Month: January 2009

Alissa Rubin visits a province that was formerly loyal to cleric Moktada al-Sadr:

The young men here are optimistic and most striking, say they are thinking seriously about voting for the Dawa party led by Mr. Maliki. The elections on Saturday will bring a new provincial council to power, the rough equivalent of a state legislature in the United States . The young men say he brought security and jobs. People hope that if his party gains power, he will bring more of both…Their enthusiasm is all the more surprising because this neighborhood was loyal to anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose militia Mr. Maliki strove to defang.

David Roberts says yes:

This may piss off some people I respect a great deal. Nonetheless, after hearing it in several off-the-record conversations in D.C. last week, I believe it’s something that needs to be said publicly:

The 111th U.S. Congress is not going to pass a carbon tax. Calls for a carbon tax, to the extent they have any effect, will complicate and possibly derail passage of carbon legislation.

It’s possible that a carbon tax (and/or cap-and-dividend) bill will be introduced. One or both might even make it to a full vote, though I doubt it. But they won’t pass. If you want carbon pricing out of this Congress, cap-and-trade is what you’re getting. It follows that your energies are best spent ensuring that cap-and-trade legislation is as strong as possible.

Them’s the facts.

This is pretty funny – actually, I found it highly amusing but I’m sophomoric in these matters. But what’s interesting about it is the way it innovates YouTube one more ratchet up the addictive/fun cycle. Just keep your YouTube Annotations turned on and follow the instructions. The shape of online video to come:

Just a glimpse into the far-right psyche. The two biggest ticket items that have leaped into public consciousness discrediting parts of the stimulus package have been family planning and STD prevention. Both have been blaring Drudge headlines. Now, this is technical stuff and I don’t doubt that there’s merit to the case against portraying these as in some way necessary counter-cyclical emergency funding.

But why is it the GOP is so easily galvanized by sexual panic? Weird, if you ask me. This is the budget we’re talking about here. Even there, they reach, like the exhausted tacticians they are, for the culture war. And it isn’t reaching back.

"I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell," – Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), head of the Republican Study Committee.

And now, of course, having offended th Grand Poobahs Of The Talk Radio Right, Gingrey has to grovel.

Ahmadinejad wants an apology: 

The vituperative Iranian president, delivering his first public address since President Barack Obama’s inauguration last week and Obama’s own overture to the Muslim world this week, suggested today that the "change” which Obama promised in his campaign means that the new American leader must apologize for U.S. "crimes" against Iran, including American support for the 1953 coup in Tehran and the backing of Iraq during the war between Iraq and Iran.

“This was not a drive-by P.R. stunt, and I actually thought it might be. It was a substantive, in-depth discussion with our conference, and he’s very effective. He knows that the debt and the deficit are huge long-term problems as well and he made a compelling case. He sounded, frankly, a lot like a Republican,” –  Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee.

As I said, the GOP should do its best to pare the worst of the social spending out of the stimulus bill; but they should save their fire for entitlement reform, just as important for long-term fiscal health. Obama will be their ally on that.

Reason takes on farm subsidies:

Consider these facts. Ninety percent of all subsidies go to just five crops: corn, rice, cotton, wheat, and soybeans. Two thirds of all farm products—including perishable fruits and vegetables—receive almost no subsidies. And just 10 percent of recipients receive 75 percent of all subsidies. A program intended to be a “temporary solution” has become one of our government’s most glaring examples of corporate welfare.

U.S. taxpayers aren’t the only ones who pay the price. Cotton subsidies, for example, encourage overproduction which lowers the world price of cotton. That’s great for people who buy cotton, but it’s disastrous for already impoverished cotton farmers in places such as West Africa.

Damon Linker thinks not:

I’m all for trying to undercut the political salience of culture-war issues. And I think symbolic gestures…can be a very effective way to achieve this goal. But we need to be clear that keeping the religious right out of political power (by stealing the votes of its more moderate members) is not the same thing as ending the culture war. Indeed, the core of the religious right might very well respond to political impotence by becoming even more radical and more committed to its causes.

And mark my words: This unhappy outcome is guaranteed if President Obama signs anything resembling the Freedom of Choice Act that’s been kicking around Congress for the past few years — and which during his presidential campaign he famously (and for pro-lifers, notoriously) promised to sign. If he fulfills this promise, Obama will not only have failed to end the culture war. He will have ensured its survival for another generation.

It’s great to see conservatives, liberated from the Bush-Cheney years, actually getting upset about massive government spending. How long has it been now? I even saw a post at NRO that worried about interest payment on the debt! Yes: it only took them eight years to worry about that one.

Of course, I suspect they’re more right than wrong. I don’t see how the massive spending envisaged from 2010 – 2012 is a counter-cyclical anti-recession tool. I’m less worried about infrastructure spending and its waste in the next year and a half than about broad structural increases on social spending from 2010 on. I’d like the GOP to make these points more powerfully than they have; and with any luck, Obma will listen to enough of their legitimate concerns to temper the package somewhat. If you haven’t read this excellent post by Jim Manzi, take a second now.

But one has to say: the Democrats won the last election. The Bush Republicans legitimized massive spending and the role of government as a kind of super-nanny for the working poor for eight years. They really don’t have any serious standing to cavil now – and calling for more tax cuts, even for the working poor, rings hollow as debt balloons.

This is Bush’s final legacy, and some of us saw it coming years ago: the creation of a massive social welfare state in America, with the potential of entrenching liberalism for generations. This is Bush’s achievement more than Obama’s. And without Bush, none of it would be thinkable. The only realistic hope is to leverage this danger into real entitlement reform later this year. McCain?