Have the Occupy Wall Street protests turned a corner, or are they about to jump the shark?

On the one hand, establishment players suddenly seem to be treating the movement far more seriously. Meanwhile, a widely-cited survey suggests that over half of Americans have heard of the protests and feel broadly positive about them.

On the other hand, Kanye West swung by, taking a break from rapping about designer sunglasses in order to protest capitalism instead. And there’s this rather frustrating video of the Occupy Atlanta crowd “voting down” an address by civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis. This in particular does not augur well for the movement. Watching it you’d almost think it’s a parody of a windy, platitude-stuffed talk shop. Only it’s real. Read More

The proverbial cagefight between AG Eric Holder and the Republicans’ House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa is really becoming quite something. TPM’s Ryan Reilly charts the latest chapter of the tempestuous back-and-forth.

A new WaPo/ Bloomberg poll on the eve of Tuesday’s debate basically finds Jon Huntsman garnering zero percent among Republicans and GOP-leaning Independents.

Given the various benchmarks candidates have to meet in order to participate in the debates one wonders how much longer Obama’s former ambassador to China can hang in there.

As TPM’s Benjy Sarlin reports, he gave a fairly supple address on global affairs today, but at this point it’s starting to look like fantasy foreign policy.

Here’s what I want to hear about. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? Just plain stupid — wtf was I thinking, thing you’ve done? Why? No reason in particular. I’m just curious and I’d like to share some of your stories — initials only of course. Now, to be clear, I’m not looking for major life decision dumb or tragic dumb. So if you spiralled into drug addiction and destroyed your marriage, no. This is not remotely meant to belittle or make light of that. But that’s not what we’re looking for in this case. We’re looking for just really dumb, make you drop your jaw but hopefully we can get a laugh out of it in retrospect kind of dumb. And what were you thinking?

So with that introduction here’s mine. Read More

Self-described “Real Life Superhero” (aka Moron) Phoenix Jones arrested for pepper-spraying clubgoers.

Pawlenty: If I knew the nomination race would get this weird, I might not have dropped out.

Truth be told, given the unsatiated hunger for a non-Romney candidate who is at all credible, I think Pawlenty may have made a premature call.

When the Senate votes on the President Obama’s jobs bill this evening, probably sometime after 5:30 ET, pay close attention to how many Democratic senators defect. Republicans plan to filibuster the bill, and it is unlikely to get the 60 votes necessary to move it forward. So we know going in that this bill isn’t going to pass. But how many Dems line up to support it — or more importantly how many fail to line up — will be the difference between whether Democrats come out of the vote with a clear political message or a muddied result where both sides share the blame for not doing anything.

If you missed Ezra Klein’s piece over the weekend recounting the Obama Administration’s early responses to the financial crisis and resultant economic collapse, give it a read.

It’s an important marker as the history of that pivotal time in late 2008 and early 2009 begins to be written.

Last night I asked you: what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. And I kicked it off by sharing with you one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done (almost blowing up a gas station when I was in High School.) And now here are some of your responses.

We’re starting with TPM Reader SM describing how she ended up licking the cord on her MacBook to make it work better. Read More

Last night I asked you: what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. And I kicked it off by sharing with you one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done (almost blowing up a gas station when I was in High School.) And now here are some of your responses.

In this edition TPM Reader RB learned how not to take off your sweater while riding your bike on a busy street in San Francisco … Read More