Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale business professor, discusses why the Obama administration’s pay czar may be the Walter Cronkite or King Solomon of resolving financial disputes.Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master on executive compensation at troubled financial institutions, made headlines last week with pragmatic remedies to surging public outrage over unjustified bonuses to leaders of failed financial firms.

At least this year, it’s increasingly clear Rasmussen Reports polls are outliers when compared to their peers. For instance, while other polls show the spread between President Obama’s approval/disapproval rating ranging from +4 to +17 points, Rasmussen has it at -5. On the 2010 generic ballot , other polls show Democrats leading from +2 to +12 points, while Rasmussen has Republicans +5.

Last week, Jake Tapper ’s potential facial hair (and high profile interviews) made him a big gain on the Power Grid — all the way up to the #2 spot behind MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell . Poised to strike, Tapper made the most of an increased profile this week, challenging White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and the White House’s attack on Fox News. Tapper was quick to show public solidarity with his fellow network, asking Gibbs pointedly , “I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports.

Bring in the funk: Jill Hughes, Brian Kaplan and Keith Pray joining Jocomo onstage Subbing for the missing-in-action Matthew Loiacono, fabulous funkateers Jocamo took over the stage at The Linda in Albany on Thursday to support their new CD, “The New Funk Order.” ( Read our CD review here .) It was the free monthly CRUMBS Nite Out session, and Jocamo had a close-to-packed house cheering them on during their hour-long performance.

Andrew Sullivan looks at this collection of polls from RealClearPolitics: And says this: Just looking at this raft of polling data, it’s perfectly clear that Rasmussen is polling a different country than other polling outfits. Umm, Andrew, perhaps not a different country, but maybe a different population: The ABC News/WaPo results are based on a random sample of adults, the CBS News and Gallup results are based on a random sample of registered voters , and the Rasmussen results are based on a random sample of likely voters.

There’s that stuff going around about the world ending on December 12, 2012 : The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012, the same date as the Winter Solstice when Earth will be in galactic alignment with the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Timewave Zero drops off of the Singularity of Novelty scale on 12/21/2012. Solar events such as the solar maximum, sunspot activity, and solar pole reversals will happen in 2012. These are all calculated and verifiable facts.