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DEFCON 1 spoiler alert! If you haven't seen last night's House, stop reading now. Everyone else, onward and downward! Here are the six things you need to know up-front about last night's House:

Here is 2009 outlook for commercial real estate from Deutsche Bank. It does not paint a pretty picture. Run through it (it is mostly graphs). Commercial Real Estate Outlook 2009 So? What to make of it? The short answer is there is still pain hovering out there for banks if they allow these loans to default.....if. First we need to segment the commercial owners into categories. The owner who holds mortgages on a single strip mall in Des Moines vs. the REIT that hold 100 or more properties. What about the little guy who gets in trouble? Sorry bud but...

President Barack Obama wants to hear from the chief executives of some of the country's biggest banks as he caps a week in which he clarified his overall plan for stabilizing the financial system. The president was set to take the temperature of the bank CEOs on Friday at the White House. The session will be the latest in a series of such meetings Obama has had with financial industry representatives and business executives since taking office amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also will attend the meeting.

Meat on a stick has a glorious, multi-ethnic history, spanning everything from shish kebabs broiled over campfires on Turkish nomads' swords to skewers cooked in Indian tandoori ovens. But none is so uniquely American as the corndog. This tube of meat coated in corn batter and deep fried has been a fair staple since it was sold for the first time at either the 1942 Texas State Fair or the 1941 Minnesota State Fair.

Michigan, Texas A&M and LSU defied the president's expectations by winning first-round games. Of those, only Michigan was close to being an upset, as the No. 10 Wolverines knocked off seventh-seeded Clemson 62-59.

HAHA! Obama's teleprompter has it's own blog! Get the inside scoop how it's taking the pressure of force feeding words to empty suit and head Obama http://baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com/

As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children's book project, a disclosure report shows. The terms of the book deal were disclosed in a Senate financial disclosure report filed Tuesday.

A 2-year old Long Beach girl was hospitalized Tuesday after she was bitten in the face by the family's dog, authorities said. The attack at a home at the 1800 block of Gardenia Avenue in Long Beach was reported around 11:30 p.m. Monday, Long Beach Department of Animal Control Officer Jaime Precado told reporters at the scene.

MILWAUKEE -- The bitter cold and record snowfalls from two wicked winters are causing people to ask if the global climate is truly changing. The climate is known to be variable and, in recent years, more scientific thought and research has been focused on the global temperature and how humanity might be influencing it. However, a new study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee could turn the climate change world upside down

A friend reports chatter within the Obama administration that Tim Geithner was a bad choice for Treasury Secretary and that Quadrangle partner Steve Rattner (currently the car czar) was brought in partly to have a good relief pitcher on hand. This doesn't surprise us: We think that, in this crisis, Tim Geithner is clearly the wrong man for the job. But this is also only unconfirmed chatter at this point.

President Barack Obama has introduced his federal budget plan for the coming years, and it includes large increases in spending, taxes, and debt.1 The Obama plan includes the costs of recent financial bailouts and the stimulus package, but it also foresees a long-term increase in regular domestic spending. The plan builds on spending precedents set by President Bush, and would boost nondefense outlays to a record share of the economy.

Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times Talk show host Vladimir Pozner. He outlived the Soviet era to become a study in the disorientation that comes from having a fervent ideology and losing it. COLUMN ONE Survival: Something a former Soviet propagandist can believe in Vladimir Pozner Email Picture Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times Talk show host Vladimir Pozner. He outlived the Soviet era to become a study in the disorientation that comes from having a fervent ideology and losing it. Vladimir Pozner, who is quick to apologize for the ideology he sought to spread to the West, knows a...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Errant motorists beware: Puppy hit-and-run could soon be a crime. Pushing animal rights in a new direction, a state lawmaker has proposed slapping California motorists with a fine and possible jail time if they flee after hitting a jaywalking dog, cat or any other pet or farm animal. The measure by Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park) would require that drivers attempt to provide aid to an injured critter and notify the owner or animal-control authorities. It's one of a herd of bills in the Legislature that could test the boundaries of what constitutes humane treatment of animals...

Gay twins who worked as servers at a Los Feliz restaurant were sexually harassed by the homosexual men who owned the eatery, a jury determined today in awarding each plaintiff $1,000. The Los Angeles Superior Court jury deliberated for a little more than a half day before finding that the 32-year-old twins were forced to work in a hostile work environment. However, the panel rejected Jed and Wyatt Lorenzen's other claims, including retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Unless you've been living under a rock (and it's okay to admit if you have, I'm told rent is cheap), you probably heard that President Barack Obama sat courtside at D.C.'s Verizon Center Friday night, watching his hometown Chicago Bulls take on the Washington Wizards. The First Fan drank beer, read the game program and left early (with four minutes left) during a blowout. "All common American activity," as Tom Ziller put it, "except most of us don't sit courtside, nor are we important enough that the NBA will hold up a tip-off until we get to our seats." (Speak...

One more day in February wouldn't have done much to salvage yet another bad month of sales for the U.S. auto industry, but it wouldn't have hurt. All of the big automakers saw sales down around 40% or more last month compared to February 2008. Chrysler Co. (-44%), Ford Motor Company (-48.4%) and General Motors (-52.9%) again took the brunt of it, but Toyota (-39.8%), Honda (-38%) and Nissan (-37%) weren't far behind. This just goes to show that the argument about U.S. domestic automakers not selling what people want to buy is bogus, as people just aren't buying across...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama tempered his pledge to substantially raise taxes for high earners with an important proviso: He'd simply restore rates to their levels during the Clinton Administration. The implication was that families in the upper brackets would see their total tax bite go back to the levels of the 1990s, but no higher. Now, it sure looks like Obama is reneging on that promise. The burden will indeed go far higher than in the Clinton years via a technicality -- one that will come as a rude shock even to the taxpayers...

(02-26) 20:00 PST San Francisco -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California. Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy.

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore has won the 2009 GRAMMY Award for Best Spoken Word Album. An Inconvenient Truth is read by Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood.

Writing in the National Journal Magazine, political analyst Charlie Cook opines that President Barack Obama had better start playing his own game, or his administration is going to get labeled incompetent. Cook, who edits the respected "Cook Political Report," writes that, with such stains on the record as Sen. Tom Daschle’s withdrawal as Health and Human Services secretary nominee, embarrassing disclosures about Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner’s taxes, and a stimulus package that has run up against a wall of criticism, President Obama may be setting himself up for the shortest honeymoon in presidential history.