Link blag

The Economist looks at America's fiscal deficit.

Ezra Klein explains how the filibuster morphed into a routine 60 vote requirement, which was eye opening for me.

Later he bemoans the neglected House. One wonders whether Ezra would be making the same argument if we had a Speaker Gingrich or Speaker Delay.

FiveThirtyEight eyes European intolerance.

Kurt Vonnegut was hard-as-nails badass.

The top 20 unfortunate lessons girls learn from Twilight.

People eating Bhut Jolokia, world's hottest pepper.

Today's kid reporter winner had an odd reaction.

Proposed amendments to BaucusCare

Egads

Link blag

Earlier I linked to Keith Hennessey's analysis of Obama's tax proposals, but Conor Clarke says taxing income earned and kept abroad is not being proposed. According to him, it only ends IRS deductions on investments abroad for which the income is kept abroad.  That plan makes sense to me.

Politico: Defense Budget Baloney; spending his higher than the topline figures that get quoted.

ThinkProgress notes that Obama's budget eliminated abstinence funding .

Megan: "there is probably a special place in hell reserved for politicians who betray our nation's most helpless children for the benefit of a sullen and recalcitrant teacher's union."

Larison contrasts neoliberalism with neoconservatism.

At last, a good argument against capitalism.

Awkward family photos.

Link blag

Carlos Miller:

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Cato: School Strips Student Of Clothes, Rights...

School officials searched Savana’s backpack, finding no evidence of drug use, drug possession, or any other illegal or improper conduct. They then took the girl to the nurse’s office and ordered her to undress. Not finding any pills in Savana’s pants or shirt, the officials ordered the girl to pull out her bra and panties and move them to the side. The observation of Savana’s genital area and breasts also failed to reveal any contraband. [...] The Supreme Court granted the school district’s petition for review.

TIME: The G-20's Hidden Issue: A Global Trade Imbalance...

world leaders have been blaming the crisis on the immediate villains: banks, investors and derivatives traders who took on more risk than they could handle. A regulatory structure that failed to notice the problems. A global consumer delusion that the bubble could expand forever.

Largely left out, however, is the vital role that trade balances played in igniting the crisis in the first place. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has been spending far more than it has earned, sending huge sums of capital overseas, a dynamic measured as the current account deficit.

Ezra Klein: AMATEUR HOUR FOR THE HOUSE GOP...

this budget demonstrates the difficulty of building a minority platform. Serious players who might introduce moderating pressures are not, after all, interested in expending resources to better a piece of off-year messaging. AARP would probably have a lot to say to John Boehner if he proposed voucherizing Medicare from the majority but will probably ignore the fact that it was in Paul Ryan's fake budget. The Chamber of Commerce would have a few concerns about the repeal of the stimulus package if they thought it might happen. But with all those groups ignoring it, the GOP's budget was influenced mainly by the party faithful even as it was delivered straight to the media.

Which gets to the real import of the budget: Something has really gone awry in the House GOP's political operation. They should not have released this document. They certainly shouldn't have released its inane predecessor. And they certainly shouldn't have scheduled their press conference for April Fool's Day.

More Ezra Klein: CAN WE LIMIT THE THREAT FROM BIG BANKS RATHER THAN THEIR SIZE?...

Kevin Drum, who's been skeptical about reforms to limit bank size, is intrigued by William Buiter's proposal to accomplish much the same thing by enacting regulations that increase capital requirements as banks grow in size. "This accomplishes two things," says Kevin. "(1) it puts natural downward pressure on bank size since higher capital requirements reduce leverage and profitability, and (2) if a bank gets big anyway, the higher capital ratio makes it less likely to fail and cause systemic problems."

Will Wilkinson smokes pot, and he likes it.

ThinkProgress: Ann Coulter April Fools

Our future robot overlords are already conducting scientific research on their own.

Customers who buy condoms also buy...

George Will's falsehoods

February 15: strike one

February 27: strike two

April 2: strike three

Plus a prior history from before I read him regularly.

He has good insights on other topics (such as Sarah Palin), but these climate falsehoods have gone too far.  I must protest, you can't go around spreading these kind of untruths and get away with it -- especially in a major newspaper that's supposed to, you know, check facts and post corrections.

For sane heresy on climate change, I'll recycle my own post:

(meme) NYT has a lengthy profile of the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson, noted global warming skeptic.

Glancing through the Wikipedia entry I think his views on the reality of climate change are quite reasonable and find myself agreeing with the bulk of what's presented.

If they make him a heretic, I guess I am one too.

Link blag

Coates: Nihilism and Gay Marriage...

[...] paranoia is key, and it really defines, not just anti-Semitism, but bigotry itself. The most laughable aspect of America's long war against racism, is the justification racist would always trot out--the specter of interracial union. I can remember being a kid and reading about black folks struggling for some small right, that, these days, we take for granted. So you'd have some black dude who'd been born a slave, in some one room shack, but had risen to become a lawyer, arguing for, say, school funding for black kids in rural Alabama. And then you'd see some bigot responding with, essentially, the following, "If we give the nigras school funding, they'll take our women! Do you want a nigra marrying yer daughter?!?!?"

Cato: Terrible Example, Mr. Secretary...

Duncan [Obama's Secretary of Education] had the gall to frame as a protector of the status quo the same governor who for years has been crystal clear that schooling in his state is dismal and that school choice – real change that takes power away from politically ferocious special interests and gives it to parents – is the key to real change. It’s also the same desperately sought after reform, by the way, that President Obama and his education secretary are happy to let die a slow – but politically convenient – death in Washington, DC.

Mother Jones: Pouring Biofuel on the Fire...

Food prices have risen 130% since 2002. The World Bank estimates that up to 75% of the increase is due to demand for biofuels.

Clearing grasslands to plant biofuel crops releases 93 times as much greenhouse gas as will be saved by the fuels grown on the land each year. Destroying Indonesian peat bogs releases 420 times as much.

There were food riots in at least 30 countries in the past 2 years. More than 40 people were killed when Cameroonians protested rising prices.

The US government spent $9.2 billion on ethanol subsidies in 2008. It spent $1.5 billion on food aid.

Wilkinson comments:

[That's ] what the green government does when it picks winners. But now we’ve got better people and won’t destroy the environment and cause food riots this time! Right?

TIME: The Queen and Mrs. Obama: A Breach in Protocol...

On Wednesday, Michelle Obama put her hand on the Queen only after the Queen had placed her own hand on the First Lady's back as part of their conversation. So there is room for theological argument as to whether the American reciprocity of touch was allowable given the social dynamics of the situation. (Less explicable was when President George W. Bush winked at the Queen.)

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is This How The Israeli Media Works?...

A half-hour ago, my phone rang; it was a reporter from Israel Channel 10 News.
"There's a big controversy about your Netanyahu interview," the reporter says.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Netanyahu's people are denying that he threatened President Obama. Do you have proof that he threatened him?"
"What are you talking about?"

TIME: Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense...

there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public.

Economist: Mexico is going back to the IMF for the first time since 1995.

TAPPED: The GOP budget is a naive attempt at messaging?

ThinkProgress: Republicans continue to spread false claims about cap and trade costs.

Note to criminals: It may not be a good idea to announce your theft on national television.

"Smart diplomacy" ? I'd say questionable...

Bowing to a Saudi king?

Gifting the Queen of England an iPod?

Gifting the Prime Minister a set of 25 classic American movies that won't play in European DVD players?

C'mon Obama -- you're a Harvard-educated lawyer, not Sarah "you can see Russia" Palin -- or George "looked into his soul" Bush.

Why, even the Bush administration could give decent gifts:

President and Mrs. Bush gave Her Majesty a bronze statuette “High Desert Princess” with a personal inscription on the bottom of the base. It is a replica of the original life size statue that is located in front of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth, Texas.

President and Mrs. Bush gave The Prince Philip an exclusive sterling silver eagle box by Tiffany & Co. with personal inscription on the inside lid.

President and Mrs. Bush gave Their Majesties a leather presentation box filled with a collection of documents from the National Archives. One of the items was a copy of an original letter from President Roosevelt to her father, King George, written in 1938. There were also photos from previous royal visits and a DVD of the footage from the Queen’s visit to the United States when she was Princess Elizabeth in 1951.

As for bowing to a Saudi, I'm not sure it's more perturbing...


Personally, I'd rather bow and get it over with.

ThinkProgress offers another flashback:

President Obama — in a departure from President Bush — has made a point during his G20 visit to emphasize that the economic crisis demands a collective global response. Indeed, in a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last October about the financial collapse, Rudd told Bush that the best response should involve the broader G20, including China — while Bush wanted response to be handled within the G7. Bush, however, reportedly didn’t have a clue what the G20 was:

Informed sources have confirmed the discussion took place on a speaker telephone with a Rudd staffer taking notes.
After the President explained the pressure from Europe for a G7-brokered action on supporting the credit sector and reforming regulation, Rudd immediately insisted the G20 was the solution.

Rudd was then stunned to hear Bush say: “What’s the G20?” 

Um, yeah.  I think we traded up. And not just a little...

I also think this helps explain why Clinton makes a decent Secretary of State. She's surely better at protocol-droidness than the Obamas, though hardly without her own gaffes.

Dealing with the neocon mess

Via Yglesias:



An example of neocon foreign policy insight:

"What has happened in Afghanistan is nothing short of a miracle. Who is responsible for it? The New York Times gives the major credit to ``the Afghan people'' with their ``courage and commitment.'' Courage and commitment there was, but that courage and commitment was curiously imperceptible until this administration conceived a radical war plan, executed it brilliantly, liberated the country and created from scratch the structures of democracy ... Against all expectations, Afghanistan is the first graduate of the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in rather hostile places. We should take a moment to celebrate a remarkable success that had long seemed so improbable," —Charles Krauthammer, December 10, 2004.

Aha, so for five years Afghanistan has been busy celebrating the "miracle" of our "remarkable success."

I'd hate to see what an unmiraculous and unremarkable failure looks like.

Today's conservatism

Update: Since many people are stopping by from an old Culture11 comment, perhaps I can interest you in Scott Payne's blueprint for 21st century conservatism.


In case you're unfamiliar with the Conservative Political Action Committee, speakers in previous years have included Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Pat Buchanan, Karl Rove, and Newt Gingrich.

Reagan spoke at CPAC a total of 12 times. So it's saddening to see how far they've fallen during the Bush years:



He suggests that Obama may not have been born in the U.S., because that would make him ineligible for the presidency. The crowd cheers.

Is there a floor on how low the conservative movement will fall?

Because that's not it. Watch this clip from yesterday: (meme)



Here Bush's recess-appointed Ambassador to the United Nations jokes about nuking Chicago. The whole audience erupts in laughter.

Obama's economic populism

NYT: Obama’s Budget Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas

The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.

The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It would reduce taxes for everyone else, to a lower point than they were under either Mr. Clinton or George W. Bush. And it would lay the groundwork for sweeping changes in health care and education, among other areas.

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years. They do so first by rewriting the tax code and, over the longer term, by trying to solve some big causes of the middle-class income slowdown, like high medical costs and slowing educational gains.

...

Whatever happens, though, it has been a long time since any president has tried to use his budget to shape the government and the economy quite as much as Mr. Obama did on Thursday. On that score, he and President Reagan have something in common.

Certainly the problems of today are not the same problems as 1980, but Obama is going further than centrists hoped. His budget plan is much closer to an LBJ than a Clinton.

NYPost makes pies:



Politico has a piece on the winners and losers.

Andrew gets an email:

"A New Era Of Responsibility"

I see in Table 8.8 of the budget that the White House assumes real GDP growth of 3.2% in 2010, 4.0% in 2011, 4.6% in 2012 and 4.2% in 2013. I leave it to your imagination what the deficits would be if they had made more realistic assumptions.

Also: very nearly 50% of expenditure in 2010 will be financed by borrowing. I wonder what that number will be in 2011.

And gathers quotes from Krugman and Clive Crook

Here are some lefty takes via Yglesias:

1. Dan Weiss on the climate and energy elements.
2. Cindy Brown and Melissa Lazarín on education.
3. Larry Korb on defense.
4. Michael Ettlinger on the big picture.

It’s not Obama’s style to actually say this, but were this budget to be enacted it would be by far the most significant progressive step in over forty years.

Over forty years. That's LBJ land.

We needed a change from Bush, but judging from my armchair this kind of post-recovery domestic spending increase will be a burden on the economy.

I'm unsure what to think about the country's future now; my speculative crystal ball is murkier than ever. But it will at least be interesting. Obama isn't tinkering with the edges.

I don't know how much populist support this first term will gain him for 2012. It all depends on economic factors he can't control. But if this high post-recovery spending budget gets enacted I'm pretty sure he'll lose libertarian leaners. Baring something wondrous like a commitment to end the drug war I don't see much of a future for last year's liberaltarian alliance.

We'll go back to fusionism if Republicans nominate someone competent. We may even grit our teeth and vote Republican even if they have a Bush-Cheney-Palin-style person on the ticket, or we may protest with a third party. I dunno. I just know we won't vote for LBJ's Great Society 2.0

Another clean break from President Bush

(meme) ThinkProgress:

Today, President Obama hosted a town hall meeting in Elkhart, IN — which faces the nation’s fastest-rising unemployment rate — to promote his recovery and reinvestment plan. As the Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin notes, Obama traveled to relatively unfriendly territory: Obama lost the county to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) 44 percent to 56 percent. Despite that fact, the White House did not screen its audience, who had the chance to ask the president questions:

In a dramatic contrast to former President Bush’s town-hall meetings — which were held almost exclusively in party strongholds, with tickets distributed primarily to supporters — it was first-come, first-served in Elkhart on Saturday [when tickets were distributed]. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained on Friday: “I’ve watched the President do town halls from 2004 through 2008, and the audience has never been hand-picked, and neither have the questions. And we’re not going to start any of that on Monday.”

What’s more, Obama invited two critics of his package along for the Air Force One ride to Indiana: Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who both voted against the bill.

The town hall is just the latest way Obama is signaling a clean break from George Bush, who aggressively screened his audience members, even requiring volunteer service or loyalty oaths before being allowed to attend his events. A few of the most notorious examples:

– In April 2005, Bush’s security detail threw out three people from an event in Colorado, citing a bumper sticker on their care that read “No More Blood For Oil.” White House spokesman Trent Duffy said that if there’s any evidence people might “disrupt the president,” they “have the right to exclude those people from those events.”

– In early 2005, North Dakota residents were refused entry to a Bush event after their names appeared on a “blacklist” of people banned from the event.

– In March 2005, people seeking tickets to a Social Security event werequizzed about their support of Bush and his Social Security plan ahead of time.

Bush even screened the assembled group of soldiers he would meet in Iraq during a 2003 Thanksgiving visit: Soldiers had to fill out a questionnaire asking whether they supported Bush.

Froomkin noted that Obama will travel to another lion’s den tomorrow, when he takes his road show to Fort Myers, FL, a county McCain won by an 11-point margin.

The largest spending bill in history

Barney Frank attacks:



(via ThinkProgress, Daily Kos has more.)

More Fear & Imbalance

Via ThinkProgress:

Left's spin on the first 100 hours

ThinkProgress:

At 4 pm ET today, it will mark exactly 100 hours since Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. The first week on the job has been a very busy one for the new White House, as the Obama administration has worked quickly to repair the damage done under the last eight years of President Bush.

As President Obama indicated in his inauguration speech, he is seeking to chart a new way forward in domestic and foreign policy. Obama has made a clean break from the Bush legacy in his early going, undertaking a number of actions that the former President would never have considered. ThinkProgress has compiled a report documenting Obama’s record so far:

REGULATIONS

The Bush Record: In his final months, the Bush administration issued a series of “midnight regulations” that gutted safeguards protecting health, safety, the environment, and the public’s general welfare.

Obama’s Clean Break: Hours after his inauguration, Obama ordered a freeze on new regulations at all government agencies and departments and the withdrawal of all final or proposed regulations not yet published in the Federal Register.

IRAQ

The Bush Record: After using false intelligence to launch the war, Bush “surged” 30,000 troops to Iraq in 2007 and vetoed all attempts to end the war.

Obama’s Clean Break: Two days into his presidency, Obama called on U.S. military leaders to start to plan for a responsible withdrawal.

DIPLOMACY

The Bush Record: In his first term, Bush — in contrast to President Bill Clinton — “generally avoided robust efforts” to resolve the Middle East conflict. Bush demeaned diplomacy with “terrorists and radicals,” likening it to the “appeasement” of Nazi Germany.

Obama’s Clean Break: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejected the “rigid ideology” of Bush and pledged to exercise “smart power.” Stressing diplomacy, Obama and Clinton “appointed high-level emissaries to handle the Arab-Israeli issue and Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

TORTURE

The Bush Record: Torture began with the drafting of a secret legal memoholding that Bush could authorize interrogators to violate anti-torture laws. Bush’s senior-most officials approved torture that, in some cases, lead to death.

Obama’s Clean Break: Obama signed executive orders ending the CIA’s secret prisons and ending torture by requiring interrogations to abide by the Army Field Manual.

GUANTANAMO

The Bush Record: Bush created the “legal black hole” that is Guantanamo Bay. He called the harsh treatment of detainees there “an absurd allegation” and was rebuked time and again by the Supreme Court.

Obama’s Clean Break: On his first day, Obama signed an executive order closing Gitmo in one year and suspended all military tribunals for six months.

TRANSPARENCY

The Bush Record: Two out of five FOIA requests filed in 2006 were not processed. The number of exemptions increased 83 percent since 1998.

Obama’s Clean Break: Obama issued new orders instructing all agencies to “adopt a presumption in favor” of FOIA requests. Obama is developing an “Open Government Directive” over the next four months.

REVOLVING DOOR

The Bush Record: Many former Bush officials “joined the ranks of the companies they once regulated where they are highly compensated. In many instances, they have helped their new employers obtain lucrative government grants and contracts.”

Obama’s Clean Break: Obama laid out stringent lobbying limits that will ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff and will ban gifts from lobbyists to anyone in the administration.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

The Bush Record: Bush reinstated the Global Gag Rule, which prohibited aid from going toward any organization that mentioned abortion as an option in family planning. Sixteen countries lost access to birth control.

Obama’s Clean Break: Obama overturned the Gag Rule on Jan. 23.

Some of these things are huge. Others are more promises and it remains to be seen how they work out in practice. But on the whole this list should be very pleasing to defenders of liberty.

I think I'll lay back and take a nap. Wake me up when he starts spending our money and increasing the size of government, then I'll get grouchy. Not that Bush fared much better on this count.

The arrogance of Cheney and the appeals court of history

Just staggering. And he thinks Bush will be popular in 30 years.

Sullivan recalled a comment on Tacitus:

It is not, as I gather, that Tacitus lacks veracity. What he lacks is what in the Thirties used to be called "the long view" of history. But to minds of a certain sensitivity "the long view" is the falsest historical view of all, and indeed the insistence on the length of perspective is intended precisely to overcome sensitivity---seen from sufficient distance, it says, the corpse and the hacked limbs are not so very terrible, and eventually they even begin to compose themselves into a "meaningful pattern."