Link dump I: Crooks and politics

• Mortgage foreclosures are a total mess, with people losing homes because they can't tell where to send their checks, random people making up reasons to foreclose, and banks suing one another over who screwed up most. This is not getting cleaned up soon.
  
  
• Meanwhile, unemployment has been so bad for so long that we're learning to ignore it by means of a wealth of strategies. Unless we're directly affected, in which case we're pretty mad!
  
  
• There's an air of desperation to this Sestak ad, but it's hard to deny that our current mess was created by the Republican right, and their attempts to reclaim power by blaming two years of Democratic action is laughable. Except for the short memories of voters, and all that anger...
  
  
• The TSA now benches pilots who aren't willing to be imaged naked or patted down. But loss of all civil liberties doesn't mean the terrorists have won, right?
  
  
• Update: I hate to omit Robert Reich's warning that we're turning into a plutocracy. Hard to argue with his line-up of facts!! (and really, we're lucky if it doesn't add up to revolution instead...)