Yup, after all was said and done for week 4 on the WPS, who should top the power rankings but our own Breakers.  Rightly so, I’d add, IMVVHO!  Next up for the Breakers, the hungry Chicago Red Stars, who played Sky Blue to a 0-0 draw in the televised game yesterday.  The LA Sol beat FC Gold Pride 1-0 on the strength of Marta’s third goal of the season.  Onward — and here’s hoping that Beulah isn’t so depressed about her Freedom that she won’t write a match report this week!  😉

I had the pleasure of seeing Elizabeth Warren on The Daily Show last week.  She chairs the panel charged with overseeing the TARP … and is apparently increasingly unpopular with Republicans.  According to the legislation:

“The Congressional Oversight Panel is charged with the job of reviewing the state of the markets, current regulatory system, and the Treasury Department’s management of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The panel is required to report their findings to Congress every 30 days, counting from the first asset purchase made under the program. The panel must also submit a special report to Congress about regulatory reform on or before January 20, 2009. The Congressional Oversight Panel will cease to exist on December 31, 2009 unless renewed.”

Of course, actually fulfilling that charge is what has the GOP all tweaked.  Asking hard questions and insisting on answers and increasing transparency apparently wasn’t part of the bargain.  Isn’t that the way?  Information, the necessary coinage of democracy, isn’t apparently something that the GOP wants to trust our citizens with.

So the GOP really is as old as it sounds.  It really is our parents’ (or grandparents’) party.  Only the powerful, parental few are to have access to the information needed to make good, knowledge-based decisions.  The rest of us should just trust them.  Yeah, right.

And this is the bunch who are eager to export so-called democracy to Iraq an the rest of the world.  No wonder it’s gotta be done at gunpoint.  Nobody’s buying it anymore, folks.  The world is growing up and that parental schtick doesn’t work anymore.  (Hear me, Dick?)

Anyway – if you want to hear from a sane adult who’ll talk to you like a sane adult about the current status of the TARP, watch Liz Warren here …

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bRerUGAOAw

And if you have time … a lecture by Elizabeth Warren at Berkeley – titled “The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class” – it’s @ an hour long, and very interesting!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A