agree that mergers kill jobs to oppose this merger. You need not agree that we need more diversity -- not merely racial and gender diversity, but just, you know, more different human beings -- in media ownership to oppose this merger. You need not even agree that, with the most recent death of FCC net neutrality rules in court, one corporation shouldn't become so big that it can dictate where you go and what you see on the internet. You need only be tired of high cable prices, lousy service, and slow download speeds to oppose this merger, because this merger will make all those situations a lot worse, in addition to the other situations listed above. One corporation, without adequate competition, has no incentive to serve its customers, because those customers are its prisoners; one corporation, without adequate competition, will only serve the cause of fattening its CEO's pay package. So oppose this merger now, and reap the benefits of better customer treatment later.