The Washington Post highlighted a recent Congressional Research Service report which shows....drum roll please, the Bush tax cuts made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Surprise!

The below CRS graph shows the percentage change in inflation-adjusted incomes and taxes by income bracket from 1996-2006.

It's a 4E. The never ending European Economic Mount Vesuvius has erupted again, threatening that final pyroclastic flow to the global economy. Friday the 13th has arrived and the horror show slasher is Standards and Poors. S&P doesn't like what Europe's leaders have done about the financial crisis.

To wit, S&P just downgraded the European bail out fund. The European Financial Stability Facility was just downgraded from AAA to AA+. This affects the EFSF's ability to raise cheap funds to help contain the financial crisis. S&P what are you thinkin'?

Last Friday France was downgraded from AAA to AA+ and given a negative outlook. Austria was spanked too and lost their AAA credit rating from S&P. One again Debbie Downer Standard and Poor's is on a credit ratings downgrade rampage.

Austria is now AA+. Italy was downgraded to BBB+. Portugal was downgraded to junk, BB. Spain gets an A and Cyprus I guess gets a beggin' cup at this point. Their S&P rating is now between junk and BB+.

The big picture downgrades from S&P's press release:

The White House just responded on the controversial Internet censorship bill SOPA and frankly, it doesn't look good for opponents.

The Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response.

Others are interpreting the White House blog post differently of course and let's hope they are right. In our experience, the minute this administration mentions keyword bi-partisan, we know we're about to be screwed frankly. Just look at the National Defense Authorization Act. That said, the fight against SOPA is heating up.

I was telling someone earlier this week about my good friend Newt Gingrich. You didn’t know he was one of my friends? Neither did I, until I saw his television commercial attacking Mitt Romney for being a vulture capitalist. For at least five years, a lot of us in Leftist Blogoland have been decrying the equity extraction and asset stripping practices of people like Mitt Romney, the former CEO of Bain Capital. We’ve been joined in this crusade by writers with libertarian beliefs, and some of them, like Karl Denninger, are far more direct than we have ever been in calling a crime a crime, and demanding prison terms for the people who helped destroy America’s productive manufacturing base.

Now we have Newt Gingrich challenging Mitt Romney’s claim that he was a venture capitalist, creating jobs while he saved companies from certain bankruptcy. Newt sees it differently; he asks in his ad if it is acceptable for someone to come in to a community, manipulate people’s lives for the worse, and “walk off with the money.” Others have joined in on the Mitt Romney bashing. Ron Paul has said that the business practices of people like Mitt Romney have nothing to do with free market capitalism, and it was Rick Perry who has come up with the phrase “vulture capitalist”.