Friday Random Ten

Shadows - Apache
Dengue Fever - Hold My Hips
Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man
Blue Orchids & Nico - All Tomorrow's Parties
Tony Bowens & the Soul-Choppers - Boilin Water
Bryan Ferry - Carrickfergus
Seeds - Can't Seem to Make You Mine
Combustible Edison - Breakfast at Denny's
Johnny & the Hurricanes - Molly-O
Byrne & Eno - America Is Waiting

So what are y'all listening to this morning?

Foot in Mouth Disease

Courtney Haden of the Birmingham Weekly takes on Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford, Richard Shelby, and Jim Bunning -- and their mistreatment by the eeeevil media -- with hilarious results.

On Larry:

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...our own mayor told a doubtless rapt audience in a Monday night forum sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists that the public is manipulated by professional journalists. In The Birmingham News, Joseph Bryant quoted Larry Langford as saying, in a sentence that begs for diagramming, “The media has become a vehicle to sensationalizing things that didn’t need to be sensationalized.”

On Shelby:

That pesky media tried to derail another faithful public servant over the weekend. Patrick McCreless, a sensation-seeking newshound for The Cullman Times, inexplicably wound up with U.S. Senator Richard Shelby as his subject. Within the fast-paced political vortex of the All Steak restaurant in Cullman, where the senior senator was holding a community meeting, a local served up a softball by asking if there was any truth to the rumor that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Shelby smacked it deep into the ear of the reporter, who heard him say, “Well, his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate.” The constitutional scholar also reminded the assemblage, “You have to be born in America to be president.”

McCreless, that troublemaking scribe, had the effrontery to quote the senator verbatim, apparently lacking the courtesy that causes most reporters to ignore anything Shelby says...

On Bunning:

Then there’s the case of another Senator, Jim Bunning, by name, notorious for shooting off his mouth the way Dick Cheney shoots faces. Back in ’04, he compared his opponent’s appearance to that of Saddam Hussein’s sons, and on another occasion complained that he’d been roughed up by “little green doctors pounding on my back.”

What these rants had in common is that nosy reporters heard the words and sensationalized them by publishing them in mass-circulation newspapers. It happened again last week at a Lincoln Day rally, when Bunning foretold the death of ailing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg...

Read the whole thing. It may make you despair for the country that these three ever got elected in the first place, but at least you'll get some good laughs too.

Potemkin Log Cabin

Alternative Title: A Gay Agenda for Our Times.

Funny story--turns out that one third of the funding for the Log Cabin Republicans comes from a noted Gay Democratic Financier. And I just thought the entire thing was a front for the love of troglodyte fiscal policy that dare not speak its name. Now things start to make a bit more sense:

The sources also said a controversial TV commercial that Log Cabin aired targeting anti-gay former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2007 before the Iowa caucuses was written and funded by Gill Action, but executed through Log Cabin to ensure the GOP organization’s name was attached to it.

The ad, which sources said Gill Action paid $100,000 to air, notes Romney’s earlier support of abortion rights and repeats a quote from him wherein he calls himself independent from former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

When they Say Its "Not The Money/Its the Principle of the Thing...." Its.The.Money.

Over at Obsidian Wings a perfectly reasonable discussion of tax policy and politics was derailed by a horde of "tax is theft!" and "progressive taxation is the eeevil" types. Meanwhile, today, we learn that what ol' georgie said is true--rich people don't pay taxes at all. At least not under Republican administrations:

Stanford also told members of the Virgin Islands Economic Development Commission that his 62 companies, in which he was the sole shareholder, managed more than $30 billion and that he was ready to invest about $2 billion in the island of St. Croix and elsewhere in the Caribbean in exchange for the right to reduce his personal U.S. tax bill by 90 percent.

“I am a very large target to pay taxes” and this is a driving force” for his proposal to relocate his headquarters from Houston to St. Croix, Stanford told the commission at a public hearing on Nov. 30, 2006, according to a transcript. Nine months earlier, he began fighting the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over an unpaid tax bill that reached more than $104.2 million in August 2008.

Sure, I'd like to do that too, is it really possible?
Why, yes:

Stanford, 58, approached the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2006 in a bid to take advantage of a congressionally sanctioned economic development program there that allows people who qualify to legally reduce their personal tax bill to 3.5 percent from as high as 35 percent.

The U.S. Virgin Islands are an unincorporated American territory about 1,100 miles southeast of Miami. Its residents are subject to U.S. tax rules, though they file returns with the territorial Bureau of Internal Revenue. The federal IRS has the right to obtain tax records filed with the Virgin Islands Bureau of Internal Revenue, though it doesn’t routinely do so.

Special Incentives

The territory generally follows federal laws, but its government has the right to create special incentives to attract businesses. In 2001, it expanded a program that effectively lets hedge fund managers and other financiers who meet certain requirements to pay a 3.5 percent tax rate rather than the 35 percent they’d face in the U.S. mainland.

To qualify for the tax incentives, firms must invest at least $100,000 in the territory, buy products such as office supplies and computers in the Virgin Islands, contribute to area charities and hire at least 10 people, 80 percent of whom must be natives of the islands. [That would be eight people, just for your information]

The Economics of Volcano Monitoring

Krugman comments on Jindal's volcano monitoring bit:

For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. [emphasis added]

Really? I'm not so sure of that.

Let's assume that government is completely out of the volcano monitoring business. Seems to me there would be an opening for a private-sector company to do its own monitoring and sell its warning services to people who are willing to pay for them. The beauty of this, of course, is that the fewer people there are subscribing, the greater the value: if, say, only 2% of the people in the Seattle/Tacoma metropolitan area have advance notice of Mt. Rainier erupting, then evacuation would be a tiny blip in the overall traffic. Compare that to the chaotic gridlock there would be if everyone were warned. (A situation like that would require massive government intervention to maintain an orderly evacuation...and as we all know, government has no business interfering in the free flow of traffic.)

The other 98%, of course, would suffer massive casualties. Well, boo-fricking-hoo. They should have been wealthy enough to afford volcano monitoring in the first place, and if they weren't wealthy enough they should have gone to live someplace that doesn't have volcanoes. New Orleans, maybe.

So maybe that's what the Republicans have in mind. The point here is that it's conceivable that their opposition to government-funded volcano monitoring isn't batshit crazy, but merely criminally, sociopathically selfish. I find that possibility oddly comforting.

Oh well, I guess not

This is just hitting the big time, since it just appeared over at Atrios, but its even more incredible than it first appears. A Republican State Senator votes against a bill to enable pregnant women to receive HIV tests so that they can also receive proper treatment for their babies to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS to their unborn child. He votes against it because:

"This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part and I just can't go there," he said. "We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly."

He defended his vote.

"What I'm hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that," he said. "The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior."

Even on its own terms this makes no sense. The article implies that he is strongly anti gay, but by definition these women are most likely *not gay* since they are HIV positive and pregnant. There's no stipulation that the tests are limited to unmarried women so even granted his medieval approach to the morality of fornication it makes no sense to draw your line in the sand with these tests and not with others. It was pointed out to him that sexual activity isn't the only way to become HIV positive but no one seems to have attacked his bizarre sense of priorities head on. What else does he think should be denied pregnant women and their fetuses if they don't meet his moral means test? Food? Police Services? He's actually really upset that pregnant teens (paging Sarah Palin!) aren't denied all hope of finishing highschool. But what else should be included in this litany of pain? How about birthing facilities at hospitals? Shelter in hotels and homes? Would all unmarried pregnant women be sent out to give birth in stables? How very...uh...christian.

Even Tories Love their National Health

This is all very infra dig but, tragically, the six year old child of a Tory leader has just died--this was noted with sorrow over at NRO--but what wasn't noted was that this poor kid was born with a host of very serious health problems and was fully cared for by the NHS throughout his short life. His father is described as the "leader of the opposition" party and even he wouldn't care to, or dare to, touch National health care. Once we get it, we'll be able to keep it. And it will totally revolutionize our lives. I'm not linking here because I don't want to make any kind of political hay out of this tragic event. Its something that struck me, however, in reading the articles about the family and their situation that the grim reality of battling insurance companies for treatment was completely absent from their story.

aimai

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

California Buttercup (Ranunculus californica) along the Gerbode Valley trail in the Marin Headlands.

Ignore the Volcano and It'll Go Away

Bobby Jindal just came out against volcano monitoring. 'What the fuckity-fucking fuck???' is, I'm sorry to say, gross understatement.

Until he said that, the most bizarrely jaw-dropping political moment within my memory was...earlier in Jindal's speech, when he cited Hurricane Katrina as an example of why government can't solve our problems. (Shades of Debra Saunders.) He spun out this weird little urban legend movie scenario in which the sheriff has a bunch of boats and volunteers but is prohibited from letting them go help people unless the volunteers have liability insurance. Brownie's incompetence is all because of...the litigation-happy Democrats! You know what would have saved the lives of thousands of poor people in New Orleans? Tort reform.

But volcano monitoring...that's wasteful spending. That's pork. So, by logical extension, is monitoring the levees. We don't need that wasteful government spending; what we need is to let people launch their rowboats.

So when Mt. Rainier or the Long Valley Caldera or the Yellowstone Caldera blow and the ash blots out the sky and and the mudflows obliterate entire counties and cities are turned to ash in an instant, remember that there would have been no value in being able to predict the event. The value lies in unleashing the volunteers. Never mind that the rowboats and the people in them will vaporize in a microsecond when they are launched on the lava flow; as long as their survivors aren't allowed to sue, everything will be alright.

Update: Nate Silver has a more substantive post on volcano monitoring.

Dilbert Turns On Instapundit

Majorities and Tyrannies

Donald Douglas makes a good point:

During the video's discussion of the founding of our nation, the narrator says, "the Founders chose to give us the rule of a republic, not the rule of the majority in a democracy."

The reason is obvious, of course, as pure democracy is synonymous with mob rule, and in the absence of legal and institution[al] checks on majority power, tyranny results...

Oddly enough, though, he doesn't seem to apply this to situations where the mob votes to impose real tyranny over the minority. More... When Jerry Brown announced that he would seek to overturn Proposition 8, Douglas was curiously unenthusiastic about any legal or institutional checks on majority power:

Looking at this from the sidelines one would think that, heck, forget majority rule. Tyranny of the majority must be so bad that any aggressive minority can have its way, traditionalism, objective right, and constitutional processes be damned.

No, of course I didn't expect any coherence or consistency from a guy like Douglas. We all know the drill by now: to rightists like him, words like 'tyranny' or 'rights' or 'freedom' have no meaning beyond the purely situational and ideological. So the sentence in the first linked post goes on to identify 'tyranny' as "the collectivization of society's product and redistribution of society's wealth"--in other words, 'tyranny' is any violation of the sacred right of wealthy people to externalize the costs of acquiring and maintaining their wealth. The only meaning of 'right' that they recognize is their 'right' to be subsidized by the rest of society.

Trivia is here

Oscar winners.

Monday Movie Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007) 10/10
In 1987, in Romania, abortion is illegal and the populace, under Ceauşescu, is tightly controlled. Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) helps her college roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an abortion. (In Romanian, with subtitles)

In 2007, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palm d'or, which is the Cannes Film Festival's "best picture" award. Despite its extraordinary acclaim, it wasn't even on the shortlist of films considered for the Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination. Not just wasn't nominated; wasn't submitted. Which created a long series of discussions in online film blogs about how the Foreign Language films are selected for Academy Awards and how Byzantine the process is, and that's how this remarkable film came to my attention.

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During the course of the film, there is at one point an extended discussion about how far along Gabita is. The abortionist (Vlad Ivanov) believes Gabita has lied to him. Perhaps she has. She wants an abortion and doesn't want anything to interfere. Is two months easier? Is three? What if it's a second trimester abortion? The abortionist points out his jail sentence would be much worse if he were caught. He is angry, he uses the lie to browbeat the young women. Although it is never explained, the suggestion is that the film's title describes the actual length of the pregnancy.

I don't watch many foreign films, not because I'm plebeian (which I am), but because I feel like I can't truly grasp the filmmaker's intention. Seen in Romania, the repressive, oppressive, Big Brother regime of the 1980s is utterly familiar. Seen in the U.S., I am learning as I go. Are there things the filmmaker took for granted that his audience would know? Am I missing the context? When I watched With a Friend Like Harry, I wondered, was Harry's sex talk at the dinner table a sign of his poor boundaries? Or a sign that it's a French film? Of course, I sometimes have that experience with U.S. films. Like The Apostle; I spent most of the movie thinking What? What? Why? What? Texas revival Christianity is a foreign language to me, just as Romanian is.

But then, if you avoid foreign films entirely, you miss jaw-dropping movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. It's the naturalism, perhaps, that is so amazing. The movie takes place over the single day of the abortion. The women wax their legs, bum cigarettes, pack, complain to each other. There is no music at all, no beauty to be seen, and tension builds from nowhere, from the simple facts of the matter. Gabita appears to be not very bright; too helpless by half. Otilia helps her because she is smarter and more able, but also because she knows that it is important to help your friends when they need help. As the film progresses, we see her anger, and her fear, and how very dangerous this all is.

This is a dark movie, with seriously disturbing images. Watching it before bedtime was a mistake. But it's an amazing movie, one that should definitely be seen.

(1 Cross-post, 2 Blogs)

Richard Shelby Acts Like a...

...hypocritical jerk. Speaking at an annual public meeting in Cullman County, the King of Pork slammed the stimulus package, although he plans to make sure Alabama gets its "fair share" of the money, and went on a rant about fiscal responsibility:

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“You can’t borrow your way to prosperity,” Shelby said. “We’re the largest debtor in the world. We’re stealing from our grandchildren.”

Really, Dick? Where was that rant when the Republican party was enabling George W. Bush as he put us into hock up to our eyeballs to pay for off-budget war funding? Or when you were earmarking money for yet another building at the University of Alabama or Auburn or UAB, or maybe some defense contracts for one of your biggest supporters?

He's also all about bank regulation -- now.

“I’m for more regulation of banks,” Shelby said. “The federal reserve is the regulator of big banks and they did a poor job.”

Hmm. I don't recall him crusading for more regulation when he was chair of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

But here's the best part -- he's just not quite sure about Barack Obama's citizenship.

Another local resident asked Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

Which, I guess, is why he supported John McCain, who was born in Panama.

Of course, Shelby's office now claims that his comments were "distorted".

The Cullman Times article contains an incomplete account, and therefore a distortion, of Sen. Shelby's comments regarding President Obama's citizenship. At the town hall meeting in Cullman, Sen. Shelby laid out the Constitutional qualifications for the Presidency and said that, while he hasn't personally seen the President's birth certificate, he is confident that the matter has been thoroughly examined.

You know what, Dick? If you really think the President of the United States isn't a US citizen, if you think his parents perpetrated a fraud 47 years ago on the off chance that their son would run for President one day, then join in one of the stupid lawsuits. Make common cause with crazy Alan Keyes. At least be honest instead of making offhand, "throwaway" comments to play to your base.

And if you really want to talk about fraud, let's talk about how you ran for Senate as a Democrat -- twice. How you took money and votes from Democrats and then, one day after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, you magically switched your allegiance so you could stay in power. And if you want to talk about irresponsible spending, start with your own.

Otherwise, STFU.

Sunday Sierrablogging

Near Teddy Bear Lake, John Muir Wilderness.

Normal business travelers

There's a commercial I've been hearing on the radio for some kind of premium for business travelers. I am not the best advertising audience in my pre-caffeinated state; I don't know which hotel chain is being advertised, but it's something about a free stay after ten stays.

And the spin is, hey, you're being rewarded for things business travelers already do. So "it's like being rewarded for wearing a tie. Or like being rewarded for shaving. Or like being rewarded for putting on pants."

What do these things have in common. Umm....I know!

They're things male business travelers do.

Now I grant you, female business travelers often put on pants. But they also often put on pantyhose. And makeup. And that wasn't in the commercial.

Once again, the default person is male. And you know what? I must have heard that commercial ten times before I realized the problem. Because "the patriarchy, you're soaking in it." Because I, too, think of the default person as male, despite a lifetime of feminism. Sigh.

Friday Random Ten

Joy Division - A Means to an End
Bing Crosby - Hey Jude
Chameleons - Singing Rule Britannia (While the Walls Close In)
Isaac Hayes - Theme from Shaft
Kinks - Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues
Zombies - She's Not There
Big Dipper - Guitar Named Desire
Essential Logic - The Beautiful & the Damned
Eno - Just Another Day
Roky Erickson & the Aliens - Two-Headed Dog

What are you listening to this morning?

What Part of 'Earmark' Do You Not Understand?

Steve Benen follows up on Sunday's post about Republicans bragging about spending in their district from the stimulus bill they opposed. Benen describes the calculation:

They disapprove of the spending measures in the legislation overall, but they proudly support the money headed for their districts. If they could have voted for just those expenditures, they would have done so.

There's a word for spending items that benefit a single district. I think you can guess what it is.

Republicans complained that the stimulus bill was crammed full of earmarks (not true, but since when has that mattered?), but what they really wanted was a bill that was nothing but earmarks. Earmarks, that is, for their own constituencies.

Which illustrates (yet again) the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the 'anti-spending' position. (Senator Maverick, we're looking at you.) Republicans aren't really against spending; they're against spending that benefits other people. It's no accident that the party that squawks loudest about spending went overboard doling out fiscal favors for individual Senators and Representatives. Earmarks are the only kind of spending they consider legitimate.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Beach Strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) at Land's End, San Francisco.

Rain

Looks like we're finally getting some winter storms. I'm a rain grinch, but when state water officials start saying this could be the worst drought in California history, even I welcome a little precipitation.

Round Robin Trivia today

Come play.

Tennessee Scandal: Non-Citizen Legislators?

The Tennessee State Constitution requires that its legislators be, among other things, U.S. citizens.

Now, questions are being raised about whether four Republican legislators--Reps. Eric Swafford, Stacey Campfield, Glen Casada and Frank Nicely--actually meet the citizenship requirement.

Even as the controversy swirls around them, all four remain silent on the issue. So far, none of the four has offered any proof at all that he really is a U.S. citizen. It shouldn't be that difficult...unless, that is, no such proof exists.

So are there four people serving in the Tennessee legislature who are constitutionally prohibited from serving? I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence of their citizenship...and their failure to produce any is damning indeed. And really, now: does Casada sound like an American name to you?

All I know is this: if I were a Tennessee citizen, I would file a lawsuit to force them to prove their qualifications. After all, the people have a right to know.

Monday Movie Review: Man on Wire

Man on Wire (2008) 9/10
Philippe Petit, after six years of planning, successfully walked a high wire across the Twin Towers in 1974. Documentary.

There is no end to the charm and delight of Man on Wire. Here is a man utterly unlike you and me: A man who has dedicated his entire life to living art; he is a performance piece. He is not an adventurer, a psychotic with a death wish, or a circus freak. If you can't accept that premise, you can't really get into the movie.

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Which you should, because it's awesome. The movie practically made itself. Petit was interested in filming his work from the beginning, and so there is tons of footage for director James Marsh to put together. The project began before the towers were even built; when Philippe saw a sketch of the World Trade Center, before construction began, he knew that he had to walk across them.

Petit is a unique high-wire artist in that he is self-taught. Most such performers are raised in high-wire families, generally in the circus, and while Petit has worked in the circus, he came to it on his own. This gives him a completely different attitude towards his art than other high-wire performers have, and thus he came to the idea of public, illegal walks on landmarks and important public structures.

The first such walk he did was across the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, his home city. All the components of the Twin Towers walk were there, if in smaller scale; the planning with a group of friends, acquiring equipment, breaking in, and filming/photographing the whole event. But nothing in Paris or Sydney could approach the scale and complexity of the New York walk. How would the equipment be smuggled into the building? How would the wire get across from one tower to the other? How would Philippe manage the intense winds at such a height? All of this had to be planned.

At first, we see that Philippe is not long on planning. He wants spontaneity. As a result, his first attempt failed. But his team includes friends with greater attention to detail, and ultimately, famously, the whole thing came together.

My one complaint about Man on Wire is that the way documentary and recreated footage are placed together is confusing. It actually took me a while to figure out how to watch the film. It didn't occur to me that Petit's crew had actually been filming themselves for all these years; a little remark to that effect would have gone a long way.

September 11 is never mention in Man on Wire. It doesn't need to be; we all know where those towers are now. But wherever we thought they were, they are now also a part of this joyful and bouyant film.

(Cross_________________________post)

Memory Like An Elephant

David Broder:

Republicans have seen to it that Obama has complete ownership of the economic rescue. By withholding nearly all their votes, they are betting that it will fail, just as they did in 1993 when the newly elected Bill Clinton pushed his first budget and tax package through Congress without a single Republican vote.

Back then, Newt Gingrich predicted that the Democratic plan would lead to "a job-killing recession," and Dick Armey, his lieutenant, called it "a recipe for disaster."

Even if they had been right, they took the risk of seeming to be betting against something most voters hoped would succeed. But they were wrong -- the economy soared under Clinton.

Sixteen years later, today's Republicans seem to have forgotten that experience.

Gee willikers. I've been reading Bipartisan Broder for like ten years, and I can't remember him ever mentioning, in all that time, this "experience" of Republicans betting unanimously against President Clinton's economic package. And losing!

It's almost as if it never happened. How ever did the liberal media miss this story?

Sunday Sierrablogging

Looking south from Grizzly Lakes, Monarch Divide, Kings Canyon National Park.

Dollhouse was...

not very good. I don't even know what else to say. If it was anyone but Whedon, I wouldn't be giving this show a second chance.

And for as much as I loved Dushku as Faith, the only sense of a real actor in the entire show was Harry Lennix. Everyone else was just being a pretty face.

We Write Letters

And sometimes they get published:

Editor:

Debra J. Saunders ("Harry beats Goliath," Feb. 10), draws a very peculiar conclusion from the saga of Bernie Madoff: that "regulation, too, can fail."

I would suggest a more precise and useful conclusion: that when regulation is put in the hands of people who are ideologically hostile to regulation, it is guaranteed to fail.

TOM HILTON
San Francisco

Of course, to Republicans that's a feature, not a bug; the guaranteed failure of their own efforts is what allows supporters like Saunders to say regulation doesn't work.

Friday Random Ten

13th Floor Elevators - Slide Machine
Social Distortion - Ring of Fire
Clash - London Calling
Pine Box Boys - 56, AR
Kathryn Williams - Easy & Me
Sorry Bamba - Porry
Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
Seeds - Pushin' Too Hard
Chris & Cosey - Re-Education Through Labour
Chris Isaak - Can't Do a Thing to Stop Me

Let's see what you've got playing this morning.

Obama versus Vader

I kid you not. These action figures are Teh Awesome. (h/t House Next Door)

Obama Loses the 2012 Election

Again. He lost it at least once already; how many more times is he going to go through this? Really, he should just resign. America can't take any more of this failed presidency.

What Michael Phelps learned

He didn't learn not to smoke pot. Give me a break! Working your body to an extreme is naturally accompanied by kicking back to an extreme.

No. He learned he can no longer trust his friends. Michael Phelps learned that, now that he is famous, "friends" will happily sell compromising photos of him to tabloids, tell the media that he lost at beer pong, and try to sell his party goods on e-bay.

He's 24 years old, and he's learned that fame and trust are mutually exclusive. I feel sorry for him.

(Cross-posted without inhaling)

It's All Relative

Dave Noon wonders

What the fuck is "nuanced" about a call for stimulus in the form of tax cuts?

John Hawkins has the answer:

The most radical, and effective, thing we could do for the economy right now is this: Stop collecting all forms of Federal business, income and payroll tax. EVERY PENNY OF IT. RIGHT NOW.

Gasp! Yes, I said it, and I meant it. Go on an absolute, 100% Federal tax holiday. That’s a real shot in the arm that would suddenly inflate the economy by a solid $1.5 trillion or more per year.

That tax cut stimulus sure looks nuanced now, doesn't it, Dave?

Hat tip: John Cole.

View from the 28th Floor

Yesterday evening a little after 5 pm.

History's Greatest Monster

Yes, it's President Barack Obama. Like you didn't already know.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum grande) along the Serpentine Trail in Edgewood County Park, San Mateo County.

Obama Stands Corrected

I usually like Froomkin, but really--he has got to be kidding:

Worst of all, Obama engaged in one of the most frustrating rhetorical techniques: The straw-man argument. It wasn't fair for Obama to repeatedly suggest that the core opposition to his stimulus plan comes from people "who just believe that we should do nothing." The basic Republican position is considerably more nuanced than that, favoring tax cuts and opposing big-government spending.

Yes, it was wrong of Obama to say opponents believe we should do nothing. What he should have said is that they believe we should do nothing effective. There's a world of difference.

Dumbass du Jour

Debra Saunders, in a column about Harry Markopolos, and the people who ignored his warnings about Madoff:

While many on the political left have blamed the 2008 financial meltdown on a lack of regulation, the Madoff story shows that regulation too can fail - big time.

Well, yeah--regulation can fail...especially when it's put under the control of people who don't believe in regulation.

Dumbass.

I've got your *&^%$ Senatorial Courtesy Right Here

It was reported in the Boston Globe this morning that the ever so clubby Senate and the oh-so-bipartisan gang of four insisted on a pro-forma vote of 61 to pass the Senate Version of the Jobs Bill. What that entailed, apparently, was allowing Cornyn to skip the vote so he could go to a fundraiser in New York, while Teddy Kennedy was forced to return to the Senate from his sickbed. I'm a knuckle dusting partisan and I get that my attitude towards Senatorial Comity is not quite in the established mode but didn't this strike "Gentleman Joe" Lieberman, John McCain, Snowe, Collins, Cornyn, Ben "I'm Psychic" Nelson, and the entire of the Weepy, self congratulatory Senatorial body as taking the notion of "bipartisan" to a psychotic extreme of pro-forma fakery?

But I'm happy that at least as of today Obama admits that the entire internet community of howler monkeys was correct. You.Don't.Begin.With.Compromise. Or, in the immortal words of our bestest worst president ever "you don't negotiate with yourself."

Trivia is up

Come and get it.

Landscape with Sky

Edgewood County Park, San Mateo County.

Saved by Dental Hygiene

Robin is plunging to his death from the top of a building. At the penultimate moment Batman throws him a bat shaped boomerang with a rope attached. Robin catches it in his teeth and uses it to pull himself to safety. Robin (excitedly) "Thank Goodness I take good care of my teeth!" Batman (solemnly) "You owe your life, to Dental Hygiene. If only more people understood."

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Sure, it was all campy fun in the sixties but as it turns out it makes damned good sense for us, as a country, right now. Dental health is a gateway to all kinds of health. A few years ago it was demonstrated that pregnant women with poor dental care--as in homeless or unemployed women--were much more likely to miscarry. The Times ran an article which I can't find a link to about just how poor dental care hampers work success: people with ugly or missing teeth simply can't be hired for "front of the house" jobs and are relegated to social obloquy and low wages. Children with poor dental care or no dental care routinely go to school with the kind of abscesses and jaw pain that floor older workers. They can neither eat a healthy diet nor study appropriately. In fact last year a child died of poor dental care when an untreated abscess lead to a very costly infection of the brain. Yet Dental care for children and adults is a luxury that few can afford. The quickest and most useful "jobs program/stimulus" in the world would be to sign up every school aged child for a federally paid tooth exam and cleaning at their local school.

A correspondent raised with me the question of whether a country whose economy was founded on people buying more and more trash could ever recover its equilibrium once people grasp that an infinite supply of plastic objects is not really within their economic grasp. Its something that has been on my mind, too, ever since I realized that although I could afford a new set of holiday themed tableware from Crate and Barrell I couldn't *store* a new holiday themed tableware set from Crate and Barrell. So, if I wasn't updating my housewares every season who was? And for how long? Answer: increasingly, nobody.

But there are one or two areas of life in which increased spending is never wasted, is always necessary, and has unlimited payoffs in intangibles like "human welfare" and that is health care spending. One way to arrive at that conclusion is to simply turn Republican arguments on their heads. Its my preferred way of studying society and politics at this point, because its infallible. Take their argument, reverse it, and you have a good approximation of a better argument and policy. One of the main Republican arguments against national health care is that people's health care wants are bottomless. If people could get access to good healthcare, man, they'd be all the time demanding stuff like stronger teeth, braces, good glasses, prosthesis, cancer treatments and even NICU units and prenatal care. The uxurious luxurious bastards. Likening ordinary health care costs and needs to cosmetic surgery, just as they liken ordinary contraceptive needs to some kind of bar hopping party game (I tried linking to Mark Steyn's priceless column on how the Contraceptive portion of the Stimulus bill was a luxury gift to drunken sluts but when you enter "Mark Steyn" and "Contraception" into a google search you discover the limits of google when it comes to handling a cottage industry of wingnuttitude), consensual sex to rape, and frat pranks to torture, the Republican version of reality inverts what we know to be true: Health Care is a smart investment for individuals, families, and for society.

The wealth of a country is its people, not its roads or houses. No people, or no healthy people, and all of that other wealth, all of those things, go to waste. Sure, its a gaping maw of need and to a certain extent the more we pay out for, say, children's health the more we are spending. But that doesn't make it any different from other kinds of consumer needs and wants, does it? I don't see the Republicans coming out against repeat trips to Disney because those trips aren't "needed" or are "costly." In fact, as I recall, Former President W asked us to continue shopping and going to Disney after 9/11 because he thought maintaining a steady stream of rodent bedazzled four year olds was important to our economic and political health.

This is, in very short order, precisely the debate we are going to have about National Health Care. On the left we see an infinite number of reasons to create and maintain an extensive, well funded, system of taxpayer financed health care. 1) It would relieve businesses of the cost and paperwork associated with insurance companies, 2) it would relieve individuals and families of the anxiety and risk associated with lost health care benefits when employment is suspended or terminated, 3) it would remove the profit motive and insurance company cost cutting from the medical equation, 4) it would produce a healthier population overall and enable more people to continue working while they or their loved ones are ill, 5) it would enable entrepreneurs of all sizes to take risks in creating new companies or trying new jobs, 6) it would create a burst of good jobs in the health care industry where "good job" is a job that requires good education, high skills and doesn't consist of simply pushing paper and denying benefits. On the Right, of course, all of this is inverted and the increased need for health care professionals and health care provision is seen as a sign of weakness and dependency in a welfare type population of slackers, health care jobs that provide health care are seen as unnecessary while insurance company jobs that deny health care are seen as good.

We are having a hugely ugly and pointless debate about the Jobs program in which the Democrats have failed to make the case that the stimulus bill is a Jobs program and the Jobs program redounds to the benefit of every American now and in the future. We are about to have the exact same debate about health care if we don't seize the initiative and the upper hand semantically and demonstrate again and again that "infrastructure" means human bones and hearts, health care spending is a jobs program with benefits for all of us.

Monday Movie Review: Two "and" Romantic Comedies

Music and Lyrics (2007) 7/10
Ira and Abby (2006) 7/10

Music and Lyrics takes the form of a mainstream romantic comedy, following its conventions while being exceptionally witty and good-natured, and having some smart things to say.

Ira and Abby takes the form of an indieromantic comedy, following those conventions while being charming and clever, and having some unusual things to say.

Both movies are populated by Manic Pixie Dream Girls, and hello, was that a type that needed to be defined or what? But the thing about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that she serves the needs of the male protagonist, just as the Magical Negro serves the needs of the white protagonist. In these movies, though, the women have lives of their own, and what's interesting is that both are paying a price for being quirky and oddball, and so they are given more depth.

More... In Music & Lyrics, Drew Barrymore plays Sophie, and when Hugh Grant's Alex first meets her, he is at once sure she's crazy. Which she seems to be, but soon we learn her oddball style is a response to a broken heart and wounded ego. An affair with a professor left her publicly humiliated and with no belief in the talents her mentor once nurtured. So she's quirky, and this is a lot like Alex's own quirkiness—an 80s has-been who takes nonchalant pleasure in capitalizing on his has-been status. The movie has the kind of pleasant and rapid wit Hugh Grant movies are known for, at the same time, it is somewhat serious about these people. They have injured self-esteem they cover up by seeming to celebrate the tiny corners they live in. Alex sings at amusement parks for his aging fans, Sophie waters plants, and neither exercises the talent they have until Alex gets an unusual opportunity to write a song and realizes Sophie can help him.

So, this is a conventional trajectory. Meet cute followed by thrown together followed by come together a little bit, then break apart, then reunite LALA! as the credits roll. But there's a lot to love inside the arc. Brad Garrett as Alex's manager, for one. A lot of really snappy dialogue, for another. High standards, for a third, meaning, you know, nothing like the extended and painful bathroom "joke" I was unfortunate enough to see in Two Weeks Notice. Also, the break-up is over artistic ethics, the commentary about the music business is clever, and so on.

Ira and Abby, being an indie, is more deeply committed to its quirkiness, and yet in some ways, is more conventional. Ira (Chris Messina) is the classic protagonist playing opposite the Manic Pixie Dream Girl; he's nerdy, nervous, pessimistic, and fearful. He's very much Woody Allen to Abby's (Jennifer Westfeldt) Diane Keaton.

Abby's quirks are costly to her as well. She is an extraordinarily open person, giving herself compassionately to everyone she meets. Who else could reach Ira, as closed off as he is? (Thus, serving the protagonist.) But her openness means she is too giving to be successful at her work, and her past heartbreaks are immense. This is considerably more interesting than the magical girl who shows up, changes the hero's life, and, I dunno, glimmers.

Abby comes by her quirks honestly, as we realize when we meet her parents (Fred Willard and Frances Conroy). Very much about family, the movie gives us two rich sets of parents (Ira's are Judith Light and Robert Klein), and when Ira and Abby meet and marry in a whirlwind, the families become intertwined.

Neither movie breaks beyond the boundaries of its own conventions to become a classic for the ages. Certainly, there are classic romantic comedies (It Happened One Night, Moonstruck, and Four Weddings and a Funeral come to mind, from three different decades), but if you just want a pleasant diversion with a higher than average intelligence quotient, either of these will do.

(Cross and Post)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Flora Lake, northwestern Yosemite National Park.

A Narcissist, a Thug, and a Professional Gambler Walk Into a Bar

This should be the start of every discussion from now until the end of time. Its not a joke, its a prescription. Not that they are listening but the Obama team should immediately contact three kinds of specialists: game theorists, Bob Altemeyer, and specialists in Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The Debacle of the Stimulus bill, which began with what apparently was Obama's honest outreach to the unreachable Republicans, could have been avoided by these simple words and true: there's no there there. You are dealing with Narcissists, Thieves, Liars, and Gamblers. Recognize that and you realize that a mere political mind and Roberts Rules of Order are not going to be enough to win the game.


After Pelosi stripped out the contraception stuff, at the behest of the White House, only to see every House Republican vote against it, and after the Dems stripped 87 billion dollars and 600,000 jobs out of the Senate Bill, only to see Boehner et al say *they* won't vote for it, I was reminded forcibly of a scene from the Sopranos. The one where Dr. Melfi is sitting in bed, reading a study of sociopaths, and she comes across the line "for the sociopath, therapy itself becomes a form of sociopathy. They can not be sucessfully treated. Therapy becomes one more place where they can enact their criminal tendencies. And the therapist just one more person they can manipulate." (or something like that).

Isn't that basically the situation with the Republicans. The Democrats insist on coming to the bargaining table with *equals* and even with "partners" whose understanding of the goals of the game are basically similar. The very notion of "bipartisanship" implies that, ultimately, the Republicans and the Democrats are on the same side--lets call it a "purple America." Maybe their hierarchy of needs and wants is a little different--for example each Senator or Congressman represents a different district whose real world interests may be differerent. But that just means that you are presuming that each Senator and Congressman is, in fact, representing *his district* and *its interests* and, in a larger sense, American citizens and their interests. That basic assumption is false. The Republicans do not put the interests of their constitutents above other interests. We know that because the ones squealing the loudest about CEO pay do not, in fact, run districts just chock full of Bankers who would fall under the Ban. And we know that because the ones squealing the loudest about how evil it would be to extend COBRA subsidies to out of work people are not, in fact, from States where there is no unemployment. Not only are the Republicans ideologues and crude partisans for upper class interests *to the despite* of their own constituents and regional interests but they also have their eye on a longer, farther, prize: retaking power nationally. And we know that the principle way they imagine retaking power is by crippling Obama and the Dems, not by (for example) generating new ideas. {And we know *that* because they just closed down and refused to fund a new think tank aimed at generating new ideas, and because they refuse to repudiate both Rush Limbaugh and John McCain as spokesmen.}

So, what should the Democrats do? Well, as we all pointed out when Bush labled first Saddam Hussein and the Ahmedinajad "madmen" the fact that people are difficult, or mean, or have other interests than yours doesn't make them mad, and it doesn't mean you can't bargain with them. It just means you have to be smart about it. And the first thing to grasp is that the Senators and the Congressmen that we have sent to Washington, and even the President and Rahm his little enforcer, are, strictly speaking, amateurs. We need some serious experts. We don't need experts at *what is to be done* so much as we need experts at *how it is to be done.*

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but all of this vote counting and vote getting and bargaining to get this or that vote is not rocket science and ought not to have come down to this level of submissive, cost cutting behavior from the Dems. What we had from the outset was a wounded, angry, frightened, hostile group of Senators whose interests will not be well served as a party if the President succeeds in passing a jobs program of any size. That was the basic given. People who know the New Deal worked are not operating in the same universe as the people who are insisting that it didn't.

If you aren't dealing with partners, you are dealing with competitors. And the rules of how to get what you want from a competitor are really very different from the rules of how to get what you want in a partnership. There was only a chance that the President would peel off three or four votes. The right thing to do at the get go was to figure out which those votes would be and then to bribe or batter them loose. Here's the thing that seems obvious to me--the bribe should *never* have included the hook that the "centrists" would get to work with other "centrists" on the dem side. Never. And the bribe should never have included "you get to cut stuff out of the bill." The only bargaining point should have been *you may add stuff to the bill* that you think is important, and your bargaining counterpart should have been far, far, far to the left of the centrist Senators. Nelson, Bayh et al. should have been locked in a room somewhere with the following lines to write "I will never, ever, ever, publicly contradict the Democratic Leadership. I know that my entire future as a Democratic Senator and the earmarks for my state depend on my making them happy."

And, of course, the negotiating should never have been left up to the Senate in the first place. We knew that was one of the "choke points" in the legislative loop but the Democrats fell into the trap of figuring that all negotiations should remain in that box. Instead of allowing the so called moderate Republicans to feel their power, and feeding their ego at the upper levels I would have taken the fight straight to their districts and their states with full page ads demonstrating just how much *their constituents* stood to loose or gain by their Senator's vote. This many jobs lost *in your state* and this much money at stake to keep the state afloat? A signed open letter from the Mayors, Governors, and State Senators pleading with their Senator to fall in line behind the President? Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and even some more intransigent Senators would have tripped over themselves to avoid that label locally almost regardless of when their next primary is. I'm not arguing for all sticks and no carrots--far from it. I'm just arguing that if the field of engagement is very narrow you benefit from expanding it. Its really clear from the whole Daschle idiocy that the Democrats really believe that personal relationships matter in moving legislation. And yet, time and again, they discover that that simply isn't so on the Republican side. Personal relationships are talked about, but never respected if it goes against party loyalty or party interests. That's the Narcissistic Personality Disorder part of the story. We've been using the metaphor of Charlie Brown and the Football for years without taking it seriously enough as a party. The Republicans betray the Democrats in the Senate and in Congress *on a personal level* every time and the Democrats remain stunned and confused by it *every time.* That is because the Democrats insist that human relations and social relations will trump ideology and the Republicans never submit to that if it doesn't benefit them personally.

This little essay very much confuses analysis with prescription and I apologize for that.

aimai

Beneath the Rule a Country Hides

So Lettuce had this song in his Random 10 and it got me wondering where exactly 41 North 93 West is (turns out it's in Iowa) which prompted further discussion which got me googling and I wound up finding this post about the song on a very cool map blog. And it turns out the author e-mailed Wire asking about the song, and this is what Graham Lewis had to say:

In 1978 Wire made their debut in the USA playing at CBGBs in NYC for 5 nights. When this engagement was completed I flew to LA to meet my girlfriend of the time and have 2 weeks vacation staying with friends. At the end of this I flew back to New York to hangout.

On the return daytime flight the visibility was perfect and I experienced a stunning aerial view of the Rockies and the vast Mid-Western plains…this was the inspiration for the first part of the text. I studied Geography at both O & A level and developed a fascination for maps and their reading… On this occasion one was able to read the epic landscape…vast gorges, an incomparable 2D flatness, meandering rivers, levees, oxbow lakes etc….with an unrelenting gridded road system imposed on top).

Some months later I had a similar sensation whilst traveling by road through the reclaimed agricultural lands of Holland. Whilst in the US it had been the road system here it was a grid system of drainage dikes. The vast green/ glass houses also made a memorable impression sparkling in the autumn sun….”Crystal palaces for floral kings”

The two pieces of writing dovetailed to produce one text on 2 locations…the title was conceptual… notionally the very centre of the Mid-west…I guessed and found a place called Centreville nearby… this seemed appropriate, poetical yet hardly scientific!

So there you are. It's very rare that a songwriter's explanation of a song makes me like it even more, but this is one of those times.

Update: I hadn't noticed when I posted the video that the map ref is different from that on the album. For the record, 43N 110W is in the foothills of the Wind River Range.

Friday Ottoman Blogging

This is an ottoman at my brother Steve's house.

Friday Random Ten

Ultravox - I Want to Be a Machine
Shriekback - Beatles Zebra Crossing
Roxy Music - Bitter Sweet
84 Rooms - 'lectricity
5.6.7.8.'s - Bomb the Twist
Joy Division - Colony
New Order - Confusion
Mikis Theodorakis - [Z] Main Title (Andonis)
Tom Jones - Kung Fu Fighting
Kinks - Alcohol

What's on your devices this morning? Extra treat below the fold.
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Success Story

Shorter Peggy Noonan: "Americans are fearful, and fearful is what Republicans do best."

Perspective

Sixteen days on the job? I've seen worse.
--Steve Benen

Read the whole thing. Besides offering a solid counterpoint to the pervasive doom and gloom, it also features the entertaining spectacle of Joe Klein admitting he was wrong. That just never gets old.

I just called Senator Nelson's Office

OK, I decided to put my time and money where my mouth is. After seeing JMM's post today about how Senator Nelson was working with "moderate" republicans to strip important provisions out of the Stimulus Bill I went ahead and called his office and told them a) my name, b) that I was a democratic activist, c) that we know how to do this stuff since we just won the national elections and e) that I was going to hold a house party called "adopt a blue dog" (Really, what it should be called is "abort a blue dog" but that seems so, well, hostile) and start raising money to primary Nelson the next chance we get. I guess I'd better get myself organized to do this. I think one of the things I've learned in watching politics over the last few years is the theory of the "choke hold" or the narrow points where legislation gets bottled up. There is no reason on earth why right wing Democrats should feel free, let alone impelled, to work with moderate Republicans. None. All politics is local and I doubt very much if Nelson's constituents give a flying fuck if he's buddies with Olympia Snowe. What they will care about is if the national party stops helping Nelson get earmarks (and you know what? Earmarks are prominent on his own home webpage. Imagine that!). Another thing I've learned is its all personal, every bit of it. Time to start building on what we know, and remember that a revolution is either permanent or its nothing at all.

aimai

Set Your TiVos!

Birmingham hits the big time tonight as the city's homicide detectives are featured on A&E's "The First 48".

Apparently, the reporters who composed the story for al.com thought they were writing noir:

With the brooding city streets of one of the nation's most violent cities as its backdrop, Birmingham homicide detectives will step out of the shadows tonight and into the light of America's cultural consciousness.

These are the detectives who, in anonymity, regularly investigate the murders in Birmingham's back streets and alleys, its barrooms and bedrooms, beds of burned-out pickup trucks and parked cars.

Beginning tonight on A&E they will be anonymous no more. Birmingham will be in the national spotlight as the city's grizzled homicide detectives make their small-screen debut on the popular television show "The First 48."

Brooding streets? Grizzled detectives? Really?

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The case featured in tonight's episode is a heartbreaker: the 2007 murder of 19-year-old Demarcus Ferrell by 21-year-old Antonio Rodriguez Spencer. I don't mean to take away from the seriousness of the crime or the pain of the family, but I was struck by the cognitive dissonance reflected here:

It started with whispers throughout the community and ended with the capital murder arrest of 21-year-old Antonio Rodriguez Spencer, all in the first 48 hours of the case. An informant described Spencer like this: "He's mean. He's mean like a rattlesnake."

Detective Eric Torrence said it was challenging because as hard as they were working to solve it, Spencer was working just as hard to prevent his neighbors from snitching.

"It was a race between me convincing the witnesses to talk to me and him trying to get them not to," Torrence said. "The good guys won the race."

Detective Jerry Williams said the cameras haven't been a problem.

"A lot of witnesses were excited about being on 'The First 48,'" Williams said.

Again with the "really?" Witnesses were afraid to talk for fear of retaliation -- until they saw the TV cameras?

Anyway, I know where I'll be at 8 PM (CST) tonight. I wouldn't miss those "grizzled" detectives for anything.

Cross-posted at Birmingham Blues

Trumpeter Swans

Endangered Species, currently resident in Northeastern PA

They're still here on my lake, eating and moving their way from open water to open water. There's an alternate take of this shot here.

[fixed tpyo]

Credit and Credibility

Yeah, I know--I'm the only person in Blogtopia who cares at all about this story. But it really is important, and this underscores the point:

Mr Markopolos, who tried for nine years to expose Mr Madoff, told a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that staff incompetence on the part of the US Securities and Exchange Commission was partly to blame for failing to bring a case against Mr Madoff earlier.

“I gift-wrapped and delivered the largest Ponzi scheme in history to them,” he said. Most officials “did not understand...the 29 red flags that I handed them”.

“The SEC securities lawyers, if only through their investigative ineptitude and financial illiteracy, colluded to maintain large frauds such as the one to which Madoff later confessed,” Mr Markopolos said.

Here's the thing: as was noted in a Talk of the Town item last month, the word 'credit' comes from the Latin for 'to believe'. To the extent that this is a credit crisis, fraud isn't a side issue; fraud is at the very heart of the thing.

Whatever the state of the fundamentals, whatever would have happened anyway, the Bush administration's passive tolerance of systemic fraud unquestionably made it much, much worse. And to the extent that this is a crisis of faith, only the restoration of rigorous enforcement will make it possible for people to believe--that is, for credit to function again.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Dwarf Checkerbloom (Sidalcea malviflora) on Sweeney Ridge, San Mateo County.

Millions for Defense....not one penny for health care?

Its time to say what we ought all to be thinking. If we can't get the Stimulus passed, with bells and whistles, over Republican objections we are not.ever.getting.national.health.care. We might get something, but we won't get much. The optics? The strategy? the cleverness? the whatever? None of this matters. The Republicans are hell bent on destroying the Obama administration in its cradle. Better infanticide, as far as they are concerned, than letting it grow to maturity. And they are showing every sign that they are going to be able to do so. Gregg--the man who wanted to destroy the commerce department to run commerce? And with the agreement that his replacement will vote with the Republicans? Franken still sidelined an unable to vote? Kennedy too sick to vote? The debate on the Stimulus on the floor of the Senate led to a Democratic amendment to increase funding for infrastructure spending being voted down. Without Kennedy, Franken, etc... and with the defection of a few Dems (Nelson!) we couldn't even get our own amendment approved.

What is supposed to change with the appointment of a health care czar, Daschle or not Daschle? Obama and his team are going to have to grasp that there simply is going to be no bipartisanship. They've locked up the republican votes they can lock up with sweet reason--that is to say Snowe. They've neutered the votes they can--that is to say Gregg. Now they are going to have to play hardball--and I mean hard ball--with the rest. That means having constituents and Governors do the armtwisting. That means going to the money guys and telling them that if they want any legislation favors done for them in the next four years they have to withdraw all money from Republican Senators who don't vote the way Obama wants them to. That means running vicious, angry, bitter, ugly ads in every district where a Senator or a Congressman is up for re-election in 2010 as the DCCC is already doing. It means an end to Senatorial comity. It means calling up Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and telling them you are going to pour money in to primaries from the left. Because if you can't get the stimulus passed as the country literally falls into the gutter you will never get health care passed. And at this point with people losing their jobs every day we are going to be looking at a massive health care crisis of both immiediate and long range impact. Every day that a person is out of work and out of health care means minor and major things ignored. In one, two, and three years an uninsured population is going to go from being a little bit sick to being permanently damaged. And, of course, all those people who fall out of the system over the next year or two are going to be, essentially, uninsurable as long as "pre-existing conditions" govern whether they can get insurance in the future. If we are ever to pull ourselves out of this self destructive spiral the Republican party and its leaders and its representatives are going to need to be defenestrated with extreme prejudice. There is simply no other way.

aimai

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Trivia

SAG Awards special.

Joe the Polymath

He's not just an ace war correspondent; he's also an economic expert and political strategist. Is there no end to this man's accomplishments?

What the Cool Kids Are All Drinking

2 1/2 oz. roasted-beet-infused vodka
1/2 oz. triple sec
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth

I haven't come up with a name for it; any suggestions? Consider this an open thread.

Smile!

Al Gore All Wet

Stunning proof here. (Story here.)

The Big Tent Party

The Republicans show us what diversity really means: they're willing to elect an African-American chairman, but they're also home to people who aren't.

Sunday Sierrablogging

Lake 10,200 on the LeConte Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

Thank you! She'll be here all Presidency!

That Sheryl Gay Stolberg is such a kidder! Look at what she (together with Robert Pear) stuck into a straight news story at the lieberal NY Times this morning:

But already, Mr. Daschle is becoming the butt of Republican jokes, as was the case at the House Republican retreat this weekend. According to one person who was there, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the party whip, had this to say after hearing the news about Mr. Daschle: 'It is easy for the other side to advocate for higher taxes because — you know what? — they don't pay them.'

Funny guy, Cantor. But I guess it's only fair for the Republicans to get a crack at publishing at third hand the sort of stale, juvenile, hypocritical attack drivel that was all our rage in, for example, the Wall Street Journal over the past eight years.

[Da-boom ching.] Heh! Try the veal!