Time-lapse of this weekend's blizzard. Were you in the path of the storm? How is the digging out going? Our thoughts are with those still without power.

Open Thread below....

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It was nice to see Chris Wallace get some push back on the assertion that we should be trying to balance our budget on the backs of our seniors or that it saves us a dime to be throwing more of them into the private insurance market by raising the age for Medicare eligibility.

Pelosi Stresses Need For Job Growth In New Budget:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Democrats' desire to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes, during an interview which aired on "Fox News Sunday."

Pelosi stressed the need for a budget which will create jobs and argued that the sequester would do too much harm to the economy. She also batted down the idea of saving money by raising the Medicare eligibility age.

"Don't you think you ought to see if raising the age really does save money?" Pelosi said. "Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the earth for two years. They're going to have medical needs and they're going to have to be attended to. And the earlier the intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life. I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. And I do think the challenge to Medicare is not Medicare, the challenge is rising health care costs in general."

Wallace was doing his usual bit where he was carping about how it wouldn't do any good to raise taxes on the rich, because that would not completely solve the deficit problem. He had no response to this and simply moved on to the next subject.

Think of it as the story of two antagonists. One of them was an honest Senator who came to Washington to fight corruption. The other is an arrogant banker who's so sure of his untouchability that he wore "FBI" cufflinks when he made a public appearance last month.

The Senator

Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, whose epic struggle to bring Wall Street to justice was depicted in PBS Frontline's recent episode The Untouchables, made a striking observation on a press call today. "In a private case," Sen. Kaufman said, the Dexia bank's lawsuit "… uncovered reams of emails directly related to the fact that fraud was (allegedly) being committed by JPMorgan Chase."

He was referring to headlines like "E-Mails Imply JPMorgan Knew Some Mortgage Deals Were Bad" in the New York Times and "JPMorgan Hid Reports of Defective Loans Before Sales" in Bloomberg News. Sen. Kaufman added:

"It is just hard to believe that if the Department of Justice had made Wall St fraud a major priority, with the resources they have, they could not have found these same emails and brought these cases."

It's not just that the government wasn't bringing a case against JPMorgan Chase.  Everybody in Washington from the President on down was praising its CEO, Jamie Dimon, claiming he was our nation's smartest and most ethical banker. So were a lot of reporters. Roger Lowenstein's flattering profile of the dyspeptic Dimon remains a classic of the Wall Street flattery genre.

Even Alison Frankel, who has done some excellent reporting in this area, was somehow able to ask only last month (unless her editors wrote the headline for her): "Is JPMorgan Chase the new MBS (mortgage-backed securities) piñata?"

Sometimes a piñata turns out to be a real donkey.

FBI Cufflinks

Wall Street Journal reporter David Erlich sent this to his Twitter followers from the international finance soiree at Davos: "Jamie Dimon is sporting FBI cuff links at #Davos. Sadly he wouldn't let me take a picture of them."

But then, there are a lot of things Jamie Dimon doesn't want coming to light. What message do you suppose he was trying to send with those cufflinks, especially in the wake of the criminal inquiries into his bank's behavior in the "London Whale" scandal?  Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer noted last May that, based on the Justice Department's record of hands-off attitude toward the bank, "JPMorgan Chase has nothing to fear from an FBI probe."

Even after JPMorgan Chase entered into enormous financial settlements - for charges that ranged from sophisticated investor fraud to plain old-fashioned Alabama bribery - it was considered somehow déclassé to suggest that the crime wave which occurred on Mr. Dimon's watch should in any way reflect badly on his character or managerial skills.

JPMorgan Chase was the "good" bank, and Dimon the "good" CEO. It was considered "unserious" to imagine that the bank's crimes could be pursued - or, despite mountains of evidence, that they had even been committed.  But somehow Dexia and its attorneys were able to obtain evidence that the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the enormous machinery of our national security state could not - or would not - find for itself.

What did FBI-cufflink wearing Jamie tell the public about that criminal matter, the $6 billion dollar loss that he told investors was nothing? "We did have record profits. Life goes on.”

I think we can guess what the "F" stands for.

The Evidence

The information that Dexia assembled is breathtaking -- and damning. The JPM section of their complaint begins by reminding us that JPMorgan Chase was lagging behind its Wall Street competitors in 2005. Dimon has tried to rewrite history since then by arguing that he was smarter than other bankers and stayed away from the short-term profits of mortgage-backed securities because he was wise enough to see how risky they were.

Nonsense. As the Dexia lawsuit recaps, they were just late to the game. Dimon was desperate to get it on the action, telling investors in the 2006 Annual Report that the unit handling MBS had "materially increased its product breadth and volume" - from virtually nothing to $25 billion in just a year.

Dimon also reassured investors that the unit "maintained its high lending standards" and had "materially tightened" its underwriting - much as he assured investors that the bank had tightened its standards after the 2008 crisis when the "London Whale" unit reporting directly to him wasn't following published standards, and much as he told them that the "London Whale" losses were a "tempest in a teapot" when he secretly knew they amounted to billions.

The emails uncovered by Dexia show that JPMorgan Chase tried desperately to make up for its late entrance into the mortgage feeding frenzy by cutting corners and misleading investors. In fact, the Dexia suit includes documentation which suggests that Dimon had already told a senior executive to sell off the bank's own ownership of these poorly-underwritten securities.

A Forbes magazine story cited in the suit also quote Dimon as saying "This stuff could go up in smoke!"

True Confessions

An internal JPMorgan Chase memo reportedly told staff how to cheat "Zippy," the company's underwriting system, by falsifying information in order to write bad loans. The memo was even entitled "Zippy Cheats & Tricks."

The Dexia filing extensively documents JPMorgan Chase's flouting of underwriting standards, its misrepresentations to investors, and its rewriting and falsification of independent analyses. These acts are strongly suggestive of criminal acts by individuals, as well as civil wrongdoing.

Sen. Kaufman spoke authoritatively about the deterrent effect that criminal indictments have against white-collar crime. Someone is much less likely to commit a white-collar crime, according to studies, if they know that they could be prosecuted. As Sen. Kaufman explained, this deterrent effect is much weaker for drug crimes, whose perpetrators have already faced the criminal justice system. But bank crimes aren't drug crimes - except, of course, when they are.

Sen. Kaufman added: "There have been a number of us saying in the cases against JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and the big banks was that one of the problems with the settlements … is that they never had to admit wrongdoing."

The Badge

When JPMorgan Chase was sued over the actions of subsidiary Bear Stearns, it implied that it had only acquired that firm as a favor to the nation - a myth the press has often repeated - and made it clear that it felt it was unfair to be punished for the acts of an organization that was not under Mr. Dimon's supervision at the time. Thanks to Dexia, that particular injustice has now been corrected.

It remains to be seen if the Justice Department will follow Dexia's lead and investigate the compelling evidence of criminal actions at JPMorgan Chase.

Jamie Dimon may believe that he and his peers above the law, but there are still honest people trying to hold them accountable. And he may have those FBI cufflinks, but hey -- Elvis Presley got Richard Nixon to give him a badge from the Narcotics Bureau, and we know how that story ended.

(The press call was part of the Campaign for a Fair Settlement's call for prosecution of Wall Street crimes in the first 100 days of the President's second term.)

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is dismissing actress Ashley Judd as an "attractive woman" who does not deserve to be a Kentucky senator because she owns a home in Scotland.

During an interview with Paul on Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley pointed out that a recent attack ad created by Karl Rove's Crossroad GPS suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was threatened by the possibility that Judd could take his Senate seat.

"Is he at this point looking weak?" Crowley wondered.

"You know, when I heard Ashley Judd might run for office, I thought maybe it was [the British] Parliament because she lives in Scotland half of the year," Paul smirked. "But no, I think really part of politics is making sure that people know about who you're running against."

"Ashley Judd is a famous actress, she's an attractive woman and presents herself well and -- from what I understand -- is articulate," he added. "But the thing is she doesn't really represent Kentucky. I mean, she was a representative for Tennessee last year. She lives in Tennessee. So, I think you do need to make sure people know about that so people don't think she's really from Kentucky or lives here."

According to her biography, Kentucky is Judd's childhood home. She moved there in 1972 after her parents divorced, and the actress is considering moving back to Kentucky to challenge McConnell.

"I cherish Kentucky, heart and soul, and while I'm very honored by the consideration, we have just finished an election, so let's focus on coming together to keep moving America's families, and especially our kids, forward," Judd said last year.

(h/t Mediaite)

Saturday Night Live's executive producer Lorne Michaels reserves the right to change his show right up to airing, the privilege of broadcasting live. Famously, Billy Crystal was part of the original cast and had a featured skit on the very first airing in October of '75, until Michaels cut it the day of broadcast and it took years for Crystal to officially join the cast. I offer this up as a caveat that it is not necessarily anything political that caused Michaels to cut the original cold open for last night's SNL episode, replacing it instead with a skit about CBS trying desperately to fill airtime during the 35 minute blackout during the Super Bowl. It is entirely possible that Michaels felt this was the funnier or more biting satire of which he likes to think SNL is capable. Whatever his reasoning, they did allow the dress rehearsal to be available online for comparison.

It is not hard to imagine the pearl clutching and cries of outrage (Outrage, I tell you!) had this skit gone out on the airwaves, depicting the blatant pandering and ridiculousness of the dialogue in Washington surrounding the hearing on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the position of Secretary of Defense. I'm sure that Lindsey Graham and his BFF Grampy McCain would be issuing a proclamation of censure and a threat to deport Lorne Michaels back to Canada. How dare SNL mock the "When did you stop beating your wife?" line of questioning that the Republicans proffered to prove how much more they love the state of Israel? I'm still wondering if anyone in the Beltway media will ever wonder why blind obeisance to Israel is considered a requirement for holding an American political office.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend its borders. I'm just not sure that it should be a requirement that we have to act as an extension of that.

Personally, I thought Fred Armisen's imitation of Bernie Sanders was perfect and the skit was worth airing for that alone.

Donald Byrd (1932 - 2013) -- Fancy Free, recorded June 1969

For the second week in a row, there were no military casualties recorded in Afghanistan. The total number of allied service members killed in Afghanistan remains 3,257.

While we may be thankful for the lull in casualties in the Middle East, we must also say good-bye to the following notable names:
Schoolteacher (and illegitimate daughter of Strom Thurmond) Essie Mae Washington-Williams, singer/songwriter Reg Presley, jazz musician Donald Byrd (video above), Alabama school bus driver murderer and child abductor Jimmy Lee Dykes, movie make up artist Stuart Freeborn, jazz musician Paul Tanner, film producer Chris Brinker, artist Richard Artschwager, and professional table tennis player Zhuang Zedong.

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Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on Sunday called out Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) for complaining about drastic cuts in the so-called "sequester" after Republicans forced it by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and risking default for the first time in the nation's history.

"This was a presidential suggestion back in 2011 -- an idea -- and, yet, the president himself hasn't put out any alternative," Cole said during a panel segment on ABC. "Republicans twice in the House have passed legislation to deal with it, once as early as last May, again after the election in December. The Senate has never picked up either of those bills, never offered their own thing."

"Now, we're three weeks out [from the sequester deadline] and folks are worried," he continued. "They ought to be worried. On the other hand, these cuts are going to occur. The real choice here is do you want cuts to be redistributed in other ways, which is the sensible thing to do, or do you want to let this happen?"

Ellison, however, pointed out that Republicans couldn't place all the blame on President Barack Obama after they voted for the sequester created by the Budget Control Act of 2011.

"Well, Tom, the problem with saying that this is the president's idea is you voted for the Budget Control Act, I voted against it," Ellison noted. "We wouldn't ever have been talking about the Budget Control Act but for your party refused to negotiate on the debt ceiling, something that has been routinely increased as the country needed it."

"You used that occasion in 2011 -- August -- to basically say, we're going to default the country's obligations or you're going to give us dramatic spending cuts. That's how we got to the Budget Control Act."

The Minnesota Democrat added that the sequester was projected to increase both unemployment and the deficit.

"It's going to do everything opposite to what your party says they want," he told Cole. "It's going to create uncertainty, it's going to increase the deficit, it's going to increase unemployment, it's going to be a problem."

"We don't have a presidential proposal," Cole opined. "I don't think you speak for the president."

Remember these words from Paul Krugman last week?

The threat to the recovery is Washington.

In anticipation of President Obama's State of the Union address this coming Tuesday, Chris Hayes asked what economist Paul Krugman (who has been right about economic issues all along, mind you) what he would like to hear in the address. While acknowledging with resignation that he probably won't get his wish, Krugman responds that he'd rather not hear the legitimization of deficit pearl clutching and advocation of austerity measures.

Like the rest of us liberals clamoring to be heard through the self-protecting insulation of the Beltway Bubble, Krugman makes the point that none of what he's advocated is more sophisticated than Econ 101, a class one would assume that every college graduate (which would be most members of Congress ) has taken. Yet these very basic economic concepts are alien to the Beltway.

It’s a very insular culture in Washington. It’s one of people who hang out together, who talk to each other, who don’t listen…what’s odd about my position on this stuff is I am, for the most part, not doing any kind of odd, unorthodox economics. I’m doing Macroeconomics 101, but that is not what people in DC hear. It’s not that they just don’t accept it. For the most part, they haven’t even heard about it. The notion that oh, the budget deficit is not a problem when the economy is depressed is barely in the Washington discourse. And because I’m still in touch with Macroeconomics 101, I’m really sort of out of it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we already know the solutions to our economic woes. We've gotten out of them before and we know what works. It has never been cutting spending and lowering taxes, no matter how many Republicans get booked on the Sunday shows to flood the discourse.

But in a sad addition to the "both sides do it" meme, the fact remains that even though these basic economic concepts and solutions remain patently obvious to those of us outside the Beltway Bubble, even those who should understand and embrace Keynesian economics miss the point, continually, as Dan Pfeiffer proves with this White House blog:

With less than three weeks before devastating, across the board cuts - the so-called "sequester" - are slated to hit, affecting our national security, job creation and economic growth, we must make sure we are having a debate over how to deal with these looming deadlines that is based on facts- not myths being spread by some Congressional Republicans who would rather see these cuts hit than ask the wealthiest and big corporations to pay a little bit more.

First, the notion that President Obama hasn't put forward a solution to deal with these looming cuts is false. In the fall of 2011, the President put forward a proposal to the Supercommittee for the specific purpose of laying out his vision to resolve the sequester and reduce our deficit by over $4 trillion dollars in a balanced way- by cutting spending, finding savings in entitlement programs and asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share. That proposal would have completely turned off the sequester while further reducing our deficit and ensuring we could still invest in the things we need to grow our economy and create jobs. That same approach was presented to Congress in the President's budget last year. And the President's last offer to Speaker Boehner in December remains on the table- an offer that meets the Republicans halfway on spending and on revenues, and would permanently turn off the sequester and put us on a fiscally sustainable path.

We should have a debate over how to best reduce the deficit. But with only three weeks until these indiscriminate cuts hit, Congress should find a short term package to give themselves a little more time to find a solution to permanently turn off the sequester. That package should have balance and include spending cuts and revenues.

Why on earth do we accept the framing of these ill-informed, petulant children on how the economy works instead of demanding that we adopt the measures that brought this country back into unprecedented levels of prosperity for most of its citizens after the Great Depression? When do the adults with the real solutions get their place at the table?

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Sunday challenged Republican lawmakers who oppose a bipartisan agreement to give legal status to undocumented immigrants as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.

"The are 11 million people living in the shadows, I believe that they deserve to come out of the shadows," the Arizona senator told Fox News host Chris Wallace.

"Under your plan -- although they wouldn't get the path to citizenship until you got this border enforcement certification -- they would almost immediately get probationary legal status, which basically means that they could continue to live in this country legally," Wallace noted. "Some of your critics on the right are saying that's amnesty."

"Well, I don’t think it is amnesty to start with," McCain insisted. "Second of all, what do you want to do with them?"

"Third of all, it's a tough path to citizenship, you have to pay back tax and learn English and have to have a clear record and get to the back of the line behind to the people who have come here legally or waiting legally. So, I just reject that."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other conservatives have blasted the bipartisan immigration reform proposal, arguing that the focus should be on securing the border without providing a path to citizenship.

"I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship," Cruz recently said. "To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally."

(h/t: Think Progress)