Okay so reading this blog is like getting the news 6 weeks early. Granted, I thought it would make the news at the end of September, and here it is in today's Times:

The Seattle Post PI.com is reporting that after clearing a Senate hurdle this week that the New Home Buyer Tax Credit of $8,000 is widely expected to pass congress this week to extend the credit into the spring season of 2010, which would be most welcome across the country. The program essentially creates a refundable $8,000 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyer tax credits (some limitations apply and "first" doesn't always mean "first"). This is very welcome news.

Cars who pass busses with children aboard them, drivers who talk on cell phones through school speed zones, they deserve tickets and fines wrapped up in string - these are a few of my "favorite" things...

From Dina ElBoghdady at The Washington Post yesterday and today.  News about the critical FHA program this week will be that it likely needs additional funds from congress. The controversy is likely to have a flavor of the bail-out debate infused with how important the FHA loan program is to the recovery of the housing sector. From the articles:

In the 1990's there was a lot of discussion about "The Third Way" -- something "between" the private and public sectors. I had an opportunity to study the thinking at the time both in undergraduate and graduate school with the preeminent thought-leaders at that time. Truly I now believe that idea was merely an attempt to appease the prevailing dogmatic anti-regulation thinking of the prior 25 years, before Reagan's "government IS the problem" mantra.

Leftward liberals and rightward conservatives are both missing the mark when it comes to how they're framing economic issues. While some partisans of any stripe may have a roughly correct conclusion here and there, the reasoning involved is rarely enlightening for "pocket-book centrists" - a term for the majority of Americans simply concerned with living a comfortable and fair American dream. This morning, the much vaunted cultural critic Frank Rich writes in The Times that: