GOP to Michael Steele: Quiet About Rush Limbaugh or You're Fired  —  Apology to Rush Limbaugh aside, new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is coming under fire from his own GOP troops to shut up and focus on his job of organizing the party and raising money, not fighting with his own political kind.

Poll: Obama's rating at all-time high  —  NBC/WSJ poll shows gap between popularity of president and his policies  —  WASHINGTON - After Barack Obama's first six weeks as president, the American public's attitudes about the two political parties couldn't be more different, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.

White House Knocks Jim Cramer For Calling Obama Budget “Greatest Wealth Destruction By a President”  —  NBC's Tom Costello, on duty at the White House today, asked press secretary Robert Gibbs about some comments made by his CNBC colleague Jim Cramer.  On the Today show this morning …

Wealthy Idiots Meet Idiot Reporter  —  I've seen a lot of dumb news reports in my life, but I'm not sure anything can quite match this one from ABC News.  The premise of the report is this: Barack Obama plans to raise taxes on people who make more than $250,000, so the reporter has gone …

Emblems to Stamp Projects Funded by the Stimulus Package  —  ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports:  —  Put a stamp on it — that's what the White House says.  —  President Obama announced today that his administration will begin stamping an emblem on projects funded by the economic stimulus package …

Bullish Obama Suggests Nation Should Buy!  Buy!  —  President Obama told Americans to take a look at investing in the stock market this afternoon, a remarkable utterance for an American president, especially as the Dow Jones Industrial Average proceeds on its course Southward.

Dems yank DC vote bill in House  —  It looks like voters in the District of Columbia will have to wait another week - and possibly a lot longer - to claim official representation in the House.  —  Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters Tuesday night that the bill would not come …

Ex-Leaders at Countrywide Start Firm to Buy Bad Loans  —  CALABASAS, Calif. — Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation's economic crisis.  After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans …

Palin foe gets administration job  —  (CNN) - Alaska State Sen. Kim Elton, one of the leading officials to pursue an investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin during the heat of the presidential campaign, has taken a high-level job in the Interior Department.  —  Palin reacted in a short statement Monday …

Extraordinary Measures  —  A new memo shows just how far the Bush administration considered going in fighting the war on terror.  —  In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside …

Senators push select econ committee  —  Senators Byron Dorgan and John McCain introduced legislation Tuesday calling for a Senate select committee to investigate the causes of the financial crash.  —  “People are confused, upset, and unhappy,” McCain told reporters this afternoon.

MTSU POLL: One In Six Tennesseans Admit To Telling Racist Jokes About The President  —  The newest poll on state and national issues in Tennessee is out from our friends over at Middle Tennessee State University complete with charts and graphs.  Some of the more interesting findings below.

Our Interrelated Crises  —  David Brooks seems to think that Barack Obama is trying to do too much at once.  Steve Benen retorts that “The notion that multiple problems — healthcare, energy, education, infrastructure, economic growth — may be inter-connected seems to elude Brooks entirely.”

The unfortunate uselessness of most ‘state of the art’ academic monetary economics  —  The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England I was privileged to be a ‘founder’ external member of during the years 1997-2000 contained, like its successor vintages of external and executive members …

Zombie financial ideas  —  Calculated Risk looks at the latest plan floated by the Treasury — to make low-interest, non-recourse loans to private investors who buy bad assets — and immediately gets it: this is a plan to drive up the prices of toxic assets by creating a lot of moral hazard.

Cafferty: My crush on Michelle Obama  —  Editor's note: Jack Cafferty is the author of a new book, “Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving Our American Dream,” to be published in March.  He provides commentary on CNN's “The Situation Room” daily from 4 to 7 p.m. ET.

Quigley opens up lead in Rahm replacement race  —  (To check the election results yourself click here for Chicago and here for suburban Cook County.)  —  (To look at AP election totals, click here.)  —  (To read the Tribune's coverage in the run up to the election, click here.)

MCCAIN EARMARKS AMENDMENT FAILS  —  From NBC's Ken Strickland  —  Today Sen. John McCain failed in his effort to strip thousands on earmarks from a government funding bill moving through Congress.  His amendment would also have reduced the funding for several government departments to last year's lower spending levels.

Team Obama on the Unit Root Hypothesis  —  All academics, to some degree, suffer from the infliction of seeing the world through the lens of their own research.  I admit, I do it too.  So when I read the CEA's forecast analysis, this sentence jumped out at me: