Isabella and Jacob are the two most popular baby names in America

I just find these kind of stories interesting.


From the Social Security Administration:

A favorite feature of Social Security’s baby names website is the “Change in Name Popularity” page. This year’s winner for the biggest jump is Maliyah, which undoubtedly is related to the popularity of the First Family. Malia (the spelling used by the First Daughter), also is one of the top 10 fastest risers among girls names. Isla, the name of popular actress Isla Fisher (and wife of Sacha Baron Cohen -- aka Borat, which thankfully has yet to make the list) was the second fastest riser among girls. On the boy’s side, Cullen had the biggest increase, likely attributable to the popular character Edward Cullen in the “Twilight” novels and movies. King came in as the number three top mover for boys, but more on Elvis later.

King? Read the rest of this post...

Kagan frontrunner for Supreme Court, reportedly hard to hit

From Chris Good at the Atlantic:

Solicitor General Elena Kagan is reportedly the overwhelming frontrunner to be picked by President Obama as his next Supreme Court nominee. But if she does get picked, she could be tough for conservatives to attack.

Her critics will have significantly less fodder to play with, it seems, than those of Obama's last nominee, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

I asked Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network (a conservative group focused on judicial nominees) what conservatives are going to say about Kagan, and what Kagan's "wise Latina" moment, if there is one, will prove to be.

"She has been much more careful than Justice Sotomayor. She never would have said something like that even if she thinks it. She's been so careful for so long that no one seems to know exactly what she does think," Severino said.

Read the rest of this post...

Here's a taste of what we can expect if the Tories win

A favorite old Harry Enfield clip from the past. I just spent the last week in London so had a chance to follow a bit of the election. Most expect fairly severe cuts in spending if the Tories were to pull together a coalition though from what I could see, they have a bigger challenge doing that than Labour. While Labour is a more distant second, they could have a more realistic chance of organizing a coalition than the Conservatives. Whoever wins is going to have the very ugly task of trimming the budget and that is going to be highly unpopular with voters.

Labour could potentially form a coalition with the Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties though they will surely want money for their pet projects to join. Handing over cash to anyone is not going to be viewed positively these days while the cuts are in the works. It's likely going to take a few more days before we hear any solid news on the next coalition. If it does turn out to be the Tories, one can only hope the coalition partners can limit the harshness that they will probably deliver. Read the rest of this post...

Technical problem with trading system triggered Wall Street drop yesterday

It doesn't quite explain why the market is getting hit again today but it sounds like a fancy trading application had a bit of a problem. Someone is surely in hot water today and someone else is probably receiving some new business thanks to the glitch. For a small error, it sure was expensive.

The glitch that sent markets tumbling Thursday was years in the making, driven by the rise of computers that transformed stock trading more in the last 20 years than in the previous 200.

The old system of floor traders matching buyers and sellers has been replaced by machines that process trades automatically, speeding the flow of buy and sell orders but also sometimes facilitating the kind of unexplained volatility that roiled markets Thursday.

“We have a market that responds in milliseconds, but the humans monitoring respond in minutes, and unfortunately billions of dollars of damage can occur in the meantime,” said James Angel, a professor of finance at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.

Read the rest of this post...

Teabagger base ticked at Palin

I love how the writer points out that the mis-spellings are in the original. LOL

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has made her Facebook page into a bully pulpit, issuing policy statements on such issues as nuclear proliferation and oil drilling. Now she's learning that social media can be more than a one-way system of message delivery — thanks to an avalanche of comments from tea party supporters taking issue with her Facebook endorsement of Carly Fiorina in California's upcoming GOP Senate primary.

Many of the supporters of the small-government tea party insurgency regard Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who stumped for the McCain-Palin ticket while serving as its adviser on financial issues in 2008, as a RINO, or "Republican in name only" — a term generally applied to pro-business moderates who don't always support socially conservative positions.

That was very much a dominant sentiment in the hundreds of comments weighing in on Palin's characterization of Fiorina as a "Commonsense Conservative." (Spelling, punctuation and grammar in the originals are retained throughout.)

Read the rest of this post...

Krugman: Greece may have to leave the Euro

Paul Krugman in the NYT:

The only thing that could seriously reduce Greek pain would be an economic recovery, which would both generate higher revenues, reducing the need for spending cuts, and create jobs. If Greece had its own currency, it could try to engineer such a recovery by devaluing that currency, increasing its export competitiveness. But Greece is on the euro.

What remains seems unthinkable: Greece leaving the euro. But when you’ve ruled out everything else, that’s what’s left.

If it happens, it will play something like Argentina in 2001, which had a supposedly permanent, unbreakable peg to the dollar. Ending that peg was considered unthinkable for the same reasons leaving the euro seems impossible: even suggesting the possibility would risk crippling bank runs. But the bank runs happened anyway, and the Argentine government imposed emergency restrictions on withdrawals. This left the door open for devaluation, and Argentina eventually walked through that door.

If something like that happens in Greece, it will send shock waves through Europe, possibly triggering crises in other countries. But unless European leaders are able and willing to act far more boldly than anything we’ve seen so far, that’s where this is heading.

Our own econ professor, Steve Kyle, wrote about the same possibility yesterday.

No question about it, the Greeks will have to undergo some austerity for a while, and if they are EVER going to pay off their mounting external debt they will need to export more and import less. Given prices and wages that are too high to be competitive with the rest of Europe, they have two options:

1. Leave the euro and devalue vis-a-vis the rest of Europe. This would, at a stroke, lower all the relative prices but at the cost of massive bank instability and credit contraction.

2. Stay in the euro zone, but force every price and wage in the economy to drop the necessary amount (maybe 25% just to guess at a number). This could work, but at the price of a massive depression and very possibly enough "civil unrest" to cause a government overthrow.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP pollster appears to suggest that Times Square terror attack may be 'opportunity' for Republicans

Washington Post via Greg Sargent:

Two days after the dramatic arrest of Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, Republicans were engaged in a full-bore effort to rewrite the good-news narrative.

Yes, we have been lucky," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday, "but luck is not an effective strategy for fighting terrorism."

Whatever the merits of their argument -- and, where terrorism is concerned, it is prudent to keep cockiness at bay -- there is a political imperative at work as well.

"Democrats are always suspect on national security, and anything that makes them look weak on national security creates an opportunity for Republicans," said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster.

As Greg notes:

Ayres is the GOP equivalent of prominent Dem pollster Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps or John Podesta of the liberal Center for American Progress. If Greenberg or Podesta had explicitly said after the capture of the Shoe Bomber under Bush that it presented Dems with a political opportunity, you can bet that some folks would have made a lot of noise about it.

This is part of the larger issue of the politicization of foreign policy, including the war on terror. The Republicans have decided to make hay with any and all issues, in the hopes of destroying the President and winning back the Congress, and then the presidency. It doesn't matter to them if they ruin the economy (opposing the stimulus), our health (opposing health care reform), or our national security (constantly trying to undercut the President on foreign policy). What's interesting, and troubling, is that the media keeps reporting the he-said-she-said, rather than calling the GOP on their bull. Greg Sargent called them on it. Others should do the same.

(I'll be on CNN Sunday morning, on Howie Kurtz's 'Reliable Sources,' talking about this very topic, among others, starting at 11am Eastern.) Read the rest of this post...

'AMERICAblog Pets' launches

A number of things led Joe, Chris and me to decide to launch a new site, AMERICAblog Pets: http://pets.americablog.com

First there was the amazing success of our request for your pet pics (well over 800 have been posted, and I still have a few hundred to go through in my in-box). Then there was the recent addition to my household of a puppy, Sasha. I've been wanting to blog more about Sasha, but didn't want to overwhelm non-pet-minded folks with lots of cute pupdates. And at the same time, I've been bugging Chris and Joe to blog more about their pets, so AMERICAblog Pets is born.

I'll certainly be blogging a lot about my first year of puppy parenthood, but hopefully Joe and Chris will write about Petey, Nasdaq and Sushi too, and I'll be writing about various pet-related topics that cross my path (such as litter training dogs, whether or not to buy pet health insurance, etc.). I'd also definitely be interested in folks sending pictures of their pets, and writing me something about their pet, a few paragraphs, that I can post in a blog post. I think it would be nice, in addition to posting pet pics in the upper right corner of the site, to also post a reader pet pic or so a day, and your description, funny story, etc. of your pet.

You can send your pet photos, and descriptions/stories, to: ablogphotos@gmail.com By sending me your pic and story, you're giving me permission to publish them on the blog. Thanks, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Teabaggers plan tea party on September 11

Rather inappropriate day for a "party." Read the rest of this post...

George W. Bush on Arlen Specter: 'I can count on this man...He's a firm ally.'

Brutal new ad on Arlen Specter from the Sestak campaign. It features the words of two prominent Republicans: George W. Bush and Arlen Specter -- and the photo of another key GOP leader: Sarah Palin.

This ad really captures the cravenness of Specter. Taegan Goddard reports that the Morning Call's tracking poll now has the race even:

The latest Morning Call/Muhlenberg tracking poll shows Sen. Arlen Specter (D) and challenger Joe Sestak (D) tied at 43% each with 13% still undecided.

My gut tells me that while Democrats have been thinking they would vote for Specter again, they didn't really love him. They needed a reason to vote against him. Sestak's ad may have crystallized that. Read the rest of this post...

290,000 new jobs added in April. Unemployment rate up to 9.9%

More jobs in the U.S. economy, but higher unemployment:

The American economy added an unexpected strong 290,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent, the government said Friday.

Analysts had expected a gain of about 190,000 in the month.

With revisions on Friday, April was the fourth consecutive month that the economy added workers (a revised 230,000 jobs were added in March instead of 162,000), the job market still has a long way to go before it can be counted on to provide a base for a sustained economic recovery. More than 15.3 million were unemployed last month.

Despite the increase in jobs, the unemployment rate rose, mostly because the government said 195,000 workers re-entered the labor force after giving up on job hunting during the recession. When jobless people do not look for work, they are not counted in the official unemployment rate.

So, job creation is improving, which is very good. But, it's still not quite enough to make a dent in unemployment. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

So, there's a hung Parliament in Great Britain. The Conservatives didn't wrack up enough seats and the Liberal Democrats finished a distant third. Apparently, the incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, gets the first crack at trying to establish a new government. And, that's not going well. I heard Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, on NPR this morning making noises about teaming up with the Conservatives.

The Senate is still debating S.3217, Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010. Expect votes on more amendments today. Yesterday, a GOP amendment to weaken the consumer protection aspects of the bill was defeated 38 - 61. Two GOPers, Collins and Grassley, voted with the Democrats. The amendment was offered by Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee. He recently told a gathering of bankers that the best way to kill reform was to elect more GOPers -- and he told them all to give $10,000 to Rep. Roy Blunt who is running for Senate in Missouri. The Republicans are not even subtle about being bought and paid for by the bankers and Wall Street.

And, how about that wild movement of the stock market yesterday? That situation in Greece isn't inspiring investors.

Let's get it started.... Read the rest of this post...