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Just 3 days short of the one year anniversary of Lois Lerner refusal to testify about the IRS' improper targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, House Republicans have voted to hold her in contempt of Congress, and

• *HOUSE VOTES TO ASK FOR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE IRS

As NBC reports, In a partisan 231-187 vote, the House passed the contempt resolution, sending the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. However, as The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) repidly noted, "Unfortunately, we don't expect the Attorney General to move forward with this case, he has put politics above the enforcement of the law on numerous occasions and unfortunately that is likely to occur again."

At this point it is clear that Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 which has been missing for two months will almost certainly never be found: whether due to the nature of the disappearance, or because it is a cover up stretching all the way to the very top (recall that it was disclosed by none other than NBC that the released air traffic control recording with the plane was edited, suggesting that the government itself is complicit in whatever happened), the plane will forever be entombed in the annals of history, alongside CNN's Nielsen ratings, and its final resting place will remain a mystery. However, over the past 24 hours, another mystery surrounding the final voyage of flight MH-370 has emerged,  one which this time involves the plane's cargo.

One of the more peculiar news from last week was the grounding of all flights for several hours at several airports in the Southwestern United States and the grounding of planes bound for the region from other parts of the country. As so often happens when there is no specific reason at the time, the error was blamed on a computer "glitch" - the computer problem at a Federal Aviation Administration center slowed the journeys of tens of thousands of arriving and departing passengers at LAX. And that would have been all we heard of it had it not been for some additional digging by NBC which on Saturday, citing unnamed sources, reported a U-2, a Cold War-era spy plane still in use by the U.S. military, "passed through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center and appears to have overloaded a computer system at the center."

As if there wasn't enough news for the market to ignore, here is another. NBC reports that a subway train has derailed in Queens, the MTA says.  FDNY was responding to the Broadway and 65th Street area in Woodside, and reported heavy smoke conditions. Authorities say the train that derailed is a Manhattan-bound F train on the express track. The MTA could not immediately say how many wheels derailed. Riders should expect delays on the E, R, F and M lines.

• Ukraine attacks rebel city, helicopter shot down (Reuters)
• Euro Unemployment Holds Near Record Amid Factory Gains (BBG)
• Yellen’s Fed Resigned to Diminished Growth Expectations (BBG)
• Junket Figure's Disappearance Shakes Macau's Gambling Industry (WSJ)
• China tried to undermine economic report showing its ascendancy (WSJ)
• Liquidity Trap Hitting AAA Bonds Has ATP CEO Sounding Alarm (BBG)
• AstraZeneca Snubs Pfizer Approach That U.K. Won’t Block (BBG)
• Missing Jet Recordings May Have Been 'Edited' (NBC)
• RBS turns corner as first-quarter profit trebles (Reuters)
• Japan household spending hits four-decade high, wages key to outlook (RTRS) while Real Incomes Drop 3.3% in March, 6th straight decline

"Americans In Large Numbers Want the U.S. to Reduce Its Role In World Affairs Even As a Showdown with Russia Over Ukraine Preoccupies Washington …."

• Headline of the day goes to... Cold weather seen temporarily slowing U.S. economy (Reuters)
• Americans Want to Pull Back From World Stage, Poll Finds (WSJ)
• U.S. Plans to Charge BNP Over Sanctions (WSJ)
• What about Jay Carney: Putin Threat to Retaliate for Sanctions Carries Risks (BBG)
• Fed expected to take further step toward ending bond buying (Reuters)
• A Fed-Watcher’s Guide to FOMC Day: Steady Taper, Green Shoots (BBG)
• Alstom accepts 10 billion euro GE bid for its energy unit (Reuters)
• BOJ projects inflation exceeding 2 percent, keeps bullish view intact (Reuters)

If the economy really is "getting better", then why are nearly 50 million Americans dealing with food insecurity?  In 1854, Henry David Thoreau observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation".  The same could be said of our time.  In America today, most people are quietly scratching and clawing their way from month to month.  Nine of the top ten occupations in the U.S. pay an average wage of less than $35,000 a year, but those that actually are working are better off than the millions upon millions of Americans that can't find jobs.  The level of employment in this nation has remained fairly level since the end of the last recession, and median household income has gone down for five years in a row.  Meanwhile, our bills just keep going up and the cost of food is starting to rise at a very frightening pace.  Family budgets are being squeezed tighter and tighter, and more families are falling out of the middle class every single day.  In fact, a new report by Feeding America (which operates the largest network of food banks in the country) says that 49 million Americans are "food insecure" at this point.  Approximately 16 million of them are children.  It is a silent epidemic of hunger that those living in the wealthy areas of the country don't hear much about.  But it is very real.

For most of Canada's existence, it has been regarded as the weak neighbor to the north by most Americans.  Well, that has changed dramatically over the past decade or so.  Back in the year 2000, middle class Canadians were earning much less than middle class Americans, but since then there has been a dramatic shift.  At this point, middle class Canadians are actually earning more than middle class Americans are.  The Canadian economy has been booming thanks to a rapidly growing oil industry, and meanwhile the U.S. middle class has been steadily shrinking.  If current trends continue, a whole bunch of other countries are going to start passing us too.  The era of the "great U.S. middle class" is rapidly coming to a bitter end.

It's not just beef, pork, shrimp, eggs, and orange juice... If you think that the price of food is high now?  Just wait.  If current trends continue, many of the most common food items that Americans buy will cost more than twice as much by the end of this decade. Even if nothing else bad happens (and that is a very questionable assumption to make), our food prices are going to be moving aggressively upward for the foreseeable future.  But what if something does happen?  In recent years, global food reserves have dipped to extremely low levels, and a single major global event (war, pandemic, terror attack, planetary natural disaster, etc.) could create an unprecedented global food crisis very rapidly.

Cows in the San Francisco area will be sleeping better at night since, for the last few days, gangs of angry internal combustion engine-likers have taken to a new trend - Smart car tipping. NBC Bay Area found four of the targeted Smart cars between Sunday night and Monday morning. "Whoever is doing this just has misdirected anger," noted one upset owner, as another witness joked, they reminded him of little dogs: "They look like they are dachshunds sitting up on their hind legs." The exact motives behind the vandalism are unclear, as a parody Facebook page was set up called "Smart Car Tipping" by a creator who does not "practice, promote or condone Smart Car Tipping,' and another site called the Smart Car tippers, "heroes." At a price starting at $13,000 for the tiny cars, perhaps it is the relative cost-benefits that the vandals are considering.

Concurrently with out post on what the odds are of a war between the US and Russia over Ukraine, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, and war hawk, appeared on TV this morning saying that the United States ought to provide weapons to the Ukrainian army "so it could defend the country from a Russian invasion." This is the same Mike Rogers who last August did everything in his power to perpetuate the lie that Syrians had used chemical weapons against "rebels" (who subsequently turned out to be mostly Qatari-funded Al Qaeda mercenaries and other Islamic extremists) “There are things that we can do that I think we’re not doing. I don’t think the rhetoric (from Obama administration officials) matches the reality on the ground,” he said. And while US neocons are warmongering, Ukraine is all too happy to raise the tension level just a bit more, hoping that NATO will finally intervene and present Putin with at least some hurdle to overrunning all of East Ukraine, using exactly the same template as already show in Crimea: Ukraine’s top diplomat warned Sunday that the chances of war with Russia “are growing” due to the buildup of Moscow’s forces along his country’s eastern border. In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia said Kiev “is ready to respond” should Russia–which has already seized the Crimea–move further in Ukrainian territory.

With the story of the day undoubtedly Yellen's first (bungled) press conference, it was easy to forget that the second coming of the Cold War is raging in the Ukraine. For those curious what they may have missed, here is a summary of the major events that took place in the troubled country this afternoon. Highlights from AP, AFP, Reuters, WSJ, Bloomberg, RIA and Interfax.

It only makes sense that now that Crimea is officially Russian territory once again, that the Russians would do with it as they see fit. Which they did. Overnight Russian troops and unarmed men stormed Ukraine's naval headquarters in the Crimean port of Sevastopol and raised the Russian flag in what Reuters described as "a tense but peaceful takeover that signals Moscow's intent to neutralize any armed opposition." Russian soldiers, and so-called "self-defense" units of mainly unarmed volunteers who are supporting them across the Black Sea peninsula, moved in early in the morning and quickly took control. But nowhere is the resignation within Ukraine's acting political leadership more evident than in a statement just uttered by potential presidential candidate and former boxer, Vitali Klitschko:

UKRAINE GOVT SHOULD WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM CRIMEA, KLITSCHKO SAYS

More appeasement of Putin: will it result in the annexation of east Ukraine? Surely. The only question is when.