Where's Wiebe

He's exactly right to call for continued drilling. Let me — let me say a couple things. In the last 50 years, the four states that allow offshore drilling on the gulf, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama — more than 30,000 wells have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the first time in that more than 30,000 we have ever had anything like this happen. About 30 percent of America's production of oil and gas coming out of the Gulf of Mexico. If you shut this down, don't kid yourself, you're not shutting it down for six months. These big oil rigs — by the way, B.P. and Transocean are not even American companies.

In six months, these oil rigs aren't going to be sitting around the gulf waiting. They're going to be in west Africa. They'll be in Indonesia. They're going to be in China. They're going to be drilling oil wells elsewhere in the world.

And the loss of production that we're going to suffer will make us even more dependent on the Middle East, on Venezuela, on people that aren't our friends.

And let me tell you one other little thing environmentalists ought to think about. Of the 10 worst oil spills in American history, seven of them were from ships. Seven of them were from ships.

So we had a big disaster. Caused by deep sea drilling. And we're not entirely sure why. Oh, and the disaster isn't over yet. Whatever. Business should go on as usual. I mean this has only happened badly a few times. Most of the time when things go wrong its the ship's fault anyway. You're getting all worked up over something that probably won't even happen. Again.

Oh yea. And get off my land, you hippie.

(Hat Tip: Doonesbury)

What does that mean?

This an attack. Right? Or maybe, it's something else. Nice use of the peace sign...

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Don't mess with Obama

Onion fun (link):

WASHINGTON—After serving 12 years in the position, Motley, the official White House Jester, was beheaded Tuesday after delivering a poorly received jape about the spiraling national debt before President and Mrs. Obama.

...

At this, Obama reportedly dropped the large turkey leg in his hand and signaled to nearby Secret Service agents, who seized Motley and dragged him, pleading, to the Executive Dungeon. The President exited the Hall in a fury, and within minutes had drafted an order of execution by beheading.

Greedy much?

Headline says it all: Nigerian spam email of the week. Here's a teaser:

Dear Friend

I am the private solicitor for Mr Tony Hayward, the esteemed Chairman and Chief executive of British Petroleum. My client has various personal and family related holdings of BP stock and options. Due to his faithful long standing service to BP the total value of his holdings amounts to in excess of 100m pounds sterling. Mr Heywood is a British citizen but it has been my sorrowful duty to advise him that his personal and family wealth is at great risk of being wrongfully confiscated by US authorities acting extra-territorially under special powers authorised by the US government and with the secret consent of a supine UK political and legal establishment.

Here's the link to more.

(Hat Tip: Felix Salmon)

Double-Dip Please...

Robert Reich on what not to tell Obama (link):

B) Tell the President you understand the political pressures for deficit reduction are growing, and Republicans are making headway fooling the public into believing that this terrible recovery is due to to excessive government deficits. So so it’s perfectly fine for the President to bend to those political pressures. Cut the budgets of most federal agencies by 5 percent, enforce “pay-go” rules that don’t allow bigger deficits, build up expectations for the report of his “deficit commission” on December, and tell the American public that we now have to move toward fiscal austerity.

If you choose B, you shouldn’t be advising the President.

Ding Ding Ding

Ezra has it right (link). The 'lone Republican' strategy has worked very well for the GOP.

It's further evidence that the "lone Republican" strategy doesn't work. Time and again, Democrats have ended up in a room with a single Republican who seemed willing to cut a deal. It was Olympia Snowe on health care, Bob Corker on financial regulation and Lindsey Graham on climate change. In every case, the final bill looked a lot like what that Republican helped negotiate. And in every single case, the Republican realized that he or she couldn't get more support from their party and so they eventually bolted the effort.

If you think this has all been a cynical strategy, it's been brilliantly successful. On the one hand, Republicans have had a major role in shaping these bills. On the other hand, they haven't had to vote for these bills, and so they could cleanly campaign against legislation that a member of their party helped write. And as an added bonus, Democrats are stuck trying to defend a bill that their base doesn't like very much and that's thick with compromises that annoy political elites.

It has to be a cynical strategy, right? If I was in the minority and I thought it would trip up the ruling party, I'd give it a shot.

Two Quick Pessimistic Thoughts

Lifted from this post by Kevin Drum. My first thought:

Today probably marks the official death of climate legislation in the United States. Lindsey Graham, the only Republican even nominally favorable toward any kind of carbon pricing plan, has announced that he can't support the Kerry-Lieberman bill because it doesn't allow enough offshore drilling (!), and without Graham there's pretty much zero chance of getting any further Republican support.

Death due to not enough off-shore drilling. That's wild. And, my second thought:

So there you have it: the American public believes in global warming and wants the government to do something about it. However, the American public doesn't want to do anything — carbon taxes or cap-and-trade — that might actually work. But they do want to open the federal goody bag and dole out subsidies and tax breaks to everyone under the sun, presumably because these all sound like pleasant things to do and they're under the impression that they're all "free." Whether they work or not isn't really on their radar.

And it looks like that's what Congress is going to deliver. We are, in this case, getting exactly the government we deserve.

Effectively policy has to be demanded. It's not being demanded.

Meet the new boss. It's the same as the old boss.

Ezra captures the strange irony of the political results so far this cycle (link):

Part of the narrative that's emerged is that these primaries show an anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, year. That's right, but it's mixed, incoherently, with pro-party -- which is to say, pro-Washington establishment -- results. The different bases are eliminating politicians who've been insufficiently dedicated to holding their party's line. The result will be much more significant than merely the election of three new senators. Rather, surviving senators will upgrade the threat an unhappy base poses to their reelection and trim their independence accordingly. The moderates and compromisers who are left will stop acting like moderates and compromisers. This election looks, if nothing else, like it's going to be a big step forward in bringing strong party discipline to the Senate.

Of course, The Who would see nothing strange about this (link).

A personal 900 number

Why in the world does Christopher Hitchens want this (link)?

I trust you answer the e-mail of your friends at no charge.
I haven’t got to the point yet where phone calls and e-mails are billable, but I am working on it. That would be happiness defined for me. What I’m hoping is to get a 900 number, so I can tell all my friends, “Call me back on my 900 number: 1-900-HITCH22.” I can talk for a long time.

(Hat Tip: Marginal Revolution)

Nobody hates their politicians like California hates thier politicians

Seriously (link), here PPPs commentary:

Arnold Schwarzenegger of course is the least popular Governor in the country with a 20/64 approval rating. The battle to replace him looks like it will be between someone marginally unpopular (Jerry Brown and his 37/39 favorability ratio) and someone very unpopular (Meg Whitman and her 24/44 favorability ratio.)

In the Senate race right now an unpopular incumbent (Barbara Boxer, 37/46 approval) is still favored for reelection because her likely opponent is just as unpopular (Carly Fiorina, 22/30 favorability and that's before the Democrats start really spending money on attacking the heck out of her.)

Tough Day for Blogging

Lots of emergency analysis going on in my day job - so my blog crawl today has been severely curtailed. On the plus side, I'm not as POed at the GOP as I usually am about this time of day.

Here is the one post that has me thinking bad thoughts (link). It's a fun rant from Sullivan about Palin, torture, Israel, and Iran. It red meat for those who sceptically view Israeli actions . Enjoy!

I'd like effectively provided government services, please.

So, not this (link).

Peach County is one of more than 120 school districts across the country where students attend school just four days a week, a cost-saving tactic gaining popularity among cash-strapped districts struggling to make ends meet. The 4,000-student district started shaving a day off its weekly school calendar last year to help fill a $1 million budget shortfall.

It was that or lay off 39 teachers the week before school started, said Superintendent Susan Clark.

The article is unsure on whether or not this is bad thing. Let me clear that up. It is a bad thing. I have never seen an educational study which says that less class time results in better student performance. I have never read an economist that said educational performance is not a significant factor in our nation's future prosperity. Every time you hear somebody complain about how much money government wastes and that we pay too much in taxes, I want you to think of four day school weeks in Peach County.

Let's put these guys back in charge....

I'm offended (link). You should be too. His presidency is an object lesson in how to become your enemy.

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

I'm in the "Don't Gut Regulation" camp...

Ezra captures the key point on the oil spill (link).

It strains credulity to suggest that presidents will enter office and zero in on failures at tiny regulatory agencies. But their underlings should. And they appoint their underlings. So insofar as Ken Salazar fell down on the job, it's Obama's fault in a "buck stops here" sort of way.

But this is also evidence of what a bad idea it is to routinely elect people who make it a point to degrade the capacity of regulatory agencies. If your regulators are going to be effective, the commitment to their effectiveness has to be continuous, not episodic. If every other administration has to come into office and nurse a sabotaged bureaucracy back to health, they're going to miss some of the problems, and much of the damage will already have been done.

(Emphasis mine).

That's the Way You Do It

When the crazzies wake-up, the deficit solution becomes apparent. It's called the budget deals of 1990 and 1993. Here's a key chart from Jonathan Chiat's excellent post "Conservatives Ignore Their One Proven Success" :

(Hat Tip: Matt Yglesias)

Your 2012 Frontrunner

May I present, Sarah Palin (link):

This is a message to extreme “environmentalists” who hypocritically protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore. There is nothing “clean and green” about your efforts. Look, here’s the deal: when you lock up our land, you outsource jobs and opportunity away from America and into foreign countries that are making us beholden to them. Some of these countries don’t like America. Some of these countries don’t care for planet earth like we do – as evidenced by our stricter environmental standards.

With your nonsensical efforts to lock up safer drilling areas, all you’re doing is outsourcing energy development, which makes us more controlled by foreign countries, less safe, and less prosperous on a dirtier planet. Your hypocrisy is showing. You’re not preventing environmental hazards; you’re outsourcing them and making drilling more dangerous.

Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.

That's right. The environmentalists are to blame. Run, Baby, Run.

Ack... I may end up buying a subscription to the NYT

I really like the free internet. All the free news and analysis that you can read. Links to the best sources. All that. Reading about the paywalls being formed has made me worried. Will I eventually have to pay for this great stuff I've been getting for free? I mean it hasn't happened yet. And usually when I run into a paywall (Like the WSJ), you can do a google search on the article's headline and get a free full version being posted by somebody else (I have no idea how they aren't getting sued for stealing content).

But remember that the NYT announced that they would have a pay wall (link). Maybe they'll back down if Murdoch's own play fails (link). Maybe not.

But, I can get my news from other sources, right? Well, Krugman's blog is part of the NYT. And now, so will Nate Silver's (link). Yikes. If all the best web content gets put behind paywalls, big content will have forced my hand. Again.

(Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan)

UPDATE: Nate has his own take on this change on his blog (link). I'm disappointed to hear that his posts will reduce in frequency over the next 9-10 weeks during his transition. However, it's good to hear that he'll be up and running by September, just about the time that political news junkies like myself will be going completely nuts.

Massively

(Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Crazy is as crazy does

Yesterday, I noticed this headline over at RedState.com: "Sestak Job Offer Violated Federal Law?". Which made me remember this post over at Ezra Klein's blog by Jonathan Bernstein (link):

The incentives all run to impeachment, as far as I can tell. The leaders of such an effort would find it easy to cash in (literally, I mean) with books and appearances on the conservative lecture circuit. It's hard to believe that Rush, Beck and the rest of the gang wouldn't be tripping over each other to wear the crown of the Host Who Brought Down the socialist gangster president. And we've seen the ability, or I should say the lack thereof, of rank-and-file GOP pols to stand up to the talk show yakkers. Besides, it's not as if a new Republican majority would have a full agenda of legislative items to pass, and what they did have would face an Obama veto (and most likely death in the Senate at any rate). Against all that is the collective preference of the Republican Party not to have a reputation as a pack of loons, but that doesn't seem to be much of a constraint in practice. Of course, also against impeachment is the lack of a serious offense by the president, but I don't see that as a major impediment -- if offering a job to a potential Senate candidate is an impeachable offense (and see Jonathan Chait if you think it really is), then they'll have no trouble at all coming up with something.

I'm beginning to fear the political impact of the oil spill on the mid-term elections. I don't want to under-emphasize the environmental/economic catastrophe by making it seem that the only impact I care about is the political one. Especially given the horse race sensibility of my comment. So please read this as only one aspect of my thinking.

Basically, the oil spill contributes to the growing sense of frustration on the part of the citizenry. This leads to greater anger at incumbents. As the GOP is out of power, this increases their likelihood of retaking the house and possibly the senate. And because the crazies are running the GOP show, we get to the Bernstein impeachment prediction. Which is crazy.

This sounds nuts. And I would bet against it today. But what else would need to happen to change my bet? If today wasn't in June but was in late October, would my bet change?

I'm real hesitant to blog this...

Because, I hate to raise expectations.

But, I keep reading this kind of sentiment (From PPP):

It's just another data point showing that Democratic troubles this year are not the result of them losing the center, but of conservative voters being more motivated to turn out.

And (From Charlie Cook):

Although no single district can be an accurate microcosm of a larger set of competitive districts, Pennsylvania's 12th District seemed to be a good example of a certain type. It is blue-collar with a mix of small towns, cities and rural areas. The Republican candidate was competent, well-funded and had a good story. Obama's job approval ratings in the district were below the national average. It might not have been a gimme, but it was a race the Republicans should have won. Not only did they lose, though, they lost by 8 points, just shy of the traditional 10-point yardstick of a landslide.

What happened? ....The Republican analysis seems to imply GOP victory is dependent upon Democratic vote depression, and for them to win, Democratic voters must be lethargic and not show up.

And (From Ed Kilgore at 538.com):

Moreover, a more stridently ideological posture by Republicans could arguably play into the hands of Democrats who are frantically trying to make the next two election cycles revolve around a "two futures" choice between two very different agendas rather than a referendum on Democratic governance.

And (From Adam Abramowitz at The Democratic Strategist):

Evidence from U.S. Senate elections since 2000 provides strong support for the median voter theory of U.S. elections. This evidence shows that conservatism had a significant negative effect on the electoral performance of Republican incumbents. Based on these results, efforts by the Tea Party movement and other conservative activist to purge moderate incumbents and pressure Republican candidates into taking more consistently conservative positions are likely to have a detrimental impact on the GOP's performance in future elections.

I'd really like to see the GOP punished for their tea party nonsense. Based on these readings, the mid-terms may hinge on how far to the right the GOP has moved. If Democratic voters do turnout, then there will be a chance to turn back the red tide. You can't know what will happen in this next round of national elections, but maybe the GOP really has taken their rhetoric a step too far.

Sell Everything. Immediately. Quickly.

(Hat Tip: Greg Mankiw's Blog)

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming

Oil Map

Excellent interaction chart at the NYT (link) on the Oil spilled into the gulf.

(Hat Tip: The Big Picture)

Like I'm not pysched about this...

My commute's reading list just got longer with Bloomberg's top fifty business books (link). Sweet!

(Hat Tip: The Big Picture)

"Wall Street CEOs Are Nuts"

James Kwak has a great take the relationship between the administration and Wall Street (link). But I like this passage on the CEOs the best:

Wall Street CEOs like to think they are the adults, the big men in the room, the ones who know how the world works. Well, you know what? They screwed up their own banks, the financial system, and the economy like a bunch of two-year-olds. Every single major bank would have failed in late 2008 without massive government intervention — because of wounds that were entirely self-inflicted. (Citigroup: holding onto hundreds of billions of dollars of its own toxic waste. Bank of America: paying $50 billion for an investment bank that would have failed within three days. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: levering up without a stable source of funding. Etc.) The financial crisis should have put to rest for a generation the idea that the big boys on Wall Street know what they’re doing and the politicians in Washington are a bunch of amateurs. Yet somehow the bankers came out of it with the same unshakable belief in their own perfection that they had in 2005. The only plausible explanation is some kind of powerful personality disorder.

Enjoyable stuff. The link is worthy of a quick read -- plus the comments below are fun too.

Nate is fixated on Rasmussen. Good for him.

A few posts ago (link), I mentioned the 'house effect' on Rasmussen polls and even linked to Daily Kos' take (link) that its all part of a right-wing conspiracy (For the record, I don't buy it). Since then there have been several blog posts by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com on Rasmussen and why their results are so odd. Here's part of his latest (link) on the Wisconsin Senate Race:

But if we indeed take this result literally, it is pretty ridiculous. Johnson is good on the stump and has started to generate a lot of buzz among the conservative and tea-party intelligentsia. He has some upside potential -- and may well defeat Feingold in the end. But common sense would dictate the number of Wisconsinites (even "likely voters") who know who Ron Johnson is right now is closer to 6.8 percent than 68.

I've had a lot of criticisms for Rasmussen Reports over the past couple of weeks. Many of the problems their polls exhibit are common to other pollsters throughout the industry, if they seem to be a bit exacerbated in Rasmussen's case.

But the fact is that Rasmussen is the 500-pound gorilla in the room. They drive a lot of traffic and narrative. They account for something like 30 percent of all horse-race polls that have been released thus far this election cycle.

I love that Nate is drilling in on the pollsters and making them accountable for not only their accuracy, but also their methodology. Polls very often make headlines and can be used to nudge people towards stronger views than they might have had without the headline. Pollsters may even want to influence our opinions. So, taking 'em down a notch is very worthwhile. Their results should be called into question, especially when they don't make sense.

Go Nate!

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