New Orleans Mayoral Race

(via Yglesias) Awesome ad by James Perry - running for mayor of New Orleans.

60 Votes in the Senate?

Didn't used to be that way. Started mostly in the early 90s with the GOP.

White House Required Reading

MUST READ: This Atlantic post by Ron Brownstein was made required reading by Obama over the weekend for his staff.

When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won't succeed unless it "bends the curve" in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

"I'm sort of a known skeptic on this stuff," Gruber told me. "My summary is it's really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can't think of anything I'd do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn't have done better than they are doing."

Chris Matthews Takes on a Bishop

This is classic Chris Matthews. He had Bishop Tobin on Hardball the other day, the guy who told Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) (yes, EMK's kid) that he shouldn't take communion because of his support for abortion rights. At the end of the interview Matthews lets Tobin make a few (weak) points, but at the beginning he's drilling Tobin with all the right arguments, all the while calling him "your excellency" ... it's great. Watch It.

Four Horseman

(via Syd O)

WSJ Interview with Cormac McCarthy

Here's a really great interview with Cormac McCarthy (author of All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road). Man I like the guy: smart, science, doom, hope, fatherly love. I'm going to see The Road on Thanksgiving.

Also, the director's last movie was The Proposition - so it's gotta be good.

Toon

A delicate balance.

To the Moderates Go The Spoils

(via the Rachel Maddow Show) To get Nelson to vote for cloture the Senate bill did not revoke the insurance industry's anti-trust exception ... to get Landrieu, the Senate bill includes billions of dollars for "States hit by natural disasters within the last 7 years". Not sure what Lincoln got.

Also - PLEEEZE kick Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus and take his committee chairmanship. If not, Reid and Durbin better hold it over his head when a public option vote comes down the pipe.

Limits of American Power

We've got carrots...but where are the sticks:

What can the United States offer its allies? Throughout the Cold War, the answer was simple: the United States guaranteed its allies security from the Soviet Union. But this question - which seems so basic - is difficult to answer today.

...

From Tokyo to Paris - and many places in between - it is not so much the lack of American power that is the problem (it still has plenty), but rather the fact that its bargaining position is paradoxically undermined by its extraordinary role.

Read the entire, short, post.

Thinking Doesn't Translate into Climate Action

From the NYT:

The example illustrates a basic principle in social psychology: that people's attitudes do not translate into action. But most environmental activism remains centered around the assumption that changing behavior starts with changing attitudes and knowledge.

And only 35% of people think climate change is man-made! So, of course education (and stopping mis-education) is key to improving that number. But this article is good at describing how we must re-focus how we set priorities and market adoptable behavior to the general population.

Brooks Gives Obama High Marks on his First Test

David Brooks thinks, in retrospect, that Geithner et al. did a great job handling the financial meltdown.

But Yglesias isn't as thrilled with the performance.

Today in Global Warming/Peak Oil

(via Syd O and Medium) First, check this out from E&E's ClimateWire:

Last ice age froze Europe in a few months (Tuesday, November 17, 2009)

It only took six months to plunge Europe's warm climate into the last ice age, according to new research.

Previous research had suggested it took some 10 years for the slowdown of the Gulf Stream that allowed ice to spread southward and plunge the Northern Hemisphere into a deep freeze 12,800 years ago.

The new findings suggest "it would have been very sudden for those alive at the time," said William Patterson, a geological sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who carried out the research. "It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months."

To conduct the research, Patterson scraped mud deposits from a lake in western Ireland and studied each 0.5-millimeter-thick layer. The mud indicated that the temperatures had abruptly chilled, with the lake's plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months.

The finding reinforces a series of studies that suggest that the Earth's climate is highly unstable and can flip between warm and cold very quickly under the right conditions (Jonathan Leake, London Times, Nov. 15)

Second, check out this Letter to the Editor in the Guardian responding to the article they ran the other day discussing how the IEA has been overestimating oil reserves. The author has been involved in exploration and oil reserve research for years and has some great insights.

Maybe My Favorite Cartoon of All Time

Fat Women are H.O.T.T. (with 2 "T's")

...in Mauritania, West Africa. Check out this Marie Claire article on how young girls are force-fed so they get obese and covered in stretch-marks - a big turn on for Mauritania men. It's a sign of wealth in a country where many starve to death. Although the practice was dying off, recently, after an Islamic coup that pushed more traditional lifestyles, some girls are going to 3month summer camps where they are force-fed 16,000 calories a day by a headmaster who tortures and whips them if they chow down.

Tijanniya wants to become a French teacher, but Elhacen says her parents have already arranged a marriage for her. "Her job will be to make babies and be a soft, fleshy bed for her husband to lie on." To this end, she intends to fast-track Tijanniya's weight gain by serving her cups of pure animal fat. "The stomach flab should cascade, the thighs should overlap, and the neck should have thick ripples of fat," says Elhacen. The ultimate sign of beauty, however, is silvery stretch marks on the arms. "Parents will give me a bonus if a girl develops stretch marks."

Bring Em On

Even before AG Holder announced that KSM and a few other Gitmo terrorists would be held for trial in NY I had thought that if I were a Senator I'd have been on the floor touting our justice system, screaming "Bring em to Supermax - we're not afraid of em ... you think we can't handle a few scheming pilots?". Along with stating the obvious (that our prisons hold way more dangerous prisoners) I think it'd bring attention and commerce to the state and be a source of pride.

Check this Colorado Pols post on the subject ... apparently IL is going to hold them for trial, and they're looking at ADX for long term imprisonment.

As for the argument that they'll get off on a technicality? No chance. Sure, they'll argue waterboarded confessions were coerced - but Holder is a prosecutor, and he must know that there is plenty of other evidence to convict so they won't have to rely on tainted evidence.

As for the argument that it'll be a circus? Sure. So was OJ.

As for the argument that the trial will become a target? Maybe, but again, do we not think the NYPD or the Nat'l Guard, etc. will be able to handle it?

The hypocricy on the right is outstanding - they decry international law, tout our legal and moral superiority, but don't think we can handle a few murderers?

UPDATE: NPR ran a story today and it's spot on.....the GOP "fears" bringing detainees to IL and Democrat Dick Durbin says (in essence) "bring em on!"

KSM: Warrior or Criminal

This Yglesias post makes an excellent distinction and argument for categorizing "terrorists" as criminals.

Alongside the various nonsensical efforts to convince people that KSM is too scary to be put in trial, the right objects to bringing him to justice on the grounds that this represents a problematic “law enforcement” approach to terrorism. I think it’s pretty clear that international terrorism has some dimensions that go well-beyond ordinary law enforcement, but if you have to put the whole thing in either the “crime” box or the “war” box, there’s a pretty strong case for erring on the side of crime.

In political terms, the right likes the war idea because it involves taking terrorism more “seriously.” But in doing so, you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves. It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. What we want to say, however, is that this sporadic commuter-killing isn’t a kind of war, it’s an act of murder. To be sure, not an ordinary murder—a mass murder—but nonetheless murder. It’s true that if al-Qaeda were something like the “blowing up train stations” arm of a major country with which we were otherwise at war, it might make the most sense to think of al-Qaeda as fitting in with spies and saboteurs; criminal adjuncts to a warrior enterprise.

After all, do we really want to send the message to the world that a self-starting spree killer like Nidal Malik Hasan is actually engaged in some kind of act of holy war? It seems to me that we don’t. A lot of people in the world are interested in glory, and willing to take serious risks with their lives for its sake. Insofar as possible, we want to drain anti-American violence of the aura of glory. And that means by-and-large treating its perpetrators like criminals.

If You're Angry About the Stupak Amendment - Here's Your Outlet

Katha Pollitt makes the right points in the Nation. A Taste:

You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

Update: Here's TPM's take on what the practical effects may be...which will be all the poor-to-middle-class women who will take part in the Exchange...and 21Million are expected to partake....the Jist:

What conclusions to draw from this? The uncertainties are substantial, but it's safe to say that, initially, a minority of women, and a minority of abortions will be impacted by the Stupak amendment. Those women will be very disproportionately poor and middle-class. And their ranks will grow as the exchanges open to larger businesses and a greater percentage of the population.

AND: an argument about what health care means to women, irrespective of the abortion debate.

IEA Has Been Lying About Oil Reserves - Things Are Worse Than They Claim

(via Syd O) Read this article from the Guardian UK. Scary.

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.

Cars Have Gotten Better In Everything Except Fuel Economy

This is why when I hear "Best fuel economy in its class" - and the commercial is referring to 20mpg - and my 10yr old car gets the same - I'm pretty discouraged about our long term prospects.

Yglesias:

From 1980 to 2004 the fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has remained stagnant despite apparent technological advances. The average fuel economy of the U.S. new passenger automobile fleet increased by less than 6.5 percent, while the average horsepower of new passenger cars increased by 80 percent, and their average curb weight increased by 12 percent. For light duty trucks, average horsepower has increased by 99 percent and average weight increased by 26 percent over this period. But there’s more to this story: in 1980, light truck sales were roughly 20 percent of total passenger vehicles sales — in 2004, they were over 51 percent.\

In Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector (NBER Working Paper No. 15162), Christopher Knittel analyzes the technological progress that has occurred since 1980 and the trade-offs that manufacturers and consumers face when choosing between fuel economy, weight, and engine power characteristics. His results suggest that if weight, horsepower, and torque were held at their 1980 levels, fuel economy for both passenger cars and light trucks could have increased by nearly 50 percent from 1980 to 2006. Instead, fuel economy actually increased by only 15 percent.

The First Marriage

A great article on the Obama's marriage in the NYT Magazine yesterday.