Matt Bai has a profile piece on the return of Newt Gingrich in this weekend's New York Times Magazine.

Obama's Iraq Speech

Abu Aardvark has a good post over at Foreign Policy on Obama's speech yesterday on his plans for Iraq. I didn't see the speech, but I usually respect Lynch's opinion - and he's very happy with the President.

The Echochamber

(via E.I.C.) John Derbyshire has an interesting half-defense of conservative talk radio in this week's American Conservative. I could quibble with many of his points - but I'll instead chalk it up to ideological differences (i.e. mentioning All Things Considered in the same sentence with Hannity is laughable). However, to the extent he's a little sad that the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. has been replaced by Rush Limbaugh as the "voice of conservatism" I'm with him 100%. Derbyshire repeats that he has "no problem" with lowbrow conservatism enough times for you to know he does have a problem with it - albeit a lesser problem - and wishes there was more to the movement. Unfortunately, when you see Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter headline the last day of CPAC (which is today), you know that lowbrow conservatism is the de facto head of the GOP

If you'd like an idea of how things ought to be - an example that illuminates the bastardization of conservative ideas and techniques as they've evolved to today - then check out this 1969 debate between WFB and Noam Chomsky and dream of what things could be.

Rocky Mountain News Shuts Down

Today was the last issue of the Rocky Mountain News - a really sad day - the paper is just 55 days shy of it's 150yr anniversary (it was around for 17 years before Colo became a state). I'm not sure why they closed, instead of declared bankruptcy ... and I'm not sure why they're closing down instead of the Post (because I don't know anyone who likes the Post better). But in any event, this has got to be the most prestigious paper to close down (something like 6 Pulitzers since 2000). There's rumblings that the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Fransisco Chronicle may be doomed as well.

Please comment if you have any idea how newspapers will survive.

Drip, Drip, Drip

Looks like Roland Burris' son got a job with the Housing Authority (which is technically a Blago political job) about 5 months ago ... and it was right when his own home was about to be foreclosed on.

Sell the Bad News - Surprise 'Em Later

Megan McCardle has an interesting view of the deficit numbers in Obama's budget. She thinks he's smart to make overblown projections of the deficit (and get credit for being honest) so that he can get credit for "surprising" good news down the road.

Andrew Sullivan has a good wrap-up of what economists and pols are saying.

McCain the Defeatist

John McCain gives a speech to a bunch of conservatives at AEI and says we're losing a war? Wow. Would love to have gotten his (less him, more GOP to be fair) take on that sort of troop-hating-defeatism a year ago.

Eco-Migration

(via Syd O) The Washington Post has an interesting piece on how fears of changing climate are driving some people to move to locations they think will weather the new weather better. It's called Eco-Migration.

Here's What Killed Your 401(k)

MUST READ: Wired has the best article I've read on CDO's, CDS's, the interworkings of the bond market, and especially on how the financial markets tanked. The current crisis has a lot to do with the Gaussan Copula Function (formula above) created by mathematician David X. Li. The formula, designed to calculate the risk of complex CDO's, was used by everyone on Wall Street. Unfortunately, the formula is deeply flawed because there's no way to assign a quantum of risk to the correlation between all the hodgepodge bonds in a CDO (read the article, you'll get it) - but the formula made making money easy, and made assessing mortgage-backed securities easy - so the market exploded .... until the bubble burst, and everyone realized they had no idea how much risk they were exposed to or how much their securities were really worth.

And here we are.

Parking Meters with Brains

(via Gortyn) Have you ever parked in front of an out of order meter, and then coming back and it's flashing "0:00" and you've got a ticket. Don't worry - you're not crazy .... it's happening a lot in D.C.

Brooks

David Brooks has one of his best columns today that I've seen in a long time. Basically, Brooks - a good Burkean conservative - is concerned about the comprehensive, swift, changes the Obama administration must implement because he's skeptical of the liberal idea that technocrats can implement effective policies. Our epistomology is limited, the problems are too complicated, and officials (non lobbyists) are barely acquainted with the political process. Read the article, I think it's very honest - especially how he admits that because the problems are so vast that he has to root against his politics and for Obama's - and America's - success.

I've held these fears as well. But, the problem is that while we may harbor these uncertainties, the situtation now doesn't allow us to fail to act. This is why, while I have some Burke in me, I've had to go along with Obama's plan. At least he's trying something. The conservatives in Congress offer zero alternatives to broad, swift action - and Burkean incrementalism doesn't help reassure the markets. Therefore, fears aside, we have to act and hope for the best.

The Irresponsible Home Buyer

(via Syd O) I've been thinking about this for a while, so I'm happy Yglesias actually took the time to put together a post on about how in an effort to advance the "there's enough blame to go around" theory, the "irresponsible" borrowers have been over-blamed for the recession.

When someone applies for a mortgage, there are two parties to the transaction. On one side of it is a teacher or a blogger or an electrician or a lawyer or a nurse or a guy who manages a Home Depot. On the side is a guy who, for a living, as a professional, works in the “deciding on what terms to offer people mortgages” business who works, for a living, at a financial services business. Businesses like that got in the habit of making loans with little regard to actual prospects for long-term payment on the theory that since house prices were rising, the borrower could always sell or refinance. That, to repeat, wasn’t the judgment of electricians and store managers; it was the judgment of people who were professional mortgage-offerers. They, in turn, were being lax in part because they were finding it very easy to sell the mortgages off as securities

....

There really is plenty of blame to go around here. But I just don’t see how more than a tiny fraction of it could possible adhere to our electrician or teacher or secretary who’s decided, basically, that the financial services professionals and government regulators know what they’re doing.

Rove's Immunity

Via the Politico:

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove was a no-show today at his scheduled deposition deadline for the House Judiciary Committee's ongoing probe into the U.S. attorney firings -- setting up a major decision for President Obama on how to respond to congressional subpoenas.

Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) subpeonaed Rove to find out what he knows about the Dec. 2006 firings which eventually toppled former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

When Rove was subpoenaed in 2007, President Bush asserted "absolute immunity" for his top aides, refusing to allow them even to appear before a congressional panel. House Democrats eventually sued, and won an initial legal victory. The Bush White House, through the Justice Dept., appealed the ruling, and when Bush left office in January 2009, the case was still undecided.

White House Counsel Greg Craig has urged the two sides to cut a deal, but Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, have kicked it back to the White House, saying it is up to them to assert executive privilege or not.

So the next big development will occur on March 4, when the Obama administration is scheduled to file a motion in federal appeals court laying out its position on the issue.

The Anti-Yoo

Jeff Rosen has a good article over at TNR about how Dawn Johnsen - Obama's pick for OLC and big John Yoo critic - is now in the position of defending some of Yoo's legal opinions... And/or she has a more nuanced view of executive power that may end up undercutting some of her heretofore liberal credentials.

Good Choice!

Tufts' prof Kathleen Merrigan has just been chosen as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. Judging from this post, her head's in the right place.

I first heard about Merrigan while working on Organic Inc., looking into the origins of the Organic Food and Production Act of 1990 and sustainable agriculture policy. She was mentioned repeatedly by people I talked to, because as a senate staffer for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Merrigan had drafted the organic law. She then went on to work at the USDA's agricultural marketing service (AMS), which runs the organic program. Even before then, she was involved in sustainable agriculture policy and has been ever since -- in organics, conservation, food access, and small farm issues. While Pollan helped put these issues onto the national agenda, people like Merrigan have long been doing the wonky policy work.

Outside government, she has worked for the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, served on a the Pew commission on biotechnology and has been active in the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. She now heads the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts School of Nutrition and Policy. As marketing and regulatory undersecretary, she would oversee AMS, GIPSA (Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration), and APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) - touching virtually every aspect of agriculture.

In short, this is a real shot for a major position at the USDA by someone who has pursued the change mantra in agriculture for nearly two decades.

Comment in Bad Taste

(even if possibly true) Sen. Bunning said over the weekend that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be dead in 9 months.

Media Malpractice

The new documentary on how the media torpedoed Sarah Palin is available here. I just saw the producer on TV - what a D*ck. Anyway, take a look if you so desire.

Fox is still the #1 cable network, right? I understand that their argument includes NBC/ABC/CBS in the "liberal media" ... however, the producer also includes SNL, Daily Show and Colbert Report as "the media" b/c many people get their news there ... and he said on TV just now (I quote) that American's "are too stupid" to know the difference between comedy and news. Really? Maybe those stupid Americans would like to be enlightened with a nice documentary.

To boot - I'll leave alone any thoughts on why political parody actually does a better job of making points and covering the news than the traditional 6 o'clock news does. I'll also leave alone any arguments concerning (1) Palin's own hand in making her a comedic hit; and (2) Obama's duckback (the way insults/comedy rolled off) .

Why Doesn't Harry Reid Just Force the GOP to Fillibuster?

Many liberals have been wondering why the Senate Majority Leader doesn't just put together a liberal bill - show it to the GOP - and make them either take it or filibuster it. Well, I should have remembered why this isn't feasible from my days in the Senate ... but Ezra Klein has the low down.

Rich

Frank Rich today talks about the fine line Obama must walk by installing confidence while being explicit about the dire problems the country faces - and must bring his message to a tone-deaf America.

No one knows, of course, but a bigger question may be whether we really want to know. One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly “changed everything,” slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable. Obama’s toughest political problem may not be coping with the increasingly marginalized G.O.P. but with an America-in-denial that must hear warning signs repeatedly, for months and sometimes years, before believing the wolf is actually at the door.

...

Steroids, torture, lies from the White House, civil war in Iraq, even recession: that’s just a partial glossary of the bad-news vocabulary that some of the country, sometimes in tandem with a passive news media, resisted for months on end before bowing to the obvious or the inevitable. “The needle,” as Danner put it, gets “stuck in the groove.”

Rahm-Bo

Ryan Lizza writes a long (6pg) profile on Rahm Emmanuel for the New Yorker ... if you've got the time.

Space Collision

From the CSM:

The collision between a US and Russian satellite some 500 miles above Siberia has raised concerns about the threat posed by orbital garbage.

A few minutes before 5 a.m. GMT on Wednesday, a US Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian military communications satellite smashed into each other, creating at least 600 pieces of debris that each could strike other satellites. It was the first time that two intact orbiting spacecraft have crashed into each other, say officials.

Inspirational

Watch this video - of the 73 year old college basketball player!

The Axis of Upheaval

Nial Ferguson writes in Foreign Policy about the new world threats - the upheavals - caused by ethnic tension, economic volatility, and declining empires which just happen to be the three converging trends we see today ... especially with the emerging world economic crisis. Oh the good old days when we just had to worry about the Axis of Evil.

Toon

The Anti-Veg

(via Syd O) When did legumes (beans) enter out diet? Is the human body made for meat or vegetables? Where did we get the protein to evolve? Read this post for some evidence -and go start up the Caveman diet, Meals.

Weather Underground

(via Yglesias) Howard Machtinger, a former WU member - writes about the 60's and formation of the group and the lessons he learned way better, and more honestly (possibly), than Bill Ayers has to date.

Bush 44?

MUST READ: Glenn Greenwald on Obama's embrace of several Bush Administration "War on Terror" policies as reported by Charlie Savage in his NYT piece picking apart the Panetta hearing and interveiwing WH Counsel Greg Craig. Obama is not only failing to repudiate some of Bush's policies - but he's actually endorsed some!

Start Diggin for Dirt

NYT reports that Gov. Sebelius is on-deck for HHS.

And speaking of - guess who else owes back taxes? Give up? Try here.

Toons

Geithner

I think Megan McCardle's right about the WaPo story from the other day about Geithner's handling of the TARP2 rollout (posted below):

The longer I think about it, the more shocked I am at how badly Treasury has handled this. First, they refused to consult with banks or, apparently, too many Bush administration officials, because they didn't want the plan "tainted" by such seedy associations. Since as far as I can tell these two sources have custody of, to a first approximation, 90% of the information needed to make a plan work, this was moronic. It was a classic technocratic error, thinking that a pure planner should operate without regard to the desires of the grubby, greedy people they're supposed to regulate.

Treasury didn't just fail to deliver a plan; it actively made things worse. At this point, the uncertainty in the markets about the uncertainty of various financial institutions is making it more likely that those institutions will have problem--no one wants to invest in a bank that might be nationalized, and no one wants to deposit substantial funds in a bank that might not. A plan would at least have shown some committment in a specific direction, even if its details had to be changed at a later date. Right now, Geithner has implicitly left all options on the table.

A Dialogue

I really enjoyed this dialog between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ross Douthat over at the Atlantic .... mostly concerning institutions, tradition, and family structure. Ta-Nehisi comes from a family of 7 kids by 4 dads - and they range from Pixar programmers, civil engineers, law students, and Atlantic bloggers. Ross, on the otherhand is (in my view) the future of the GOP ... a future David Brooks ... and while understanding where Ta-Nehisi's values come from, has a different take on those themes. It's worth checking out.

What's With Politico?

TNR does a piece on the start-up and success of Politico and touches on some serious journalistic debates along the way. Here's a good anecdote to get you started:

Politico reporters also file whenever news breaks. Shortly after 8 a.m. on November 10, while commuting to work, media reporter Michael Calderone learned that msnbc's Joe Scarborough had just said "fuck" on air. Calderone, who often blogs from the back of taxis and buses, leapt off the crowded Mount Pleasant bus and blogged the YouTube clip from a park bench.

The Way DC Works

This Yglesias post is right on the money. This is what the whip does - find out what votes are out there so he knows how many to give away:

Ruth Marcus writes: “It would have been hard to predict, as the stimulus debate began, that President Obama would end up losing more Democratic votes than gaining Republican ones.”

I dunno. It’s true that this outcome wasn’t widely predicted. And I don’t think I even thought about it seriously. But it also strikes me as pretty predictable. When a bill becomes controversial, your goal as a mover of legislation is to get all the votes you need. And in the House, the leadership can afford to lose some Democrats and to not pick up any Republicans. Given that, I think we should expect it to happen pretty frequently on controversial pieces of legislation. In purely cynical terms, if there are members from vulnerable districts whose votes aren’t needed to secure a majority it makes perfect sense for the leadership to even instruct them to vote “no” in order to bolster their independence credentials so that they’ll be better positioned to take a tough vote if they’re really needed on some future bill.

A Conservative Who Understands Economics

(via Yglesias) Bruce Bartlett (Treas. Secy under Bush 41, and House Banking Cmte guy and Ron Paul and Jack Kemp staffer) writes in Forbes that the problem with FDR's deficit spending was that it wasn't big enough! Here's a conservative - and an economist - who understands that the conservative politicians are talking gobbelygook on Capital Hill.

Nevertheless, Republicans claim that today's fiscal stimulus is doomed to fail because the deficits of the 1930s didn't end the Great Depression. "We know for sure the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell asserted on Feb. 6.

The implication seems to be that the economy would have recovered faster from the Great Depression if the budget had been balanced. But as my calculations demonstrate, the true failure of the New Deal was that deficits were much too small, not too large.

Ironically, Republicans implicitly acknowledge the truth of this when they argue that "the only thing that brought us out of the depression was World War II," as Sen. John Ensign explained on Feb. 7.

Yet Republicans conveniently overlook the fact that it was massively larger budget deficits--which averaged close to 20% of GDP from 1941 to 1945--that were the principal contribution of the war to economic recovery.

Michael Pollan

Everyone should think about food and eating like Michael Pollan. I wish he was Secretary of Agriculture. A change in food policy is a damn near panacea. Listen to Pollan on Fresh Air (40min) or read this open-letter to Obama.

Adding to Pollan, (via Ezra) here's some more food policy you should know about.

Jill Richardson digs into the data and learns that about as much land goes to grow corn for high-fructose corn syrup as goes to grow fruits or vegetables:

The USDA site also says that 4.1% of U.S. corn goes for high fructose corn syrup. That means that since 29.9% of all U.S. cropland harvested was planted in corn in 2007, 1.2% of all U.S. cropland harvested in 2007 went for high fructose corn syrup. That's only slightly less than the 1.5% of U.S. cropland devoted to vegetables or the 1.6% of U.S. cropland devoted to [fruit] orchards.

Says something about our priorities. That comes via a Tom Philpott post running through some data showing that subsidies for high fructose corn syrup have merely a moderate impact on consumption.

SEXting

(via Syd O) Dahlia Lithiwick writes in Slate about the dangerous teenage "sexting" epidemic and how the justice system is too blunt an instrument to deal with the societal intricacies.

Sexting is the clever new name for the act of sending, receiving, or forwarding naked photos via your cell phone. I wasn't fully persuaded that America was facing a sexting epidemic, as opposed to a journalists-writing-about-sexting epidemic, until I saw a new survey done by the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The survey has one teen in five reporting he or she has sent or posted naked photos of himself or herself. Whether all this reflects a new child porn epidemic or just a new iteration of the old shortsighted teen narcissism epidemic remains unclear...
...The argument for hammering every such case seems to be that allowing nude images of yourself to go public may have serious consequences, so let's nip it in the bud by charging kids with felonies, which will assuredly have serious consequences.

Conservative Movies

(via Syd O/VH1) National Review has a list of Top 25 "conservative" movies ... Life of Others leads the list ... and the others are mostly good movies, but their "link" to conservatism is pretty hilarious and strained.

Here's another comment on it.

Obama's Team is Still a Work in Progress

First, Obama mishandles (I believe) the Stimulus package by 1) offering up too many concession to the thankless GOP off the bat; and 2) by allowing the House to have initial, and most of, the control over the details. At least we all know Obama is great at learning and adapting and we can expect he'll do better in the future.

Now, the Washington Post reports that Tim Geithner changed his mind at the last minute on how to structure the Bank Bailout Plan which lead to rolling out a vague proposal that landed with a thud. I understand his reasons - but again, maybe in the future he'll take the time to work a plan out before he unveils it ... that way he can define it before the stock market does.

UPDATE: Tom Toles has my comedic back

George Will Distorts Science

George Will's column yesterday talks about the "Global Cooling" scare of the 70s. The blogs are going nuts over a major pundit at a major newspaper getting off being so factually wrong. Here's Nate Silver's graphs, here's Ezra, here's TPM, here's Yglesias, here's Sullivan.

UPDATE: Still no word back from Will on making a false claim attributed to the UI Arctic Climate Research Center.

Family Farms Creep Back in Iowa

NYT editorial is after my own heart:

So it comes as a pleasant surprise to find in the 2007 Census of Agriculture that the number of farms in Iowa has risen to 92,856, a level last seen in 1992. Some 4,000 new small farms have been created since 2002. These are very small farms, 9 acres or less, and they are producing a much wider array of crops than the rest of Iowa, which specializes in corn and soybeans. Most have very local markets, not Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. And yet as new farms are being created, midsize farms go out of business. Consolidation at the highest level — big farms eating slightly smaller farms — continues.

The Long and Winding Road

Ross outlines the most probable, and patient, route for the GOP to find new - good - leadership. Ones with ideas, not just leaders who follow Rush Limbaugh and have nothing to say except "No!".

Whereas the GOP's leaders in Washington, your Mitch McConnells and John Boehners, owe their power entirely to backroom politics: Nobody loves them, nobody trusts them, and as a result they're in no position to execute the kind of pivots that the party needs to make.

Electric Cars and Windpower

(via Syd O) Oil Drum has a breakdown of the energy efficiency of cars.

Do We Still Abide by Torture Treaties?

Glenn Greenwald argues that we should prosecute our public figures (read Cheney, etc.) who authorized torture under the War on Terror. Also, he breaks down a recent Gallup Poll on a majority of American's who favor criminal investigations of Bush Administration activities. Lastly, John Yoo may finally get his do!

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

...[ALSO] ... Finally, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff -- echoing a report from John Yoo's Berkeley colleague Brad DeLong -- reports that an internal DOJ probe (initiated during the Bush administration) has preliminarily concluded that Bush DOJ lawyers who authorized torture (John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury) violated their professional duties as lawyers by issuing legal conclusions that had no good faith basis, and that this behavior will be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary action. Those conclusions so infuriated the allegedly honorable Michael Mukasey that he refused to accept the report until changes were made. Now it is up to Eric Holder to accept and then release that report.

It's Harder on Native Alaskans

(via Syd O) CNN reports on how the recession, climate change, and a series of factors are especially hurting native Alaskan populations. They rely on fuel to heat their homes and snowmobiles to hunt and travel, and the changing seasons are making hunting and fishing more difficult - and eggs cost $22! Many are starving and relying on school lunches for food. Palin and Murkowski are asking for a bailout or for BIA help in the matter.

Weekend Tab Dump

"The Iraq war hasn't been fought yet": Read Tom Ricks on re-evaluating our expectations for Iraq.

Read Frank Rich on Obama's political capitol.

Megan McCardle on the drop in consumer spending for food.

Tab Dump

Ethanol supply/demand is drying up

An insider's look at science funding and basic research.

Steve Pearlstein chides Wall Street for their thanklessness and shows how smart banks can make the most of their bailout money.

Yglesias on judicial term limits

The REAL Axis of Evil

I forgot to post this last week, but in case you didn't know, Pakistan released A.Q. Khan from house arrest last week. He's the Pakistani nuclear scientist who provided nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and (of course) Pakistan.

Old Time Politics from the Center

I meant to post this Douthat thought yesterday - I think he's exactly right ... and the more I listen to Spector, Collins and Snowe the more they prove that he's right.

The liberals are angry, and not without reason. You can imagine a world in which "centrist" Senators used their awesome deal-making powers to forge compromises that incorporate ideas from the left and right alike. A world in which moderate "gangs," in David Brooks' formulation, actually put meat on the bones of Barack Obama's promise to end politics as usual. A world in which Susan Collins, Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman emerged as ardent champions of, say, a stimulus approach divided evenly between billions in Keynesian spending and billions for the sort of payroll tax proposal that people like Larry Lindsey and Greg Mankiw have been championing - or some similarly wonky, high-concept policy compromise. A world of bipartisanship and postpartisanship and everything in between.

But that's not the world we live in. In this world, centrist Senators exist to take politics as usual - whether it's tax cuts in Republican eras, or spending splurges in Democratic ones - and make it ever so slightly more fiscally responsible. So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts - but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the "gang of moderates" have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.

Now fiscal responsibility is generally a good thing, and so a centrism mindlessly focused on tweaking legislation away from deficit spending has its uses. But what Nelson, Collins, Specter and Co. have done isn't a new kind of politics. It's the definition of politics as usual. And in this particular case, there's a reasonable argument that it's actively pernicious - that if you can't shrink the stimulus package much more substantially than the centrists have done, you shouldn't shrink it at all. There's a case to be made for a stimulus that's radically different than the one we have now; there's a case to be made for a stimulus that's like the one we have now, but a great deal smaller and more targeted; and there's a case to be made for a stimulus that's absolutely gargantuan. But thanks to the centrists, we're getting the cheapskate version of the gargantuan version: They've done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right - but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right.

This means that if the damn thing doesn't work, we won't even know whom to blame. But it wouldn't be crazy to start by blaming the centrists.

Another "Compensation" Question

I know I got hit in the comments for my rant against "compensation consultants" the other day. But here's another interesting point that may have been percolating in my sub-conscious and boiled over when I learned about the consultant. (via Ezra) here's Hertzberg at the New Yorker:

Why is that a manual worker gets paid wages and a middle manager or cop or teacher earns a salary, but a corporate boss condescends to accept “compensation”?

Compensation. I have to say, I get a little dizzy with disgust whenever I hear that word used to describe some C.E.O.’s pay envelope. “Compensation package” is even worse. What, exactly, are these people being “compensated” for? Are they victims of crime? Or is it the long hours, the loneliness, the inability to spend time with their children—so much more terrible than the plight of a middle-aged immigrant mother working double shifts as an office cleaner?

Ezra: It's actually a good question. Is CEO pay referred to as compensation because it encompasses so many perks and revenue streams that sit outside their yearly salary? Or is it just because they deserve it so much more than day laborers?

TARP 2

Ezra has the wrap-up on economists' take on Geithner's new plan.

Healthcare Provisions in the Stimulus

(via Dannel) This is the first I've heard of the "European-style socialist" healthcare provisions included in the Senate Bill. Betsy McCaughey at Bloomberg thinks Daschle's hand is behind it - and used the stimulus as a Trojan horse.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

The Slogan's Good ... but Sad

(via Cody)

Toon

More Bacon

(via Ezra Klein) Check this recipe out - and start looking forward to Thanksgiving.

Are Centrists Sabotaging Their Home State?

Yglesias is cynical enough to think it's possible:

Ed Kilgore reads an Arlen Specter op-ed and develops a hypothesis that might do something to explain how it is that the Senate “centrists” zeroed-in on the most-effective element of the stimulus package for elimination: “A cynic might observe that all of the four senators that Arlen Specter identifies as the organizers of the ‘centrist’ coup-by-amendment–himself, Ben Nelson, Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman–happen to come from states where the governor is of the other party.” Ed’s no cynic, I guess, but I am and I think this is important. I suppose it might be too cynical to suppose that the Gang of Four is deliberately trying to sabotage their states’ opposite-party governors. But at a minimum, you have to think that if there were political allies sitting in the relevant governor’s mansions that these legislators might have taken their calls and listened to good sense.

Dump Your Fridge

(via Syd O) I don't think I could go without the cold beer - but some enviros are ready to unplug their refridgerator.

Mental Health Moment via "The Wire"

Read Your Krugman

Krugman's mad at Obama and the "centrists" - and he has a Nobel in economics.

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

UPDATE: Read this McCardle post to hear why Krugman may be letting too much "theory" in.

Vilsack is Growing on Me

(via Ezra Klein) The Washington Post has a good interview with Tom Vilsack - and a lot of it sounds like he's been absorbing Mike Pollan-esque ideas. Good development from an Iowan!

Econ 101 for Congress

(via Armando) Steve Pearlstein has a great lead op-ed in the post today focusing on how many MOC's have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to economics.

My modest proposal is that lawmakers be authorized to hire personal economic trainers over the coming year to sit by their sides as they fashion the government's response to the economic crisis and prevent them from uttering the kind of nonsense that has characterized the debate over the stimulus bill during the last two weeks.

At a minimum, we'd be creating jobs for 535 unemployed PhDs. And if we improved government economic policy by a mere 1 percent of the trillions of dollars we're dealing with, it would pay for itself many times over.

That's a Big Snake

(via Cody) We've just discovered an ancient 1-ton, school bus long, anaconda ..... and it even offers some reason to be even more concerned about climate change.

Toon

Frustration Boils Over in Committee

MUST SEE: Check out this video of NY Rep. Gary Ackerman lashing members of the SEC for their incompetence in the Bernie Madoff deal.

Also, read Dana Milbank's account of Mr. Markopolos - the guy who "gift wrapped" the case for the SEC ... which in turn did nothing about it.

Shepard Fairey

If you've seen this image - you should take 15 minutes and listen to Charlie Rose interview the artist, Shepard Fairey.

[He also sort of made his name with the Andre the Giant image.]

Zinni Got Snubbed

Former CentCom Marine General Tony Zinni got snubbed for the Ambassadorship to Iraq (in favor of Chris Hill) and is pretty pissed about how he was treated.

The Sickness of it All

I was listening to NPR today about Obama's cap on executive compensation, and they had on a guy who ran a NYC Compensation Consulting Firm to talk about how many people would be affected by the $500K cap. A COMPENSATION CONSULTANT!! You're telling me he gets people to pay him to find out how much they should pay other people! Just like how the derivitive market made it possible for people to make money off of other peoples funny-money, this guy is making serious money because Wall St. fantasyland is so big that even the margins make people rich.

This epitomizes the mess on Wall Street and is a perfect example of why ordinary American's aren't a bit sympathetic to Wall Street Bankers who may have to tap into their savings to support the $10M bonus/lifestyle they've become accustomed to when their pay gets capped at $500K.

UPDATE: Fine, in response to VH1's defense of compensation consultants, I'd recommend going to glassdoor.com and post your salary online so the market can work accurately with data and without parasite consultants.

The Myth of an Effecient Car

(via Syd O) This article is really interesting - arguing that we need to abandon even trying to make more efficient cars because we need to abandon car culture completely and move toward a "20 minute" neighborhood.

A Penny Saved ...

... Is a penny earned. (via Medium) Watch this Tom Daschle video - it's ironic considering yesterday's news.

Toons

The DC Babysitting Co-op

In case you haven't read it - this is a fairly famous Krugman article in the blogosphere. It was written in 1998 but Slate recently republished it. Give it a read, it explains the psychological causes of recessions so simply - and is super pertinent today.

Change We Believed in 40yrs Ago

(via Ezra Klein) The L.A. Times reports that Jerry Brown - who was California's 36yo Gov'r in 1974 - is running again for the Governorship. It's a croweded, famous, field: Newsome, Villiaragrosa; and maybe Feinstein.

The picture above is pretty cool ... it's Brown's official portrait that sits in the State House.

Goodbye N. Korea - Hello Iraq

ABC News reports that Christopher Hill - the long time #1 nuke negotiator in North Korea - is taking over for Ryan Crocker as Ambassador to Iraq.

Just Wanted to Post This Picture

Muammar Qaddafi has now taken over the African Union's rotating post. He calls himself the "king of kings."

Some Reads on Obama

1) Annie Leibovitz shoot the Obama cabinet for Vanity Fair
2) Esquire does a cool profile on David Plouffe on college beer pong and what he's going to do with that 13Million strong supporter list
3) A great article on Obama and the "New Black Manhood" over at the Root