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Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 6, 2010 at 6:14 pm

I’m in love with that song:

— Peter King’s long record of active support for terrorist groups.

— It’s not often your OMB Director gets caught up in this sort of gossip page business.

— White House trying to get the senate to confirm some nominees.

— I wonder if new columnist Dana Milbank will be able to crack the next decade’s “ten worst WaPo” columnists list. Will they even still be publishing the paper ten years from now?

— Robert Rubin’s economic outlook.

— I want this Ben Bernanke back.

Can’t find any “Alex Chilton” on YouTube that’s not a recording of someone playing Rock Band 2.

Politics

Local Tea Party co-founder doesn’t want Steele ‘out there with the tea partiers.’

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 6, 2010 at 6:05 pm

Yesterday on Fox News, RNC chair Michael Steele said that if he wasn’t currently leading the Republican Party, he’d join the ranks of the far right tea party protesters. “As I like to tell people — long before there was this big push on tea parties — if I wasn’t doing this job, I’d be out there with the tea partiers,” he said. This afternoon, Fox’s Neil Cavuto hosted Quincy, IL Tea Party co-founder Steve McQueen and asked him whether Steele would be welcome. “Not quite, Neil,” McQueen replied:

CAVUTO: Retired Army Sergeant First Class and tea party activist Steve McQueen saying, “Not so fast Mr. Steele.” He joins me right now. Steve, you would say “not quite,” right?

MCQUEEN: Not quite, Neil. Actually the Tea Party is, I liken that to an army of Davids which I am only one. I do confer with Tea Party organizations all over the country so I feel confident that I understand what the movement’s about and as I understand it right now, the GOP is currently on probation with the American people and obviously you can’t be on probation and probably be a member of the Tea Parties at the same time.

Watch it:

Health

Nebraska Governor, Senate Democrats Pressure Nelson To Abandon Medicaid Carve-Out Deal

By Igor Volsky on Jan 6, 2010 at 6:00 pm

On December 22, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) defended the Nebraska Medicaid deal by arguing that he was protecting the state from unfunded mandates at the Governor’s request. Nelson quoted Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman’s concerns about rising costs and stressed that he was “prepared to ask that this provision be removed from the amendment in conference if it’s the governor’s desire.”

Since the deal became public, however, Heineman has repeatedly said that he “didn’t want a special deal” out of Senate health care bill. “We’re embarrassed by what’s going on. We’re very surprised. Nebraskans are angry and upset about what occurred. And so they need to set this straight,” Heineman told Fox News’ Greta Van Sustren the day Nelson explained his reasoning. This morning he reiterated his opposition:

What I’m saying is, every Governor including myself is worried about unfunded mandates, education, Medicaid or whatever and we don’t want that and we don’t want this special deal and don’t wanted to be treated differently than any other state. We — all states ought to be treated fairly and equally, particularly when you are talking about a federal program like Medicaid.

Watch it:

Heineman’s public condemnations, the pending constitutional challenge from 13 attorneys general, and the growing Democratic discomfort with the agreement, may ultimately force negotiators to remove the provision from the final legislation. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has said that the deal should not be part of the final package and yesterday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) predicted that it “won’t be law by the time that goes into effect.”

But so far, Nelson isn’t backing down. The Senator recently ran a television ad defending the agreement and even asked South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster — the leader of the so-called Gang of 13 AGs — to “call off the dogs” on the constitutional challenge.

Whatever the merits of Nelson’s carve-out, Congress has long considered each state’s unique economic conditions and circumstances in crafting legislation. In fact, even today, the federal matching formula varies from state to state, depending on each state’s poverty level. States are not always treated “fairly and equally,” nor should they be.

Culture

Agent Zero Suspended

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 6, 2010 at 5:31 pm

ArenasWizards

David Stern decided to reverse course and suspend Gilbert Arenas for his gun antics:

Because Arenas violated NBA rules by bringing guns into Washington’s locker room, Stern decided to punish Arenas now. He said the suspension begins immediately.

“We fully endorse the decision of the NBA to indefinitely suspend Gilbert Arenas,” the Wizards responded in a statement on Wednesday. “Strictly legal issues aside, Gilbert’s recent behavior and statements, including his actions and statements last night in Philadelphia, are unacceptable. Some of our other players appeared to find Gilbert’s behavior in Philadelphia amusing. This is also unacceptable. Under Abe Pollin’s leadership, our organization never tolerated such behavior, and we have no intention of ever doing so.”

Stern says he originally planned to wait for the criminal investigation to be completed before taking action, and had directed the Wizards to do the same.

Every game Arenas, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Wednesday, ends up missing during the suspension will cost him $147,208.

The element of this that a lot of the press coverage isn’t getting at clearly is that even though Arenas is still the Wizards’ “star” player, at this point his contract is clearly a white elephant. So under the circumstances, extremely severe sanctioning of Arenas could—if it allows for his contract to be voided—be a major positive development for his team.

Politics

Dodd’s Retirement Injects New Urgency Into Effort To Rein In Wall Street

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 6, 2010 at 5:02 pm

AP090319056942One question bouncing around news outlets today is what Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) retirement means for the regulatory reform effort. Does it make him more or less likely to compromise on key parts of the bill, including the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA)?

It’s hard to discern whether Dodd’s retirement will lead him to give in on a host of issues (as one “gleeful” financial services lobbyist told Politico it would) or compel him to put “it all on the line to get what he wants, bipartisanship be damned.”

But one thing is for certain: Dodd’s retirement means that the regulatory reform effort needs to wrap up this year, as Dodd’s likliest successor as chairman is Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), a very bank-friendly Democrat who would almost certainly produce a worse product. And this point hasn’t escaped Republicans, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out:

At the same time, [Dodd's] decision gives Republicans the incentive to draw out the process until after next year’s elections when a more business-friendly Democrat could ascend to the banking panel’s chairmanship. Next in line on the committee is Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.), generally seen as more receptive to industry concerns.

According to Roll Call, “Senate Democrats said that no palace intrigue is expected to take place with the Banking panel” and that Johnson will take the gavel. So Republicans and the financial industry have ample motivation to gum up the works until Dodd is all the way out.

This same concern arose when it looked like Dodd might take the helm of the Senate HELP committee following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. Back then, Tim Fernholz wrote that “it would be bad news for regulatory reform if Johnson took over the [banking] committee; he’s received nearly a million dollars from the financial industry in the last 20 years.”

Johnson was the only Senate Democrat to vote against a credit card reform bill last year, and the banking industry has focused on him as one of the Democrats most likely to torpedo the CFPA. “No one is pro-industry today but he’s been historically very receptive,” said a top financial services lobbyist of Johnson. “He’s been sensitive to the impact of legislation on the financial service industry given the large number of jobs he represents.”

Even if Dodd gets a regulatory reform bill passed, as the investment research firm Concept Capital pointed out, Johnson’s chairmanship would likely result in other efforts to rein in banks going by the wayside. “His elevation to chairman should put to rest worries over interchange and interest rate caps,” the firm wrote.

There is one note of good news amidst all this, however: Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will be running for Dodd’s seat, and he has been a strong advocate for consumer financial protection.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Update

The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim assesses that a Johnson chairmanship would mean “the biggest winners will be Wall Street, pay-day lenders and credit card companies. The biggest losers: widows and orphans.”

Security

Iran’s Tunnels Make Bombing Pointless

By Max Bergmann on Jan 6, 2010 at 5:00 pm

isis-nuclear-facility-image-2Neoconservatives have consistently portrayed bombing Iran as the solution to the problem of its nuclear program. While this was always fantasy, the inanity of such an attack has become even clearer. In an extensive piece today, the New York Times details the Iranian regime’s construction of a vast network of tunnels that can be used to shield their nuclear facilities from a potential air strike.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of big tunnels in Iran, according to American government and private experts, and the lines separating their uses can be fuzzy. Companies owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, for example, build civilian as well as military tunnels.

The Times story has lots of interesting tidbits, noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a tunnel expert from his previous work as a transportation engineer. He even helped found the “Iranian Tunneling Association” in 1998. But the rub of the story is that any attempted military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is basically futile. The New York Times explains:

American war planners see Iran’s tunnels — whatever their exact number and contents — as a serious test of military abilities. Most say there is no easy way to wipe out a nuclear program that has been well hidden, widely dispersed and deeply buried. Among the difficulties, military experts say, are decoy tunnels and false entrances, the identification of which requires good intelligence. The experts add that Iran’s announcement about new enrichment plants may simply produce a blur of activity meant to confuse Western war planners.

Not only is it highly uncertain whether a military strike could penetrate these facilities, but with the lack of intelligence it is impossible to know what entry points to target. Furthermore, if a strike were conducted we would have no idea if any attack was even successful. Any bombing effort would essentially be throwing a punch in the dark.

Additionally, calls from neoconservatives encouraging Israel to go ahead with an attack are even more pointless, since the Israelis have even fewer capabilities than we do. The Times notes:

Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.” … Some analysts say that Israel, which has taken the hardest line on Iran, may be especially hampered, given its less formidable military and intelligence abilities.

So to be clear neoconservatives are advocating a military strike that won’t work, and will have dire consequences for the reform movement within Iran and for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only thing an attack would seemingly achieve is fulfilling – in the words of the President – “the satisfying purity of indignation” that so aptly characterizes the neoconservative movement.

US officials will never really take the military option “off the table” but it seems pretty clear that an effort to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites would be pretty futile.

Alyssa

Heart of Ink

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 6, 2010 at 4:57 pm

I agree with Dylan that it’s exceedingly stupid to defend the novel by bashing people who enjoyed or helped develop other technologies and modes of entertainment.  In fact, I think defending the novel as somehow necessary is a sort of foolish project.  Novels aren’t necessary, but neither are television shows about suburban mobsters, or movies about John Smith dipped in ink, stretched on a rack, and sent to space.    I don’t think novels are necessary.  I think they’re extremely enjoyable.  I like disappearing into an antisocial fugue state sometimes, particularly the one that leads me to sneak books under desks and to walk down streets with my nose amidst a lot of paper.  As a writer, and as someone who largely thinks in text instead of in pictures, I enjoy seeing what other authors are doing with the same weapons available to me, and seeing the world in a new way, because someone else has identified a new color in a sunset, or juxtaposed a situation with a new adjective, forcing me to work a little harder, to see a little more clearly.  I like writing in margins, folding down pages, and waking up at three in the morning wondering where a particular volume is on my spectacularly disorderly shelves.  Reading’s the only thing I do where I can’t actively do something else–I can’t email, I can’t watch television, I can listen to music but lately I’ve been finding it much harder to listen to music with words when I need to read quickly.  I don’t need novels to live, but my life would be poorer without them.

Climate Progress

Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice

By Joe Romm on Jan 6, 2010 at 4:48 pm

New study supports finding that “the amount of [multi-year] sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009″

Arctic warmth

Map of air temperature anomalies for December 2009, at roughly 3,000 feet above surface, Areas in orange and red are warm anomalies, areas in blue and purple are cool.

It’s cold here and in northern Eurasia, but it’s been positively toasty ar0und the Arctic circle — thanks to an extreme negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation, as the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) explained in their online report yesterday.

The temperatures reported by NSIDC show some Arctic anomalies exceeding 7°C (13°F)!  That’s not good news for the kind of re-freezing one wants to see in the otherwise rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet (see Nature: “Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet ocean margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized”).  It’s also one reason “December 2009 had the fourth-lowest average ice extent for the month since the beginning of satellite records, falling just above the extent for 2007. The linear rate of decline for December is now 3.3% per decade.”

Significantly, a new study, “Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009” by Barber et al. finds that all the crowing by the anti-science crowd about the supposed “recovery” of Arctic sea ice was quite premature:

Read more

Yglesias

It’s Time to Not Get Financial Reform Done

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 6, 2010 at 4:44 pm

cash-wad 1

Nick Beaudrot on how to un-demoralize (re-moralize?) the base:

Banks. And Jobs.

While the absolute level of unemployment does have an impact on elections, the 1934 midterms show that change in unemployment is the more important number. If things are at least headed in the right direction, Dems will get some credit. Past that, it’s time to get financial reform done. Keep it off the calendar until all the budget bills pass, and then dare Republicans to tie up the Senate to stop it. Do they really want to go into the election as the defenders of Wall Street, the Credit Card industry, payday lenders, and sketchy mortgage originators? I doubt it will do them any good, and it will give Democratic candidates in swing districts something to run on that should be quite popular. At the moment, it looks like losses are coming, but there’s a big difference between losing 10 House seats and losing 35.

I’m agreed at the conceptual level, but I think the key insight here is to make financial reform the thing you’re willing to not get done. The whole problem with the health care issue, from the get go, has been that the reform push was “too big to fail” to the Joe Liebermans of the world can hold everything hostage, threatening disaster for the progressive project, unless they get their way. The genius of financial regulation is that while it’s important to fix this it’s actually not critical that it be done in 6 months as opposed to 18 or 24 months. This is an issue where if a block of 44 Senators want to filibuster you can draw a line in the sand, let them filibuster and run around the country complaining about it. That’s a campaign issue. That’s a time to show the base some gutty feisty fightiness. An opportunity, in other words, for people to see their president fighting hard. And also to see that a hard-fighting president isn’t enough—he needs a congress that’s willing to vote for progressive bills.

Saying you’re determined to get something done amounts to saying you’re determined to make whatever compromises are necessary to get a bill on your desk. What’s needed is determination to fight for what’s right, whether it can get sixty votes or not.

Climate Progress

Chris Matthews: Politico serves as the Drudge-Like “news conduit” for Dick Cheney

By Joe Romm on Jan 6, 2010 at 4:08 pm

I am less and less a fan of the more and more center-right Politico (see “Memo to Politico: Do you really aspire to being nothing more than a new media version of the MSM — stenographers of the status quo?“)  This TP repost has some blunt comments from a leading TV journalist:

Last month, Politico conducted an “interview” with former Vice President Dick Cheney. As ThinkProgress noted at the time, the paper’s top reporters “” Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen “” transcribed Cheney’s attacks on Obama without challenge, criticism, or rebuttal.

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