Huckabee Chides Republicans For Being ‘More Interested’ In Defeating Obama ‘Than They Are In Rebuilding America’ |
As the GOP candidates stump around the Hawkeye State before tonight’s Iowa caucus, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), who won the caucus in 2008, called out many in his party for prioritizing political victory over the country’s well-being. In a radio interview, Huckabee expressed his frustration with the current field and said, “If I walked in the booth today I’m not sure who I’d pull the lever for.” He explained that he decided not to get in the race this time because, “It appears to me, and it still does to a large degree, that many of the Republicans are more interested in just defeating Barack Obama than they are in rebuilding America.” Huckabee said he wanted to see more of an emphasis on how to get Americans back to work and noted, “defeating somebody without a plan to really resolve problems, to me, is a worthless endeavor.”
New U.S. daily high temperature records exceeded daily cold records in December by a ratio of 1.8 to 1, a margin of 80%. The overwhelming excess of heat records continued into New Year’s Day, when the 116 high maximum records set or tied absolutely crushed the one lonely low minimum record…. The annual value [of the high/low record ratio] was 2.8 to 1, well above the 2.3 to 1 in 2010. Data from NOAA.
Steve Scolnik at Capital Climate analyzed the data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and created the chart above.
I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming.
If you want to know how to judge whether the 2.8-to-1 ratio for the entire year is a big deal, here’s what a 2009 National Center for Atmospheric Research study found over the past six decades (see “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.“):
Israeli-Palestinian Talks: No Breakthroughs, Pledge To Continue |
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for the first time in 15 months today in Amman, Jordan. Jordan’s foreign minister reported that there were no breakthroughs, but the two sides pledged to continue meeting. “The important thing is the two sides have met face to face today,” Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, said. “We agreed that the discussions will be continuous, that the meetings will continue and will take place here in Jordan.” The State Department called the move a “positive development,” and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon encouraged the sides “to build on this meeting.”
I kind of feel like Netflix is giving us everything and the kitchen sink with Lillyhammer: it’s The Sopranos! And a little bit of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Scandanavia! With a good dose of fish out of water stuff a la You Kill Me! And a sheep! And a girl band! And a bit of Uncanny Valley in that opening sequence that makes the characters look more like Grand Theft Auto avatars than actual humans!
That said, I do quite like semi-goofy gangster stories and Steve Van Zandt, so I’ll definitely check this out.
But I think the show, and the other originals Netflix has signed up for, including an Arrested Development continuation and a House of Cards remake point to a larger challenge for the service as it tries to develop a brand identity. What’s been great about Netflix as a streaming and DVD delivery service has been its breadth. Whether your thing is violent motorcycle gang soap operas, workout videos, or great sitcoms of the ’80s, it had you covered. It would likely be easier for Netflix to dig in and develop a couple of great sitcoms, or one or two great dramas, or to decide it’s going to do a couple of anti-hero shows across formats, effectively deciding that it’s going to court a niche audience for its originals business, or at least one niche at a time. But it’s a harder thing to develop consistently excellent programming across a wide variety of genres, tones, and subject-matter tranches. I can understand why the company would prefer to try for that, though: after causing a lot of confusion and doing itself a lot of damage, I’d want a master-stroke to bring in new or disaffected former customers, and to make a lot of my audience very excited. I’m just not entirely sure how it’ll pan out.
Newt Gingrich previewed his attacks against Romneycare during a press conference in Iowa this afternoon, repeatedly hitting the former Massachusetts governor for signing legislation that allowed for tax-payer funding of abortion and “includes a requirement that an advisory panel appoint one member from Planned Parenthood.” Gingrich predicted that South Carolina’s conservative primary voters, who go to the ballot on Jan. 21, would break for him once they “learn that [Romney] put Planned Parenthood by law into Romneycare, they learn that he has tax-payed abortions as part of Romneycare,” the former speaker said. He also deflected any suggestion that he himself carries health care baggage that Republican voters oppose:
Q: How would you go forward attacking Obamacare? You have at one point supported an individual mandate, like Mitt Romney…but how would your strategy going forward be different?
GINGRICH: It’s real easy. I said, we looked at it, we studied it, we concluded it was wrong. And unlike Romney, I’ve concluded it was wrong — he is still defending it. Nobody at the White House said they relied on Gingrichcare to design Obamacare. They have said very clearly they relied on Romneycare. They actually had Romney staff in the White House helping design Obamacare. None of my staff were invited.
Watch a compilation:
Indeed, uninsured Massachusetts residents below 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) can participate in the state-subsidized Commonwealth Care program, where members receive health services by enrolling in health plans which cover a comprehensive package of benefits like “doctor’s visits, surgery, radiology and lab” and abortion services. The package of services was not specifically developed or approved by Romney — in fact he vetoed a provision for essential health benefits — but he has previously described the law as a whole as “the ultimate pro-life effort.” Section 16M (a) of Romney’s health care law, however, does state: “There shall be a MassHealth payment policy advisory board. The board shall consist of…1 member appointed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.”
Gingrich actually supported various provisions that were ultimately included in Obamacare until as recently as last year and even praised Romneycare in a 2006 newsletter, saying, “The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to affect major change in the American health system. We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goals should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans.”
Virginia Republicans Aim To Repeal Gun Regulations |
Virginia’s legislature will reconvene on Jan. 12, and the Republicans who control the capitol have already laid out their policy priorities. The Examiner reported last month that pro-gun “Republicans in Virginia said they will press ahead with efforts to undo the state’s gun laws.” Foremost among these are laws preventing Virginians from buying more than one handgun a month and the state’s background check on gun purchases. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of residents oppose repealing the state’s one-handgun-per-month law.
NEWS FLASH
Study: GOP’s Capital Gains Tax Cut Is The Biggest Driver Of Income Inequality |
The lowering of the capital gains tax, pushed through as part of the Bush tax cut package of 2003, was the biggest driver of income inequality from 1996 to 2006, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service. While the Bush tax cuts as a whole contributed to rising inequality, it was the change in policy toward capital gains — which were once taxed at normal income rates but are now taxed at 15 percent for the rich — that played the largest role in exploding the income gap. While after-tax income increased by an average of 25 percent for Americans as a whole, lower earners saw a much smaller increase and the top 0.1 percent’s income, driven by lower capital gains tax rates, nearly doubled, as shown in this chart from Jared Bernstein:
As Maryland lawmakers consider legislation expanding marriage equality to gays and lesbians this session, some on-the-fence Democrats will introduce language to exempt religious institutions from performing same-sex marriages and allow those organizations to deny services to same-sex couples:
One person in that category is Del. John Olszewski, a Baltimore County Democrat who expressed concerns about the legislation last session but has left the door open to voting yes. He said his main concern is how the law would impact churches, mosques and synagogues whose members abhor same-sex marriages. “We have to be crystal clear on the religious exemptions,” Olszewski said in a recent interview.
Olszewski is looking for protections beyond simply letting religious institutions bar the ceremonies. He said the law could, for instance, make clear that religious organizations would not have to rent a house to a same-sex couple. “If Maryland is going to move forward, it is very important that appropriate religious safeguards are included,” he said.
Recall that New York legislators secured similar protections before approving the state’s marriage equality measure in June. That law — which was widely praised as fair by the same-sex marriage coalition — states that religious entities “shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage.” “Any such refusal to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges shall not create any civil claim or cause of action or result in any state or local government action to penalize, withhold benefits, or discriminate against such religious corporation, benevolent order, a not-for-profit explanation.”
Thanks to the vast expansion of our cable news industry, you could spend hours tonight watching talking heads speculate about the potential results of the Iowa Caucuses tonight. But fortunately, you don’t have to! You can keep hitting refresh on Twitter or the news site of your choice while watching any one of these movies, which actually get the mechanics of politics right in a way that most others don’t, and that most snap-judgment analysts won’t.
1. Primary Colors (1998): Unlike most political movies, which set up a dichotomy between often-unnamed but clearly defined members of opposite parties, the vast majority of Primary Colors takes place during the Democratic primary. That means you get tough debates, hilariously incompetent campaign volunteers who get whipped into a professional fighting force, the entrance of a late-breaking messiah candidate who turns out to be not-so-messianic, and best of all, a deeply cranky conversation about a meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This is politics as informed and presented by people who have actually been there.
2. Definitely, Maybe (2008): This movie may be disguised as a romantic comedy, but it’s a savvy look at the disappointment of the Clinton years that draws its small dramas from an actual understanding of political pressure points. Fundraising gets you places. Both candidates and journalists have a dangerous desire to be liked. Not putting union bugs on Democratic paper goods during a campaign is disastrous. The president probably will not remember his early volunteers years down the road.
3. The American President (1995) and Thank You For Smoking (2005): It’s sort of amazing how naive Aaron Sorkin is about lobbying in The American President, a movie that makes the profession look so sexy and principled it’s sort of shocking it wasn’t a product of the influence industry itself. Thank You For Smoking is a loopy tonic to that misconception. Watch this double-header as we gear up for a Super PAC-filled election year, and vow not to get fooled again.
4. Contagion (2011): In the hysteria of an election year, it can be easy to forget that there’s life beyond politics and elected officials. But a lot of what’s important about presidential candidates is the people they’d appoint to serve under them, and any administration is limited in the changes it can make by layers of existing bureaucracy, regulations, and the time it takes to turn a ship much bigger than the Titanic around. Contagion‘s a critically important reminder that in crisis, it’s not always a matter of whose finger is on the button.
5. All the President’s Men (1976) and Dick (1999): These two very different retellings of the same essential story make two different but critically important points. First, journalism is hard, and it’s difficult to do it even when you have all the right breaks and time in which to do it: so how hard must it be to nail down true stories on the campaign trail, where everyone is sleep-deprived and exhausted, and events are moving extraordinarily rapidly. Second, politicians are people, often eccentric, obnoxious people. They want power, but they want other things too, including pot brownies and to kick their dogs.
Our guest blogger is Mike Casey, president of cleantech communications firm Tigercomm.
Happy residents of the Karl Smith Siberian global warming relocation program.
Currently, fossil fuel industry lobbyists, flacks, allied pundits, and government officials are far too comfortable dismissing concerns about what their pollution does to other people. What if we had a system that required those who are advocating, defending or producing large sources of pollution to be one of the other people? What if they had to drink the dirty water, breathe the polluted air, and have their livelihoods compromised by (their) status quo industries. It wouldn’t be fun for them. But they’d be accountable, deeply accountable, for what they are doing.
I think it’s time to explore what Deep Accountability would look like. I’ll start here, with this Modest Proposal for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Karl Smith. He’s the newest addition to the crowd that believes global climate disruption isn’t a problem because we can all move to the top of the world.
Alexander Konovalov
Minister of Justice of Russia
Address: 4 Zhitnaya Ulitsa, Moscow 119991
Telephone/fax: (495) 955-59-99
Dear Minister Konovalov:
I received your name from contacting the Russian embassy in Washington. I apologize in advance for not having the resources to translate this unusual proposal into Russian.
I am the owner of a United States public relations firm, Tigercomm. We represent renewable energy and energy efficiency businesses both here in the U.S. and internationally. In our company’s view, renewable energy and energy efficiency represent a path toward economic revitalization in many countries, as well as addressing the threat of global climate disruption.
In that context, I wanted to bring to your attention the recent, remarkable writings of Professor Karl Smith, Assistant Professor of Public Economics and Government at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Professor Smith recently received attention with his assurance that global climate disruption isn’t really a big deal because a good chunk of the world population can just move to the northern part of your country if things transpire as most scientists fear they will.
Needless to say, if you believe Professor Smith’s predictions are correct, then there is going to be an influx of tens or even hundreds of millions of people to the northern part of your great country. This would likely be a significant change for Siberia, from a region with a current population density of just 3 persons per square kilometer, to one of the most densely populated places on earth in a few decades.
I thought you and other Russian leaders might have some views on the merits of this assertion, because Professor Smith isn’t alone in saying global climate disruption is no big deal. Some, such as Peabody Energy Vice President of Government Relations Fred Palmer have asserted that we will benefit from global climate disruption.
With that in mind, I’d like to raise with you an idea I’ve had for a while, one that I call “Deep Accountability.” Under this concept, the foolish and the reckless in American punditry – and they seem to increasing, even as the climate science gets more damning – would be forced to actually sample the realities they advocate for others.
Therefore, I am trying to confirm the viability of an unusual proposal. Would it be possible for my company to pay for the rental of unoccupied space in any of the estimated 476 former Soviet prison facilities, particularly those in northern Siberia? If such space is available, we would like to pay to house Professor Smith for a year or more as a guest of your great country. We are seeking to provide him with a direct experience of the vigorous Siberian climate firsthand, and see for himself what the future home of tens or hundreds of millions of global climate disruption refugees would be like.
As Maryland lawmakers consider legislation expanding marriage equality to gays and lesbians this session, some on-the-fence Democrats will introduce language to exempt religious institutions from performing same-sex marriages and allow those organizations to 
