Buck Naked Politics

Jobs Bill Coming?

by Bill Kavanagh: OK... this could be a little ray of sunshine. Probably little is the operative word, but little is better than none. The Senate will bring a jobs bill to the floor soon. The best news is that Byron Dorgan will co-write the bill. He's got nothing to lose by saying what he really thinks, having stepped back from seeking re-election.

The $174 billion House bill would provide some relief, but not the large program needed. One can hope the Senate can come somewhere near that, but it will doubtless be stuck short of a huge effort to end our rampant unemployment. Look for some way to make this bill into a deficit-neutral scenario instead of in-your-face help for the jobless.

(H/T to Ezra Klein for this)

(Bill cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond.)

Friday Night Highlights for the Stay-Home Set

by Bill Kavanagh: I guess Brad DeLong's Friday night was pretty dull, but it's all to our benefit this morning. His "Ten Economics Pieces Worth Reading: January 9, 2010" is a helpful scan through our current situation, financial reform, the commercial real estate bubble, big bank breakup proposals, the economics of the New Deal, China's stability, deficit reduction, and a few other things.

Personally, I didn't read anything last night, but did watch Bill Moyers Journal, which featured David Corn and Kevin Drum on financial reform (and why we'll not get any real reform). They laid out the basic reasons why Congress does Wall Street's bidding: money, money, and money. It's pretty hard to argue with their analysis when one considers how complex financial reform tends to be and how easy it is for financial firms to evade restrictions with a word change here and there— and a contribution here, there, and everywhere.

As a personal aside, I'm fascinated by how Kevin Drum has transformed into a Washington journalist in the seven or so years since I started reading his Left Coast "Calpundit" blog — and has even started wearing suits and ties. I'm not sure the sartorial changes are for the best, but it's great to see his work on magazine covers and network television (PBS is network television, right?).

(Bill cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond.)

Afghanistan Stimulus Plan

by Bill Kavanagh: I'm thinking about Afghanistan this morning. Not so much because I'm a real foreign policy wonk... mostly I'm thinking about it because I read a blog called Here and Far, which my blog-friend Matt Mabe and his girlfriend Molly write. Matt is stationed in Gardez, Afghanistan and Molly is a writer here in the US. Matt is battling not only the Taliban, but also the depressing holiday angst that comes with going without his home, his girlfriend, his family, and the security which comes with waking up in a bed no one is presently trying to shell.

My heart goes out to Matt and to Molly.

Keeping Faith

by Bill Kavanagh: Today, with our spirit beaten down by two long wars, an economic collapse, and a seemingly paralyzed political process; we wait for the President’s speech on Afghanistan. We’ve become restless and fearful now, still waiting, but less hopeful for the big changes we thought would be coming after we threw off the chains of our former right wing leaders. Many of us are out of work; many are underwater in our homes.

Despite the trepidation we feel about the future, there are reasons to hope that yes, we can, in fact, make a better America and a better world for our children. The first one is remembering that we did elect someone because he inspired hope. Whether or not he lives up to our high expectations, Barack Obama is in the White House because he embraced hope and change. His campaign succeeded largely on the premise that this democratic experiment in the United States still had the potential to be reinvigorated by our participation in it. Across racial, age and economic boundaries, Americans responded to that premise, with the belief that yes, we could make a more progressive and vital America.

Progressives Ponder Obama's Nobel Prize Win for Not Being George W. Bush; Others Enjoy Wingnut-Baiting Bonus

by Damozel | Neener neener! Ha ha ha! (as Big Tent Democrat is wont to say, speaking for me only). 

Many progressives are disturbed by the award.  Tas of Comments from Left Field calls it ridiculous.  .

If the “feeling” about Obama is the “game changer”, then why not award the Nobel Peace Prize to the entire American electorate?  After all, we’re the ones whose feelings have changed — as shown by us collectively doing as much as possible to remove Republicans from power in Washington and treat the world better....

This prize should only be awarded to those who, as can be shown empirically, brought more peace to the world.  To throw the prize at Obama — or anybody else — who simply causes the Nobel committee to “feel good” only cheapens the award.

Maria of Crooked Timber wrote the post to which Tas is reacting.

[T]his isn’t about domestic politics, or about what he’s done yet. President Obama has changed how the world feels about America. He’s lifted the planet’s mood. This guy is global Prozac.

Aboat Free Health Care: Canadians Defend Their Single-Payer System Like the Wild-Eyed Ranting Socialists They Are

by teh nutroots |   Oi, teabaggers!  Time to stick your fingers in your ears and sing, "LALALALALALA"!  The blogger who made this video tried to find even one Maple Leafer who would say something negative about their system, and came up empty.  But what else do you expect from a nation of people who go on saying "aboat" when it's clearly spelt "about"? 

Nobody Does It Better: in Which Bloggers Consider the Dismaying of MoDo, the Throwing of Progressives Under the Bus, & the Usual Wingnut Loonies

by bartleby the scrivener |  On the dismaying of MoDo by internet bloggers who hide behind pseudonyms ("On the Internet, it’s often less about being constructive and more about being cowardly," writes Dowd),  Bats Left, Throws Right rejoins:

Y'know, thirty-five years ago news media strode the earth like a Colossus. And from that vantage point they saw bigger profits on the horizon from cable, and space phones, and billboards on the Moon, and, especially, unfettered mergering and acquistioning and other rapining. And they decided that the Supermarket Tabloid model of making shit up was an unfair advantage, costing them literally hundreds of dollars a week in fact-checking. Pretty soon you can't say Time without the guy sitting next to you on the bus replying, "Warner." And what happens? When there are no standards left, aside from that byline thing, people discover they can make shit up for themselves and cut out the middle-man.... 

.And we learn in short order that there're 40,000 people who can write better than you, would do it for less, and can produce coherent thought without a Blackberryfull of "sources".  (The New Maureen Dowd Signature Line Of Donkey Appendage Strap-ons)

Media Morons Heart the Tea-bagging Fools of the Party of No: A Compendium of Progressive Snarkery

by Teh Nutroots | curv3ball over at The Toot, commenting on the relationship between astroturfers and attendant loonies and our useless media:

The stupid has reached supernova and all the media can do is applaud the ability of those firing up the stupid to capture the media’s attention with a particularly shiny stupid.  Rather than, you know, point out that stupid mendacity is actually stupid and mendacious, and its purveyors likewise (or, in the alternative, cynical and mendacious). ("Nobody Dumbs It Better")

TBogg:

A coalition of 'concerned citizens'...have banded together to make sure that abortion funding is not included in whatever half-assed  health care plan the gutless Democrats finally cobble together. The idea being that....women will wake up in the morning and be all, "Hmm.... should I go to the mall or have an abortion today?" because woman just love abortin',  particularly if it's free, just like a makeover at M•A•C.

Abortion is only for those who can afford it. The uninsured Poors will just have to have their babies.

The cycle of poverty demands it. (Keeping Abortion Out of the Reach of the Riff-Raff)

Gah. Megan McArdle, Glibertarian, Live at WaPo

by Teh Nutroots | Gah. Whoever offered her a platform at The Washington Post needs to be forced to read her musings every day for the next year as a penance. 

McArdle: "Facts I Did Not Know"

TBogg:  "We're gonna need a bigger internet."  

Even so.  If you want a break from reality, catch McArdle in the process of demonstrating how much her reach-- as TBogg points out (though he's funnier) -- exceeds her grasp.

Update:  TBogg reviews McArdle (First we get rid of all the sick people.  Then we won’t need insurance. Profit!)  "I think, after this, we can officially designate Megan McArdle as the America's Stupidest Blogger™."

Brad at Fire Megan McArdle:  "Note that every single number she came up with to support her argument was hypothetical, and based on willful ignorance of reality..."

Susan of Texas: "A hypothetical is not a statistic. A statistic is a fact that can be verified, not a guess, and McArdle just admitted she made a guess. That guess was the entire basis for her argument against health care reform."

Farewell and Fare Well to the Lion: Progressives and Others Mourn Sen. Kennedy's Death (Collected Valedictions)

by Damozel |  We shall not see his like again. Quoting Kennedy himself, Lance Mannion says simply:  "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."  "The wind takes the lion," says bmaz of Emptywheel.  As PZ Myers writes, "[m]ay we have many more Massachusetts liberals to take his place."

Via Huffington Post:  Obama called him "the greatest senator of our time."  Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that he was admired around the world as "the Senator of Senators" and that he will be mourned on every continent. 

Sen. John Kerry said he was "the best senator, the best advocate you could ever hope for, the best colleague and the best person to stand by your side in the toughest of times."

More reactions from political figures-- including Netanyahu, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Reagan, Orrin Hatch, George H.W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and others -- are here.

Everything that's Wrong with the Media: Marc Ambinder on Why Progressives Are Always Wrong

by bartleby the scrivener | So. Tom Ridge confirms what progressives have long known to be true. Here's Marc "Divide the Baby in Half" Ambinder to confirm why you must never again rely on our "free press" to protect democracy.

Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong.  Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence.  But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration's pronouncements. And yet -- we, too, weren't privy to the intelligence. (emphasis added)

Marcy Wheeler saw that one off in fine style.

Turn to the Left: a Bloggerama

by Damozel | Demosthenes at Shadow of the Hegemon has published the letter of Grand Ayatollah Husein Ali Montazeri calling on the Iranian government to respect all views and to restore the people's confidence, and warning the instruments of oppression that "receiving orders will not excuse them before God."  Good commentary as well. 

Quiddity "agrees" with Jonah Goldberg:  Obama should do something about Iran.  But what?  "Let's start with bombing Tehran. That'll send the mullahs a message that can't be ignored and will no doubt lead to a satisfactory resolution of the issue."  At Alas, a Blog, Jeff Fecke explains exactly why meddling won't work.  Among other things, "Mousavi is not a liberal reformist who wants warm ties with America."

Buck Naked Bloggerama: Recommended Reads

by Damozel | Robert Stein at Connecting.the.Dots on the Palin-Letterman feud: "The Great Cultural Divide has split wider open with the Queen of Low-Rent Resentment and the Sultan of Snark in open warfare, leaving those who still hope for rational public discourse waiting for it all to go away so we can talk about boring subjects like health care reform and saving the economy...Yet somewhere between Sarah Palin's aggressive anti-elitism and David Letterman's snidely assumed superiority, there is an issue beyond the need of politicians and media figures to keep calling attention to themselves--questions of privacy and boundaries."

Brit blogger and Modern History lecturer Alex Goodall is happy Paul Krugman thinks the Brits have got a pretty good stimulus plan.  Wish we could say the same.

Michael Boh at Our Rants & Raves! has written about the multiple ironies embedded in right wing extremism.

Progress-speak: A Buck Naked Bloggerama

by Damozel | At Shadow of the Hegemon, Demosthenes has some great discussion of the Iranian election debacle and the ensuing anger (discussed here at BN-Pol):  see here, here, here, and here.   Psyche, Science, and Society has a great news round-up of the ongoing turmoil. 

Libhorn at Godless Liberal Homo is disgusted that Gordon Brown, like Barack Obama, is treating the Uighurs like pariahs. Libhorn reckons that this makes GB officially a Tory.  (But then what does it make Obama?)

Quiddity at Uggabugga deconstructs David Broder's quest for super-duper bipartisanship, because somebody needs to.  Quiddity's also happy to see Michael Steele "standing up for the beleaguered white man."

Ronald Reagan, the Consumer Culture, and "The New Frugality"

 by Damozel | Paul Krugman discusses Reagan's role in bringing about the current fiscal crisis through his disastrous policy towards Savings and Loans.  As he points out, we weren't always a nation of spendthrifts; back in the 1970's, most people managed to save about 10 percent of their income. 

The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

Murdered Doctor Target of Campaign by Bill O'Reilly; Meanwhile, Wingnuts Celebrate Success of Domestic Terrorism, While Right-Wing Hypocrites Speedily Try to Distance Themselves

by Damozel | While the trigger of the gun that murdered George Tiller in his church was pulled by one Scott Roeder, but it also seems that the so-called "abortion doctor" was the target of an ongoing campaign by Bill O'Reilly. At Salon, Gabriel Winant writes:

When his show airs tomorrow, Bill O'Reilly will most certainly decry the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife. Tiller, O'Reilly will say, was a man who was guilty of barbaric acts, but a civilized society does not resort to lawless murder, even against its worst members. And O'Reilly, we can assume, will genuinely mean this.  (emphasis added)

Can we assume it?  All righty then. 

Maj. Gen. Taguba: Abu Ghraib Photographs Censored by Obama Show Rape "and Every Indecency"

by Damozel | The conservative British paper, The Telegraph, reports:

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged....

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts...Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed..

Gallup: GOP Loses Credibility with All Demographic Groups Nationwide Except Regular Churchgoers; Michael Steele Still Invoking Reagan

photo by Deb Cupples

by Damozel | As Daniel Larison puts it:  "Not to worry -- pretty soon, no Republicans will be influential."  He says that like it's a bad thing.  Okay, I'm kidding:  it is a bad thing.  My daddy used to say, "An airplane can't fly with just one wing."  A principled conservativism is a good thing.  Political discourse means you have to have a dialogue.  Where are the conservatives capable of anything but ranting to the grandstand (meaning Rush and the dittoheads).

So.  Gallup reports:

Colbert Interviews Blogger & McCain Daughter Meghan McCain

 Should she lick Stephen's face, as a friend advised her, especially since he went to the trouble to have himself flavored in teriyaki and chipotle?  

Meanwhile, she's pro-sex, pro-life, and pro-gay marriage and Stephen is determined to turn her into a Republican before the show is over.  After the jump...

Snark on Toast: Venal Politicians, Crappy Taste; Shorter All the Defenders of Dick Cheney's Lies; the Omnipotence of Obama & His Childlike Faith in Insurance Companies; Following the Money

by Teh Nutroots | British libertarian Vindico isn't only disgusted by British MPs who divert taxpayer money to their own ends; he also objects to their taste in taxpayer-funded gewgaws:

Not only are our MPs up to their receding hairlines in the Parliamentary trough, but they also appear to have no taste whatsover...

John Reid claimed for a pouffe and a glittery loo seat on MPs' expenses...