Crack Brain Zealot For Democracy

Great Quotes

Some quotes collected over the past few days around the blogosphere that deserve your attention:

Pres. Obama on the fight in 2010 and 2012:

So, I know everybody in the media is all in a tizzy -- "Oh, what's this going to mean politically?" Well, let me tell you something. If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have. (Applause.) If their best idea is to return to the bad policies and the bad ideas of yesterday, they are going to lose that argument. What are they going to say? "Well, you know, the old system really worked well; let's go back to the way it was"? That's not going to appeal to seniors who are now seeing the possibility of that doughnut hole finally closing and so they can finally get discounts on their prescriptions. (Applause.) That's not going to appeal to the small businesses who find out all the tax credits that they're going to get for doing right by their employees -- something that they have been wanting to do, but may not have been able to afford. It's not going to be very appealing to Americans who for the first time are going to find out that they can provide coverage to their children, their dependents, all the way up to the age of 26 or 27.

And that's why I'll be out there waging a great campaign from one end of the country to the other, telling Americans with insurance or without what they stand to gain -- (applause); about the arsenal of consumer protections; about the long-awaited stability that they're going to begin to experience. And I'm going to tell them that I am proud we are putting the future of America before the politics of the moment -- the next generation before the next election. And that, after all, is what we were sent up here to do: standing up for the American people against the special interests; solve problems that we've been talking about for decades; make their lives a little bit better; make tough choices sometimes when they're unpopular. And that's something that every one of you who support this bill can be proud to campaign on in November.

Now, I know that some of the fights we've been going through have been tough. I know that some of you have gotten beaten up at home. Some of the fights that we're going to go through this year are going to be tough as well. But just remember why each of us got into public service in the first place -- we found something that was worth fighting for. There was something we thought was important enough that we were willing to stand up in the public square, risk loss, risk embarrassment, because we knew in our hearts that something wasn't right, that we weren't in some measure living up to the American ideal, and that we thought that if we got involved and engaged in the democratic process, somehow we could make it a little bit better.

Jon Chait on the history of banking regulation in America:

Daniel Gross recently wrote an excellent piece for Slate about why we should ignore the banking industry's warnings about the bank tax. Basically, Gross argues that they are probably wrong now because they've always been wrong (at least about the dangers of regulation):

This rule dates almost to the beginning of American history. Many commercial banks in the United States opposed the creation of the first and second national banks of the United States in the late 18th and early 19th century. They saw the proto-central bank as competition, since it was essentially a congressionally chartered private bank that would compete with them. As a result, the United States, in contrast to economic rivals England and France, lacked a central bank in the 19th century—despite periodic banking panics and failures, the severity of which could have been mitigated by a central bank. It was only after the Panic of 1907 that forces were set into motion for the creation of a central bank. Would it surprise you to learn that many bankers and their political allies opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve? Didn't think so.

So to what can we attribute their cluelessness?

The simple explanation is that these guys don't know the first thing about their business, regulation, or history. Then again, maybe there are important factors of organizational psychology at work here. Industries, as a rule, don't like regulations that they didn't come up with on their own. They like to control their own environment. (You can praise the deliciousness of steak until you're blue in the face, and your 6-year-old will pronounce it "blech." Then one day, on his own, he decides to eat it and pronounces it "yummy.")

Matt Yglesias on why there's nothing new about neo-conservatism:

Robert Farley’s account of how national security hawks around the world re-enforce each other’s position, with each country’s version of Charles Krauthammer insisting that one more demonstration of implacable will can scare the other guys off, is a must-read. It’s also a reminder that there’s really nothing that’s “neo” about neoconservative foreign policy thinking.

Obviously, as a matter of historical fact it’s the case that a certain number of former liberals reacted to the dovish turn of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party by adopting more conservative ideas. But there’s nothing actually new in “neoconservative” thought. Their take on China, or their take on Iran, or their take on the Soviet Union, or their take on Saddam Hussein, is all the same and the same as the general take that the nationalistic right has in all countries—the enemy du jour is uniquely awful and compelled toward irrational and aggressive behavior, therefore we ourselves must behave in an irrational and aggressive manner lest we be overrun

Generals Krulak and Hoar on detention interrogation (via Attackerman):

A lone Nigerian caught with a bomb in his underwear is no match for FBI interrogators and skilled federal prosecutors – without resorting to torture, which violates our laws and subverts our values. Some assert that once suspects like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab get “lawyered up,” it will be impossible to get information from them about plots in progress. But FBI interrogators routinely crack tough suspects, even those with high-priced lawyers.

The assertion that suspects with lawyers never talk is simply wrong. Lawyers routinely encourage their clients to cooperate, especially in cases where suspects have been caught red-handed. And terrorists have proven eager to brag about their grand plans and al-Qaeda connections. Questioning in such cases has led to vital intelligence in the past – about sleeper cells in the United States, training camps in Afghanistan, and high-level terrorism suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Kevin Drum on the health care excise tax compromise:

Our story so far: one of the funding mechanisms for healthcare reform is an excise tax on expensive health plans, popularly known as the "Cadillac tax." As policy, it's a good idea: by taxing expensive plans, you provide an incentive to keep their costs down. As politics, though, it sucks: union health plans, which are often pretty rich, would get hit by the tax. And Democrats like unions.

So yesterday everyone compromised. The excise tax is still in the bill, but the cutoff for the tax was raised from $23,000 to $24,000, dental and vision were excluded, and implementation was delayed a couple of years to give unions more time to renegotiate their contracts. In other words, a policy beloved mostly by wonks and deficit hawks stayed largely intact and unions got only a few crumbs. Nonetheless, John Boehner (R–Ohio) thundered that it was the "latest in a long line of backroom payoffs and sweetheart deals." Sarah Palin tweeted that workers "should oppose their UnionBOSSES backroom deal." Even some liberals bought the framing: "I'm not about to pretend that the union deal was anything but interest group politics," said Ezra Klein.

But except for the sense in which everything in a democracy is interest group politics in one way or another, I don't buy it. This compromise doesn't give unions anything. All it does is slightly moderate a basically anti-union tax. If Democrats were really cutting backroom deals with union bosses, they never would have proposed the excise tax in the first place. Or they would have exempted union contracts completely. There are plenty of other ways to fund healthcare reform, after all. But we've gotten to a point in the United States where anti-union sentiment is so widespread that (a) proposing a tax that falls largely on unions, and then (b) reducing it a bit, is considered a grubby giveaway even by some lefties. Yeesh.

Last but not least, this:

Happy Health Care Day!

It's been nearly a month since I've posted an update here - blame my dissertation! blame Twitter! blame the slow pace of progress in the Senate! - so long that I've now got 100's of items saved in my Feed Reader for future comment. At this point, there's obviously no way I can get to all of them, but given that the end of the decade is fast approaching... and given the historic nature of today's vote in the Senate... I feel like I have no choice today but to try. So let's get to it!

On Health Insurance Reform:

We're nearly there people! The bill's not perfect, but no bill ever is. Social Security was far from perfect when it first passed. Medicare and Medicaid were far more modest than they are today. Civil Rights legislation was nowhere near perfect when it was first adopted. It took decades of fighting to create robust protections for our nation's parks and forests. Why? Because this is how democracy works. It is a method and a process, not an outcome. We fight. We argue. We talk. We convince. We stand up. We act. And then we do it all over again, each and every day, until it is time for the next generation to take the lead in the fight.

Is it messy? Yes. Is it contentious? Yes. Because it is supposed to be. Because it needs to be. If the fight was easy, it wouldn't be a fight. The status quo, no matter how wretched, never easily gives way. Creating change requires more energy than defending stasis. Know this. Understand it. Accept it. And never, ever let it prevent you from doing what needs to be done.

I understand why some people on the left are unhappy with this bill. But I cannot for the life of me figure out why they think its smart politics or policy to oppose it, or worse, to join with the most hideous elements on the right in an effort to see it killed. On that count, I'm with Nate: "Progressives Are Batshit Crazy To Oppose The Senate Bill." And with Josh: "In real politics, there are no opt-outs, only cop-outs." And with Max, with a nod to Matt, who wrote:

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth--that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.

To repeat myself, this bill isn't perfect. But it is, as John Chait wrote today, "the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades." And, as KDrum wrote, "the biggest progressive advance in my adult life." And, as John Cohn wrote, "the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation in a generation." And, as Ezra wrote, "arguably the most important piece of legislation the body has passed since 1963." This is an enormous achievement. Do not let your quest for your idea of the perfect blind you to the immense good that is happening right in front of your face. We're winning one of the most important political fights in more than a generation.

And while we're on the subject of Ezra, Jon, John, Kevin, Nate, and the rest of the wonky progressive bloggers around the 'sphere, let's be sure to also acknowledge just how much these guys have done to enlighten our nation's political debate. A decade ago, citizens who wanted to follow the ins and outs of our nation's policy debates quite literally had nowhere to turn. TV and print media covered the people and the politics, but they never - and here I am using that word quite deliberately - dug into the details of policy in anything even remotely approaching the level of detail that these bloggers have. Once, maybe twice during a debate you'd get a giant, multi-thousand word piece that attempted to cover the subject, but that's about it. And god help you if you happened to miss that day's edition, because there were no archives for you to return to.Today? Today you can read thousands of words a day, all part of an ongoing conversation that this nation's citizens are having with themselves. Ezra and Jon and Nate and others are leading a national clinic, and in so doing, are helping to re-democratize our nation's public sphere.

Nothing like this has ever existed before. What we are doing, what we are creating together, is something entirely new. The consequences for our system of government are immense, even if they aren't yet clear. Don't believe me?

But back to health care before moving on.... Do not underestimate what an historic achievement this will be. Ignore the cable teevee pundits. This issue represents a HUGE win for the left and for the Democratic Party. Some parts of the party are unhappy right now, but this will pass. Remember how divided we supposedly were during the primary? Remember how everyone said the wounds would not heal in time for the fall campaign? Remember how wrong all of those people were?

I know its fashionable to claim that Democrats don't know what they are doing. Ignore this too. With the help of the people - both activists and average citizens alike - the party is finding its soul and its spine again. Its leadership is rising to the occasion. Health care reform will be a huge issue next fall, and again in 2012. And I promise you, it will be an issue we will win on, both because we have the people on our side and because our opponents are so far beyond lost I don't have the words to describe them....

On the Continuing Collapse of the GOP:

State Attorneys General from several Southern states are planning to mount legal challenges to the law - never mind that the clause of the constitution they are citing makes explicit reference to ports

Congressional Republicans plan on making their opposition to health care the centerpiece of the upcoming campaign - never mind that their opposition comes without any positive proposals of their own.

Republican pundits, the people opinion polls consistently ID as the real leaders of the Republican Party, continue to hyperventilate about how this bill will end civilization as we know it - never mind that this tactic utterly failed them in the fall of 2008.

And its newest leading light, a morning zoo DJ turned political movement leader, is set on leading the effort to remove all the "Marxist code words" from the Bible. Because God knows his Son wasn't in favor of helping the poor. Or the sick. Or the downtrodden. Or the outcast. Or the weak. Or minorities. Or anyone other than himself, right?

Mark my words: The Republican Party is collapsing. If it does not pull itself out of this tailspin soon, it may soon cease to exist as a truly national political power. No political party is forever. The Federalist Party collapsed in the early 1800s under the weight of its own contradictions. The Whigs followed suit in the decade before the Civil War. The Populists misjudged their era and disappeared at the turn of the 20th century.

And then... something changed, and the two "major" parties reached a form of stasis. What was that change? In large part, I believe it was the rise of top down, national broadcast networks, a new system of political communication that privileged those in power over those now forced to watch from the outside. And that system of communication is dying. As a vertical system of one-to-many communication gives way to a horizontal system that interconnects the many unto itself, the elites are losing control. The information infrastructure atop which the last great party system was built is disappearing. And as it goes, it is entirely conceivable that it will take one of our nation's parties with it. It has happened before. It will happen again. And yes, that's precisely what my dissertation seeks to show.

Like the Federalists before it, the modern Republican Party is on the wrong wide of every major issue facing this country. It is opposed to universal health care. It is opposed to climate change legislation, even if it helps create jobs. It is opposed to any and all forms of non-punitive Immigration reform. It is opposed to the use of science in the creation of public policy. But its for tax cuts! And wars! And white people! It stands, in short, for the past, no matter how obviously disastrous that past is.

Political parties do not live forever. Like all living things, they must evolve or they must die. Denying the power of evolution does not make it go away.

On Realignments:

Republicans are becoming Democrats, and Democrats are becoming Republicans. Will this help the GOP find its way? I doubt it. But only time, of course, will tell.

Meanwhile, OFA, the organization that we built for the Obama campaign, is still out there, alive and well. We made 1 million calls to Congress over the past few months. We held more than 25,000 events in congressional districts. And now, our opponents are beginning to copy us. The future? Why, I think its already here.

On Obama:

Not surprisingly, I cannot say it better than this: Meep Meep, mutha fucka....

On the Filibuster:

Its nice to see people across the political world finally turning their attention to just how absurd and undemocratic this rule really is. James Fallows, Matt Yglesias, Mark Schmitt, and eventually even Pres. Obama himself have commented at length recently.

For me, its simple. The Senate is already ridiculously undemocratic. Despite the fact that California's two senators represent more than 12% of the US population, their votes count for only 2% of the US Senate. Meanwhile, despite the fact that the smallest 20 states have a population roughly equal to that of California, they hold 40 of the chamber's votes. Add Connecticut, and you've got enough under current Senate rules and practices to block any and all legislation.

Let me repeat myself: The smallest 20 states + Connecticut = a filibuster.

I think I'll leave it there for now.

On Climate Change:

Im running out of time for this update, so let's go to the links:

Uncertain about uncertainty? Read this.

What the hacked ClimateGate emails do - and do not - show.

Scientific American offers Seven Answers To Climate Contrarian Nonsense

How Science is supposed to work.

A climate skeptic's conversion.

Bits and Bobs:

Zen and the Art of Politics

A solution to the black carbon problem?

The Bright Side Of $26 Drone Hacks? Makes me wonder if it wasn't intentional.

Michelle Bachmann is a welfare queen!

Teddy Roosevelt is still a badass.

RedState's Erick Erickson is still a moron.

Donald Duck loves taxes.

Even in Obama's socialist utopia, taxes are still at historic lows.

And Obama, no matter what pundits might say, is still, in the one way that matters most, like Reagan. Believe it.

I'm out. Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Peace....

On Lieberman

Has anyone out there in pundit land considered the very real possibility that CT Senator Lieberman might be deliberately undermining Democrats before switching parties in advance of his 2012 re-election effort?

Also, why aren't Dems rolling out the Republican "nuclear option" playbook from 2005? I'm not suggesting they should use it, necessarily. But as a trial balloon, it might help clarify things for the ridiculously named "moderates" in the Senate.

UPDATE: Jon Chait offers another hypothesis: Lieberman isn't devious; he's just dumb.

UPDATE II: Ezra Klein looks to have gotten into a tangle with one of his colleagues at the Post. After detailing how their only disagreement appears to be around the fact that Ezra followed the facts they agree on to their logical conclusion, he writes something that everyone must read:

We have a very sterile policy debate in this country. We talk about things in terms of costs, not lives. It's the equivalent of conducting wars from the air: You hide the damage. That might be helpful, in some cases. Too much passion can impede clear thinking. But we run the danger of forgetting the implications of our actions. It's fine to speak in terms of costs so long as we do not forget to think in terms of lives. 

Joe Lieberman is insured. Chuck Lane is insured. I am insured. If we get sick, we can go to the doctor. Studies show that our risk of death is substantially lower than those who are uninsured, as is our risk of medical bankruptcy, and chronic pain or impairment. Health-care reform, with or without the public option and the Medicare buy-in, will extend coverage to more than 30 million people. It will improve the coverage of tens of millions more. 

The debate over this policy is whether it cuts the deficit, but the point of this policy is that it saves lives. Making that clear using numbers derived from the best empirical evidence we've had is not venomous. It's responsible. Threatening to sink the effort because you don't like a small corner of it is morally irresponsible. And we columnists should not grow so accustomed to the forced courtesies of Washington that we forget how to say so. 

Not too long ago, Lieberman agreed that these lives were far too important to be sacrificed due to political pique. “Every campaign, as President Clinton reminded us, is about the future," Lieberman said in a 2006 debate against Ned Lamont. "And what I'm saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance." 

If this is doing more, I'd hate to see doing less.

I've come to believe that this tendency to view everything from an antiseptic 30,000 ft view-from-nowhere has, more than anything else, destroyed the trust Americans once had in the news media. And by extension, the trust they once had in their political system. If every policy story is presented in cold, impersonal terms, over time it is only natural for people to conclude the details of policy simply do not matter. It's all presented as if its a big interpersonal drama, with the only effects felt by elite political actors who aren't actually affected by the issues they are debating. 

But that's just not how things actually work. This government is our government. It is no more and no less than what we make it, together, each and every day. And this policy debate is a perfect example of that. This isn't about the Senate. It isn't about the President. It is about us. And although it might not be convenient for either our political or media elites, in our 21st century America, some of our fellow Americans die each and every day because they do not have health insurance. Saying that might make people uncomfortable. But so what? It should. 

Why does one of the writers at the Washington Post think it is a "venomous smear" to point out that Joe Lieberman's personal grudge will in point of fact cause some people to needlessly die. He doesn't disagree with Ezra on the facts. In fact, he accepts that studies show that "the lack of health insurance contributed to the deaths of 137,000 people between 2000 and 2006." Each and every day, more than 50 Americans die, Lane admits, because they were unable to get the care they needed. But connect that to Lieberman's endless need to delay things, and oh my! Ezra has just gone much too far. But why? What is journalism for if not speaking truth?

It might be uncomfortable for everyone to think about public policy is like this, but to repeat myself: so what? If it makes you uncomfortable to deal with the world as it is, don't become a journalist. Or a politician. Go do something else that better suits your fragile nature. 

UPDATE III: Via Ezra, a video from just 3 months ago of Lieberman strongly endorsing the Medicare buy-in that his principles demand he reject today: Ezra adds:

I'm still awaiting an explanation of how it's principled for Lieberman to threaten to derail a bill that will save more than a hundred thousand lives because it includes a policy he supported as recently as three months ago.

And then this, via Twitter:

If all these insured people think health care insurance doesn't reduce mortality, why do they buy so much of it?

I can't wait to hear the answers to that last one! UPDATE IV: At this point, this really is just a long "go read Ezra" post. But in the interest of covering the entire debate today... another must read from Ezra. FINAL UPDATE: None of this should be read as a suggestion that Dems bail on the reform project. As I've said on numerous occasions: public option, no public option; Medicare expansion, no Medicare expansion, it doesn't matter. Passing this bill is the beginning, not the end. If you don't think it goes far enough, that's great! Go out and fight for it, both before and after passage. But to suggest that the whole thing should be scrapped so that we can start over? That's as ridiculous as what Lieberman is doing. You go to reform with the political system you have, not the one you wish you had. The world isn't perfect. Welcome to adulthood.

Bye Bye Huckabee!

So if it turns out that this is the guy who shot four cops in Washington, Mike Huckabee is done:

Maurice Clemmons, the 37-year-old Tacoma man being sought for questioning in the killing of four Lakewood police officers this morning, has a long criminal record punctuated by violence, erratic behavior and concerns about his mental health.

Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.

...Clemmons' criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.

Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child...

In 1990, Clemmons, then 18, was sentenced in Arkansas to 60 years in prison for burglary and theft of property, according to a news account. Newspaper stories describe a series of disturbing incidents involving Clemmons while he was being tried in Arkansas on various charges.

...When Clemmons received the 60-year sentence, he was already serving 48 years on five felony convictions and facing up to 95 more years on charges of robbery, theft of property and possessing a handgun on school property. Records from Clemmons' sentencing described him as 5-foot-7 and 108 pounds. The crimes were committed when he was 17.

Clemmons served 11 years before being released.

News accounts say Huckabee then commuted Clemmons' sentence, citing Clemmons' young age at the time the crimes were committed.

When I made my previous predictions about Huckabee's future, I certainly did see this. Thankfully, I didn't put any money down. Whew!

UPDATE: Huckabee's first response is to blame the justice system? I mean, sure... the second time around, there were most definitely screw ups. But the fact remains: had Huckabee not commuted the guy's sentence, he'd never have committed the second round of crimes.

Remember, its his party thats spent the last 40 years posing as manly men who are tough on crime. Its his party that turned Willie Horton into a name everyone knows. You made your bed...

Weekend Bits + Bobs

Got a ton of posts saved in the clippings folder. Might as well clear 'em all out while watching some football....

+ I keep hearing from all my conservative friends that deficits are going to be Obama's undoing. Ignoring for the moment that conservatives have absolutely no credibility whatsoever on this issue... and ignoring for the moment that the current federal debt as a percentage of GDP is only slightly higher than it was at the end of the first Bush presidency... Obama hasn't yet completed his first year in office. He's got plenty of time to tackle this problem. And - shocking! - he's already planning to!

+ This might fall under the "things you already know" category, but its still worth a review. Attackerman offers this conclusion from a new Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation on how bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001:

The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.

+ Meanwhile... Socialism!

"We need to start thinking like the Chinese," [Glenn] Beck said at a recent rally. "I’m developing a 100 year plan for America."

But its Obama we're supposed to be afraid of, right?

+ Sen. Lieberman won't appear on Rachel Maddow's show because she has a "point of view." Good to know. So I assume from now on he will only do interviews with robots?

+ Why are bills so long? Combine this, this, and this and you have the answer.

+ This one is for my California people. Ummm... What the hell is wrong with you? Would you please do something about this?

+ Tom Schaller offers a great response to the Tea Party / Tenthers here.

+ This tweet from Sen. Claire McCaskill is a few weeks old, but it deserves a second look:

After you do one really, really big, really, really hard thing that makes everybody mad, I don't think anybody's excited about doing another really, really big thing that's really, really hard that makes everybody mad

I hear this all the time from politicians, and no matter how many times it is repeated, it never makes any sense. What's the point of getting elected to office if you don't want to do hard things? No one forced you to run for office. It was your choice to run now, during a time of economic crisis, and not later. If the country has lots of "really, really hard things" that need to be done, its your job. Suck it up and deal! As Ezra says, "they can solve fewer problems when there are fewer problems to solve." Which, you know, is what will happen if they actually do the job they were elected to do.

And please... don't come back to me with this "I might not get reelected!" nonsense. The point of getting elected isn't to enable some future reelection effort. Its to get things done. I'd love to have a permanent Democratic majority, but not if it doesn't actually lead to policy change.

+ Via Andrew Sullivan, this is the best fact check I've yet seen of Palin's new book:

“That is the most cockamamie bullshit. She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn’t know what it was about," - Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants’ civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp.

+ This, however, is the quote of the month:

"I meet with the gays here and there. They were in my house two weeks ago. I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time," - Utah Senator Chris Buttars, explaining his opposition to allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.

+ Back to Andrew Sullivan for a strange but nevertheless typical defense of states' rights:

Because these are areas of deep and principled disagreement and this is a vast and diverse country. Getting Massachusetts and Alabama to agree on a deep moral issue is almost impossible. And I remain a conservative who wants to see necessary change occur as far as possible with as broad a consensus as possible and who believes that decisions made closest to the ground are the least worst ways of avoiding massive errors or hideous unintended consequences.

He's right about the problem of settling deep moral issues in a country as large and diverse as this. But... why are states the best political unit in which to locate these decisions? Why not counties? Or metro areas? Or some other, much smaller political unit? State lines, after all, weren't originally drawn up along demographic lines. They were entirely arbitrary decisions made by people who weren't even remotely local. What the lines drawn by King George, for example, have to do with today's political questions? I'll tell you what: Nothing. And yet you hear this sort of thing from states' rights people all the time. I just don't get it.

+ And last but in no way least... two must read posts from TNC. Here's a fantastic take on the role of the MC and the DJ in hip hop culture. And here's a must-read on how Palin supporters misunderstand the role of fear in politics. It's so good I have to quote the conclusion:

People misunderstand fear. It doesn't always cause your foes to cower in a corner. Sometimes it causes them to beat the crap out of you with a bag of rusty nails.

The Sounds of a Civil War

Great quote from Glenn Beck on the idea that he might run for president with Sarah Palin:

BECK: Please can we not? (CROSSTALK) No, no I’m just saying — Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine, can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? What? Come on! She’d be yapping or something, and I’d say, “I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.”

CO-HOST: You’d you have to live up to evil conservative stereotypes, you’d have no choice but to do so.

BECK: I’d have to.

Anyone who thinks this all ends well for the conservative movement just really isn't paying attention. When all of the leaders of your party care more about publicity than they do about politics, you've got a serious problem. When the only thing they seem to care about is publicity, you've got a disaster in the making.

Eventually, someone will emerge on the right who actually cares about the content of their party's policy. When that happens, the first order of business will be to take on hucksters like Beck, Palin, and Dobbs. Like the intra-party fights among Democrats in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it wont be pretty. But like them, its also inevitable.

Friday Night Bits + Bobs

No reason not a guy can't watch baseball and blog at the same time....

+ Jon Chait comes around to my "if you take the longview, Obama's doing just fine" point of view.

+ Moments like this are precisely why I have no - and by no I mean none, zero, zip, zilch, nada - worried about the 2010 or 2012 elections.

+ Peter Beinart, however, is still clueless. To suggest that liberals should "lay off Obama" is to completely misunderstand how progressive politics work. Our system was designed to make change very, very hard. Without constant pressure from the left, conservative forces will inevitably dominate. So as always, please ignore Beinart.

+ I've never paid much attention to Alex Castellanos, both because I very rarely watch CNN and because I think Castellanos' is a dick. Hunch confirmed.

+ Why don't I watch CNN? Yglesias nails reason #1. Ezra nails reason #2.

+ Why do polls say that Americans think crime is on the rise? If you ask me, its because polls no longer, and perhaps have never, accurately measured how the public feels about anything beyond how they plan to vote. I mean, what to make of this poll from FoxNews? Does anyone anywhere actually think this is measuring a pre-existing attitude? Of course not. And that's one of the big problems with polls - the evidence that they measure pre-existing attitudes is almost entirely nonexistent. And yet people spend millions on them.

+ Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), meanwhile, is straight up insane. Expect much more of this as we move into a new, 1790's partisan political system.

+ Oh look! Here's more! But again, everyone should start getting used to this sort of thing. Because in our new world of hyper-partisan media (like this blog!), this is going to become the new normal. Which is what my dissertation is all about.

+ Also, this! The more hyper-partisan the media gets, the more we will see parties moving towards their respective bases. So this study should be seen as a sign of a beginning, not an end. The problem for the GOP, as Eric Kleefeld implies here, is that the positions of the great uninformed middle are much, much closer to those of the Democrats than of Republicans. To which I would add: the GOP needs to be very, very careful about where it heads the next few years. Should they take the Palin path, I suspect they may find themselves facing a similar future to the Federalists and the Whigs. When was the last time you had a chance to vote for one of them?

+ Last but not least, just because:

OK, back to the game.

Mitt Romney?

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has a post up today detailing the 7 things Mitt Romney is "doing right" in preparation for another run at the presidency. I can't say I necessarily disagree with the rightness of any of these things, but... isn't this all beside the point? I mean, when Romney ran in 2008 he got beaten nearly everywhere he ran. And not because of the inside baseball stuff that Marc lists here, either. What killed his campaign was that Republican primary voters didn't want to vote for him!

Now sure, I suppose its possible that his fanboy staffers are right in their theory that 2012 will be "different" from 2008, but.... what about everything that has gone on in the Republican Party since last fall makes anyone think that the party's base is becoming more reasonable in its outlook, and not less? What am I missing here?

Gov. Kenneth Jindall

I'm expecting SNL will be on it this weekend. But until then, well.... here's Kenneth's response to Jindal's response to Obama. Nice touch finding the same time for him to wear.

UPDATE: 

Blue Mountains

If like me you believe that the Mountain West is well on its way towards turning deep blue, you should be very concerned about this. Not in 2012 necessarily, but still...