It seems Rep. Jerrold Nadler is making some noises about the open New York Senate seat:

REP. JERROLD NADLER: Well, I think all the candidates think they’re the most qualified. I think my record in Congress is a very progressive and forward-looking record. I think I’ve shown very good judgment. I was one of the few downstate people who voted against the war, against the PATRIOT Act. I’ve taken a leadership role on civil liberties, on economic development. And I led the battle against the–I led the battle for eight years against the Bankruptcy, so-called, Reform Act of 2005, which we now recognize as probably responsible for maybe a third of the foreclosures that are going on in this country.

There’s interest, mostly for good reasons, in appointing a woman, or a Hispanic, or someone from upstate and Nadler is none of those things. But Nadler is a rock-solid progressive leader. I grew up in his district, and was always proud to have him as a representative.

Hope everyone had an adequately merry Christmas. What are you interested in?

Via Ben Armbruster, the US Geological Survey says previous reports may have been too optimistic about the likely rise in sea levels facing the United States:

In one of the report’s most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea levels could rise as much as 4 feet by 2100. The intergovernment panel had projected a rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the last two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice in the Alps.

But there was unseasonable snow somewhere last week, so I’d say continuing to ignore this problem makes a lot of sense.

Commenter Max asks an important Christmas question that’s also vitally important for the incoming Obama team to consider:

Merry Christmas, Matthew and enjoy the Chinese food! (Which brings up the question: does the Chinese food here suck as much as the Mexican food? Because I had the worst Chinese food I ever had here (cooked by actual Chinese people), and I’m hoping it was a one-off.)(Maybe the badness of the food induces badness in governing, so we need a stimulus project to replace all the restaurants in DC with good ones.)

The issue with Chinese food and DC isn’t that there’s no good stuff, it’s that there’s an extraordinary quantity of bad stuff. If you go to a shitty neighborhood where there’s very little in the way of retail options — like Columbia Heights in 2003 or U Street in 2004 or the Atlas District in 2006 or many other places to this day — the one thing you can count on being there is an incredibly awful Chinese restaurant. Back when I lived near the corner of 10th and V I was in a deeply dysfunctional relationship with Lucy Chinese on 10th and U. Every time we spent the night together I would regret it in the worst way the following morning and swear we were through, but soon enough I would come crawling back. It was disturbing.

What pulled me out of the self-destructive cycle was Mr. Chen’s Organic Chinese. I’ve never actually been to Mr Chen’s and I’m not totally sure where it is (Woodley Park, I think) but they’ve got a pretty wide delivery radius and if you’re in it you should check the place out — it’s very classic Chinese-American place but well made and with good ingredients. These days, though, I live just blocks from DC’s best Chinese restaurant Full Kee, which is just slightly off the main drag in Chinatown. The cuisine is a bit hard for me to characterize, but there’s a lot of good seafood here. I recommend both the crispy spicy head-on shrimp and the crispy spicy fried squid. I think the shrimp’s somewhat better, but the best part is the head so the more squeamish may want to go with the squid.

Full Kee doesn’t deliver, so if I want delivery I now turn to Great Wall Szechuan House near Logan Circle. Stick to the Szechuan items on the menu. Also notable in the city in Chinatown Express on 6th Street south of H. There’s a little box on the menu featuring cheap dumplings, cheap fried noodles, cheap noodle soup, and cheap pork buns. None of this stuff is great, but it’s all an excellent bargain and delightfully close to the movie theater and the Verizon Center.

But my favorite Chinese place in the area is, like most of Greater Washington’s very best Asian food, in a random strip mall in the suburbs. Thus, if you’ve got the means to go there check out Hong Kong Palace in Falls Church. Note, though, that despite the name this is a Szechuan place. Try the lamb with cumin.

For more on the general subject, check out the “Chinese” section in Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide.

Rising tensions with India are prompting Pakistan to shift forces away from fighting the Taliban near the Afghan border and toward preparations for a subcontinental standoff. And of course they are — Pakistan has no choice but to make its situation vis-a-vis India its primary security concern. This is the sort of thing people really need to think harder about before talking about bringing India into NATO.

Meanwhile, it’s a reminder that all the clever counterinsurgency tactics in the world aren’t going to work as a substitute for a regional diplomatic strategy.

This is a nice point from Mark Kleiman, something he allegedly gleaned from a Tom Friedman column:

But there is an important insight hidden in Friedman’s breathless prose: you can’t much improve the quality of life of currently prosperous Americans (let’s say, folks above twice the median family income where they live) by giving them more of the things that money can buy. A safe neighborhood, walkable cities, fast, comfortable inter-city transport, excellent public schools and universities, scientific discovery, medical progress, clean air to breathe, an economy that is sustainable into the lives of one’s children and grandchildren, a vibrant high culture: these are primarily public goods, and need public expenditure to bring them about.

At the same time, we have reason to believe that in an affluent society such as ours a lot of the problems that people at the bottom suffer from have a lot to do with relative rather than absolute deprivation. In other words, a reduction in the volume of wealth in the hands of the wealthiest aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of public goods could make very wide swathes of the public better off.

Alissa Rubin’s look at recent political developments in Iraq is very interesting, but the lede seems overwrought to me:

With provincial elections scheduled for the end of January, Iraq appears to be plagued by political troubles that seem closer to Shakespearean drama than to nascent democracy.

It’s true that nascent democracy is hard to see in Iraq. But the events unfolding aren’t especially outlandish. What would be outlandish, really, would be for democracy to bloom in the land between the rivers. Everything we know about regime types and democratic consolidation always indicated that Iraq was an exceedingly non-promising locale for a democratic transformation. The fact that starting in mid-2003 the United States spent years combating a worsening insurgency tended to distract attention from the subject of democracy per se. But over the past year, with the insurgency on the wane this comes back into focus.

But it’s difficult for democracy to prosper in countries with serious ethnic and sectarian divides, especially when the majority group is — like Iraq’s Shiite Arabs — a less-than-overwhelming majority. It’s also difficult for democracy to prosper in countries whose economies are centered around national resource extraction. Conversely, it’s helpful for a democratic transition for a country to have democratic neighbors or to be integrating into multilateral democratic institutions. But of course, Iraq doesn’t have those things. Bad for democracy is to have neighbors with rival geopolitical designs that they’re trying to play out inside your territory.

Under the circumstances, Iraq will probably be pretty unstable for a while and then eventually someone or other will consolidate control over the country and they’ll almost certainly be using means that don’t get you an A on your democracy promotion 101 test.