DON SURBER: 52 days, 52 mistakes.

NUANCE: Obama VA: Let’s charge vets for care on service-related injuries. “If the Obama administration wanted to come up with the most politically offensive policy it could imagine, within the bounds of reason and reality, what elements would it have to include? Insulting veterans and looking like cheapskates in a time when massive government outlays to private industry would certainly help it along. . . . It’s just another incompetent moment in an administration trying to set a record for them.”

OUCH: Woman Injured in Power Tool Sex Toy Encounter. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Grownups, either.

RUSSIAN MILITARY EXPERT warns of Iranian threat.

JUDD GREGG: Obama Budget Forecast is a Lie:

It was obvious to most Capitol Hill insiders why President Obama wanted Republican Judd Gregg as a member of his cabinet: He’s one of the sharpest money-minds in Congress.

But instead of getting Gregg’s counsel within the administration, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner found himself today of the receiving end of Gregg’s fiscal conservative wrath.

In a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee Gregg dressed down Geithner with facts, figures, and charts. While always keeping his cool, the exchange was somewhere between a mother’s scolding, a drill sergeant’s questioning and an attorney’s cross examination.

In his opening statement, Gregg politely called the administration’s budget forecast a lie.

“The argument that it cuts the debt in half in four years is, ahh, is truly spurious,” he told Geithner.

Read the whole thing.

THE EMILY LITELLA PRESIDENCY: Obama: Economic crisis ‘not as bad as we think’.

A BUNCH OF MARKED DOWN new Blu-Ray releases.

FROM CLUB COBRA: 50 State Tea Party Road Rally–Call For Volunteers!

SMOOTHEST TRANSITION IN HISTORY! “As a third top Treasury nominee withdraws from consideration (see Mark’s item, below) and Vivek Kundra, President Obama’s Chief White House Information Officer, takes a leave of absence following the FBI’s raid on his former office, the administration announces that attorney Tony West, who volunteered his services to represent John Walker Lindh (the so-called “American Taliban” convicted after making war against his country), is the president’s choice to lead the Civil Division at the Department of Justice.”

TWO OF PRESIDENT TYLER’S GRANDSONS are still alive: “Not great-great-grandsons, not great-grandsons, but grandsons. (President Tyler was born in 1790.)” Wow.

DODGY: Pelosi dodges chance to end automatic pay raises.

A REPORT FROM Philadelphia’s “tea party” protest.

MICKEY KAUS ON CHAS FREEMAN: “During the Trent Lott scandal, if I remember right, there was speculation that the blogosphere would really have arrived when a high public official suddenly resigned over an Web-borne scandal without the scandal being mentioned in the respectable mainstream press–so if you had only read the New York Times or Washington Post you’d have no idea why this person quit or what the scandal was until he or she was gone. Poof! Killed by ninja blogs.** Well (without regard to the merits of the dispute), the Charles Freeman withdrawal is close to that case, no? WaPo apparently printed its first news story on the controversy the day it ended–i.e. when Freeman withdrew. Ditto the New York Times. … What does this event signify? Not to be too portentous, but it signifies you can no longer be a well-informed citizen if you just read the Times and Post print editions. You have to go online. Sorry, Mom!”

MAXINE WATERS AND THE CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Waters Helped Bank Whose Stock She Once Owned. “Ms. Waters and her husband have both held financial stakes in the bank. Until recently, her husband was a director. At the same time, Ms. Waters has publicly boosted OneUnited’s executives and criticized its government regulators during congressional hearings. Last fall, she helped secure the bank a meeting with Treasury officials.”

UPDATE: More here: “Note that OneUnited is the same bank whose relationship with Barney Frank raised some eyebrows back in January. After receiving $12 million in bailout funds with Frank’s help, the FDIC issued a cease-and-desist order against the bank, in part related to the fact that the bank was paying for the CEO’s beach house and Porsche.” The country’s in the very best of hands.

A JOURNALISTIC CHALLENGE for the Center for American Progress. Progress, regress, whatever.

SILICON GRAFFITI: All You Need Is Tweet.

SIGH: Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids.

A NEW, IMPROVED — and quieter! — female condom.

EXTREME IRONY: Ed Rendell edition.

THE LAW OF SPACE COLLISIONS: In the wake of today’s Space Station near miss, I’ve got some thoughts in Popular Mechanics.

IT’S A DIVERSE ECONOMY: Professional Rope-Skipping Coaches.

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING that there would be no math: “The Energy Department made a $500 million math error a year ago when it withdrew its support from a ‘near-zero emissions’ coal plant in Illinois, Congressional auditors will say in a report to be released Wednesday.” I for one welcome our new, mathematically incompetent carbon overlords!

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Robotic Control Without Computation.

OBAMA THE INTELLECTUAL? “Yet if one compares Obama’s positions with Bush’s, it’s the similarity in their intellectual approaches that is striking. Both make decisions on the basis of pragmatic, momentary considerations rather than an intellectually defined standard. Just as Bush employed a seemingly random grab bag set of strategies, going with his ‘gut,’ so Obama is already switching positions on policy after policy. . . . However much Obama seems to sport the trappings of an intellectual—and clearly he does—in practice, his policy consists in shooting from the hip, making short-range decisions without adherence to any firm set of guiding convictions.”

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST DIAMOND HEIST.