Too Much Rivalry for Judd Gregg

It's sad day for the team of rivals, with conservative Republican Judd Gregg removing himself from consideration to be Secretary of Commerce.

I for one can't understand why it failed. You mean there are ideological differences between the Democratic President and a nominee for Commerce Secretary who doesn't believe there should be a Department of Commerce? WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING?!?!

In fact, the dust clears on the Cabinet, you discover that Obama's team of rivals doesn't have many rivals after all. If it's based on ideology, it's a dozen or so Center-right policy makers vs. Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, and maybe Shinseki. Not only is it not a team of rivals, it's a pretty strong statement on what policy recommendations will be heard during your administration.

At this point a few different types of thinking would do the Obama administration a lot of good. But it's hard to sway the administration if you can't get in the door:

The House Blue Dog Coalition continues to wield outsize political power, thanks to a canny willingness to leverage its votes on key issues, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus must fight to be heard.

Case in point: the Blue Dogs are meeting directly with President Obama this afternoon on the stimulus bill. The Progressives have yet to hear back about their request for a meeting, which was issued almost a month ago.

I'm not too surprised to hear that, since Obama's first weeks have been packed similar attempts to court that constituency of so called "centrist" politicians. He's even agreed to host the Blue Dog's "fiscal responsibility (read: cut social security and everything but the military) summit" at the White House later this month. Progressives will need to find a way to make their voices heard with the Administration, and as Chris Bowers suggests, maybe blocking legislation (like the blue dogs) might be their best bet. We need to try something new, because whatever's going on now isn't working.

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week: Bill Clinton

The Joe Buck Disgusting Act of the Week is awarded to whatever event/person best deserves Joe Buck's unnecessary and over the top outrage after a 2004 Randy Moss' touchdown celebration.

Gay rights groups and Labor Groups are boycotting the Manchester Hyatt in California because it's owner gave large sums of money to support Prop 8. Bill Clinton plans on speaking there for a trade group meeting, and as a result will cross the picket line. And while that's pretty annoying, the quote is the truly disgusting act:

“He's obviously sympathetic to this cause,” Clinton spokesman Matthew McKenna said. “I don't think you can name a leader in the world who has done more to advance gay and lesbian issues.”

This comes from a man who pushed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which rather than advancing a cause, actually TOOK AWAY the rights of gay and lesbian Americans. So you can make the case that any world leader who didn't actively oppress the gay community in their country has done more for gay rights than Bill Clinton.

And forgetting the facts, to make a statement like that while explaining that you're going to ingnore their boycott is pretty amazing in itself. I guess the real news here is that even though he hasn't been in the news much recently, Bill Clinton continues to find ways to remind everyone that he's a conceited jackass.

The Train of Thought Lounge: Beck

New music from Beck! Well, not exactly brand new music because his latest album "Modern Guilt" was actually released in July 2008, but hey, it's new enough for me!

Here, Beck teams up with the ubiquitous producer Danger Mouse, who actually produced every song on the album. It seems that every time I hear from a new project involving Danger Mouse, he's collaborating with one of my absolute favorite artists (i.e. Gnarls Barkley, DangerDOOM, the Grey Album with Jay-Z, etc...).

While I can't exactly say this is Earth-shattering stuff, I can say with great confidence that I'm just really feeling this track at the moment.

It's Obama's win, and it's Obama's bill

A really great point made by a TPM reader:

Like everyone else, I'm waiting for the details. But from what I've heard so far, this seems to be a remarkable triumph for the new president.

A month ago, Obama economists Romer and Bernstein released job-creation projections that "assumed a package just slightly over the $775 billion currently under discussion." Lo and behold, the final bill comes in at $789 billion. It reportedly includes Obama's proposed tax cuts, comprising almost exactly the same proportion of the overall package. For the past month, media attention has focused on all the changes to the package, and on the controversies it has engendered. Obama has been criticized for failing to forge a bipartisan consensus, for not safeguarding his priorities, and for not taking a sufficiently aggressive role in the negotiations on the Hill. So it's worth stepping back to take note of the fact that the final package looks remarkably like what Obama has wanted all along. In fact, it's closer to that original proposal than to either the House or Senate versions of the bill. Remarkable.

Whether or not it's the right package is a whole separate topic. But as a legislative achievement, coming so early in the term, this is astonishing.

Whenever I talk about the stimulus negotiations being a failure, I'm looking at it from progressive, economic and political angles. It was a failure for progressives because it was a once a generation opportunity to enact a massive bill to revitalize our nation's infrastructure. I don't think it's good from an economic perspective because most of the economists I read think it's way too small, and far from a sure thing to turn around the economy. And politically I worry because if the economy tanks past 2010, so will the future prospects of the Obama's presidency.

However, this is essentially the bill that Obama wanted, and he got it. He wanted higher school spending than the Collins/Nelson clusterfuck cut out, and he wanted more tax cuts that the senate democrats were thankfully able to cut out. The negotiations may have enraged progressives, but at the end of the day, this is very close to the bill that Obama drew up right after the innaugeration.

I don't really have a larger point to add on to that, I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Satellite Collisions and the Kessler Syndrome

Yesterday, for the first time ever, two large satellites collided in earth orbit. Though the actual damage caused by the accident is small – both were destroyed utterly, but one was non-functional and the other apparently has eight in-orbit backups – the event could mark an unfortunate turning point in space exploration.

Space, even just the space directly above earth, is enormous relative to the number and size of things that happen to be in it. But that number is only growing, and since stable orbits require velocities that are dozens of times the speed of bullets, collisions need not involve large objects in order to cause massive damage. Worse, as Donald Kessler argued in a 1991 article on the increasing dangers of space debris, we need not add any more satellites to low earth orbit for the number of objects to increase: rocket pieces, discarded accidentally or intentionally during launch, often stay in orbit indefinitely; and debris caused by the breakup of satellites during collisions has the potential to spread out and endanger other satellites.

At a certain critical mass, the safety of every object leaving earth is jeopardized, as chain reactions of collisions continually add debris, causing more collisions. This potential condition is perhaps predictably known as the Kessler Syndrome, and while we're not in danger of that state anytime soon, yesterday's major collision is probably just the first of many. And it's added a significant amount of debris in and of itself. Before, there were only 17-18,000 object capable of causing catastrophic damage to an artificial satellite. Now, after a single collision, SpaceflightNow quotes Michael Carey, the Air Force Brigadier General in charge of the surveillance program: "As of about 12 hours ago, I think the head count was up (to around) 600 pieces." The number will certainly rise before they're done, and they won't have a clear picture for days at least.

And with all of this in mind, the AP article on the recent collision manages to paint a scary picture even for our relatively infrequent manned flights:

Litter in orbit has increased in recent years, in part because of the deliberate breakups of old satellites. It's gotten so bad that orbital debris is now the biggest threat to a space shuttle in flight, surpassing the dangers of liftoff and return to Earth...

"The collisions are going to be becoming more and more important in the coming decades."

What about... NO TAXES?!?

Ever wonder why the right wing blogs have never organized or caught on the way progressive blogs have? Maybe because the most well known right wing blog puts ideas like this on their front page:(Via John Cole)

But tax cuts actually are the answer. The economic weakness is a forgone conclusion, because it results from de-leveraging. You can’t put that genie back in the bottle.

The most radical, and effective, thing we could do for the economy right now is this: Stop collecting all forms of Federal business, income and payroll tax. EVERY PENNY OF IT. RIGHT NOW.

Gasp! Yes, I said it, and I meant it. Go on an absolute, 100% Federal tax holiday. That’s a real shot in the arm that would suddenly inflate the economy by a solid $1.5 trillion or more per year.

That's pretty stupid even for redstate.

Meet The New Israeli Boss

Actually not the same as the old boss- the Israeli elections seem likely to end with an even crazier government. First, the number of seats now held by the three largest parties:

Kadima- 28
Likud- 27
Yisrael Beiteinu- 15

A quick refresher: Kadima has been in charge for the last few years. It was formed by Ariel Sharon after he suffered a dramatic burst of conscience and realized that Likud is awful back in ‘05. Sadly he pretty much instantly fell into a coma after that, and the party leadership since then has done their best to make his old war criminal spirit happy. It should be noted that when the press refers to them as centrist, it means Kadima only wants to kill most of the Palestinians, instead of the entire population.

Next up, Likud. They’re a proper right-wing party, with a bunch of fantastic policies like claiming the right to colonize the West Bank. Naturally stances like this don’t endear them to the Palestinians, who then give Likud lots of excuses to bomb, smash, shoot, and in other ways cause them injurious harm. Which then makes even more Palestinians angry, who then act on that and enable even more acts of retribution from Israel and thus help keep the area in the endless cycle of lopsided violence that's been a constant feature of the region since the foundation of Israel.

Finishing third is Yisrael Beiteinu, a truly great party. Ultranationalists with a proud ten year history of being extremist psychopaths, they’re headed by ex-bouncer Avigdor Lieberman. Name sound familiar? If you aren’t thinking of the shitty American politician known as Lieberman you might be familiar with his comments about the best way to release Palestinian prisoners from a few years ago: “It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world.” Sounds bloodthirsty, but things like that must play well with some Israeli voting bloc- involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre was just one of Sharon’s stepping stones on the way to becoming a prime minister.

So what do these seat numbers means? The Knesset has 120 seats, so there’s going to have to be some serious coalition-building before anyone can take charge. The dismaying thing is that despite having a (one seat) lead, Kadima may actually be put in the back seat by a far-right alliance. Meanwhile, how did more reasonable parties perform? Meretz and Hadash both captured three each, which seems to suggest that “give peace a chance” is a far less popular slogan than “oppress Palestine every day.”

In closing, a question for Yisrael Beiteinu and Avigdor Lieberman: Does your plan to make Arab Israelis take loyalty tests and swear their allegiance to Israel go far enough? Might be helpful to have some sort of visible marker making it obvious who they are, maybe a crescent and star in the form of a patch on their clothing or tattoo? Just something to consider before you potentially end up as an important part of the ruling coalition.