Glenn Greenwald:

When I first heard Chuck Todd questioning Obama at Tuesday’s Press Conference about why Obama wasn’t demanding “sacrifice” from ordinary Americans — as though the massive loss of jobs, homes, retirement security and financial opportunities isn’t sufficient “sacrifice” — I mistakenly attributed Todd’s question to the standard vapid ignorance of our media stars. I assumed that Todd was just mimicking a question he heard about 9/11 and decided to repeat it seven years later without realizing what a complete nonsequitur it is when applied to the financial crisis.

But there was actually a more pernicious aspect to his question. He was basically demanding of Obama: shouldn’t you be telling those dirty masses that they can’t have health care and education improvements and that they’re also going to have to give up their Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits (while Citibank and BoA use taxpayer money to buy up distressed assets that they will then sell at a huge profit, also to the taxpayer under the Geithner plan)?

Sounds about right.

Many if not most of Bernie Madoff’s victims were lured in by a web of other victims rather than by Madoff himself. They were set up for the con by relatives and friends who had previously been set up, inadvertently, by others. Contagion.

In the same way that cities are vectors for epidemics, society is a vector for ideas. (For a raw depiction of rural culture, try the Spanish movie Solas.) In this way, society reproduces itself. It is bigger than us not because it is the sum of our individual actions but because it is the sum of our interactions.

How big is it? As big – and inscrutable – as God. Can any one of us see the chain of events that causes us to find that coin on a sidewalk?

When we knew even less about what was happening across town, let alone across the country, these obscure but powerful forces had a name: destiny, fate, chance, the Will of God.

Meredith Whitney on Charlie Rose:

The larger issue that is so important to focus on is something your friend Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote about, which is the whole notion of what are the rules? What is a contract and how do we protect contracts? How do we protect the legal system in this country? Because if the rules are constantly changing, you are going to have a freeze in commerce, you are going to have a freeze in spending, which is obviously a freeze in commerce, and people are going to be too scared to act. And I think a lot of companies have already behaved that way. They are too scared to act because the rules are changing on them constantly.

It doesn’t even matter if they’re wrong to think this and/or act this way. If they do, it has terrible consequences. You can’t compel people to have faith.

A paradigm shift, a political transition is a perilous time. Some of the personnel issues affecting the new Obama administration are apparently tied to the problem of purity – the desire for a clean break. But such a change may be impossible: you can’t just sever the ties between the government and the financial sector. They’re far too intertwined. It’s the equivalent of de-Baathification. You have to affirm the financial sector, warts and all, to attain power in the U.S.. It’s how the world works today. There is only gradualism when taking apart a bomb.

Update: President Obama: “It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk [to] them, ease that finger off the trigger.”

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell:

The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces.

The joint where the military and the executive come together is so important and so delicate.

Frank Rich:

Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion.

Gordy Thompson as quoted by Clay Shirky on viral distribution and its impact on newspapers, a business built on limited distribution channels:

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

This is a well-known argument but I’ve not seen it put so succinctly and with the appropriate emphasis on love.

Perhaps four of the most important words in politics: “what if I was?”

This week’s On the Media has an excellent, extensive story on those most real Americans: the confidence men.

Crime is mostly about opportunity. Bankers have the most.

Whatever publicity Kutiman’s video song album receives – and I’m guessing quite a lot – is well deserved. The video sequencing is clever and lighthearted, the music tastefully composed and the overall conceit exudes love for humanity.

Much of music is a conversation across space and time, a retracing of other people’s gestures, a palimpsest. Today’s sampling technologies expose those overlays like so much colorful sedimentation.