The Rest Of The Week In Review... Also The Last?

Well, before the new job I just want to clear out my tabs and what-not.

• I think the biggest threat to the economy right now remains the housing market. The Administration has apparently been using the FHA to prop up the market by continuing to guarantee high-risk mortgages which otherwise wouldn't have been made. Well, those are starting to go bad at an alarming rate, and now policymakers are talking about a federal bailout. At the same time, the federal program designed to slow down foreclosures isn't really working. However, none of this is stopping Democrats and Republicans from trying to extend an $8,000 homebuyer credit to... prop up the housing market. It's insane.

• In a story reminiscent of The Jungle, the New York Times did an expose of the meat inspection industry and its effects on the lives of people paralyzed for eating the wrong hamburger. The story was so powerful that the industry started striking deals for testing their meat for e.coli. Aside from the environmental concerns from eating meat altogether, at the very least we should be able to expect that we won't get paralyzed from it.

• Sonia Sotomayor was lively and active in her first week on the Supreme Court, asking more questions in an hour "than Justice Clarence Thomas has asked over the course of several years." Meanwhile, Antonin Scalia was trying to argue that the symbol of the cross wasn't actually a religious symbol. And he's supposed to be the conservative intellectual on the bench.

• This Karl Rove op-ed is as silly as the rest of them, but one part rings true.

The numbers may get worse for Democrats if they pass a health-care bill. Why? Because Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.) wants to frontload the reforms with distasteful things. Under his plan, tax hikes and Medicare and Medicaid cuts kick in immediately, while new benefits are delayed for two-and-a-half years. Voters likely won't warm to reforms that slam them next year while promising benefits down the road.

This is unquestionably true, actually. You have to have some tangible benefits up front. I think the high-risk pools that could get the uninsured covered before the exchanges take effect could solve some of this problem.

• Good to see the DSCC taking this on - just why did 30 GOP Senators vote to deny rape victims justice in court?

• I'm still not sure whether the Senate is ready to pass a climate change bill, but the participation of Lindsey Graham in this op-ed doesn't hurt. Huckleberry often says one thing right before doing another, but it helps to put him in a box, saying that the Senate can pass the bill. Actually, it might help even more that a Midwestern Democrat like Sherrod Brown is leaning toward supporting the bill - the industrial-state Senators will make or break this.

• Not only did Rick Perry pull a bunch of members from a commission that wanted to look into his role in putting an innocent man to death, he cut the commission's funding. The rationalizations from the prosecutors aren't really cutting it, either.

• I didn't see Keith Olbermann's special comment on health care, but here's the transcript. It sounds like he took the experience of caring for his ailing father and interfacing with the health care system and pretty much came up with an hour full of stories. I don't know if he found out that some insurers consider domestic violence a pre-existing condition, or if his hospital charged a "facility fee" for his father to sit there, or if his father or someone in the hospital died from a preventable death. But the point is that, once you actually use the health care system, you have a far less positive view of it.

• You absolutely knew that Bill Frist would walk back his support of health care reform within about 24 hours. No surprise at all.

• I'm assuming that when Republicans get together, they use terms like "ghetto grandmothers" to describe all Democrats.

• I always hated the "look how many times that speaker used the words "I" or "me" as a proof of anything approaching narcissism, but Mark Liberman strikes a nail through the heart of this nonsense.

• In the grand scheme of things, $54 billion over 10 years is not a lot of money, certainly nowhere near the kind of numbers that Republicans always tout when they claim that medical malpractice reform is all that's needed to save health care.

• The ad I directed for Blue America targeting Blanche Lincoln for her stance on health care reform was featured on Rachel Maddow. Yay me!

• The latest conservative freak-out could be the dumbest ever - attacking Obama from choosing an artwork to adorn the White House because the wingnuts think it's a copy of a work by Matisse - when it's supposed to be a copy of a work by Matisse. I know it's not dogs playing poker, but really, maybe you should shut your mouth about things you don't understand.

• Well, blow me down - one of the top people in the Tea Party Movement owes the IRS a half a million dollars. Boy, he really doesn't like taxes!

• And finally, there's a Last Comic Standing show in Iraq. If they opened it up to the entire Muslim world, the head of the Pakistan Taliban would win in a walk.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

I personally haven't moved in quite a while, and hadn't remembered how draining it all is. I'll be glad when it's over, but of course, we're just moving out during the remodel and then have to move back in. So even when we're done, we'll be half-done. Lovely. Anyway, here's what I missed this past week:

• Congress has been trying to pass a federal shield law for journalists for some time, and the bill Sen. Schumer proposed suddenly made all unpaid bloggers and citizen journalists ineligible, despite the fact that many of them work on investigative subjects and may need protection for their sources. It's more that the bill gives journalists special protections unattainable for bloggers that gets to me. Markos doesn't blame Schumer but some other Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and reports are that the White House could be involved as well - actually it looks like they want to kill the bill altogether by trying to great giant national security exceptions. Stay tuned on this.

• Ben Bernanke gave a long piece of testimony to Congress about the role of the Federal Reserve saying nary a work about consumer protection, a good symbol of the fact that the Fed could give a rat's ass about whether or not consumers are getting ripped off by financial firms. Perhaps this signals that Bernanke won't work too hard to oppose the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that could take away their portfolio on consumer protection. Bernanke seems to be relenting on giving the Fed the role of systemic risk regulator, too.

• Insurance companies continue to mail misleading information to seniors over Medicare reform, in this case not just to protect schemes like Medicare Advantage but to sell new supplemental insurance to the elderly. Now THAT'S entrepreneurship. The Department of Insurance in Connecticut will investigate.

• Alan Grayson's performance on the national scene this week was great, but the other positive is that he just moved to the top of every rollodex in the traditional media. He has a higher profile for the issues he has been working on in Congress, mostly the great story of our time, the destruction of the economic system by financial and corporate elites. Grayson has been a leader in the movement to audit the Federal Reserve and bring accountability to Wall Street. He has also seized on the right's phony ACORN gambit by extending their bill to defund companies who have committed fraud and applying it to government contractors like weapons producers, who have consistently defrauded the government for decades.

• The Pew Research Center alleged that a poll showed a decline in American support for a woman's right to choose, but Kevin Drum offers ample evidence showing it to be an outlier.

• Turns out that, while both sides were at fault in last year's Russia-Georgia war, an EU report states that Georgia started it by attacking South Ossetia. As John McCain said, "We are all Georgians now." Because we all support unnecessary invasions of random countries.

• If you want to know why even the IMF wants to overhaul the global financial system, read Matt Taibbi's post about how Goldman Sachs tries to bamboozle lawmakers. They really have consolidated far too much power. This new book should have some answers, too.

• Showing that you still can't fight the military-industrial complex, Congress voted for $2.5 billion in C-17 cargo planes that the Pentagon says it doesn't want or need. This is going to be a long struggle.

• A dozen retired generals and admirals told Dick Cheney and his Mini-Me daughter to stop the scaremongering on Guantanamo Bay. The sad part of all of this is that transferring the remaining prisoners to a Supermax site would greatly intensify their isolation and curtail their freedoms. This is what the Cheneys are arguing against.

• Brad from Sadly, No! authored a great piece about the entrenched interests in the health care reform debate who have been thwarting a sane method for providing care to everyone for almost a century now. Puts things in perspective, but also demands that Democrats formulate some sort of long-term response.

• Could we be seeing the end to sectarian politics in Iraq? I'm not certain - Maliki sought out Sunnis because Shiites formed their own list. The elections themselves will tell the tale, not the slates.

• RedState head Viking Erick Erickson, who is incredibly a city councilor in Macon, GA, wants to eliminate the local police force rather than let them unionize. There's a certain perfection to that. Somehow I don't think the cops are coming to his house during the next round of burglaries.

• This is a very good shift by the WIC program: "Beginning today, women and children who receive food vouchers through the federal government's WIC program will be able to use them to buy fresh fruits and vegetables." It's astounding that they weren't able before. I know I'm seeing a lot more people in the supermarkets using the WIC vouchers these days, so it's good to see that they have access to nutritious and healthy food.

• A new report by a respected national commission calls on the government to provide broadband to everyone as an imperative. This is just self-evident. We cannot compete with the rest of the world if a large segment of our population lives without the same tools of communication and knowledge. We have failed to provide the infrastructure for the 21st-century economy, not just with broadband but transportation and education, and we will pay the price.

• Here's this week's Silvio Berlusconi chronicles: he opened the week by calling Obama tan again, which appears to be his favorite joke; the woman who claimed to be a paid prostitute for the Italian prime minister asserted on Italian TV that Berlusconi knew her to be an escort; and meanwhile, despite the controversy the Italian Parliament approved a tax amnesty bill that allows the Mafia and Berlusconi's rich friends to avoid prosecution for illegal actions. Same as it ever was.

• And finally, I'm not going to rush right out and enter the WaPo's America's Next Great Pundit contest. First of all, being on the op-ed page that spawned David Broder, George Will and Charles Krauthammer isn't my idea of a prize. Second, it's unclear whether the Post even is obligated to run the columns. Third, they're offering a whopping two hundred bucks per column. Fourth, I think "Groomer Has It" was more interesting than this contest. Also, Thers won it with this entry.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Blogging is likely to be limited this week. We're under the gun to pack up the house for a long-awaited remodel, which basically involves taking every single thing we own and putting it into a two-car garage. And selling whatever doesn't fit. It's going to be FUN. So I expect next week's "rest of" to be about twice the size:

• I can't tell you how worried I am about the bottom dropping out of the so-called recovery once even more mortgage rates recast and people cannot afford the new payments. The housing bubble popped, but air is leaking from that patched balloon as well. These option ARMs and other junk mortgages all have rates that skyrocket for millions of homeowners in the next couple years. We're talking $30 billion dollars in San Francisco alone. There was a time in bubble regions when a junk mortgage was the only option for affordability. When the borrowers feel the real price, they could all snap - with terrible consequences for the economy. And of course the lenders pushed all their clients into this for years, seeing that they operated what amounts to a massive criminal enterprise, which this week even the Kansas state Supreme Court acknowledged.

• I'm still holding off on talking definitively about the death of Bill Sparkman, the Census worker found dead in rural Kentucky, but what we do know is not encouraging. Clearly the anger leveled at government does go somewhere, whether Sparkman's death is a result of that or not. So those ringleaders doing the demonizing really have to look at themselves when incidents like this get reported.

• I'm very interested in this Micah Sifry piece about how Obama is fading online. Measuring YouTube hits is a blunt instrument, but consider, a video that the White House intended to go viral, the 4-minute Obama plan cutdown of the September speech to Congress, has 130,000 views, far short of where a viral video would be. I think governing is just inherently less sexy and won't capture the imagination of a community that thrives on passing around media. And like it or not, there is such a thing as the digital divide, and you really can reach more people in old media, even today. But I think Chris Hughes provides a pretty good answer in terms of what the White House could do if they sought a new media strategy - although Hughes clearly blames progressive groups for failing to adapt, not the DNC, which just isn't equipped tactically to handle what needs to be done.

• That said, despite the difficulty in mobilizing online about policy, that's no reason to eschew policy completely, the foundational basis for governing, in the manner that Dean Broder suggests. Perhaps he hates policy so much because the only Presidents who offer it are those dirty hippie Democrats. And relying on some Hudson Institute flak to create his opinion for him is truly embarrassing. Very close to a new low for the Dean.

• Paul Volcker really needs to be listened to about financial reform. If we keep protecting the banks, they're just be encouraged to take greater risks because the government will pick up all that risk for themselves. We have to do the opposite by removing risk from the system. Volcker's the only one talking sense.

• As it is, we're not only looking at losing money on the bailout, which would be fine if the money was spent preventing a total collapse and fixing the system for the future, but we're also in a shakier position than ever because we've made the remaining banks bigger.

• Here's a great tangible victory for the Obama Administration - "One of the country's largest food service companies announced Friday that it will buy winter tomatoes only from growers that pay a fair wage and offer good working conditions." Big accomplishment for farm workers, courtesy of the great Hilda Solis at the Labor Department.

• A lot of what's contained in the health care bill covers obscure and unassuming items like delivery system reforms - digitizing medical records, moving to value-based purchasing, MedPAC reform. These have little publicity but will hopefully be where the bulk of the savings to the system will emanate. This interview with Peter Orszag has a good overview.

• The United States is wrong to block the war crimes report from the Israel/Gaza conflict for referral to the International Criminal Court. Now the report will be used by the Palestinians - actually, both sides, since everyone's implicated - as an example of unequal treatment in the Middle East. And in this case, they'd be right.

• Arlen Specter is terrible on marriage equality. He's moved left on a host of issues since becoming a Democrat, but that's largely due to a primary challenge, and before agreeing to six more years of service, Pennsylvanians should really look at the whole record and not his mid-2008 to today cram session.

• Good NYT op-ed on corporate personhood. It's amazing to see this issue, relegated to the progressive fringes for so long, finally get some attention, as the true agenda of the Roberts Court gets revealed.

• Though anti-Castro Cuban exiles decried the event, I think the Peace Without Borders concert for hundreds of thousands in Havana will end up being as significant as any event to bring Cuba back into the community of nations. Once you give people the taste of Western culture, they tend to crave it. The Cuban regime can try to frame it as them bringing these musical acts to the people all they want, but opening the society a crack will eventually lead to a flood.

• Has Republican pollster Strategic Vision been cooking its books and defrauding their clients? Nate Silver seems to think so.

• Spain has figured out how to deal with runaway unemployment - move quickly to the green economy through subsidies and incentives. And no, these jobs don't destroy two jobs for every one created, they just destroy the status quo for oil companies and power plant polluters. In the US, creating a prize for the most energy-efficient light bulb is a start, but we could do this faster and better than Spain if we just has some political will.

• The Yes Men did it again this week, spoofing the New York Post on the day of the UN Climate Change Summit, with all articles about saving the environment. The Post was, er, not amused.

• Balloon Juice is concocting the ultimate blog lexicon. If you read something here that doesn't make a lick of sense to you, you might want to check over there. It's bookmark-worthy.

• Finally, a cautionary tale against creating a big marriage proposal "moment" - you may end up killing 60 protected sea turtles. Word to the wise - just get down on one knee and be done with it.

The Rest of The (Belated) Week In Review

Didn't get to this yesterday, as I basically played hooky from blog. So I'm cleaning out the closet:

• The House voted to strip all federal funding from ACORN in the student loan bill, and there are more such funding strip amendments in the health care markup in the Senate Finance Committee. The "let's strip ACORN funding" amendment will soon become a staple of GOP politics. Only problem is an unconstitutional bill of attainder, but when have laws gotten in a way of a good story. I've talked about the whole thing to death, but Joe Conason offers a decent synopsis of my views. In the end, this hurts nobody but the low-income disempowered Americans who will lose a voice for justice in their communities.

• Speaking of ACORN, their main sin before the entrapment videos was voter registration fraud by some of their members, which cannot possibly result in one fraudulent vote being cast in an election unless something in a mouse suit goes around to the polling sites where a "Mickey Mouse" registration was filed. The actual preferred technique for controlling an election is raising the spectre of voter fraud to pursue draconian voter ID laws, like the kind in Indiana which the state Supreme Court struck down. Of course, the entire 2008 election was held under the old, restrictive voter ID law, needlessly disenfranchising possibly thousands of voters.

• Very good news that Sens. Feingold and Durbin have introduced legislation to fix both the Patriot Act and the FISA law. With Durbin, a member of the Senate leadership, in the mix, they both actually stand a chance of passage. This is a fight that bears watching, which will get more crucial as the year ends.

• I really don't know how you can look at these 9-12 videos and then claim that race is somehow not a motivating factor in the anger on the right. Not even necessarily the race of the President, but the race of the presumed recipient of any government benefits under liberals. Obama's race just extends from their logic on this.

• After reading all the excerpts leaked, I may have to go pick up former Bush speechwriter Doug Latimer's new book on the reign of error. I think the fact that one of Bush's top economic advisers was known for putting whoopee cushions on people's chairs in the West Wing pretty much sums up the whole Presidency.

• Most of the critiques of the GOP plan for interstate insurance sales include the idea that it would devolve into a race to the bottom, much like the credit card industry, where one state would gut their regulations to attract insurance company HQs and leave Americans unprotected. Michele Bachmann considers that a virtue. She wants the kind of world where finding excuses not to pay for treatment would be the de facto law of the land.

• I've heard these rumblings about Blue Dogs working with conservatives on back-channel health care deals, but I have concluded that it's a lot of talk and bravado from some GoOPers who want to throw Dems off the trail. It's more of a psy-op than anything, IMO.

• Mark Kirk wants us to believe that cap and trade made sense for his small Illinois district but not the nation. But the worst part is how the sheep listening to him alternately boo him and then cheer him within two minutes.

• Classy work by the African-American former mayor of Memphis, claiming a racial entitlement on a Congressional seat in a majority-black district held by the white Steve Cohen. The Civil Rights Act gave an opportunity minority-majority districts so traditionally disenfranchised voters could pick their legislators. It was not a quota system or a racial ceiling, nor should it be, and race-baiting tactics like this are outrageous. Cohen has beaten challengers offering this kind of rhetoric before, however.

• It's sad that we could see a massive shift in campaign finance law, allowing corporations to give directly to candidates, at the same time as when the recession is limiting contributions from wealthy donors. Outside groups may be able to freely spend, but unless co-opted completely by corporate interests they're going to have trouble keeping up in the spending race. The 2012 campaign could really be ugly for those advocates for clean elections.

• Evan Bayh's plea for fiscal responsibility and spending freezes would have a lot more credibility if he didn't vote this session for a $250 billion tax cut for the richest people in America. His credibility lacks, um, credibility.

• A long piece from Kevin Drum about the real consequences of Republican obstructionism is worth a read.

• China wants to know about our health care debate because they cannot continue to justify investment in such a sclerotic nation. It doesn't make a great bumper sticker, but "Health Care Now - Because We Want China To Keep Servicing Our Debt!" makes sense to me.

• Best news I've heard in years: Operation Rescue says it's broke.

• I remain convinced that technology, through geoengineering or innovation, is a far better bet for getting us out of the climate change mess than relying on our political leaders. Nanotube technology for solar offers yet another example.

• Here's an insane case of jurisprudence where the prosecutor and presiding judge were sleeping together at the time that a man was convicted for having an affair.

• Finally, this is the funniest compilation I've seen in years:

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Been a nice long weekend, but it had to come to an end. And so, we mop up last week and look forward to the week ahead:

• A new report from the Council of Economic Advisers shows that the stimulus package boosted the economy by 2-3% in the 2nd quarter and created or saved as much as 1.1 million jobs. Pro Publica, the self-appointed stimulus watchdog, questions the numbers, but I don't think you can deny the effect of public spending to fill the shortfall in demand caused by a lack of private investment, trade and consumer spending. Indeed, Pro Publica's critique was more about the media reporting of the report than the report itself.

• I'm not going to get entirely bent out of shape by the Administration stopping ACORN from helping with the Census, though I don't really have a good sense of what they did with it in the first place. An accurate count should probably be free of even perceived political bias. This comes after a video of questionable legitimacy, possibly doctored, showing ACORN in a bad light. If I had a dollar for every wingnut welfare organization that got money during the Bush Administration, I'd be a rich man. ACORN isn't even profiting from most of this stuff, but if other groups can positively fill their role, fine.

• John Stossel is moving to Fox News, where his combination of selfish cruelty and mangling of facts will fit in perfectly. I will never forget his "In praise of price gouging" column written after Hurricane Katrina, written with the conceit that starving people seeking food and water had the luxury of comparison shopping.

• The right has tried to take back the word "astroturfing," but here's a real-life example of it from Florida, where a GOP operative writes a critical letter posing as a "constituent" of Alan Grayson's.

• Better late than never as the Connecticut AFL-CIO finally begins to turn on Joe Lieberman. The man is an endangered species in 2012. You've never seen so much progressive energy as you will then.

• Being right about the Iraq war makes you just as crazy as a teabagger or a Birther. That's the verdict from the Politico. What do you expect from a media that privileges conflict over the truth? When hackish Mark Bowden can figure this out and stitch together a thoughtful story about the death of the media, you know it's gone completely to the dogs.

• Now Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell has even more extremist comments to defend. He apparently didn't believe gays should serve in the judiciary as recently as 2003.

• I'd be more comforted by this story of Obama's ability to shape a health care debate in the Illinois state legislature if the ultimate bill he got passed wasn't totally compromised and worthless. It becomes a much more ominous story given that context.

• The Schloz gets a reprieve: his perjury case for testimony about politicized hiring at the Justice Department will indeed be thrown out.

• No, Congress isn't coming close to passing their various spending bills to get the government running after October 1. Expect a stopgap measure.

• Abu Ghraib had a three-day riot this week, where inmates started a fire and fought with guards. That kind of thing wouldn't have happened under the stalwart control of the US military!

• Having trouble in the Great Recession? Time to make some weed! I'm dubious that it's a trend, but the Guardian seems to think so.

• According to Glenn Beck's lawyers, a domain name counts as defamation. Actually, the domain name in question is pretty defamatory, though clearly satirical.

• Fascinating article about John Murtha and incredible largesse he's bestowed on Johnstown, PA and the rest of his district over the years. This is all the more fascinating for me because I have family in Johnstown, which has apparently been propped up by $2 BILLION dollars in federal spending over Murtha's tenure. Johnstown's always revolved around one company or another, only now, instead of Bethlehem Steel, it's the ability of Murtha to bring the bacon home to the district.

• With the sudden notoriety of backbencher Joe Wilson, two of my favorite things are coming back into relevance: bizarre political behavior globally, like fights in Taiwan and South Korean Parliaments and such; and the curious history of South Carolina politics, with figures like Rep. Preston Brooks caning Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly to death. It's a hell of a state. More on South Carolina's dubious history here.

• More from my favorite Italian buffoon-cum-dictator, Silvio Berlusconi, who apparently has purchased up to 30 women for parties at his Roman villa over the past five months. Very few people in Italy will know anything about this if they only consume Berlusconi-run media.

• I used to have a Geocities page, which I guess now will be lost to Internet history with the shuttering of that online community. Kind of sad, in a way, although this thing is a bit easier to update.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Holiday weekend but I guess I'll clear out the bookmarks anyway.

• Let's not forget some of the good things the Obama Administration is doing - a Justice Department bolstering enforcement in the civil rights division, for example. Or a President willing to break a promise in favor of keeping tax breaks for the working poor. Or the US lifting all restrictions on family travel to Cuba (individual travel should follow). And even on a signature policy, the Geithner baseline plan for financial industry reform is not half-bad. On the last point, that will probably not resemble the final form, but there is some room for optimism.

• On the other hand, I seriously object to the President appealing to 9/11 to justify denying federal employee raises. Lowering them from 2.4% to 2% isn't the worst thing in the world (although public employees still make far less than they could in the private sector), but using 9/11 as the excuse for that is kind of ridiculous.

• There's actually quite a bit of public support domestically for a climate and energy bill, but little in the way of mass action. Maybe environmentalists can take a lesson from across the pond. Reformers in Britain embarked on a campaign called the 10:10 initiative, demanding that public figures and corporations agree to reducing their carbon impact 10% by 2010. Devised by filmmaker Fanny Armstrong (The Age of Stupid), it's simple, direct and powerful, with a focus on personal responsibility. Within a week, not just the expected celebrities and political parties have signed on, but the conservative Tories and the entire Labour cabinet. The whole political spectrum in England has committed to this. I know conservatives there are non-crazy, but something like this should be transported to the US tomorrow.

• By the time we get done with what's left of health care reform this year, we all may be pining for the deal Richard Nixon offered in 1974. I completely disagree with Stuart Altman, Nixon's health policy author back then, about the public option, and actually, the 1974 plan would have faced similar difficulties to working properly, given that it subsidized insurers and would have become most of the federal budget within a few decades, since the cost controls were meager.

• Iran's ruling class, clearly still feeling the heat from reformers, had to pledge to seek justice for the beating death of a protester in jail. This will start another 40-day cycle of mourning and another round of protests. Meanwhile, the regime's top nuclear negotiator said the country is ready for talks with the West. This comes directly out of the internal pressure by reformers.

• You'd think the fact that Americans pay twice as much for health care as any industrialized nation, with worse outcomes, would be a statistic at the top of everyone's mind during this time of discussing reform. But reversing that terrible scenario would take actually reducing industry profits, and the plans on the table don't do that to any degree. Also Democrats are advised not to bring this statistic up because, they say, Americans hate foreigners, but probably because it would spur outrage against those very industry actors whose profits groups like Third Way are trying to protect. So we'll all have to keep divorcing our spouses in the event of a medical emergency so we can qualify for care, I guess. Matt Taibbi gets at a lot of these depressing dynamics in his Rolling Stone article. As he says, "We might look back on this summer someday and think of it as the moment when our government lost us for good."

• It's sad that, at just the time when a President is elected with the will to deal with the Israel/Palestine problem, a right-wing government in Israel will continue the destructive policy of settlement expansion that will basically end any possibility at reaching peace.

• The state of Texas killed an innocent man. We've known this could happen for many years, and we've saved many innocent people from Death Row. But this is the first near-certainty. The state executed an innocent man for no reason. We tell ourselves that we're a moral society. Everyone who thinks that needs to know about this.

• We're never getting around to gay rights legislation, are we? Sure, some liberals will introduce a bill, the way they do every year, but leadership will always find something better to do before getting around to it.

• I was tempted to ignore the latest Chris Christie scandal, his traffic accident back in 2002, but now that he's demonstrably lied about it, maybe there's a little more there there.

• Turkey and Armenia establishing diplomatic ties is truly a world-historical event. We are quick to fight one another to the death, we humans, but not so much on the reconciliation. And sure, this Turkey/Armenia thing took around 90 years. But it's significant, nonetheless.

• An Eliot Spitzer comeback? I'm all for it. I don't know what the best fit would be, but he belongs back in public service. He was fearless and he knew exactly what we needed to prevent the financial crisis.

• Thanks to Cash for Clunkers, light vehicle sales hit their highest point in August since May 2008.

• No, in case you're wondering, serial liar Betsy McCaughey, hasn't been laughed out of this country, but has succeeded in both raising her profile and getting her warped ideas infused into the mainstream. What a great system we have.

• Laura Ling and Euna Lee break their silence on their experience in North Korea, and in so doing basically blame their guide for being either incompetent or a secret agent for the DPRK. It's a very strange article.

• This is basically how it works in Italy - an editor writes an article criticizing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (I'm talking about one of the few who don't actually work for his media empire), and Berlusconi organizes a vicious smear campaign calling him a homosexual and a sexual harasser, and then the editor resigns. By the way, this was the newspaper of the Italian Bishop's Conference. Glenn Beck has NOTHING on the Prime Minister of Italy.

• Don Imus could scream out of his window and reach more viewers than those who currently watch the Fox Business Channel. And I really don't think he has a built-in audience, either, outside of irascible types with racial insensitivity. Where is this likely to go?

• The Travel Channel has an entire show about deep fried foods. They did not include the deep-fried butter but I'm guessing that's because it's a recent innovation. At the same time I saw the deep-fried foods show, two slots down on TLC was a show called "Half Ton Mom," followed by "Half Ton Dad." Not a coincidence!

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Y'ever feel like things are just too much? Like there aren't enough hours in the day for you to do what you want? Welcome to my life. And here's some of what fell by the wayside this week:

• The torture debate has revealed some of the worst arguments - and arguers - of the Bush Administration get resurrected to torture us with their logic all over again. Smintheus goes postal on John Yoo over his fictional account of how the Convention Against Torture allows for it in "exigent circumstances" like a war (it doesn't); and Abu Gonzales pretends he didn't write what he wrote about the Geneva Conventions being obsolete and "quaint." At least one Bush-era holdover, Fran Townsend, decided the rare step of telling the truth by saying, correctly, that the CIA documents provide no evidence for Dick Cheney's claims that torture "worked," as if it would matter to the authorities that my robbing a bank "worked" because it made me very rich.

• Mohammed Jawad, who was sent to Guantanamo at the age of 12, returned to Afghanistan this week after federal judges demanded his release on the basis of having committed no crime that would justify holding him any longer than the eight years he spent in Cuba. But instead of going quietly and trying to forget the past, which included torture, Jawad will seek justice and reparations by suing the United States. If he can get a fair hearing this could be yet another opening into accountability for torture, or at least a deterrent (the big dollar signs would presumably deter future Administrations from torturing).

• You don't see a lot of appreciations of Arne Duncan like this around progressive circles, particularly for his "Race To The Top" contest where he is pitting states against one another to make favored changes in order to qualify for stimulus funding. But certainly, establishment media is on his side, portraying teachers and their unions with the black hats and reformers emblazoned with gold. I think it's much more nuanced. Duncan actually has some union support for his policies, for example. And reformers often veer off course in their zeal for change. Education itself doesn't get caught up in manichean thinking, and the debate over it shouldn't either.

• The stealth poll of the week was the very broad support for the Democratic agenda on energy and climate change. The public even supports cap and trade, which they probably don't understand to the letter, because they support the things Democrats are standing for on other fronts, like increased renewables and action on climate change generally. In this environment, Senators should be working to improve the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House. The public is on our side on this one.

• Paul Krugman is pretty much right about the deficit, and all the teeth-gnashing being done in service thereunto. The most ludicrous part of the health care debate is the way in which the fiscal scolds, who weren't all that interested in deficit talk before and happily voted for things that raised the deficit over time, are sounding the alarm about the deficit with respect to reform, even though every single bill is deficit-neutral over ten years, and costs under a status quo with no reform will bust the budget in a hurry. And of course, you never hear a conservative say that military spending is unacceptable in the face of big deficits. In short, the deficit is a red herring.

• This would have been good information at the time: "The CIA removed its station chief in Iraq and reorganized its operations there in late 2003 following "potentially very serious leadership lapses" that included the deaths of detainees in the U.S. custody, according to a newly released document and former senior officials." Seriously, we don't know the half of what went on over there.

• Here's an insane New York Times article trying to posit a Georgia man who gets all his information from Rush and Drudge as somehow just a normal guy moved to care about the health care debate. I wonder how? I mean, fine, he's not an ideologue heckling people in wheelchairs. He's just a quieter ideologue. I'm not surprised they exist.

• Even I was surprised by Arlen Specter's warm embrace of the right-wing "death book" controversy. It's like he forgot he was running in a Democratic primary for a second, and running against a veteran (the "death book" concerns a book from the VA). Meanwhile, Joe Sestak is debating Republican Pat Toomey this week on health care, which I think is a pretty inspired move.

• Time for a little news of the good: The Obama Administration and Congress are moving to bolster the nutritional content of the school lunch program, as they renew the Child Nutrition Act; the House has begun reviewing the broken Army procurement system in a first step to cleaning up the military-industrial complex; major institutional figures like Bill Richardson are calling for an end to the Cuba travel ban; and North Korea officially invited a US envoy to Pyongyang for talks on their nuclear program.

• It's not all fun and games, however; I do not understand how the Obama Administration could allow the practice of searches of traveler's laptop computers at the full discretion of TSA personnel to continue. That's a joke.

• In Colorado, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff looks to be tossing his hat into the ring with a primary of appointed Sen. Michael Bennet. Bennet's a centrist, but Romanoff may not be too much better. I'm actually potentially more interested in former Army Gen. Russel Honoré running a primary against David Vitter in Louisiana. Honoré's a Republican, but first of all would kick Vitter's ass, would keep the seat out of the hands of a Blue Dog like Charlie Melancon, and I'll bet his Republicanism isn't so ideological. Plus it would be good to see some diversity on the other side of the aisle, intellectually and demographically.

• Joe Lieberman might need to grow another side to his mouth, he's worn out talking out of both of the sides he has.

• By the way, here was the ugliest Ted Kennedy smear of the past week - this idea that he reached out to the Soviets in the 1980s. Expect that one to stay as part of the lunatic fringe's worldview for a while.

• Blue Dog Parker Griffith doesn't want to vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker next year. OK, then I don't want the DCCC to give him a million dollars like they did when they got him elected.

• Seriously, if all the right has got after the wildly successful Cash for Clunkers program, which sold 700,000 cars, raised GDP .3-.4% on a $3 billion investment and saved 1.5 million tons of global warming pollution from being fired into the air, is that the spare parts industry for the clunkers might take a hit, they have a bigger problem in the area of brainpower than I even thought.

• The Silvio Berlusconi chronicles continue - he's suing the few news media outlets in Italy that he doesn't control over their publishing news about his sex scandal.

• On top of everything else about Ted Kennedy, the flood of legislation, the championing of every cause of the marginalized and less fortunate, he happened to be the first US Senator with a website. In 1994.

• And finally, a profile of me! Thrill to the discussion of my taste in music, the California gubernatorial primary and Peter DeVries.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Sorry for the lack of posting since around noon yesterday. I'm still in a bit of flux post-marriage. We're remodeling the house, but aren't ready to move out yet, so I'm kind of camping at Mrs. D-Day's for a while, and we're still doing lots of remodel stuff on the weekends. So weekend posting will be light for the time being. Point being, I missed all kinds of stuff. Such as:

• After killing the head of the Pakistani Taliban, the President wants to reach out to the Islamist parties there. This is generally a good idea, but its effectiveness will be hampered somewhat by the fact that Pakistanis can't stand Americans, and insistent Predator drone strikes that kill Pakistanis won't exactly ameliorate that.

• This "Congress' Gulfstream Jets!" story became one of those simmering issues on the right that becomes part of their vernacular, but strangely dropped from the complaint is the fact that Obama himself put a stop to Congress (mostly conservatives from Georgia, where Gulfstreams are made) trying to double the Congressional air travel budget, not to mention Obama constantly slamming the defense industry and Congress for their wasteful projects. Not that I expect the right to be coherent and factual.

• North and South Korea actually held high-level talks this week for the first time in a couple years, suggesting that the DPRK is rapidly moving toward a position of conciliation with the West. However, their talks with Bill Richardson this week amounted to them believing they are owed bilateral talks with the United States, which probably won't happen.

• Given how Obama is "losing the left" this week, let me point to a few things the Administration is doing right. They're apparently getting global buy-in on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, with several countries willing to accept those released. The new credit card rules took effect this week, which will have a tangible, if modest, impact for consumers. And the US is finally giving the names of everyone in overseas prisons to the Red Cross, ending the shameful practice of hiding ghost detainees from international perusal. Also the stimulus projects may start really ramping up in the next two months. Let's at least acknowledge this.

• It's not all good news, of course: why the hell is the State Department still using Blackwater to the tune of $400 million in contracts?

• David Vitter wants members of Congress to take the public option as their own health care, a cute little talking point which is, incidentally, IN the Senate HELP Committee version of the bill. I have a challenge for Vitter. He could try to run for re-election without using public funds for campaign activity.

• Alec MacGillis has a very good primer explaining the entire health care fight in 1,000 words. This is one article Dean Baker doesn't need to criticize. Probably the only one, but still.

• It's fun to watch the National Review admit that rationing is inevitable in medicine, and that the proper way to do it is through price. They think it's completely just that you should be denied treatment by virtue of your station in life. This story, in other words, is exactly how the market should work. Your modern conservative movement, ladies and gentlemen.

• Jim DeMint, who thinks health care is a privilege (see the National Review above), has teamed up with Michele Bachmann (a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde stealing from poor people) calling for state nullification if health care reform passes. These are the kind of people known as "patriots" to their supporters. Funny, I don't recall any effort to reject stimulus money being anything put a pose, quietly reversed later on.

• This stimulus grant for electronic medical records is well-timed. The fact that we're still using paper files to track the health status of 300 million Americans is asinine.

• Turns out that end of life provisions improve the mood and quality of life for the patients who use them. We've moved so far away from a rational debate over health care or really anything in this country, that such news won't have an effect. The proof of that is the fact that the states with the most uninsured are the states most likely to believe the swarm of misinformation out there.

• Here are two epic takedowns - Glenn Greenwald on America's biggest corporate whore, Lanny Davis; and Julia on America's other biggest corporate whore, Betsy McCaughey.

• Capping off New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's horrendous week, a tape has emerged showing him telling a crowd that he's "got" US Attorneys, presumably ones that do his bidding. Jon Corzine really has a chance to make this a race now. Christie is tarnished, and he was running almost entirely on his law-and-order image.

• This John Ensign quote is astonishing:

"I haven't done anything legally wrong," the Nevada Republican told the Associated Press in an interview. "President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people," Ensign said. "You remember that famous day he lied to the American people, plus the fact I thought he committed perjury. That's why I voted for the articles of impeachment."

I guess paying off the family of your lover through your parents, in installments just small enough to avoid IRS scrutiny, means that he did nothing legally wrong. Funny moral universe Republicans live in.

• Speaking of which, Karl Rove wants an apology. This is about the most self-serving extended whine I've ever seen in a print newspaper. It's the journalistic equivalent of the Leave Britney Alooonnne! guy.

• Lt. William Calley has broken his silence about the My Lai massacre. I honestly didn't know he was still alive, but he's worked at a jeweler in Columbus, Ohio for years. Calley is very remorseful, you'll be glad to know.

• I couldn't hear a word of this at Netroots Nation, but it's actually pretty funny, especially the cameo from David Cross (can't wait to read his new book):



• There's a German comedian pretending to be a candidate in upcoming elections who would take 18% of the vote, according to a recent poll, based on ideas like wanting to change the national symbol of the eagle to a bunny. It's a sad day for American satire that a GERMAN comedian is kicking our asses. Germany, home of such vintage comedy as... well, nobody.

• And finally, in news of the recession, Italian banks are considering taking wine and proscuitto as collateral. Next thing you know we'll be using bottlecaps as scrip.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

So last week, I missed... everything. And frankly, was happy to do so. Every now and again you need a week off from this. Thanks to those who pitched in a bit. Also thanks to anyone who voted for me in the CREDO Mobile state blogger of the year contest at Netroots Nation, for which I won a Blackberry Curve and a year's service. Really nice.

I thought the conference was really the best yet, with few hitches or problems. The additional events in Pittsburgh were first-rate - getting to take batting practice at the Pirates' home park was pure fun - and the focus on manufacturing and industry in one of the nation's most storied centers for the same made a lot of sense. Pittsburgh's a great town and the blogging community got to see it at its best. All the panels I saw were excellent. Especially mine! Seriously, thanks to my co-panelists on the California panel, Robert Cruickshank, Jean Ross and Kai Stinchcombe. I've received lots of great positive feedback about it.

So I'm going to wipe the slate clean and start fresh this week. It might take a little while to decompress. Thanks for your patience.

The Rest of The (Mid)Week In Review

Why? You'll find out tomorrow, that's why:

• Looks like the Senate has a deal on cash for clunkers to extend it through Labor Day. Good, that's another $10 billion or so circulated into the economy. Good stimulus, good tangential environmental benefit. Everybody wins.

• Looks like the SEC actually wants to do something about high-frequency trading, particularly the technique of "flash orders" which allow traders to legally buy inside information and look at investor orders before they are consummated. There's just nothing useful about that to the wider world other than making investment firms rich. Baseline Scenario has a good look into the subject. Hopefully the SEC regulation won't amount to slaps on the wrist, like that pathetic fine on Bank of America.

• It certainly looks like Stanley McChrystal wants more troops for Afghanistan. I'd rather throw something into an actual sinkhole and not just a figurative one. Russ Feingold has vowed to oppose any increase because the case for more troops has yet to be made. If you want some damning evidence of the mission creep we're engaged in here, read this quote from Rory Stewart:

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, he has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks, pronging a mussel out of its shell.

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...’”

• Rep. Tom Perriello has more information on the astroforging, where letters from local groups asking him to oppose the Waxman-Markey bill were actually forgeries sent by lobbyists. Apparently women's groups and senior groups were spoofed as well. Meanwhile, this peek inside Booner and Associates, the "white-collar sweatshop" responsible for the astroforging, is quite a read.

• Is there an enthusiasm gap in politics right now, with the Republicans more intense and more excited? I think the data isn't totally clear, but to the extent that there is one, it's entirely driven by the sucky economy that still feels like a deep recession to millions upon millions of people. If the economy remains in this lower gear, particularly the employment numbers, by November 2010, the Democrats will take big losses.

• They finally convicted Dollar Bill Jefferson, but curiously, NOT for the count regarding the $95,000 in the freezer. There wasn't enough evidence for that particular count.

• That fully-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act bill, including LGBT, has finally been introduced in the Senate. We need at least some movement on gay rights this calendar year.

• Chris Matthews lies about polling. There's just such an obsession with balance that journalists have to invent an equivalence between Truthers (a discredited and bipartisan segment of the fringe) and Birthers (accepted by 30-odd percent of the Republican Party).

• This car battery challenge could actually spur some creative innovation. Good use of stimulus funds.

• Adam Liptak has a good rundown of the Obama Administration's deeply troubling use of state secrets to 86 lawsuits. Their stance on this issue has really colored all of their civil liberties and terrorism decisions, even ones like this that may or may not be benign, depending on how you look at it. For sure, it doesn't make me want to defend them from people like Pat Roberts, who is vowing to "shut down the Senate" if Guantanamo prisoners are sent to Leavenworth in his state of Kansas.

• I haven't made my Kenyan birth certificate yet. You?

• Radio Shack's rebranding themselves "The Shack", prompting a copyright lawsuit from Shaquille O'Neal and Love Shack writer Fred Schneider of the B-52s.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

This will be my last "rest of" for a couple weeks, for reasons that will become clear sometime in the middle of next week. And I'll be looking to get a fill-in to contribute a couple posts here and there for the next week-plus, so if you're out there and willing, let me know. On to the exploration of what dropped off the page for me last week:

• There's a compelling argument that the skyrocketing cost of health care is due to the technological innovations keeping Americans alive longer. However, over time, unlike other technological innovations, the cost of health care innovations do not go down. This is probably due to the incentives of the system, allowing doctors to write up very expensive treatments because they are paid for service, instead of seeking the same outcomes at lower costs. And Americans are largely, though not entirely, insulated from this process, because the government effectively intervenes in the market to cushion the blow.

• Lots of people hyped this military adviser memo counseling the US to declare victory and get the heck out of Iraq, and I share the sentiment because I think there's little more the US military can actually get done there. But Col. Timothy Reese, the author of that memo, also wrote a blog post attacking health care reform which doesn't show the most clear thinking in the world. So I'd proceed with caution taking this guy's word as authoritative.

• Speaking of Iraq, this week their troops overran the base of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian dissident group which has in the past supplied info (possibly false) about Iran's nuclear program to the US. The WaPo sees this as a sign of Nouri al-Maliki consolidating and aggressively pursuing power, as well as his profile as a nationalist leader to help him with re-election. I think that's always been his desire.

• The NRA has attempted to slow down conservative support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, but with most, if not all, Democrats and even members of the Republican leadership supporting her, the NRA may be out of ammo on this one. That vote of dozens of Republican white men voting against a qualified Latina candidate for the bench is going to be devastating to the long-term future of the GOP.

• Of course, when 28% of your base thinks Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, including numbers approaching 70% for white males in the South, the politicians have to go along with the monster they created, I suppose.

• It seems like I read a "cramdown about to be revived" article every few days or so. I agree that it's needed for a housing market that, while perhaps at the bottom, is still struggling with an unusually large number of foreclosures. But the banks beat back this effort the first time, in fact for years, and I don't see them having a problem doing it again.

• Another drip leaks out of the faucet with the revelations about CIA secret prisons and British "ghost planes" used to transport detainees. This detailing of a detainee flown around in a coffin is pretty damning stuff. How you can just turn away from this, or worse, prosecute selectively and not those who authorized and directed torture, rendition, and all the rest, takes my breath away sometimes.

• With the unquestionable throw the bums out mood in the country, I'm fairly surprised we haven't seen much of an effort to primary Democrats in safe districts. So far, really only Marcy Winograd has mounted a campaign, against Jane Harman in CA-36. The Progressive Campaign Change Committee was founded largely for this purpose, yet I've heard next to nothing about it. There really should be more organizing around this by now.

• We finally have a settlement between the US government and UBS in the case over 52,000 American tax evaders hiding their money overseas. No word on whether UBS will disclose the names, or pay fines.

• I'm not Phil Bredesen's biggest fan, but I do like what I hear about the Tennessee governor's use of stimulus money to subsidize new job creation. Maybe it's the residual good tidings from the Tennessee Valley Authority that made this a receptive launching place for what amounts to a kind of WPA.

• The House has set up hearings for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell in the past, but this would be the first, to my knowledge, in the Senate, and that is progress. They're moving at the speed of molasses on Capitol Hill on an issue which is uncontroversial in most of the country, but at least they're moving.

• David Vitter wants you to know that he's on the side of not straying from conservative values. The guy who wore the diaper with the hooker David Vitter. That one.

• Rick Steves would instantly be America's best Congressman, if only for the tours he could give around Washington. "I know the best out-of-the-way Italian restaurant, perfect for discussing defense appropriations with industry lobbyists!"

• Lots of reporters are in the running for America's Worst Journalist, but Alessandra Stanley may have nailed it with her arts section appreciation of Walter Cronkite, of all people, which required SEVEN corrections, including getting the date wrong of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Take a bow, Ms. Stanley.

• Continuing my love affair with stories of the insanely corrupt tycoon titan Silvio Berlusconi, the latest revelation is that he offered his escort a seat in the European Parliament, and only took back the offer after his wife complained. Make that ex-wife; she left over his consorting with 18 year-olds. Berlusconi is 73.

• Michael Jackson had a Stasi file with the East German secret police. It was in reference to a concert he held at the Reichstag building in West Berlin, but I could have seen them taking one out anyway. Culture was the great unheralded element that led to taking down the Iron Curtain, and Jackson represented that cultural shift for lots of youth. He really was dangerous to repressive, isolated regimes, as much as blue jeans or Coca-Cola.

• The pen with the tape recorder inside is some James Bond kind of stuff, but the fact that uses a tiny camera at its tip to essentially track what you were hearing when you were writing is some bad-ass technology. Seeing how I look at notes later and wonder what the hell I'm reading, that's a useful item. Wish listing it! If only they had that pen during Watergate, we wouldn't have to rely on reading the indentations and impressions made from Bob Haldeman's notes to come up with what was said during the infamous "18 1/2 minute gap."

• And finally, Bruno has made some interesting enemies, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. I'm thinking Borat 2 will steer clear of the Middle East.

The Rest Of The Week In Review

Another weekend gone by. Programming note: Netroots Nation happens in just a few weeks, and on Saturday, August 15 from 3-4:15 I'm part of a panel discussing the California budget crisis and the impact on the nation at large. OK, what'd I miss?

• Here's a good study about health care, from the RAND Corporation, showing the linkage between rising health care costs, job losses and lower output (they can also add wage stagnation - that raise you didn't get went to pay for your health benefits). Here's a bad study by the Lewin Group, consistently cited by Republicans, without them bothering to mention that the Lewin Group is pwned by large insurance company UnitedHealth Group.

• I had a good conversation with a teacher about the Department of Education and their plans for merit pay. The impetus was Arne Duncan announcing his "Race to the Top" funds from the stimulus package, which only can go to states that use test scores to measure teacher performance. I think there are a lot of problems with that, not the least of which that it seems to me like a blunt instrument, untied to personal student situations, class sizes and strengths, or the relative differences between individuals. Duncan has spoken of teacher's unions being partners in education reform, which is obviously a delicate dance. Meanwhile the various reformer groups themselves need to get their act together and work in concert.

• One thing becoming clear in health care reform is not just how enormous the issue is in and of itself, but how it intersects with so many other areas of public policy. Two smart commentators made those connections this week - Elana Schor, talking about transportation policy ("For every long-term $1 increase in gas prices, the national obesity rate drops by 10 percent"), and Jill Richardson, talking about food policy ("Our health care costs are going to be a mess until we stop eating MESSes - Manufactured Edible Substitute Substance").

• Secessionist Governor Rick Perry's next big idea is to nullify federal law if the health care reform bill passes. He's borrowing all the tricks of the antebellum South Carolina legislature? Perry is a blowhard, and this talk is all for the rubes.

• This fascinating piece looks at the role of CIA contractors in detention and interrogation of terror suspects. We're finally starting to see the result of how interrogation policy will change as a result of this stain on our conscience. Military commanders have sought changes to detention policy at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, and a new specialized unit may be created to interrogate terror suspects. Which is fine, but ignores the realities of the detention itself, particularly those without charges or even hope, and the psychological disturbances they cause.

• Parity in crack and cocaine sentences would be a good step to a saner criminal justice policy, but I would rather see nonviolent drug offenders treated more as addicts and less as criminals. The fact that we see drops in violent crime but no concurrent drops in prison populations should worry people.

• Could Hamid Karzai get a legitimate challenge in Presidential elections in Afghanistan from someone named Dr. Abdullah Abdullah? By the way, if I see a candidate abroad using the language of "change" one more time, I know that I probably have enough old Obama material in the back of my car to make a killing as an international political strategist.

• Ralph "Blood and Guts" Peters had an interesting week. First he called for that Private Bowe Berdahl, captured by the Taliban, to be left for dead and murdered by his captors because he allegedly deserted. He got some major flak for that and partially recanted, then turned around and called the guy a liar and a deserter again. At least one Democratic Congressman has called for his firing. If Republicans were upset at these comments, there would be 150 of them pushing a resolution on the House floor.

• We don't have an industrial policy in this country, and have paid the price with historic drops in manufacturing. Very little from the Obama Administration has shown me any willingness to do something about this, and the article makes the case that any grand strategy has been on an ad hoc basis. Not good enough.

• Are you following Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Facebook? You should. He actually updates it frequently, and includes lots of interesting video and links. I've got one he could add - this study by the Dept. of Agriculture (crossing the cabinet streams) suggesting that the benefits of the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill "easily outweigh" the costs when it comes to farmers.

• If Tuvalu can go carbon neutral, we all can. Unfortunately, the tiny group of islands are already close to underwater, and they represent about 1/600,000th of the global population.

• I greatly admired and respected Walter Cronkite's work, but I do wonder if he ushered in an era of the "anchorman" seeking prestige rather than reporting the news. It's no fault of his own, of course, but somewhere in his time period broadcast news became about the individual brand and not the content. And the result, over decades of devolution, becomes smug attack dogs using their brand to hurt people. I think this video of how the moon landing would be reported today sums it up.



• I'm guessing Carolyn Maloney could have gotten away with criticizing her potential opponent in a Senate primary in New York, Kirsten Gillibrand, without using the N-word.

• My fascination with the Silvio Berlusconi carousel of scandals continues. An Italian newspaper released an audio tape of the Prime Minister after he allegedly finished having sex with an escort. He goes through details of male orgasms and female masturbation on the tape. His response? "I'm no saint." Since he's basically a thief at the head of the government, I'm more interested in the fact that his approval rating has dropped below 50%.

• Here's some of the Republicans' fun week - they first falsely asserted that a million dollars in taxpayer money bought two pounds of ham (it was 380 tons for food banks). Then they lied about stimulus money going to fix a door without mentioning it was a HANGAR door. They also spent a lot of time claiming wrongly that the health care bill would take away insurance. In their one positive act, they deliberately held up Congress so they could all attend John Boehner's beach party. Is this a political party or a bad community college frat house?

• I have no idea if it's true that Lou Dobbs has a fake birth certificate, but if wishes were fishes...

• And finally, I thought this picture summed up the California budget mess: