Rapier asks:

When is it going to occur to you and most that the economic crisis is the most important story of their lives? Let me put it another way. Do you feel that the economy is going to get only somewhat worse and then will recover in some normal way? I am sure that is the case so think it though and just lay out some half assed guesses about how bad this recession will be compared to any post WWII recessions. Try to articulate what sources you rely on to reach these guesses.

I’m not really sure this hostile tone comes from. I’m also not really sure how I’m supposed to know how bad things will get. The answer to that questions depends in part on what policymakers around the world decide to do, and I have no idea what they’ll do. So while I’m sure we’re going to see a worse recession than we saw in 1982 — i.e., we’ll see the worst recession since the Great Depression — I’m not certain how optimistic or pessimistic I should be exactly.

What I will say is that I have a hunch that on the other side of this we’re going to see a substantial transformation in the structure of the political and economic system. It won’t be like the last two recessions where things went down and then they went up again. It’ll be more like the Depression in the sense that pre- and post-Depression America were very different places. And I mean that not just in terms of policies, but in terms of mores and social norms. I’m still trying to get a grip on Japan’s “lost decade” but one thing I’ve heard from a bunch of knowledgeable people is that it had a large social impact in terms of changing attitudes toward work and life and business.

The Presidential pardon power is just hanging out there begging to be abused and so of course you get stuff like this:

President Bush pardoned a Brooklyn real estate developer accused of scamming hundreds of poor, minority homebuyers — and whose father donated $28,500 to the Republican Party this year.

Bush pardoned Isaac Toussie, 36, two days before Christmas in a gesture of mercy that outraged ex-customers who said they were duped into buying overpriced, defective homes.

Ir’s really outrageous. And Bush isn’t the first president to make outrageous pardons by any means. On the contrary, it’s becoming the norm. And someone ought to put a stop to it.

I agree with Spencer Ackerman that folks really shouldn’t read anything into Bill Gertz’s report that “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is asking many of the Bush administration’s 250 Pentagon political appointees to remain on the job until the incoming Obama administration finds replacements.”

The article was given the headline “EXCLUSIVE: Obama wants Bush war team to stay” and succeeded in distressing Chris Bowers, but the facts don’t support any such interpretation. The reality is that Barack Obama will be president in less than 30 days, some of which are major holidays. He’s not going to be able to churn out 11 Pentagon subcabinet officials per business day between now and then. And when you consider that the exact time constraints exist in every administration, the task becomes even more impossible. He faces the choice, as do all incoming administrations, of having his predecessor’s appointees lingering on for a while as he lines up replacements and gets them confirmed or else of having a million vacancies amidst the department’s senior leadership. The former is difficult to deal with, but the latter is worse. And the challenge, realistically, is that you have no leverage with which to persuade people to stay. Bush appointees need to be looking for their next job. And if you get a good offer that will be rescinded if you can’t start by February 2, you really need to take the offer.

Joe Romm has some interesting criticisms of the “Reality Campaign” ads against clean coal propaganda that you may have seen:

I think I like the ads a bit more than he does. But on another level, I think they’ve fundamentally got the wrong target. Fundamentally, it’s extremely difficult to move a specific policy agenda through the mechanism of issue advertising to the public. The clean energy community has done a good job of convincing voters that they want clean energy. Which is why the coal industry and its lapdog politicians are for “clean coal.” But if you spend months and vast sums of money convincing the public that that slogan is bogus, it won’t be so difficult to change the slogan. Ultimately, you need to identify some bad people and go after them to try to teach other pols the lesson that it’s a bad idea to anger the clean energy community.

Meanwhile, there’s a larger story here about progressive groups’ uncomfortableness with some of the seamier aspects of politics. When people give money to support high-minded causes, they tend to want that money to be spent in high-minded ways that make them feel better about themselves rather than in crass, effective ways.