Thanks at least in part to the Super Bowl, people in Indianapolis will wake up to the football off-season next week with a newly expanded convention center, a new central civic space, a newly revitalized low-income neighborhood, even a new downtown skyline. The Super Bowl, in short, has done more to catalyze change in Indianapolis than it does in most cities — and all of this has taken place over the course of a recession.

Anyway, I really like that Parks and Rec treats Indianapolis, with absolute seriousness, as a significant urban center. It shows it cares more about its characters’ point of view than that of its writers.

(Also, I really like the sense of American grandiosity that led to the country giving its cities names with the Greek suffix -polis, a geographical manifestation of the young nation’s fascination with classical thought.)

I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine.

I don't know if Mitt Romney is out of touch with the average American, and even if he is, I don't believe that would necessarily prevent him from, as president, pushing policies that would improve the common welfare of the people. But statements like this are damaging his campaign, and conservatives are becoming increasingly worried about them. It's messy, and suggests he's a candidate who is careless about the task before him. Democrats would love the public to think of Romney as a heartless plutocrat. He's giving his opponents great help in creating that impression.  

If conservative Christians understand that moral rules are difficult to follow and transgressions must sometimes be forgiven, they have less tolerance for people who want to overturn the rules. This may make Gingrich a more acceptable candidate than Mitt Romney, who has a spotless family life but signed gay marriage into law as governor of Massachusetts. Brad Atkins, the leader of South Carolina's 700,000 Southern Baptists, has also claimed "Romney's Mormonism will be more of a concern than Gingrich's infidelity'', because Christians can forgive infidelity but Mormonism is a continuing affront to Christianity.

"The personal" is a lot more than sex. Gingrich's well-known past infidelities may have lost the power to hurt him, but that does not mean "character" has ceased to be an issue. Testimony from former colleagues could hurt him more than testimony from ex-wives. Grandiosity might be less forgivable than infidelity.

This chart comes from the Tax Foundation, via Ilya Gerner. It turns out that though Mitt Romney pays a much lower rate on his earnings than most comparably wealthy people, because he can claim them as capital gains, he still pays a greater proportion of those earnings in income tax than most Americans.

This is a good thing to keep in mind, but in the graphic above, the Foundation seems to be using that old sleight of hand where “taxes” and “federal income taxes” are supposed to be the same thing. I’m going to assume the culprit is an understandable desire for simplicity from the Tax Foundation, which describes itself as nonpartisan, rather than intentional deception. The post describing the chart is generally pretty good about clarifying that it’s talking about income tax, but it gets sloppy in the conclusion:

Which gets us back to Mitt Romney’s effective tax rate of 14 percent, after deductions. As the chart shows, this rate is still higher than the average rate paid by taxpayers earning up to $200,000. There are about 136 million taxpayers who have adjusted gross incomes less than $200,000, or 97 percent of all taxpayers. So even with an average tax rate of 14 percent, Romney paid a higher average rate than 97 percent of his fellow Americans.

I assume they intended “average rate” to be a shorthand for “average federal income tax rate.” But let’s not forget that as well as getting a sweet deal because his income arrives in the form of capital gains, Romney also sees a lower proportion of his earnings disappear in sales taxes and payroll tax.

And also, it’s worth discussing whether Romney’s capital gains earnings should be taxed at a lower rate than those rare wage earners who have done well enough for themselves to get paid $200 000 or more a year. The idea is that Romney is an investor, and the lower tax rate encourages him to keep up this economically valuable activity. There’s another school of thought that this rationale doesn’t amount to much.

This is a point Kevin Drum recently made:  

There are, among lefties, a smallish number of issues where we believe that conservatives routinely peddle flagrant factual falsehoods that ought to be refuted immediately. Climate change is the obvious one, and there are a few others. But the truth is that misstatements of plain facts are fairly rare. That's just not how most political debate works. I think that federal stimulus would be good for the economy. Republicans claim otherwise. Is this a fact? No: it's an argument. That kind of thing makes up about 99 percent of all political discourse. It's just not fact-checkable in the usual sense.

See also Communication Studies professor Matthew McGlone telling the New York Times that politicians get away with lying because truth is difficult to define:

Despite centuries of scholarly inquiry into the enigmatic nature of “truth,” in most cultures a simplistic notion of a dichotomy persists: statements are either true or not, and speakers who knowingly produce the former are being honest and those who knowingly produce the latter are lying. There are situations in which this formulation works, but countless more in which we pretend the line is clear — even when we know otherwise.

In particular, we know that many political messages are passed off as truths, although a little inspection reveals the statements have only some degree of truth. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead observed that “all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”

This is the unsolvable problem of political media: we long for someone to hold disingenuous politicians to account, but cannot accept that doing so requires a definition of truth that doesn't exist. Of course, the alternative, in which partisans flee to figures who repeat their preferred definition of truth as if it were gospel is not particularly desirable either. 

After that, presidents have been pretty insistent on telling the American people that their Union is strong. Perhaps Obama's prediction of eternal strength can end this piece of rhetorical filler for good?

Interestingly, presidents haven't always been so triumphal. In 1948, Harry S. Truman was ambivalent. "The state of our Union," he said, "reflects the changing nature of the modern world." In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson affirmed the Union was always "equal to the test," but only predicted future strength. "The State of our Union will be much stronger eight years from now on our 200th birthday," he said.

In 1976, Gerald Ford was downright glum: "Just a year ago I reported that the state of the Union was not good. Tonight, I report that the state of our Union is better — in many ways a lot better — but still not good enough."

Ouch. Maybe the election Ford lost that year discouraged future presidents from being so pessimistic. His successor, Jimmy Carter, said in his first State of the Union address, in 1978, "Militarily, politically, economically, and in spirit, the state of our Union is sound."

Much more reassuring.

Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought – and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

We can do this. I know we can, because we’ve done it before. At the end of World War II, when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known. My grandfather, a veteran of Patton’s Army, got the chance to go to college on the GI Bill. My grandmother, who worked on a bomber assembly line, was part of a workforce that turned out the best products on Earth.

The two of them shared the optimism of a Nation that had triumphed over a depression and fascism. They understood they were part of something larger; that they were contributing to a story of success that every American had a chance to share – the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.

The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.

Let’s remember how we got here. Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores. Technology made businesses more efficient, but also made some jobs obsolete. Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled with costs that were growing, paychecks that weren’t, and personal debt that kept piling up.

In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them. Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior.
It was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work, saddled us with more debt, and left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag. In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs. And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect.

Those are the facts. But so are these. In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. American manufacturers are hiring again, creating jobs for the first time since the late 1990s. Together, we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion. And we’ve put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again.

The state of our Union is getting stronger. And we’ve come too far to turn back now. As long as I’m President, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.

No, we will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits. Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last – an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values.

This blueprint begins with American manufacturing.

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.
We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.

What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh. We can’t bring back every job that’s left our shores. But right now, it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China. Meanwhile, America is more productive. A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home. Today, for the first time in fifteen years, Master Lock’s unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.

So we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back. But we have to seize it. Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed.
We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it.

So let’s change it. First, if you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it. That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies like Master Lock that decide to bring jobs home.

Second, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here.

Third, if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.

We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world. Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements I signed into law, we are on track to meet that goal – ahead of schedule. Soon, there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Soon, there will be new cars on the streets of Seoul imported from Detroit, and Toledo, and Chicago.

I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules. We’ve brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration – and it’s made a difference. Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires. But we need to do more. It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated. It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.

Tonight, I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders. And this Congress should make sure that no foreign company has an advantage over American manufacturing when it comes to accessing finance or new markets like Russia. Our workers are the most productive on Earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you – America will always win.

I also hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can’t find workers with the right skills. Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job. Think about that – openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.

That’s inexcusable. And we know how to fix it.

Jackie Bray is a single mom from North Carolina who was laid off from her job as a mechanic. Then Siemens opened a gas turbine factory in Charlotte, and formed a partnership with Central Piedmont Community College. The company helped the college design courses in laser and robotics training. It paid Jackie’s tuition, then hired her to help operate their plant.

I want every American looking for work to have the same opportunity as Jackie did. Join me in a national commitment to train two million Americans with skills that will lead directly to a job. My Administration has already lined up more companies that want to help. Model partnerships between businesses like Siemens and community colleges in places like Charlotte, Orlando, and Louisville are up and running. Now you need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers – places that teach people skills that local businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing.

And I want to cut through the maze of confusing training programs, so that from now on, people like Jackie have one program, one website, and one place to go for all the information and help they need. It’s time to turn our unemployment system into a reemployment system that puts people to work.
These reforms will help people get jobs that are open today. But to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earlier.

For less than one percent of what our Nation spends on education each year, we’ve convinced nearly every State in the country to raise their standards for teaching and learning – the first time that’s happened in a generation.

But challenges remain. And we know how to solve them.

At a time when other countries are doubling down on education, tight budgets have forced States to lay off thousands of teachers. We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies – just to make a difference.

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.

We also know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.
When kids do graduate, the most daunting challenge can be the cost of college. At a time when Americans owe more in tuition debt than credit card debt, this Congress needs to stop the interest rates on student loans from doubling in July. Extend the tuition tax credit we started that saves middle-class families thousands of dollars. And give more young people the chance to earn their way through college by doubling the number of work-study jobs in the next five years.

Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money. States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. Recently, I spoke with a group of college presidents who’ve done just that. Some schools re-design courses to help students finish more quickly. Some use better technology. The point is, it’s possible. So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down. Higher education can’t be a luxury – it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.

Let’s also remember that hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country face another challenge: The fact that they aren’t yet American citizens. Many were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation. Others came more recently, to study business and science and engineering, but as soon as they get their degree, we send them home to invent new products and create new jobs somewhere else.

That doesn’t make sense.

I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration. That’s why my Administration has put more boots on the border than ever before. That’s why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.

The opponents of action are out of excuses. We should be working on comprehensive immigration reform right now. But if election-year politics keeps Congress from acting on a comprehensive plan, let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, and defend this country. Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away.

You see, an economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country. That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.

After all, innovation is what America has always been about. Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow. Expand tax relief to small businesses that are raising wages and creating good jobs. Both parties agree on these ideas. So put them in a bill, and get it on my desk this year.
Innovation also demands basic research. Today, the discoveries taking place in our federally-financed labs and universities could lead to new treatments that kill cancer cells but leave healthy ones untouched. New lightweight vests for cops and soldiers that can stop any bullet. Don’t gut these investments in our budget. Don’t let other countries win the race for the future. Support the same kind of research and innovation that led to the computer chip and the Internet; to new American jobs and new American industries.

Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.

But with only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, oil isn’t enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years, and my Administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy. Experts believe this will support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade. And I’m requiring all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.
The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy. And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of thirty years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that Government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.

What’s true for natural gas is true for clean energy. In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries. Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled. And thousands of Americans have jobs because of it.

When Bryan Ritterby was laid off from his job making furniture, he said he worried that at 55, no one would give him a second chance. But he found work at Energetx, a wind turbine manufacturer in Michigan. Before the recession, the factory only made luxury yachts. Today, it’s hiring workers like Bryan, who said, “I’m proud to be working in the industry of the future.”

Our experience with shale gas shows us that the payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy. I will not walk away from workers like Bryan. I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.

We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well tonight, I will. I’m directing my Administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes. And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history – with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

Of course, the easiest way to save money is to waste less energy. So here’s another proposal: Help manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings. Their energy bills will be $100 billion lower over the next decade, and America will have less pollution, more manufacturing, and more jobs for construction workers who need them. Send me a bill that creates these jobs.

Building this new energy future should be just one part of a broader agenda to repair America’s infrastructure. So much of America needs to be rebuilt. We’ve got crumbling roads and bridges. A power grid that wastes too much energy. An incomplete high-speed broadband network that prevents a small business owner in rural America from selling her products all over the world.

During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. After World War II, we connected our States with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today.

In the next few weeks, I will sign an Executive Order clearing away the red tape that slows down too many construction projects. But you need to fund these projects. Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.

There’s never been a better time to build, especially since the construction industry was one of the hardest-hit when the housing bubble burst. Of course, construction workers weren’t the only ones hurt. So were millions of innocent Americans who’ve seen their home values decline. And while Government can’t fix the problem on its own, responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief.

That’s why I’m sending this Congress a plan that gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks. A small fee on the largest financial institutions will ensure that it won’t add to the deficit, and will give banks that were rescued by taxpayers a chance to repay a deficit of trust.

Let’s never forget: Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same. It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody.

We’ve all paid the price for lenders who sold mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and buyers who knew they couldn’t afford them. That’s why we need smart regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior. Rules to prevent financial fraud, or toxic dumping, or faulty medical devices, don’t destroy the free market. They make the free market work better.

There is no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly. In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his. I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense. We’ve already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years. We got rid of one rule from 40 years ago that could have forced some dairy farmers to spend $10,000 a year proving that they could contain a spill – because milk was somehow classified as an oil. With a rule like that, I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk.

I’m confident a farmer can contain a milk spill without a federal agency looking over his shoulder. But I will not back down from making sure an oil company can contain the kind of oil spill we saw in the Gulf two years ago. I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury pollution, or making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean. I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny you coverage, or charge women differently from men.

And I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules. The new rules we passed restore what should be any financial system’s core purpose: Getting funding to entrepreneurs with the best ideas, and getting loans to responsible families who want to buy a home, start a business, or send a kid to college.

So if you’re a big bank or financial institution, you are no longer allowed to make risky bets with your customers’ deposits. You’re required to write out a “living will” that details exactly how you’ll pay the bills if you fail – because the rest of us aren’t bailing you out ever again. And if you’re a mortgage lender or a payday lender or a credit card company, the days of signing people up for products they can’t afford with confusing forms and deceptive practices are over. Today, American consumers finally have a watchdog in Richard Cordray with one job: To look out for them.

We will also establish a Financial Crimes Unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. That’s bad for consumers, and it’s bad for the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals who do the right thing. So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count.

And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.

A return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help us protect our people and our economy. But it should also guide us as we look to pay down our debt and invest in our future.

Right now, our most immediate priority is stopping a tax hike on 160 million working Americans while the recovery is still fragile. People cannot afford losing $40 out of each paycheck this year. There are plenty of ways to get this done. So let’s agree right here, right now: No side issues. No drama. Pass the payroll tax cut without delay.

When it comes to the deficit, we’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more, and that means making choices. Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else – like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans? Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both.

The American people know what the right choice is. So do I. As I told the Speaker this summer, I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.
But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up.

You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief.

Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.

We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right. They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit. That’s an America built to last.

I recognize that people watching tonight have differing views about taxes and debt; energy and health care. But no matter what party they belong to, I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.

Can you blame them for feeling a little cynical?

The greatest blow to confidence in our economy last year didn’t come from events beyond our control. It came from a debate in Washington over whether the United States would pay its bills or not. Who benefited from that fiasco?

I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad – and it seems to get worse every year.

Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix that. Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa – an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.

Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days. A simple majority is no longer enough to get anything – even routine business – passed through the Senate. Neither party has been blameless in these tactics. Now both parties should put an end to it. For starters, I ask the Senate to pass a rule that all judicial and public service nominations receive a simple up or down vote within 90 days.
The executive branch also needs to change. Too often, it’s inefficient, outdated and remote. That’s why I’ve asked this Congress to grant me the authority to consolidate the federal bureaucracy so that our Government is leaner, quicker, and more responsive to the needs of the American people.

Finally, none of these reforms can happen unless we also lower the temperature in this town. We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction; that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common sense ideas.

I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That’s why we’re getting rid of regulations that don’t work. That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program.
On the other hand, even my Republican friends who complain the most about Government spending have supported federally-financed roads, and clean energy projects, and federal offices for the folks back home.

The point is, we should all want a smarter, more effective Government. And while we may not be able to bridge our biggest philosophical differences this year, we can make real progress. With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions that help the economy grow. But I can do a whole lot more with your help. Because when we act together, there is nothing the United States of America can’t achieve.
That is the lesson we’ve learned from our actions abroad over the last few years.

Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies. From Pakistan to Yemen, the al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America.

From this position of strength, we’ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer. This transition to Afghan lead will continue, and we will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America.

As the tide of war recedes, a wave of change has washed across the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunis to Cairo; from Sana’a to Tripoli. A year ago, Qadhafi was one of the world’s longest-serving dictators – a murderer with American blood on his hands. Today, he is gone. And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can’t be reversed, and that human dignity can’t be denied.

How this incredible transformation will end remains uncertain. But we have a huge stake in the outcome. And while it is ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings – men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty.

And we will safeguard America’s own security against those who threaten our citizens, our friends, and our interests. Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.

The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever. Our ties to the Americas are deeper. Our iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history. We’ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power, and a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope. From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies; to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years. Yes, the world is changing; no, we can’t control every event. But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs – and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.

That’s why, working with our military leaders, I have proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget. To stay one step ahead of our adversaries, I have already sent this Congress legislation that will secure our country from the growing danger of cyber-threats.

Above all, our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it. As they come home, we must serve them as well as they served us. That includes giving them the care and benefits they have earned – which is why we’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President. And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our Nation.

With the bipartisan support of this Congress, we are providing new tax credits to companies that hire vets. Michelle and Jill Biden have worked with American businesses to secure a pledge of 135,000 jobs for veterans and their families. And tonight, I’m proposing a Veterans Job Corps that will help our communities hire veterans as cops and firefighters, so that America is as strong as those who defend her.

Which brings me back to where I began. Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one Nation, leaving no one behind.

One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.

All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.

So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Rap music is the defining American art form of our time. In its showmanship, its exuberance, its hunger for innovation, its love of technology and its ruthless competitive discipline, it represents mass culture in the US like no other medium.

Country music, the only other contender, showcases a different set of equally American values: community, tradition, compassion, patriotism, resilience, faith. But it is principally a domestic phenomenon, largely ignored overseas. Hip-hop, meaning rap music and its associated culture, is both a global force and a central feature of the face America presents to the world.

Rap as a form of American soft power is easy to see if you know where to look; the relationship between hip-hop and the Arab Spring, for instance, is well documented. This is helped by the music's malleability; it offers its Americanness to the world as something to be remodelled and localised.

The FT piece is right that country doesn't have this global appeal, and it may seem less interesting as a result. I prefer, however, to focus on the similarities between hip-hop and country — each being folk musics for a certain subset of American society that have been adopted by the culture at large. And if country music's conversations are consumed on a largely domestic basis, rather than adopted globally as those of hip-hop are, this suggests that it has something to say about the aspects of American culture that don't cross borders: the strange trivialities unique to that society; the most unassuming type of American exceptionalism.

But Ms. Giffords, a moderate Democrat from Arizona whose remarkable comeback stirred the nation, decided in recent days that she could not continue her recovery and still serve as a member of Congress. On Sunday, she announced that she would step down.

As I said at the time, what was so disturbing about the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords in Tucson last year — beyond, even, the six lives lost that day — was that it was an attack on the democratic process itself. When the alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner attacked a Congressional representative while she was meeting her constituents, he struck at the fabric of American government. That Giffords recovered sufficiently that she was able to cast votes on the House floor was not only great news for her personally, it was a valuable sign that violence would not prevent her from serving the public that elected her. Sadly, however, it now has.

In a video from Giffords announcing her resignation, the Congresswoman said “I will return, and we will work together for Arizona and this great country.” Hopefully that means her political career has been put on hold, rather than ended. Either way, I hope her recovery will be rapid and complete.

After defecting from the Democratic Party over civil rights, Senator Strom Thurmond argued that the state’s whites should direct their political activities toward amassing as much influence as possible in the national GOP. “That notion, that you wanted to have maximum influence on what the national Republicans believed, tended to produce a kind of caution in supporting an insurgent nominee for president,” says Lacy Ford Jr., a historian of the South and Southern politics at the University of South Carolina. “A lot of people outside of South Carolina thought that Bob Dole would be vulnerable in 1996 to such a candidate, but that wasn’t the case at all—he took out Pat Buchanan decisively by beating him in South Carolina.”

 This year, however, says Bouie, South Carolina Republicans were looking to buck the trend and follow their political instincts to a hard right conservative:

[Tea Party Republicans] see this contest as an opportunity for finding a more ideological nominee. “I go to a lot of party meetings and party functions, and it seems like voters are looking for people who match up with their values first and can win last,” says Edward Cousar, second vice chair to the state GOP and head of the Black Republican PAC, a group devoted to supporting Afri-can American candidates in South Carolina and across the country. Karen Floyd, a former state Republican Party chair, agrees. “I think the grassroots effort is crucial in the state of South Carolina, and I think some consultants can help deliver that, but really, it’s all about message. Most people are looking for the person who is most authentic and can help us get out of the situation we’re in.”

Gingrich had been assidiously courting such voters all week, and his efforts bore fruit today. But not too much has changed. Gingrich is still a severely flawed candidate, and though his rival Mitt Romney might have had a truly awful week, Romney is still better organised, better funded, and, with Florida, Michigan, and Nevada set to vote in coming weeks, looking at a more friendly electoral calendar. South Carolina might well have lengthened the GOP race today, but Romney is still the favourite, and Gingrich is still as non-viable as ever.

I also hear that the Centre will be running an Election Watch competition, and I understand that the prize is fabulous. Something else to keep an eye out for.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum might be struggling to convert his strong Iowa showing into a successful national campaign, but he should be cheered by one vote of approval — that of HBO Mafia don Tony Soprano. The above clip comes from a 2006 episode of "The Sopranos," Live Free or Die, which featured one of Tony's mobsters, Vito Spatafore, being outed as gay. Vito flees to New Hampshire to escape the persecution of his compatriots, and Tony struggles to reconcile his revulsion at homosexuality with his lack of concern for people's personal lives as long as they don't interfere with his business activities. He particularly likes, he says, the anti-gay stance of Senator "Sanitarium."

Unfortunately for Santorum, the New Jersey primary won't be held until June 5th — and fictional characters can't vote.

The plan, as it shaped up through early '68, was for the intial assault on D.C. to come on Eastertide: one hundred leaders lobbying for a government jobs or guaranteed income program. That failing, three thousand destitute Americans would "tent in" on the Mall. if that didn't get results, King imagined a "massive outpouring of hundred of thousands of persons" the weekend of June 15. Civil disobedience had never been attempted on such a scale. To transform what he now called a "sick, neurotic nation" would require disruption "as dramatic, as dislocative, as attention-getting as the riots without destroying life or property." "The city will not function," he'd told reporters after his testimony to the Kerner Commission. He spoke of similar demonstrations nationwide: "We got to go for broke this time."

Taxes: The easy line is that this election is going to be about jobs. I think it's going to be about taxes. Three reasons: First, because a big tax cut is at the core of Romney's policies for how to create jobs and a big tax increase on the top two percent is at the core of Obama's thinking on how to reduce inequality. Second, because the GOP's top priority is tax cuts and the top priority among liberals right now is raising taxes on the rich. Third, because Republicans think they have a winning issue in painting Obama as a tax hiker and Democrats think they have a winning issue in painting Romney as George W. Bush 2.0. In other words, the two (likely) candidates' platforms, parties, and polling all push in the direction of emphasizing taxes very heavily.

I've discussed before why taxes are such a dangerous issue for Democrats (though voters are in favour of tax increases on the rich, low information voters might vote for the party that doesn't want to raise taxes on anybody just in case) and how Republicans risk surrendering that advantage. If Klein is right, this election will be the first test of whether inequality has become such a salient concern that the politics of tax have changed. Muddying the waters: Mitt Romney's potentially damning tax returns, which he has not yet made public.

On that most recent album, a collaboration with Kanye West called Watch the Throne, the men included a song, "New Day," addressed to their hypothetical children. Jay dwelled on the state of black fatherhood, and contemplated his own unusual place in black America: "Sorry junior, I already ruined ya/Cause you ain’t even alive, paparazzi pursuin’ ya." For his actual daughter, Jay released a quickly recorded (and artistically dubious) tune called "Glory." It features snippets of his daughter's babbling, and has made its way on to the Billboard charts. Blue Ivy Carter might or might not be the first African American celebrity baby, but she's definitely the youngest person to ever be credited with a hit single.

First, as Keller points out, "It has been kicking around on the blogs for more than a year without getting any traction, mainly because it has been authoritatively, emphatically dismissed by Hillary, Biden and Team Obama." Considering all the relevant parties dismiss the idea, you might think that would give its proponent pause. But no.

Joe Biden "is not a dazzling campaigner," says Keller, ignoring Biden's support among the Democratic base and his appeal to voters in swing states across the working class Rust Belt. Reich, in a piece penned for the Huffington Post, argued "Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that's been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans," ignoring that the president, far from being unpopular with the Democratic base, has his keenest supporters among them. 84 per cent of liberal Democrats approved of the job the president was doing in November 2011, as compared to 43 per cent of the general population. These people don't need Hillary Clinton to get themselves excited.

Reich also thinks Clinton could save Obama on the economy:

Moreover, the economy won't be in superb shape in the months leading up to Election Day. Indeed, if the European debt crisis grows worse and if China's economy continues to slow, there's a better than even chance we'll be back in a recession. Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined.

Does he really think a couple of news days about Hillary Clinton would make Americans forget they don't have jobs? Does he really think this election — unlike most American elections, even when the country isn't in dire economic straits — will be one where foreign policy takes centre stage?

Both Reich and Keller point to Clinton's popularity, demonstrating only the shortness of their memories. Clinton looks popular now while in the largely nonpartisan role of Secretary of State. But during her time as First Lady and her tenure in the Senate, Republicans loathed her. All women in politics bear the brunt of sexist attacks, but Clinton was such a lightning rod, with her divisive and progressive beliefs about gender roles and social policy, that she copped more than most. If she were added to a presidential ticket, Republicans would quickly remember how much they dislike her.

But the biggest reason this switch up will not happen is that it would make Obama look weak and desperate. Stories would fly about the White House being in disarray, and how the president was relying on a last-minute gimmick to scrape a victory. And Clintons, like it or not, are larger than life figures. Hillary on the ticket would have the same effect she would have in 2008 if Obama had asked her to be his running mate: She would have distracted attention from the top of the ticket and made it harder for the campaign to keep on message. 

I understand why Democrats keep pushing Hillary Clinton in these kinds of situations. She's an adept politician and a talented woman, and women have too long been shut out of the highest positions in American political life. But putting her on the 2012 ticket would be a terrible idea that isn't going to happen. Political analysis should be based on sober judgement, not daydreams derived from exciting headlines.

That Gingrich and Perry are openly using classic Democratic attack lines against Romney, especially with his record at Bain, is a sign to me that they suspect it could work. And if it can work against Romney in a Republican primary, imagine what could be done in a general election.

[...]

Even the hardest of hardcore Republicans, like Perry, realize that this is now a populist election and their likeliest nominee is a plutocrat who stumbles every time he tried to relate to regular folks, and has a record at Bain that is a populist opponent's dream.

Also check out James Fallows for more on why this could harm Romney, even though it shouldn't:

It's the word fire ... people with any experience on either side of a firing know that, necessary as it might be, it is hard. Or it should be. It's wrenching, it's humiliating, it disrupts families, it creates shame and anger alike — notwithstanding the fact that often it absolutely has to happen. Anyone not troubled by the process — well, there is something wrong with that person.

EDIT: Besides, as Matt Yglesias writes, the problem with Romney's statement is not that it can misconstrued to make him sound nasty, it's that his idea of customer choice in health insurance would not work in reality.

Remember Ronald Reagan's famous "Morning in America" campaign commercial from the 1984 election? That was the year Reagan won 49 states and 58.8 per cent of the national vote, in a landslide victory over his Democratic opponent Walter Mondale. What's less often remembered is that Reagan's morning in America wasn't all that sunny. "It's morning again in America," said the commercial's narration, "and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better." It finished with a question: "Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?"

The truth is, however, that Reagan didn't actually end his first term with the American economy in much better shape than when he began:

That's the unemployment rate during Reagan's first term. When he took office, in January 1981, the unemployment rate was 7.5 per cent. Over the next two years it soared up, reaching a high of 10.8 per cent in November and December of 1982, and staying above ten until July 1983. From there it went down, but when Reagan was re-elected in November 1984, the unemployment rate was still 7.2 per cent, barely lower than when he took office. The story of the Gipper's first term was one of joblessness and misery for a lot of Americans. Why, then, were they so eager to vote him back in to office?

This graph shows GDP during Reagan's first term. The big swoop upward after the shaded recession does a lot to explain his victory: Americans were still unemployed, but all in all, voters could tell things were getting better. Reagan got the credit, and a second term.

There are signs the latest job figures may be the beginning of a similar turn around now. Obama took office with even higher unemployment than Reagan — 7.8 per cent — and the jobless rate topped out at 10.0 per cent, in October of 2009. Where Reagan oversaw a relatively rapid drop in unemployment after his peak figures, under Obama, the rate declined a little bit, but mostly it just levelled off. Things stopped getting worse, but they didn't get better.

It turns out, however, that 2011 was a pretty good year for job growth. All in all, the economy added 1.9 million jobs in the private sector and lost 280 000 in the public sector. And, adding to that, Ezra Klein explains why it was better than we thought at the time:

As more accurate data has streamed in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics have revised its estimates upwards for many months. For instance: The December jobs report is the best jobs report since September, when the economy added 210,000 jobs. But we only know that now. When the September jobs report came out, the initial data showed that we added 103,000 jobs. What seemed like a disappointment was actually a very strong month for the economy. (By the same token, the December numbers could be revised up or down in the coming months.)

Some economists think that these are the first hints of a strong recovery, as Matt Yglesias explains here. If they're right, what looked to be a tough re-election campaign for Obama could turn out to be a romp home. And remember, as Reagan showed, the nation doesn't have to return to full employment for an incumbent to get on voters' good side. It's growth that matters.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons this scenario might not play out. Most economists still expect slow growth during 2012. It's possible that the good December figures are a blip, and the next few months will see unemployment revert to the mean. There's a chance that when the BLS revises the December figures in three months time that job growth wasn't as strong as we originally thought. Or perhaps this is indeed a real recovery, but it will be thrown off course due to trouble in Europe, poor economic policy decisions in Washington over the next year, or an unforeseen circumstance like a natural disaster. We don't know what the economic landscape will look when America goes to the polls next fall. But there's no guarantee that the economy will still be issue number one.

...Voters in Iowa participate early in the process and therefore have less information about the candidates than those who vote later on. Momentum may represent a learning process by which some voters come across salient information about a candidate sooner than others.

If this model is true, the momentum Rick Santorum built leading up to the caucuses yesterday started when a small number of Republicans learned some information about him that convinced them to back him. Then, as time passed, other voters learned that information, and switched their support to him as well. Of course, the increased media exposure this momentum drew in turn informed even more potential supporters about Santorum, adding further to the momentum he'd already accumulated.

The concept as illustrated by this New York Times report:

Mr. Santorum would become openly frustrated when it seemed that every other Republican candidate would enjoy a surge except him. “When’s my bump coming?” he asked Mr. Laudner early last month.

Mr. Laudner replied that when he started to move a little bit, the effect would snowball; if he got to about 10 percent in the polls, “the 1 would be replaced by a 2 very quickly,” Mr. Laudner said.

* The "absurd" clarification was in reference to a Daniel Flitton column talking up General Stanley McChrystal as a Republican 2012 prospect.

Abramowitz explains:

This distinction between Congress as an institution and its individual members is alive and well today. For example, in the same Gallup Poll that found that only 20% of Americans feel that most members of Congress deserve to be reelected, 53% of the respondents felt that their own representative deserved to be reelected. And this percentage would undoubtedly have been even higher if respondents had been asked about their own representative by name.

When they vote in a House or Senate election, Americans cast their ballots based on their evaluation of their own representative or senator. As a result, the reelection rates for House and Senate incumbents are generally quite high, averaging over 95% for House incumbents and over 80% for Senate incumbents in recent years.

Gaming this out, I see five most likely options for control of the various branches of government in 2013:

1. Republican President, Republican Senate, Republican House (Convincing Republican win in 2012)
2. Republican President, Democratic Senate, Republican House (Narrow Republican win in 2012)
3. Democratic President, Republican Senate, Republican House (Narrow Democratic win in 2012)
4. Democratic President, Democratic Senate, Republican House (Moderate Democratic win in 2012; the current arrangement)
5. Democratic President, Democratic Senate, Democratic House (Convincing Democratic win in 2012

In the case of scenario three, this would be the result of Barack Obama being narrowly re-elected; Democrats making gains in the House, though not enough to overcome the GOP's 50 seat advantage; and Democrats not being able to defend enough of the tough Senate races they'll face. Though Democratic presidential and House victories would usually suggest a strong performance in the Senate, and of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs this year, Democrats hold 23 of them. The retirement of Democratic incumbents in traditional red states Nebraska and North Dakota make those seats likely Republican pick-ups, and if close races in Missouri, Montana, Virginia, or Wisconsin break the wrong way, Democrats could lose the Senate, even if they have a good year elsewhere. 

Betting website InTrade currently has the Republicans with a 77.6 per cent chance to take the Senate this year. 

The other day, American Idol winner and rather successful pop star Kelly Clarkson winner caused a bit of a stir on Twitter with an unexpected announcement. New album? Impending world tour? She had decided to donate all her Grammys to Milli Vanilli?

Nope. Ms. Clarkson told the world she was endorsing Congressman Ron Paul in the Republican Primary. "I love Ron Paul," the singer tweeted. "I liked him a lot in the last republican nomination and no one gave him a chance."

Fans were outraged, because it apparently surprises people that a young woman from Texas decided she liked a conservative politician?

Anyway, Mike Barthel at the Village Voice looked into Clarkson's catalogue and found a decidedly libertarian strain:

This is especially true for Clarkson, whose story at times sharply parallels that of Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Rand's libertarian erotic novel The Fountainhead, a book well-loved by Paul's fanbase. Like Roark, she was stymied by the establishment, and had to take her appeal directly to the people on American Idol. Just as Roark was vindicated by a jury at the novel's climax, Clarkson was ultimately successful through a powerful display of her talent to the masses, who rallied behind her when the powers-that-be would not, voting her into freedom. Bands are at least nominally collective affairs, but as a solo artist, Clarkson is a fierce sole proprietor, a creative who, like Roark, refuses to compromise. Her songs frequently sound the theme Roark summons in his courtroom speech: "A man's spirit, however, is his self...the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures." This is, basically, the idea behind "Miss Independent."

It doesn't matter to me who pop stars endorse, but I feel this connection is something the Republican Party might like to exploit further. Might I like to suggest they engage the former Idol judge Simon Cowell as a debate moderator? After all, they almost let Donald Trump have the spot and as reality shows go, Idol has produced far more solid talent than The Apprentice has. Think it over, GOP.

1. Brad Wing, Australian hero: A kicker from Melbourne becomes a college football star.
2. Why DC rap mattters, even if you don't care about rap: Hip hop tells the story of how the other half of Washington lives.
3. On Anthony Weiner: Just how sleazy was the disgraced congressman?
4. One last Get Out Of Jail Free card to play on the debt ceiling? Could the US government sidestep its statutory borrowing limit with a novel idea?
5. Top ten fictional spin offs from #OccupyWallStreet: Cookie Monster as part of the one per cent?
6. Tossing around the political football on climate change: Australian PM Julia Gillard's visit to Washington shows the need for American leadership on a global problem.
7. No, seriously, who is John Galt? Ayn Rand's influential novel and the movie it inspired are a curiously American phenomenon.
8. Born in the U.S.A.: Barack Obama releases his birth certificate to the world, proving he is indeed a natural born citizen.
9. DSK and black women in reconstruction-era America: Though the charges against the former French politician were dropped, but hospitality work has always involved particular dangers for women. 
10. FDR and ALL: The Tea Party has much in common with a group that opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s

Ultimately, McCain’s selection of Palin only changed the game in that it made McCain look like a gambler. The selection didn’t actually chane the dynamic of the race, and Palin has essentially retreated into the small-town Alaska from whence she came in the years since. The selection of her didn’t even stem from particularly novel thinking, unless playing women and people of color off against each other counts. Not to go all Slim Charles on it, but the game was the same–it just got more fierce.

The story I’d really like to see out of that book, actually, is the one about John and Elizabeth Edwards, Rielle Hunter, and the fact that he went ahead with the 2008 campaign despite the mess in his personal life. Hubris and denial aren’t emotions that can be fit into rationality, which makes them particularly interesting. What happened behind the scenes in Palin’s brief, dizzying ascent has been done to death. The Edwards’ follies and tragedies are still somewhat inexplicable. And in a country where we’ve only ever had one divorced President, the idea that you could totally escape the expectations Americans have for the private lives of presidential candidates (Clinton, at least, only ever had Chelsea with Hillary) is a kind of magical thinking.

Gingrich’s revolt highlighted a rift that persists to this day within the Republican Party, between a pragmatic establishment open to deal­making and a more rigid conservative base that prefers purity over compromise.

[...]

The party divide also played out on Capitol Hill last week, when a group of conservatives in the House attempted to torpedo a deal struck between Senate Republicans and the White House over payroll taxes. In that case, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) backed down in the face of political pressure. In 1990, Gingrich did not.

Don't expect it to get better in 2012, either. Seasoned Congressional observer Norman Ornstein thinks false memories of Gingrich's showdowns in the '90s are the driving force behind Tea Party stubbornness today:

Ultimately, the root of the problem may lie in the stark lessons that the Republicans elected to Congress in 2010 seem to have drawn from an earlier cohort of conservative Congressmen — those that Newt Gingrich lead into the majority in 1994. Today’s Tea Partiers recognize that they share a similar governing philosophy with their forebears, but they believe almost uniformly that the Gingrichites sold out too quickly, blinking unnecessarily when the political heat got turned up. The conclusion many have drawn is that Gingrich made a huge mistake when he gave in after the disastrous government shutdown at the end of 1995 — if Republicans had held out, lashed themselves to the collective mast and weathered the storm of public disapproval, Clinton would have caved and they would have succeeded at rolling back the welfare state.

There is, of course, zero evidence for this thesis, but that doesn't matter. Some of this group will come back to DC in January believing that Boehner and sellouts like Mitch McConnell and John McCain have just repeated the error of 1995. That will make John Boehner's task even more difficult as he moves to negotiate a new deal on the year-long extension of the payroll tax cut, and will compound his difficulties as he considers other key decisions, including the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. For Boehner, the nightmare will not only continue, but deepen.

Barack Obama failed to usher in the era of post-partisanship he campaigned on, but that doesn't mean American voters have gotten any fonder of ideological rigitidty or Congressional gridlock. Newt Gingrich doesn't have much of a shot at the GOP nomination, but this is one more reason why Democrats would relish the chance to run against him.

One thing separating Paul and Kucinich, however, is that Paul has managed to shift the debate in his direction far more successfully. Paul has infected the Republican mainstream with his ideas far more adeptly than most novelty candidates do. And good for him! Democracy and such. That won’t help him, though; Tea Partiers have picked from his platform buffet style, and are content to chow on his opposition to spending on social programs while ignoring some of his less orthodox ideas.

As for whether he’s the worst thing to ever happen, well: he’s a crank, and he’s helping to pull the GOP in the direction of cranks. Really, his economic ideas are just nutty, particularly his vehement opposition to the Federal Reserve and his witch doctor passion for “hard money.” I know some folks like his principled stand on certain foreign policy issues, but I see him as basically unhinged, and I’m not going to pay credence to a madman on a street corner, even if he stumbles across something reasonable every now and then.

Ron Paul is pretty much Lyndon LaRouche with a better run fan club. And though that fan club makes for impressive polling in Iowa right now, it’s a fan club with a hard ceiling in terms of membership. The best thing to do is ignore him. I take the Homer Simpson Theory of Presidential Candidates pretty seriously.

Regular readers may notice that I've said something about more than a few of the other Republican contenders. (Regular readers may also note that I've been right about them.)  I didn't think much of the rise of the now waning Newt Gingrich, and I certainly didn't think Herman Cain was worth bothering about.

It isn't that I think I know what's going to happen in the GOP contest. The closest I'll make to a prediction is to say that, at the moment, Mitt Romney is best placed to get the nod. But the race thus far has seen a lot of contenders who are far too flawed to be taken seriously, even if a good poll result or two successfully convinces the media otherwise. Ron Paul, like Newt Ginrich, Herman Cain, and Donald Trump before him, is simply not a credible candidate, and it doesn't make sense to treat him otherwise.

Another note on this graph: Compare the volatility of the post-1994 congresses against the relative ideological stability of those over previous decades. This is the partisanship of American politics in action. The 2004-2010 period is particularly remarkable; in the space of four years, the Congress swung from the most conservative since in 1930 to the most liberal, and then, two years later, swung back to an even more conservative one than before. The moderate has become a distinctly endangered species.

Meanwhile, back on the popularity of Gingrich among conservatives, Jonathan Bernstein has another explanation: short memories.

And that's the story with Newt Gingrich's various and many problems. Sure, the marriages are a big part of the story that people have told about him all year. But the ethics violations and fine? Really — how many times do you think that Fox News or Rush Limbaugh mentioned those things since, say, 1998? I sure wouldn't be surprised if even a hint of ethics problems was never once mentioned on any Fox News program since the turn of the century, at least until this year's presidential campaign.

It's been a long time since Gingrich held office, and a lot of Republicans simply may not remember how disastrous he ended up being for their side. Then again, that may be changing. As Nate Silver reports today, Gingrich's popularity appears to be on the wane.

The "Lost Cause" interpretation of the war Coates discusses — the idea that the war was tragic and avoidable, that slavery was not its root cause, and that the South was a noble loser in the conflict — always brings to mind a short sequence from an episode of "The Simpsons." (Admittedly, this happens to me a lot.) In the 1996 episode Much Apu About Nothing, the city of Springfield is gripped by anti-immigrant panic. To avoid deportation, the Indian-born convenience store clerk Apu Nahasapeemapetilon takes out American citizenship. During the exam portion of his application, the soon to be new American demonstrates his intelligence:

Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--
Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

The joke is that an immigrant understands American history with greater depth than a presumably native born official, but I feel Apu's examiner's answer is ultimately the more accurate one. Yes, there were many political disputes between the north and south in the Antebellum period, but the reason the country went to war against itself was that the South considered it proper for one race of citizens to enslave another, and was prepared to secede to maintain a society built on that belief. This, I guess, is an example of the insidious way the Lost Cause has entered into American culture.

As I've learned more and more about the Civil War, I think that's a truth about studying this portion of American history. When you first start out, you think it's all about slavery. As you learn more, you find out that it was about much more than slavery. And, eventually, as your knowledge increases, you figure out that it was actually about slavery after all. If you're doing it right you will, anyway.

The best lines come from Congressman Barney Frank, and though they should be read while keeping in mind that Frank is a political opponent of Gingrich's, the panache with which their delivered is delicious. This bon mot is particularly cutting — and, I suspect, accurate:

Newt does not have ideas, he has ideas about ideas. He keeps saying what a good idea it is to have ideas.

Or this:

“He is the least substantive major political figure I’ve ever seen. When I think of Henry Hyde, I think of abortion. When I think of Jack Kemp, I think of economic opportunity. When I think of most conservatives, something of content comes to mind. Even when I think of wacky Dornan, I think of his military views. But Gingrich in seventeen years has never got into substantive stuff. And, frankly, Democrats are having trouble working with him because he just knows so little about issues. If you do not understand the issues, you can’t predict people’s responses. He made a concession on setting up a commission to oversee enforcement on the Mexican loans, and his own people went berserk. He didn’t realize what it all meant in the context of NAFTA.”

For more on the larger than life curio that is Newt Gingrich, try this 1984 Mother Jones profile.

It is not as if the US has not tried to undertake major reforms recently. Indeed, it's even successfully reformed its health care system and introduced new financial regulations during the term of the current president. But the consistent road block to greater reform has been the Senate, and the mechanism a Senate minority has used to block those reforms has been the filibuster.

As James Fallows wrote this weekend, the Senate was never designed to be a body that required a supermajority. The filibuster was created by accident, and, as the above graph shows, senators used it sparingly for most of its existence. The US government's gridlock has not arisen from a constitution that has functioned well over its 223 year history. The recent problems are due to recent changes in political norms.

Says Carr:

The polarisation seems to have its roots in President Richard Nixon’s grand strategy in the late 60s of mobilising white voters in southern states to move from Democrat to Republican ranks. Race, rights and taxes were the rallying cries. And the result? A diminution of the centre and more extreme political rhetoric and political behaviour.

That's accurate, and you can see from the graph that the first big spike in cloture motions occured in the 92nd Congress, elected in 1971, half way through Nixon's first term. The second big spike occured during the late '80s and early '90s. Both of these, however, were dwarfed by the number of times the senate has had to try to end a filibuster during the 110th (2007-2008) and 112th (2008-2009) Congresses, in which Democrats have controlled majorities of both the House and the Senate, and a minority of Republicans turned a rarely used rule into a unremarkable legislative tactic. It's been so thoroughly normalised that when I visited a Tea Party rally in Seattle last year, a protester told me without a hint of irony that the Obama had passed his health care legislation through the 100 member Senate "without having a majority of 60 votes!"

Indeed, many of the deficiencies Carr identifies with Madisonian democracy are features that, if corrected, would make the US's problems even worse. There is an "absence of party discipline" says Carr — except the unprecedented disciplined of the Republican caucus is exactly why it has been able to make the filibuster such a devastating weapon. (Incidentally, though it's correct to say that Republicans "can’t tick off tax increases," its wrong to say Democrats "can’t tick off cuts to entitlement programs." During the debt ceiling negotiations, Obama offered Republicans a deal that would have cut entitlements by $3 trillion, in exchange for $1 trillion in new revenues. Democrats been willing to give on entitlements. Republicans have been unwilling to give on taxes.)

The US government's inability to accomplish needed reforms is a serious problem, but it isn't due to weaknesses in its system of divided government. The blame lies in recent changes in legislative norms, and the solution lies in changing the legislative rules that permit minorities to excessively obstruct legislation. James Madison isn't culpable for this one.

This is the problem with the limited creative imagination that results in shows like these: It ignores entirely the lives of the people they hope will watch their programs. And that means it ignores the problems they face as well.

The U.S. Constitution has no provision for this practice, but it does authorize the minting of coins. Most delegates at the Constitutional Convention distrusted the idea of paper money because, with the important exception of colonial Pennsylvania (whose currency succeeded), the creation of paper money by several colonies had led to hyperinflation. So did the issuance of “continental currency” by the Continental Congress during the American Revolution.

[...]

Lester did some research on the methods employed by Benjamin Franklin and others in colonial times—methods whereby the Pennsylvania magistrates printed up money and lent it into public circulation. According to Lester’s findings, inflation was never a problem under this system: “The price level during the fifty-two years prior to the American Revolution and while Pennsylvania was on a paper standard was more stable than the American price level has been during any succeeding fifty-year period.” As late as the 1970s, the eminent economist John Kenneth Galbraith agreed that colonial Pennsylvania “handled paper money with what must now be regarded as astonishing skill and prudence.”

This looks to be a fascinating piece of American economic history! Was pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania really such a model of good management?

That Striner article is worth reading in full, by the way. Interesting, though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to endorse its thesis — it seems like less novel methods may be used to achieve the same goal.

But the Internet has plenty of discussion of Gingrich's flaws. Instead of me laying them out in further detail, I recommend checking out Tom Switzer's latest column in American Review, which makes the case for why Gingrich might succeed. Gingrich, Tom says, "is the last best hope for conservatives."

It's a smart, well-argued piece as to why Gingrich doubters like me are wrong — and we might be! Check it out. 

First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.

Of course the Romney team lied in its commercial, this Romney insider is saying. It's a political commercial!

Voters, of course, shouldn't accept this, and Mitt Romney should be above it. Political commercials are often designed to deceive, and in doing so, they help erode public trust in government. Telling the public they should expect to be lied to, however, erodes trust even further. A candidate who wants to lead the nation should not be telling the public they shouldn't trust the people who wish to represent them.

But, at the same time, voters do find this kind of candour refreshing. John McCain, for instance, built much of his initial popularity on his willingness to cut through the pretence of how political campaigns oeprate. When a candidate acknowledging how shady politics can be, voters feel as if they're being treated like responsible adults — that the candidate respects them enough not to think the public doesn't know it's being manipulated.

In fact, the current president is something of a master at this kind of thing. Here's Ryan Lizza, profiling Obama in the New Yorker in June 2008:  

[E.J.] Dionne wrote about a young Barack Obama, who artfully explained how the new pinstripe patronage worked: a politician rewards the law firms, developers, and brokerage houses with contracts, and in return they pay for the new ad campaigns necessary for reëlection. “They do well, and you get a $5 million to $10 million war chest,” Obama told Dionne. It was a classic Obamaism: superficially critical of some unseemly aspect of the political process without necessarily forswearing the practice itself. Obama was learning that one of the greatest skills a politician can possess is candor about the dirty work it takes to get and stay elected.

Obviously, it would be best if politicians would just foreswear unseemly practices entirely. But Romney's campaign couldn't even practice its sleight of hand correctly; rather than merely describing a sketchy tactic that campaigns generally use, and earning points for honesty in the process, they brazenly dared voters to be disgusted by their deceptions. All in the game? Sure, but here's another Omar-ism: "A man got to have a code." 

And if he can't have that, he should at least be smart about his fibs.

That's a shot of Daniel Day-Lewis on the set of the forthcoming Steven Spielberg film Lincoln — in costume as the eponymous president. Well, not quite in costume; I can't quite come to grips with a Levi-clad Lincoln. Still, apart from that, the resemblance is extraordinary. I'll be eager to see how the movie turns out. It's based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and is due in theatres December 2012.

(Thanks to USSC Masters student Sertan Saral for the tip)

My lack of sorrow is really based on two primary objections to his tenure. First, he was an extreme and irresponsible foe of defense spending. Last Friday, he issued yet another blast revealing his indifference to national defense: “Cutting military spending is really essential if we are going to accomplish some of the things the Occupy movement wants to do in terms of fairness.” And who can forget that in 2003, with two ongoing wars, he called for a 25 percent cut in defense spending? He rarely even bothered to make the case that such cuts wouldn’t harm national security. He simply didn’t care; he wanted the money to use for liberal statism.

But his real legacy will be his cluelessness and indifference to reforming Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As Phil Klein put it: “‘These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,’ the New York Times quoted Frank as saying in 2003. ‘The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.’ Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie between 1989 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”

Defence spending makes up one of the largest sectors of America's budget and its becoming increasingly untenable for the country to maintain such an expensive global presence — particularly if it wants to continue highly popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and to get its deficit under control. Rubin can deride it as "liberal statism" if she wants, but if the first thing Frank's detractors can think to criticise him is desire not to pour further money into Afghanistan and Iraq, he must have been doing something right.

Meanwhile, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do deserve some criticism, but it's nothing but a conservative shibboleth that the Fannie-Freddie affordable housing policies were behind the financial crisis — which is what a post Rubin links to in support of her argument seems to say. (Brad Plumer has more debunking this.) Rubin also mentions the "model of excessive regulation" that was the Dodd-Frank bill — as if the trouble with the financial industry of late has really been too much regulation?

If this is what his detractors have against him, Frank is ending his career in good stead.

It hasn't held Wing back, though. Apparently his Aussie Rules background has given him kicking talents rarely seen in American football. His prowess with the boot has propelled him to minor celebrity — this university undergraduate has more than 8000 followers on Twitter — so much so that the Wall Street Journal featured him in a glowing profile: 

What sets Wing apart from other punters is he isn't one of them. A native of Melbourne, the left-footed Wing grew up playing Australian Rules Football, where precise punting and goal kicking are the game's most important skills

[...]

For most American punters, directional punting is a high-wire act. Misfire the punt toward the center of the field, and it sets up an easy return. Launch one at too wide of an angle, and it probably sails out of bounds.

"It's extremely difficult to be consistent with directional punting," said Sean Landeta, a former NFL punter and three-time All-Pro selection. "If you literally—and I mean literally—turn a couple of inches too far to the right, you can hit a wonderful punt, but it'll go out of bounds at the 40 instead of the 20."

Wing seldom has such issues. His greatest asset, coaches and teammates say, is his precision, not his leg. Wing said he typically can land the ball within five yards of his target when he uses the drop punt. "He can place it wherever he wants," said Drew Alleman, LSU's kicker.

Brad, mate: we salute you.

Accusations of prejudice are often seen in right wing circles as a liberal trick used to bring down innocent conservatives when honest politics founder. (In the words of one National Review columnist: "when particular groups fail to win a 51 per cent majority on a particular issue, they resort to invoking racism and prejudice.") But, just like Herman Cain, who decided that racism was at play in the accusations of sexual harassment against him, Bachmann has decided prejudice indeed exists — but she was a victim of it because of her conservatism, not her gender.

Why, after all, invoke Imus? Imus is not Rush Limbaugh. He's a radio broadcaster before he's a politico, and he's supported both Democrats and Republicans. But Bachmann is a white woman who was slighted by a black man, and Imus is a white man who ran into trouble for slighting black women. Did Bachmann mention the former radio host because he became an honorary conservative — a victim of what much of the conservative base thinks is America's "true" problem: accusations of prejudice?

In one way, of course, Bachmann was indeed treated poorly on "Fallon" precisely because she is a conservative. ?uestlove doesn't like her politics and felt comfortable being rude to her because of that. But there's no systemic discrimination against conservatism in the United States, and one guy thinking you'd make a lousy president doesn't make you the victim of systemic prejudice, even if that guy does have a band at his disposal. 

Which doesn't mean Bachmann wasn't the victim of prejudice — just that she wasn't the victim of an imaginary prejudice against conservatives. Is this a politician with a particular reputation for dishonesty? Of course not. Bachmann is well known for having extremely right wing beliefs, for being a bit off the wall (Hey, ?uestlove, why not play the title track from Michael Jackson's 1979 album?), and for getting basic facts of history wrong, but she's hardly distinguished as a dissembler. If anything, she's notable because she really does seem to believe the rather absurd things that comes out of her mouth. So when the Roots greeted her with a rendition of "Lyin' Ass Bitch," it seems unlikely that it was the "lying" portion of that title they really cared about.

The argument these conservatives are making has two components. First, it is wrong as a matter of civic morality for some people — let alone large numbers of people — to contribute nothing to the support of the federal government. Second, this situation is politically dangerous because it means that, for a large number of voters, big government is, or appears to be, free. These voters will therefore support the expansion and oppose the retrenchment of government, voting themselves goodies at other people’s expense.

The good news is that these fears are overblown. The 47 percent figure does not mean we are near a tipping point. Most of the people included in that figure do make financial contributions to the federal government, and there is no reason to think that nonpayment of income taxes is turning millions of Americans liberal. The bad news is that worrying too much about this number will lead conservatives down an intellectual and political dead end.

If nothing else, I'm surprised more conservatives are not concerned about the political ramifications of this position on taxation. It's not just that voters, particularly the poor or elderly who currently avoid paying federal income taxes, might look askance at a politician who asks them to pay more. Many Americans likely do not realise they don't pay income taxes. It's that the Republican Party, if it pushes this line too hard, risks losing a big advantage it has built up over time.

I discussed this advantage recently in American Review:

But Republicans tell voters that Democrats want to raise taxes. An informed voter will know the Dems only want to put up the taxes of those making more than $250k. But most voters are uninformed, particularly the coveted genuine independents who are so influential at election time. And for voters who really don't want their own taxes to go up, it's safer to stick with the guys who don't want any taxes to go up, instead of trusting that the Democrats will only tax the wealthiest ... Republican tax policy over recent years is very easy to explain: They don't like taxes. Ever.

Democrats have the difficult task of telling voters that they only want to raise taxes on some people who can already afford it. Republicans, however, have been so opposed to any tax increase of any kind that they've been able to convince voters that voting for a Republican is the best way to ensure your taxes never go up, no matter who you are. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to ask voters to work out whether they're in the 53 per cent or the 47 per cent when the GOP has previously found such advantage in treating voters as the 100 per cent.

That is, the 100 per cent who Republicans think should not have to pay more taxes.  

I hope everyone celebrating Thanksgiving has a good one. If you're looking for something to read in between servings of pumpkin pie, why not try my American Review column today? A sample:

This holiday is the occasion at which America is at its smallest and most humble. It is a time when the United States retreats into domesticity, and makes room for family, gratitude, and charity. No wonder it holds such a special place in the American psyche.

Maybe y'all might consider staying away from the Black Friday sales as well. I understand the bargains are tempting, but the chaos that is day-after-Thanksgiving shopping is a piece of American culture I've never had the urge to participate in. Even if the reputed soporific qualities of turkey aren't real, sleeping in sounds like a much better idea to me than waking up at 4am to fight Walmart patrons for a discount Blu-Ray player.

The Laffer curve is based on the work of economist Arthur Laffer, and it seeks to describe the relationship between a tax rate and the revenue a government collects from the rate. It proposes that as the tax rate rises, so too does the revenue the government collects from the tax — but only up to a certain point. If a tax rate is set too high, people will decide that the return on earning more income is not worth the extra work, and so revenue will actually go down.

That's the theory behind conservative economic ideas that propose tax cuts actually increase government revenue. Conservatives believe current tax rates are on the right hand side of the Laffer curve, and discourage high income earners from working harder to increase their take-home pay. Empirical experience, such as the massive deficit created by the George W. Bush tax cuts shows this to be incorrect, but the Diamond/Saez paper shows just how incorrect it is.

The top marginal tax rate in the United States today is 35 per cent — half the "optimal" rate of 70 per cent. Whether it's fair to do so or not, there is a long way to increase taxes on high income earners before you hit the point where it starts reducing revenue. Whatever your opinion on its tax rates, the US sits firmly on the left hand side of the Laffer curve, and is in no risk of tipping over to the other any time soon.

I've said before that I'm liable to link to any video showcasing all fifty states in some creative way. (Another previous example.) This video doesn't cover any state, but it encompasses a whole lot of them.

The project, called Drivelapse USA, was the result of photographer Brian DeFrees heading out on a 12 225 mile road trip around the United States, shooting video footage from his car's windscreen as he went, and compiling the results into a five minute timelapse video. It really is a beautiful country.

But, were I to throw caution to the wind, I would note that the map does indeed mimic the red/blue divide quite neatly. From this, I would perhaps make the not terribly novel inference that the cultural indicators driving variations in political support between the states correlate with taste in popular fiction. Explanations as to why, however, might be highly speculative.

(That is: Do folks from red states report higher approval of Twilight because they enjoy its social conservative outlook, or is it, say, because there is less social pressure to disparage Twilight, and so readers are more likely to seek the book out and give it a fair go?)

It is impressive, however, how closely this map correlates with the 2008 election result. If it can be trusted, it's of interest that the Obama-voting Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida are all pro-Twilight. Perhaps these states went blue temporarily due to circumstantial factors, but are still culturally Republican and may easily be won back? 

On the other hand, note that swing states Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico are all blue. Perhaps the 2008 election represented a genuine realignment in these places. Indeed, does this lend support to the idea that the West is the new frontier for Democratic politics? After all, Montana and North Dakota are also anti-Twilight. Reliably Republican Alaska is too. Then again, Nevada, a 2008 blue state, is pro-Twilight. So is Iowa.

And! What's that? Utah is anti-Twilight?

Reviews were mostly distributed according to population, with the notable exception of Utah. Utah is the 34th most populous state in the US, but it generates the 6th most reviews of Twilight. In terms of cities, Salt Lake City—the 125th largest city in the country—is second only to New York in number of Twilight reviews. Opinion on the book is split in the Beehive state, with the average rating a pedestrian 3.64.

This suggests that Utahans are exceptionally likely to read Twilight, but are also more likely to dislike it. Does the expanded readership mean more people outside the target audience check it out and review it poorly, or does the Great Mormon Hope of literature fail to live up to the standards of the most Mormon state?

Perhaps not incidentally, the 19 states with the highest rate of church attendance are all pro-Twilight. (Virginia is the most churchgoing anti-Twilight state.) Of the 15 states with the lowest rate of church attendance, only three are pro-Twilight (Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming).

Incidentally, the pro-Twilight states make up a total of 232 Electoral College votes. The anti-Twilight states add up to 303. I've not included DC's 3 Electoral College votes in either total.

Prime Minister Gillard, Leader Abbott, thank you both for your very warm welcome.

Mr Speaker, Mr President, Members of the House and Senate, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the honour of standing in this great chamber to reaffirm the bonds between the United States and the Commonwealth of Australia, two of the world's oldest democracies and two of the world's oldest friends.

To you and the people of Australia, thank you for your extraordinary hospitality. And here, in this city — this ancient "meeting place" — I want to acknowledge the original inhabitants of this land, and one of the world's oldest continuous cultures, the First Australians.

I first came to Australia as a child, travelling between my birthplace of Hawaii, and Indonesia, where I would live for four years.

As an eight-year-old, I couldn't always understand your foreign language. Although, last night I did try to talk some Strine.

And today I don't want to subject you to any earbashing. I really do love that one and I will be introducing it into the vernacular in Washington.

But to a young American boy, Australia and its people — your optimism, your easy-going ways, your irreverent sense of humour — all felt so familiar; it felt like home.

I've always wanted to return. I tried last year. Twice. But this is a Lucky Country. And today I feel lucky to be here as we mark the 60th anniversary of our unbreakable alliance.

The bonds between us run deep.

In each other's story we see so much of ourselves. Ancestors who crossed vast oceans-some by choice, some in chains.

Settlers who pushed west across sweeping plains. Dreamers who toiled with hearts and hands to lay railroads and to build cities.

Generations of immigrants who, with each new arrival, add a new thread to the brilliant tapestry of our nations.

And we are citizens who live by a common creed-no matter who you are no matter what you look like, everyone deserves a fair chance; everyone deserves a fair go.

Of course, progress in our societies has not always come without tension, or struggles to overcome a painful past. But we are countries with a willingness to face our imperfections, and to keep reaching for our ideals.

That's the spirit we saw in this chamber, three years ago, as this nation inspired the world with a historic gesture of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians.

It's the spirit of progress, in America, which allows me to stand before you today, as President of the United States. And it's the spirit I'll see later today when I become the first US president to visit the Northern Territory, where I'll meet the traditional owners of the Land.

Nor has our progress come without great sacrifice.

This morning, I was humbled and deeply moved by a visit to your war memorial and pay my respects to Australia's fallen sons and daughters.

Later today, in Darwin, I'll join the Prime Minister in saluting our brave men and women in uniform.

And it will be a reminder that — from the trenches of the First World War to the mountains of Afghanistan — Aussies and Americans have stood together, we have fought together we have given lives together in every single major conflict of the past hundred years. Every single one.

This solidarity has sustained us through a difficult decade.

We will never forget that the attacks of 9/11 took the lives, not only of Americans, but people from many nations, including Australia.

In the United States, we will never forget how Australia invoked the ANZUS Treaty — for the first time ever — showing that our two nations stand as one. And none of us will ever forget those we've lost to al Qaeda's terror in the years since, including innocent Australians.

That's why we are determined to succeed in Afghanistan. It's why I salute Australia — outside of NATO, the largest contributor of troops to this vital mission.

And it's why we honour all those who have served there for our security, including 32 Australian patriots who gave their lives, among them Captain Bryce Duffy, Corporal Ashley Birt, and Lance Corporal Luke Gavin.

We will honour their sacrifice by making sure that Afghanistan is never again used as source for attacks against our people. Never again.

As two global partners, we stand up for the security and dignity of people around the world.

We see it when our rescue workers rush to help others in times of fire and drought and flooding rains.

We see it when we partner to keep the peace — from East Timor to the Balkans — and when we pursue our shared vision: a world without nuclear weapons.

We see it in the development that lifts up a child in Africa; the assistance that saves a family from famine; and when we extend our support to the people of the Middle East and North Africa, who deserve the same liberty that allows us to gather in this great hall of democracy.

This is the alliance we reaffirm today — rooted in our values; renewed by every generation.

This is the partnership we've worked to deepen over the past three years.

And today I can stand before you and say with confidence that the alliance between the United States and Australia has never been stronger.

As it has been to our past, our alliance continues to be indispensable to our future. So, here, among close friends, I'd like to address the larger purpose of my visit to this region-our efforts to advance security, prosperity and human dignity across the Asia Pacific.

For the United States, this reflects a broader shift.

After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region.

In just a few weeks, after nearly nine years, the last American troops will leave Iraq and our war there will be over.

In Afghanistan, we've begun a transition, a responsible transition so Afghans can take responsibility for their future and so coalition forces can draw down. And with partners like Australia, we've struck major blows against al Qaeda and put that terrorist organisation on the path to defeat, including delivering justice to Osama bin Laden.

So make no mistake, the tide of war is receding, and America is looking ahead to the future we must build.

From Europe to the Americas, we've strengthened alliances and partnerships.

At home, we're investing in the sources of our long-term economic strength — the education of our children, the training of our workers, the infrastructure that fuels commerce, the science and the research that leads to new breakthroughs.

We've made hard decisions to cut our deficit and put our fiscal house in order — and we will continue to do more. Because our economic strength at home is the foundation of our leadership in the world, including here in the Asia Pacific.

Our new focus on this region reflects a fundamental truth — the United States has been, and always will be, a Pacific nation.

Asian immigrants helped build America, and millions of American families, including my own, cherish our ties to this region.

From the bombing of Darwin to the liberation of Pacific islands, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to a cold Korean peninsula, generations of Americans have served here, and died here. So democracies could take root. So economic miracles could lift hundreds of millions to prosperity.

Americans have bled with you for this progress, and we will never allow it to be reversed.

Here, we see the future.

As the world's fastest-growing region — and home to more than half the global economy — the Asia Pacific is critical to achieving my highest priority and that is creating jobs and opportunity for the American people.

With most of the world's nuclear powers and some half of humanity, Asia will largely define whether the century ahead will be marked by conflict or cooperation, needless suffering or human progress.

As President, I have therefore made a deliberate and strategic decision — as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with allies and friends.

Let me tell you what this means.

First, we seek security, which is the foundation of peace and prosperity. We stand for an international order in which the rights and responsibilities of all nations and people are upheld. Where international law and norms are enforced. Where commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded. Where emerging powers contribute to regional security, and where disagreements are resolved peacefully.

That is the future we seek.

Now, I know that some in this region have wondered about America's commitment to upholding these principles. So let me address this directly.

As the United States puts our fiscal house in order, we are reducing our spending. And yes, after 'a decade of extraordinary growth in our military budgets — and as we definitively end the war in Iraq, and begin to wind down the war in Afghanistan — we will make some reductions in defence spending.

As we consider the future of our armed forces, we have begun a review that will identify our most important strategic interests and guide our defence priorities and spending over the coming decade.

So here is what this region must know.

As we end today's wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in US defence spending will not — I repeat, will not — come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.

My guidance is clear.

As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.

We will preserve our unique ability to project power and deter threats to peace. We will keep our commitments, including our treaty obligations to allies like Australia.

And we will constantly strengthen our capabilities to meet the needs of the 21st century. Our enduring interests in the region demand our enduring presence in this region.

The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.

Indeed, we're already modernising America's defence posture across the Asia-Pacific.

It will be more broadly distributed — maintaining our strong presence in Japan and on the Korean peninsula, while enhancing our presence in Southeast Asia.

Our posture will be more flexible — with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely. And our posture will be more sustainable — by helping allies and partners build their capacity, with more training and exercises.

We see our new posture here in Australia.

The initiatives that the Prime Minister and I announced yesterday will bring our two militaries even closer. We'll have new opportunities to train with other allies and partners, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean.

And it will allow us to respond faster to the full range of challenges, including humanitarian crises and disaster relief.

Since World War II, Australians have warmly welcomed American service members who've passed through.

On behalf of the American people, I thank you for welcoming those who will come next, as they ensure that our alliance stays strong and ready for the tests of our time.

We see America's enhanced presence in the alliances we've strengthened.

In Japan, where our alliance remains a cornerstone of regional security. In Thailand, where we're partnering for disaster relief.

In the Philippines, where we're increasing ship visits and training. And in South Korea, where our commitment to the security of the Republic of Korea will never waver.

Indeed, we also reiterate our resolve to act firmly against any proliferation activities by North Korea.

The transfer of nuclear materials or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies.

And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.

We see America's enhanced presence across Southeast Asia.

In our partnership with Indonesia against piracy and violent extremism, and in our work with Malaysia to prevent proliferation.

In the ships we'll deploy to Singapore, and in our closer cooperation with Vietnam and Cambodia. And in our welcome of India as it "looks east" and plays a larger role as an Asian power.

At the same time, we're re-engaged with regional organisations.

Our work in Bali this week will mark my third meeting with ASEAN leaders, and I'll be proud to be the first American president to attend the East Asia Summit.

Together, I believe we can address shared challenges, such as proliferation and maritime security, including cooperation in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, the United States will continue our effort to build a cooperative relationship with China.

All of our nations — Australia, the United States, all of our nations — have a profound interest in the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China-and that is why the United States welcomes it.

We've seen that China can be a partner, from reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula to preventing proliferation.

And we'll seek more opportunities for cooperation with Beijing, including greater communication between our militaries to promote understanding and avoid miscalculation.

We will do this, even as continue to speak candidly to Beijing about the importance of upholding international norms and respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people.

A secure and peaceful Asia is the foundation for the second area in which America is leading again — and that's advancing our shared prosperity.

History teaches us the greatest force the world has ever known for creating wealth and opportunity is free markets.

So we seek economies that are open and transparent.

We seek trade that is free and fair. And we seek an open international economic system, where rules are clear and every nation plays by them.

In Australia and America, we understand these principles. We're among the most open economies on earth.

Six years into our landmark trade agreement, commerce between us has soared.

Our workers are creating new partnerships and new products, like the advanced aircraft technologies we build together in Victoria.

We're the leading investor in Australia, and you invest more in America than you do in any other nation, creating good jobs in both countries.

We recognise that economic partnerships can't just be about one nation extracting another's resources.

We understand that no long-term strategy for growth can be imposed from above.

Real prosperity — prosperity that fosters innovation and prosperity that endures — comes from unleashing our greatest economic resource and that's the entrepreneurial spirit, the talents of our people.

So even as America competes aggressively in Asian markets, we're forging the economic partnerships that create opportunity for all.

Building on our historic trade agreement with South Korea, we're working with Australia and our other APEC partners to create a seamless regional economy.

And with Australia and other partners, we're on track to achieve our most ambitious trade agreement yet, and a potential model for the entire region-the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The United States remains the world's largest and most dynamic economy. But in an interconnected world, we all rise and fall together.

That's why I pushed so hard to put the G20 at the front and centre of global economic decision-making — to give more nations a leadership role in managing the international economy, including Australia.

Together, we saved the world economy from a depression. Now, our urgent challenge is to create the growth that puts people to work.

We need growth that is fair, where every nation plays by the rules — where workers rights are respected and our businesses can compete on a level playing field; where the intellectual property and new technologies that fuel innovation are protected; and where currencies are market-driven, so no nation has an unfair advantage.

We also need growth that is broad — not just for the few, but for the many, with reforms that protect consumers from abuse and a global commitment to end the corruption that stifles growth.

We need growth that is balanced, because we'll all prosper more when countries with large surpluses take action to boost demand at home.

And we need growth that is sustainable.

This includes the clean energy that creates green jobs and combats climate change, which cannot be denied.

We see it in the stronger fires, the devastating floods and the Pacific islands confronting rising seas.

And as countries with large carbon footprints, the United States and Australia have a special responsibility to lead.

Every nation will contribute to the solution in its own way, and I know this issue is not without controversy, in both our countries.

But what we can do — what we are doing — is to work together to make unprecedented investments in clean energy; to increase energy efficiency; and to meet the commitments we made at Copenhagen and Cancun.

We can do this. And we will.

As we grow our economies, we'll also remember the link between growth and good governance — the rule of law, transparent institutions and the equal administration of justice.

Because history shows that, over the long run, democracy and economic growth go hand in hand. And prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.

This brings me to the final area where we are leading — our support for the fundamental rights of every human being.

Every nation will chart its own course.

Yet it is also true that certain rights are universal, among them freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, and the freedom of citizens to choose their own leaders.

These are not American rights, or Australian rights, or Western rights. These are human rights.

They stir in every soul, as we've seen in the democracies that have succeeded here in Asia.

Other models have been tried and they have failed-fascism and communism, rule by one man and rule by committee.

And they have failed for the same simple reason.

They ignore the ultimate source of power and legitimacy — the will of the people.

Yes, democracy can be messy and rough, and I understand you all mix it up good during Question Time.

But whatever our differences of party of ideology, we know in our democracies we are blessed with the greatest form of government ever known to man.

So, as two great democracies, we speak up for these freedoms when they are threatened.

We partner with emerging democracies, like Indonesia, to help strengthen the institutions upon which good governance depends.

We encourage open government, because democracies depend on an informed and active citizenry.

We help strengthen civil societies, because they empower citizens to hold their governments accountable.

And we advance the rights of all people-women, minorities and indigenous cultures — because when societies harness the potential of all their citizens, these societies are more successful, they are more prosperous and they are more just.

These principles have guided our approach to Burma, with a combination of sanctions and engagement.

Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is free from house arrest.

Some political prisoners have been released and the government has begun a dialogue.

Still, violations of human rights persist. So we will continue to speak clearly about the steps that must be taken for the government of Burma to have a better relationship with the United States.

This is the future we seek in the Asia Pacific-security, prosperity and dignity for all. That's what we stand for. That's who we are.

That's the future we will pursue, in partnership with allies and friends, and with every element of American power.

So let there be no doubt: in the Asia Pacific in the 21st century, the United States of America is all in.

Still, in times of great change and uncertainty, the future can seem unsettling. Across a vast ocean, it's impossible to know what lies beyond the horizon. But if this vast region and its people teach us anything, it's that the yearning for liberty and progress will not be denied.

It's why women in this country demanded that their voices be heard, making Australia the first nation to let women vote and run for parliament and, one day, become prime minister.

It's why people took to the streets — from Delhi to Seoul, from Manila to Jakarta — to throw off colonialism and dictatorship and then build some of the world's largest democracies.

It's why a soldier in a watch tower along the DMZ defends a free people in the South, and why a man from the North risks his life to escape across the border. Why soldiers in blue helmets keep the peace in a new nation. And why women of courage go into the brothels to save young girls from modern-day slavery, which must come to an end.

It's why men of peace in saffron robes faced beatings and bullets, and why every day — from some of the world's largest cities to dusty rural towns, in small acts of courage the world may never see — a student posts a blog; a citizen signs a charter; an activist remains unbowed, imprisoned in his home, just to have the same rights we cherish here today.

Men and women like these know what the world must never forget.

The currents of history may ebb and flow, but over time they move decidedly, decisively, in a single direction.

History is on the side of the free-free societies, free governments, free economies, free people. And the future belongs to those who stand firm for these ideals, in this region and around the world.

This is the story of the alliance we celebrate today. This is the essence of America's new leadership, it is the essence of our partnership. And this is the work we will carry on together, for the security, the prosperity, and the dignity of all people.

So God bless Australia, God bless America, and God bless the friendship between our two peoples.

Thank you very much.

(Photo SMH)

Elsewhere, check out what our USSC experts have to say about the visit. Previously, Erin Riley speculated that had the Gulf of Mexico oil spill not prevented Obama from making his previously scheduled visit, Australia might still have Kevin Rudd as its prime minister.  

On the other side of the internal debate was a faction of unlikely allies within the White House and the State Department who viewed Libya as an opportunity to enact a new form of humanitarian intervention, one that they had been sketching out for nearly a decade. Up until this point, their views hadn't held much sway within an administration marked by its pragmatism and caution. Their formative experience in foreign policy wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan, but memories of the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and Rwanda during the 1990s, a period in which they firmly believed that the United States had failed in its responsibilities to other countries. They would now be to Obama what the neoconservatives had been to Bush: ardent advocates for war in the name of a grander cause. Libya, in effect, represents the rise of the humanitarian Vulcans.

Neoconservatism was so damaged by its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan that over the past decade that it's easy to forget it's a doctrine based on noble intentions: that human rights and democratic rule are important and the US should support them. Though it's inconsistently applied — witness America's cautiousness over Bahrain and Syria — it's evidence that the neoconservative method is not the only means of achieving outcomes that neoconservative would favour.

I'm not much in the habit of posting candidate gaffes like this from Rick Perry in tonight's Republican debate. Politicians are human and like all humans, every now and then, they're going to do things that make themselves look stupid — particularly when they have media tracking their every single move.

But I'm also only human, and this gaffe from Perry is hilarious. Launching into a determined and dramatic pledge to cut three government agencies, he comes up with two, and then... forgets the third. I bet as he stood there, he expected to look down, find out that he was in his underwear, and then wake up from the nightmare. 

Of course, this does matter. Not because Perry made a silly error tonight, but because he's established a pattern of bad debates. Republican party members and primary voters might like his politics, but they're also aware that if Perry gets the nomination, he'll have to face off against Barack Obama in further debates. At first, when people started suggesting Perry's poor performances might hurt his candidacy, I had my doubts. After all, Obama himself began his candidacy with a series of lacklustre debates. But Perry's not improving. Instead, he's developed a reputation as a poor debater.

My bipartisan promise: Next time a Democrat does something this silly, I guarantee I'll share that as well.

(h/t ThinkProgress) 

Ms Guertin, 66, a retired postal worker, remembers Ms Dunham as ''quite charming'' but says she did not really get to know her.

Ah. But can the Herald wring anything more from this stillborn story?

She remembers she had plans to travel to Australia and speculated it was for more than a holiday, given her degree.

''So she probably wanted to go work on a dig or study there. She would be interested in the Aborigines, I'm sure.''

Probably. I'm sure.

In fact, apart from a clarification that the reported conversation occured as the White Australia policy was being dismantled, Nicholls doesn't even delve into the most interesting part of the story: Whether, within many Australians' living memory, a white American woman would have had trouble getting an Australian visa if she an African American child.

The shoddiness is a shame, because the same edition of the Herald had a smart preview of the 2012 election — now fewer than 365 days away. 

It is easy enough to understand why President George W. Bush wanted war with Iraq, whether or not it will harm broader U.S. interests. But what is it that has made Britain and Australia so keen to sign up for an uncertain agenda of "regime change" that may remake the map of the Middle East?

Both countries have long labored under the belief that they have a special relationship with the United States, although that has seldom been reciprocated.

In an earlier article, the same author used the phrase in regard to the US's view on China.

Of course, Australia and the United States have a valuable and fruitful alliance, underpinned by the ANZUS treaty. But Australians should not mistake it for more than it is, and not misunderstand the flattering comments of visiting leaders or dignitaries as evidence of anything unique.

Apologies for the late edition, folks. I was hindered by technical issues.

With fans playing an integral role, the selection of the nickname "Ravens" was inspired by the poetry of former Baltimore resident, Edgar Allan Poe. From a list of more than 100 possible nicknames presented by NFL Properties, club executives narrowed the list to 17. Focus groups of 200 people from the Baltimore area trimmed the list to six. A telephone survey of 1,000 fans shortened the list to Ravens, Marauders and Americans. Fans were then invited to participate in a phone-in poll conducted by the Baltimore Sun. Of 33,288 voters, nearly two-thirds (21,108) picked Ravens.

High brow!

• First, many of us understand that Barack Obama inherited a terrible predicament. We have a degree of sympathy for the man. But we have concerns, which have been growing over time, about whether he’s up to the job.
• Second, most of us are gravely concerned about the economy. We’re not certain what should be done about it, but we’re frustrated.
• Third, enough of us are prepared to vote against Obama that he could easily lose. It doesn’t mean we will, but we might if the Republican represents a credible alternative and fits within the broad political mainstream.

Hey, remember Blackwater, now known as Xe Services? That's the security company contracted by the US government to provide extra military support in Iraq. They've been accused of murdering a number of Iraqi civillians, and after one particularly vicious firefight, which the Iraqi government found killed 17 people, they were banned from operating in the country. (Blackwater boss Erik Prince said his employees were operating in self-defence.)

Well, those guys have their own video game now! Awesome. Here's developer 505 Games's description:

Blackwater takes virtual combat to the next level, using Kinect TM for Xbox to create an unprecedented new level of battle immersion. Just like a real-life Blackwater operative, players must use military tactics and full body gestures to complete high-stakes assignments in some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

No indication of whether players will be subject to criminal investigations, just like real-life Blackwater operatives.

(h/t Andy Hutchins)

I’m actually not entirely sure it’ll hurt him much in a Republican primary. There’s a anti-political-correctness counternarrative that exists in many conservative circles that sees calling people out sexual harassment stuff as indicative of a broader trend- the “they want to ban Christmas” thing. It’s unfair, and it’s wrong, but it exists. So I think while it will certainly turn some primary voters off him, the type he most appeals to are unlikely, IMO, to be dissuaded.

She might be right. RedState's Erick Erickson called the story "a sincere effort to destroy the black guy running to be the GOP’s Presidential nominee," and commented:

We have never seen a candidate publicly vetted before like this. The closest comes with the rise of Mike Huckabee in 2008, when we witnessed what seemed like a never ending media attack. It was, in reality, the other campaigns running as quickly as possible to the media to pour out all the dirt they’d rapidly accumulated.

But Mike Huckabee rose only just before Iowa. The media and the campaigns were caught off guard. This time, people don’t want to be caught off guard. They want to make sure Herman Cain cannot become Mike Huckabee for 2012.

His conclusion: "Herman Cain’s lead in the polling is real — very, very real. People are taking him seriously." Uh-huh. Meanwhile, Ann Coulter told Fox News that liberals are "terrified of strong, conservative black men."

Two things: Erickson and Coulter represent the more intemperate end of the right wing in American politics, and as other sources comment on the story when America wakes up tomorrow morning, the conservative response could well prove less defensive. Indeed, some Republican Party members with an eye to winning in 2012 may see a chance to push Cain out of the contest for good. It doesn't speak well for the current seriousness of American conservatism that singificant voices on the right are instinctively rallying to defend a standard bearer who has no serious chance to bear the party's standard.

The team has spent decades playing in largely black neighborhoods, from its current home in Prince George’s County — which black fans view more favorably than whites by a more than two-to-one margin — to RFK Stadium on East Capitol Street, surrounded by carryout joints and barbershops.

“Look at where RFK is and was. It’s in the heart of the city,” said NBA guard Roger Mason Jr., a lifelong Redskins fan who followed the team with his father in his youth. “I’m not talking about the White House. I’m talking about Southeast.”

 Definitely worth a read.

Greg Sargeant posts the above Pew chart and comments:

Why is it so widely assumed that polls showing high distrust in government automatically support the conservative narrative?

It’s true that multiple polls have shown recently that trust in government to do the right thing is at abysmal lows. And when those polls come out you routinely see Republican operatives Tweeting them gleefully. But the problem with those polls is they don’t probe why distrust in government is running so high. For all we know, some of the reasons for it could also support the liberal narrative. For instance, what if anti-government sentiment is running high because Congress isn’t passing jobs creation and fiscal policies — including tax hikes on the rich — that are supported by large majorities of the American people?

I've talked before about how it's a mistake to see anti-government sentiment as being intrinsically conservative:

The "small government" stance is concerned with different functions of government, but it is not that different — and certainly does not result in a reduced government presence. "Small government" conservatives tend to value government involvement in broad-based universal programs like Medicare or Social Security, infrastructure projects and regulation that facilitate suburban lifestyles, regulations that shift externalities deriving from polluting industries on to the population at large rather than the polluters, rigorous defence of borders, a strong capacity to extend military power, and strong enforcement of property rights. By contrast, conservatives tend to bristle at what they notice as failures of government bureaucracy, such as business regulation, income tax, or services provided to people they consider not worthy of receiving them.

This is the problem with viewing conservative politics as being about "small government." It's not only incorrect; it also leads to sloppy analysis. Dissatisfaction with what government does is not equivalent to a desire for government not to exist, which is in itself not equivalent to endorsement of conservative policy. The American people strongly support federal programs like Social Security and Medicare; they clearly like government when it works. That they don't like government when it doesn't work, doesn't make them conservative or liberal or anything specific.

But in some sense, the "Star Spangled Banner" is cold and eerie. Erika Villani disagreed with Vargas-Cooper's take on the performance as well, and in doing so she describes marvellously why the song is more than just a synechdoche for national pride:

The national anthem was too sexless for you? You want the national anthem, a poem about crawling out of the darkness of a bloody all-night battle, where you stood sustained by glimpses of the American flag as illuminated by the bombs bursting all around it, to gaze at that battered but still standing symbol of the country you fought for, turned into lyrics and sung to the tune of the enemy’s most difficult drinking song, to turn you on a little more?

The "Star Spangled Banner" is quite a moving tune, and it's only through official adoption and the numbing force of repetition that is has become triumphant. Deschanel might not have been able to effectively realise its emotional qualities, but a talented performer can.

This is a take by Michigan singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens. It may not have swagger and it may not be everyone's indie rock cup of tea, but it is dramatic and impassioned. The quaver in his voice on "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave" properly conveys the fragility of a fledgling nation. It was this version that first made me notice the song's sentiment, rather than its pomp. 

Yet for a real recovery to take place, GDP growth does need to catch up to that trendline. There's no reason why it should not be able to do so, either. The American workforce still has the same skills and talents it had in 2007. What's missing is the demand required to put those skills and talents to use. When Obama says that the economy is not where it wants to be, he's saying that the United States has the resources to achieve the level of output it was maintaining prior to 2007 decade, it's just not putting them to use.

But it doesn't have to be that way! To put those resources to use, the government can take advantage of the extremely low borrowing rates available to it, and use that money to put unemployed Americans to work. Those Americans, who now have money in their pockets, will do things like replace their old car, or move out of the place they're sharing with a family member because they can't afford rent, or buy some fancy new gadgets. This activity will put money into the pockets of people who build houses or sell cars or run gadget stores, and those people will go shopping for the things they want. Before you know it, things are humming along nicely once again!  

To be fair to the Post, Pexton lists two examples in which the paper did allow some nasty language to slip through:

Brauchli notes that, in a recent piece on the breakdown of comity in the D.C. City Council, two swear words were published because they were essential to the story, and that The Post published Vice President Cheney’s infamous epithet hurled at Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in 2004. “But in truth,” Brauchli continued, “I’m not sure we couldn’t have conveyed even those episodes without printing the obscenities.” 

The linked examples uphold the strong tradition of American journalism. Too bad they're notable only as exceptions.

It's that weapons cache that attracts the attention of agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and sets up the Waco-esque siege, lead by Special Agent Keenan, the well-meaning but powerless moral centre of the story, played adeptly by John Goodman. (It's amazing how welcome I'm beginning to find Goodman's performances.) Smith's view of government responsibility and accountability is so low as to be absurd, but realism isn't the point of this film. It works best as a compilation of backwoods American grotesques, and the result is a tense and engrossing thriller.

In the end credits, the cast is divided among the categories of "Sex," "Religion," and "Politics," though the film's motifs could as easily be those upon which the red states are supposed to be fixated: gods, guns, and gays. Take the title as indication of setting rather than the introduction of a thesis. This is Smith creating his own take on the American gothic.

I saw Red State at Dendy in Newtown, though Sydneysiders can also find it at various Hoyts, Event, and Reading cinemas, as well as the Chauvel at Paddington. In the US, Kevin Smith distributed the film himself, taking it with him on a speaking tour across the country. Americans can apparently see it on Video On Demand, or, as of this past Tuesday, purchase it on Blu-Ray or DVD.

Like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich before him, Herman Cain is a joke candidate. He won't be the nominee and he won't be president. The best proof of that? Check out the above video, from the Omaha World-Herald, which features a much younger Cain performing a parody of the John Lennon song "Imagine," with new lyrics about the greatness of pizza. Opening verse: "Imagine there's no pizza/I couldn't if I tried/Eating only tacos/Or Kentucky Fried."

This would be a light-hearted diversion for a candidate with serious ideas, but there isn't anything more to Cain than this sort of craziness. The guy's a goofball. A pleasant and charming one, sure, but he's still a goofball.

Anything else you need to know about him, you can get from John Barron's great column at American Review this week:

Like 2008's conservative "little candidate that could" Mike Huckabee, Cain seems too in danger of peaking early and running out of money to be competitive in big delegate-rich states deep into the primaries when costly advertising on TV becomes decisive. The again unsettled and compressed primary calendar will only add to his difficulties.

But Herman Cain doesn't seem to be that fussed; in fact he's spending more time promoting his new best-selling book This Is Herman Cain! in populous but politically unimportant states than pressing the flesh in Iowa City and Manchester.

Jonathan Bernstein has some insight into how such a candidacy happens:

While each election year field is subject to its own particular constraints and quirks of history, today’s wacky Republican field is also the undeniable product of two long-brewing trends within the party. First, GOP elites have become ruthlessly efficient at winnowing the field of serious contenders. At the same time, however, the growth of the market for conservative books, television shows, and speaking engagements has made a presidential run a good brand-builder for those not seriously seeking to be president but eager to exploit that market.

Maybe Christine O'Donnell should have also considered a run? She'd have no better chance at the nomination than Cain, but it might have helped her sell some books.

This is an issue for the traditional "left" because it's a classic instance of overweening corporate power — but it's an issue for the traditional "right" because these same institutions are also the biggest welfare bums of all time, de facto wards of the state who sucked trillions of dollars of public treasure from the pockets of patriotic taxpayers from coast to coast.

Both traditional constituencies want these companies off the public teat and back swimming on their own in the cruel seas of the free market, where they will inevitably be drowned in their corruption and greed, if they don't reform immediately. This is a major implicit complaint of the OWS protests and it should absolutely strike a nerve with Tea Partiers, many of whom were talking about some of the same things when they burst onto the scene a few years ago.

The part I've bolded is correct, but the rest is nonsense. The traditional right has never had a problem with corporate welfare; it's welfare welfare that they dislike. From opposition to Social Security in the '30s and Medicare in the '60s, to their '80s and '90s demonisation of "welfare moms," American conservatives have always existed to make things nicer for the interests of business.

Let's get this straight. The Tea Partiers never cared about financial reform. They might have said they did, but political movements should be judged on the way they behave, and this movement has been entirely AWOL on any attempt to regulate Wall Street. Tea Party protesters, like the Republican Party, have generally fought against financial regulations. In fact, once you take a close look at Tea Partiers, you find that they're fairly ordinary conservative Republicans: pro-business, pro-religion, and anti-immigration.

Occupy Wall Street really might be different to some previous protest movements and I'll discuss the reasons why in a later post. Spoiler: It's not because the movement is the long-awaited materialisation of a bipartisan populist chimera.

I'll give the last word to Scott Galupo:

The problem is Tea Partyers, as conventional conservatives, were never intellectually prepared to deliver on this threat. There'd been talk about ending corporate welfare in Republican circles for years. The TARP bailouts added a powerful new ingredient to this critique.

But when it came down to it, what did Wall Street and corporate America ever have to fear from the Tea Party? Lower corporate taxes and regulatory rollback? Seriously?

If CEO types truly fear a freer free market, why do they constantly complain on the shout shows of being "handcuffed" by Washington? And for crying out loud, didn't I watch the Tea Party movement go viral on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade?

The Tea Party, ultimately, had nothing new to say. 

(via slacktory)

4. I AM THE 98 DEGREE

(via thenewhotness)

5. Occupy Black Street

(via SwagBomb)

6. Giraffe forbidden to occupy Wall Street

 

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL YOU “OCCUPY WALL STREET” OR “OCCUPY BOSTON” OR “OCCUPY” ANYTHING EXCEPT THAT GARBAGE PIT YOU CALL A BEDROOM UNTIL IT’S CLEAN, DO YOU HEAR ME?

(via Animals Talking In All Caps)

7.The Littler 99 Per Cent

(via Critical Massachusetts)

8. WE ARE THE 5 PER CENT

(via Sach O)

9. Occupy Legoland

(via Occupy Legoland on Facebook)

10. The latest New Yorker cover

That last one is perhaps a bit more pointed than some of the others. Are there any other parodies out there I've missed?

This, should you not be able to guess, is the flag of the Utah town of Provo. The Atlantic wonders if it might actually be the logo for a brand of "counterfeit Centrum vitamins." I love it because it looks like a well-meaning city official drew it up in PowerPoint. In 1997. Compared to something like the hodgepodge of iconography that is the flag of Milwaukee, Provo's amateurishness has an endearing charm.  

As actually attractive flags go, the Atlantic highlights Washington, D.C. and Chicago, both of which are so strong that locals have woven the design into their local iconography.  

And the show's government theme has inspired my favourite new Tumblr: Obama is the New Knope, which captions images of the President with quotes from the show. Highly recommended!

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, those of you in the US can catch this gem on NBC at 8.30/7.30c. For those of us in Australia, unless we're willing to use, um, non-traditional means, Channel 7 is currently airing the show's third season at 11.10pm on Tuesday nights. For all the American media we get on our shores, some of the smartest and most innovative is irritatingly difficult to track down.)

But more to to the point, even if the reasons for Southern success are due to those states' conservative politics, they're not scalable to a national level in the way Habeeb proposes. For instance:

Last December, gun manufacturer Winchester moved one of its plants — and 1,000 jobs — from East Alton, Ill., to my small town of Oxford. Joseph Rupp, who runs the company, explained: “While I am disappointed that employees represented by the International Association of Machinists chose to reject a proposal that would have allowed us to remain competitive in East Alton, we look forward to expanding our existing operations in Mississippi.”

According to this explanation, Winchester moved a plant out of Illinois because it found in Mississippi a location where it was harder for workers to assert their interests through collective bargaining. This may well be true. But if the federal government makes it tougher for workers all over the United States to bargain for good conditions and higher wages, then Mississippi will no longer be better off than Illinois. Winchester won't need to move. Note that the United States didn't actually benefit from this intra-state transfer of jobs. What Mississippi gained, Illinois lost. Habeeb doesn't explain why an across the board reduction in worker's bargaining power would benefit the country in the slightest.

Habeeb also makes the error of extrapolating from his own experience to explain the region's success. Cost of living is low, he says, which is great, because, since his work is done over the phone or Internet, where he lives has no relationship to what he earns. He's fortunate to have that flexibility, but most Americans work at a specific location each day, and where they live does have a relationship to what they earn. And Southerners earn less than Americans in other regions of the country. In fact, Habeeb left New Jersey, the state with the second highest median income in the nation to go to Mississippi, the state with the lowest median income. No wonder cost of living is so low!

But there's no doubt that the South has been booming over the past few decades, and policy makers should heed the reasons why. The first is one impossible to replicate in the midwest and northeast: Weather. Absent global warming, New Jersey is going to continue having snowy winters that drive a lot of folks away. The other two reasons for the South's boom, however, are cheap land and a large intake of migrants like Habeeb himself. 

Habeeb is right to point out how much cheaper housing is in the South. Expensive cities in the north-east might not have as much free space as there is in Texas, but they'd do well to change their planning laws to make it easier to build denser residences in the space they do have. (See Matt Yglesias for frequent and cogent discussion of this.)

And migrants? The US can't get new people from Illinois like Mississippi can, but it can get them from all over the world. A lot of people want to move to the United States, but can't thanks to overly strict immigration laws. A Chicagoan can pack up her things and move to Biloxi tomorrow without any trouble at all, but a citizen of Mexico would have to jump through any number of hoops to do the same. And Southern states like Alabama are intent on making life tougher for those who have had the moxie to try to better themselves despite hostile US immigration law.

So sure, the US should try to understand how it can extend the South's success nationwide. But it should do it by inviting in immigrants and keeping housing costs low, not making it harder for workers to earn money and weakening common sense regulatory protections.

In fact it wasn't Steve Jobs's computers that I thought were his most impressive achievements, but what he did in an industry that wasn't even his own: the music industry. Over the past ten years, with the iPod and iTunes, he remade the landscape of the music industry entirely, and, in finding a way to monetise MP3 files, revived a collapsing market. The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh, in an article published this past August, called him "the most effective and influential music executive of the decade." 

I'm sure animation buffs could wax with similar enthusiasm about what he did with Pixar. (And as a casual animation buff, I would.) Jobs pioneered a lot of advances we take for granted in the world of computing today, but his creativity wasn't limited to his first arena.

On Facebook, after Jobs died, a friend wrote that he "was not a messiah, not a guru, possibly not even a genius. He was a very very canny businessman." I think this is right, and it should be considered a compliment. As Eric Harvey wrote:

Jobs was also a great CEO, which meant he had a savant's skill to examine what exists, then to imagine ways of improving it, and organize other smart people to make it a reality. Yet his public persona is so nearly infallible because, especially in relation to his peers, he was actually pretty hip. Unlike Zuckerberg, Gates, or Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jobs wasn't a coder or an engineer — he was a designer at heart, and one with a knack for building images for both his products and himself. He also had a keen eye for style, emphasizing minimalism and open space where others saw an opportunity for more buttons. It was Jobs who merged the worlds of computing and design like no one else could — or dared to try.

Jobs didn't invent the MP3 player or the personal computer, the tablet or the 3D animated film. But he made all of those into things people want to use. That's a significant achievement.  

• Last week, I dicussed how American cities are being reshaped so that the poorer areas are no longer downtown, but in the outer suburbs.
• I cautioned the Republican Party not to get too excited about a possible presidential bid by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. With good reason, too, it turns out: Christie announced this week that he will not run.
• On Tuesday, I talked about the controversy surrounding the name of a hunting spot used by Texas Governor Rick Perry, and why the racial slur "nigger" is such a flashpoint in American society.
• And, finally, yesterday, I looked at the ability of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement to become a sustainable and influential political force. Consider it a follow up to Louisa's excellent post on the same subject from this Wednesday. 

Glad we're all up to speed, and I hope there's something there for you to enjoy!

Kevin Drum uses this chart to illustrate the rise and fall of Rick Perry, but it also succinctly illustrates the entire Republican race to date. The story of the contest thus far has been of a series of candidates putting their hands up, each of whom the party has looked at and decided is in some way unsatisfactory. Through all this, the default option has been plugging along, quietly establishing himself as the only possible choice remaining. To the GOP's consternation, that default option happens to be named Mitt Romney.

Which is not to say Rick Perry's finished by any means. Sure, that's a precipitous polling slump, but if he pulls out of the dive, it will just end up looking like a blip. Notice that Herman Cain's recent uptick has coincided almost exactly with Perry's fall. This suggests that even as some sections of the party are having doubts about the Texas governor, they're not yet ready to give the race to Romney. Perry can come back. There's still a market for a non-Romney option, and from this stage in the race on, that market will be monopolized by Rick Perry. Romney's strategy of outlasting the competition can still work, but his task from here will be to convince the sort of Republicans who prefer Perry that, even if they don't like Romney, they will be able to live with him.

It may seem, inside the bubble of movement conservatism, that everyone on the right responds favorably to pitches aimed at the "Red American" stereotype. But a lot of citizens, Republican and Democrat alike, aren't particularly attuned to political symbolism. Upon hearing a politician signal solidarity with small-town residents who hunt, they conclude that, since they live in an exurb, own no gun, and play basketball on the weekends, that candidate isn't for them.

The show's fourth season began on NBC last month, and it did include some political satire, which, somehow, went completely over my head. The episode featured one character, Ann, receiving lewd photographs in her email. Ann's a nurse, and after she notices symptoms of mumps in the offending photograph, she finds herself subject to an avalanche of offensive snapshots from men throughout the city government eager for a free check-up.

Then I read this article about the show's writing staff: 

Schur wants to keep incorporating ideas that seem "zeitgeist-y," and they discuss how to do their own take on the Anthony Weiner scandal.

Congratulations, former Congressman Weiner. You've been immortalised the best way American pop culture knows how: As a gag on a sitcom. 

Seattle, Washington (Photo by Jonathan Bradley)

I really enjoyed this article by Chris Leadbeater, in which he searches for the legacy of Nirvana in the band's adopted hometown of Seattle, on the twentieth anniversary of the release of its breakthrough album Nevermind. The short story of Nirvana and its frontman Kurt Cobain is an oft-told one, and if you'd like to revisit it and the ensuing "alternative" culture of America in the '90s, I recommend this excellent Pitchfork review by Jess Harvell. Leabeater, however, uses the band to paint a quite vivid picture of Seattle, as well as the entire Pacific Northwest:

For Seattle is a fascinating city, San Francisco's cool cousin, all implausibly steep streets and fractious climate — but blessed with a youthful vibe (it was only founded in 1852) where its Californian "neighbour" pines for the Sixties. It is also a curious hybrid, a hard-working port with a real cultural edge. And its two-tone appeal is immediately apparent — the sweat of its industrial zone, where the main Boeing plant churns out aircraft; the high-brow Seattle Art Museum, where water-colours sit next to striking contemporary pieces.

And:

But it would be simplistic to define Nirvana only in terms of Seattle. The band's roots sprouted not in the city, but in Cobain and Novoselic's adolescence on the Olympic Peninsula, the expanse of mountains and forest that shields Seattle from the Pacific.

This is significant. For while Nirvana are as indelibly the sound of America's west coast as the Beach Boys, this is a different west coast, marinated in rain, mist and darkness ...  Ruby Beach belongs to the same continental flank as California, but it suggests a different universe: its sand grey and damp, the giant trunks of dead cedars piled where the tide has left them.

Washington and Oregon are often overshadowed by the behemoth that is California, but the Pacific Northwest is a part of the country with its own distinct culture. Travel writing can too often devolve into a list of landmarks and high priced restaurants, but when it's done well, as Leadbeater does here, it gives a smart sense of a distant place. Nicely done.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace ― business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering ...

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me ― and I welcome their hatred.

Now compare to Obama in Denver yesterday:

And you know what? I’m positive ― I’ve talked to them, most wealthy Americans agree with this. Of course, the Republicans in Congress, they call this class warfare. You know what? If asking a millionaire to pay the same tax rate as a plumber makes me a class warrior, a warrior for the working class, I will accept that. I will wear that charge as a badge of honor.

It's not quite "I welcome their hatred," but it is exactly what supporters of the President who thought he had been too conciliatory in negotiations with Congress have been asking for. The question is: Will it have FDR-like results?

The movie, based on Michael Lewis’ bestseller of the same name, tells how Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s captured the American League West in 2002 utilizing a statistical technique known as sabermetrics. Beane was able to best bigger market teams that could attract major stars with higher salaries by focusing on sophisticated metrics such as on-base percentage, runs created, and linear weight, that maximize player success and help refine offensive tactics ...

Is there a reason this happened in Oakland instead of elsewhere? Maybe so. To start with the obvious, it’s a smaller market team with a limited budget. New York, Boston, L.A., and Atlanta are rich; they could care less about this approach, since they can and often do just go out and buy the players they need. But ... [a]long with San Francisco and San Jose, Oakland is one of the three major metros that make up the broad San Francisco Bay Area. And the prevailing culture of the region at the turn of the millennium – fueled by high tech industries from semiconductors and software to biotech and social media – was one that was based on innovative and commercially viable ideas. Engineering values were and continue to be deeply embedded in its DNA.

Running a baseball team like a tech start-up, perhaps? If so, it makes for a neat connection with Aaron Sorkin's movie about America from last year, The Social Network.

Sadly, we won't see Moneyball in Australia until November 10. In the meantime, anyone have any ideas as to the last great American sports movie? It's been a long while since I've seen Any Given Sunday, but I know I enjoyed that. Have I forgotten anything more recent?

In January of 2003, two days before leaving office, the then Governor of Illinois George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 prisoners on the state’s death row. Instead of facing execution, the convicts would all serve the remainder of their lives in prison. Governor Ryan had announced a moratorium on the death penalty three years previous. This past March, the current Illinois Governor, Pat Quinn, signed a bill ending capital punishment in the state for good.

Governor Ryan wasn’t a saint — like his successor, Rod Blagojevich, he was convicted on corruption charges — and when he announced his moratorium, he wasn’t even a death penalty opponent. “I still believe the death penalty is a proper response to heinous crimes,” he said at the time. But during his term in office, as appeals courts overturned death sentences and activists found new evidence proving the innocence of condemned prisoners, he realised that the chance that his state would execute an innocent person was too great.

I am opposed to all uses of the death penalty, but cases like that of Davis, when the shakiness of the evidence reveals the politics behind the machinery of death, makes clear the impossibility of reconciling justice and capital punishment. May the United States end its use as quickly possible.

There's a lot more polling on the compromise question these days than there was under President George W. Bush, and I haven't been able to find a poll from that era asking about appetite for compromise in general. But in a 2007 question about the war in Iraq, Gallup found Democrats were far more fond of sticking to their guns then than they are now:

Here, just 36 per cent of Republicans thought Bush should compromise. An even smaller 27 per cent of Democrats, however, thought their own side should compromise. It's hardly definitive, and both sides were fairly insistent on intransigence, but when a Republican was in power, Democrats valued compromise a whole lot less than they do today.

I assume everyone reading this blog has been keeping up with the great content we've been putting up over at the USSC's magazine, American Review, right? You have? Good.

I've mentioned before that you can subscribe to the magazine's iPad app [iTunes link], but there's a couple more American Review outposts around the web of which you may not be aware. The magazine's Twitter feed is @American_Review, for instance, and here is its Facebook page. We've also recently introduced an RSS feed for the daily updated Blogbook section. You should follow, like, and subscribe to each respectively!

(I assume you already subscribe to this blog's RSS feed. Of course you do.)

And here's Erick Erickson's take:

"Soviet chic"

Did someone exhume Joe McCarthy and hand him a copy of InDesign?

And, yes, there are some implausible victories for our Magical Democrat as well. If anything these show how much American politics has changed over just the past 19 years. In 1992, Bill Clinton won Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky, Arizona, and Georgia. I have heard vaguely plausible suggestions that Obama could have won Georgia had he properly campaigned there, but Louisiana? Is there really some kind of Democrat that could win Louisiana today? Could Bill Clinton win Louisiana today?

I don't think any of this means a whole lot. Certainly, none of it is relevant to next year's real life presidential election. (Well, the Magic Republican map might be.) If I were to draw a conclusion, however, it would be that the Democrats' ceiling is much higher than the Republicans', and hence so too is their room for error. Even a highly successful Republican candidate has to thread the needle pretty expertly to pull off a victory.

For instance, if our Magical Republican failed to win in Florida, he or she would still lose the election.

Moreover, as surely as Chicago was the mythical "Promised Land" for blacks in the early and mid 20th century, Atlanta is the mythical "Promised Land" for blacks in the late 20th and early 21st Century. This seems to be the week of killed stories for me, so I'll quote from a long dead piece I wrote about about black New Yorkers decamping for Atlanta to illustrate the point, "Growing up, especially in New York, you'd see pockets, but very few of us doing well," said Debra Harper. "And if we were doing well, we were living in white communities. In Atlanta you can do well and still live among African-Americans who are also doing well. I had never seen that before."

I'm always a little wary of using rap as a means to talk about African American issues. After all, it is a music that speaks only for part of the community — usually the younger, male part — and, obviously, there are plenty of black folks who have no interest in rap or actively dislike the way it presents them. And since it's primarily a form of entertainment, the language hip-hop uses and stories it tells are stylised and sometimes unrealistic. It takes familiarity with the genre to learn how to read the music as a text.

Yet at the same time, hip hop was the first exposure I ever had to black people talking about American politics, culture, and history on their own terms, and it continues to be one of the most common means in pop culture for black voices to be transmitted. It's only part of the story, but it's an instructive part if you pay attention to it.

Last week, President Barack Obama announced a jobs plan worth $447 billion designed to pull the economic recovery out of a stall. The plan is a combination of measures that would stop things from getting worse — continuing a cut on the payroll tax rate, for instance — and measures designed to boost growth and reduce unemployment, such as spending on infrastructure. The forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisors predicts it would add 1.3 million jobs to the economy before the end of 2012. You can see why Obama and his supporters are hoping to make "Pass this bill" a refrain as familiar as "Yes we can."

The rest is here. Check it out.

A fellow by the name of Jeff Yorkes has given a new soundtrack to seminal journo flick All the President's Men: the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage." The song's original video was heavy on the '70s crime caper iconography anyway, but who'll say no to extra Dustin Hoffman, extra Robert Redford, and, of course, extra Richard Milhous Nixon?

These exurban outlet malls are an American phenomenon of commerce that simply do not exist in Australia — or certainly not on that scale. I'd been in the US for about a week at that time, but the trip to this outlet mall was my first experience of something truly alien in its Americanness: A massive, multi-lane freeway surrounded by miles and miles of big box stores. This wasn't a strip mall; it was a city of strip malls. Best Buys and Walmarts next to Home Depots and Old Navys, interrupted by outlets of Denny's and Wendy's, or Ramadas and Holiday Inns — just in case shoppers grew hungry or sleepy in the midst of their consumption — as far as the eye could see. The 149,000 square metres of mall that was our destination wasn't a focal point; it was just a building hosting a collection of chain stores in a forest of chain stores lining the freeway.

This isn't a description of somewhere exceptional. In fact, there are examples of the same all over America. This is a country where you buy your coffee from Starbucks, watch movies at an AMC theatre and dress in chinos purchased from the GAP. Politicians like small business because Americans aren't so much anti-government as they are individualists and voters know big corporations can interfere with their self-determination as much as a politician can. Talking about small business is a good way to defend private enterprise without seeming too friendly to the interests of faceless corporations. But I don't think anyone even slightly observant could look at contemporary America and think this is the natural home of the small businessman. 

But to do that, it would be helpful to know what's causing the deficit problem. Erskine Bowles's diagnosis is accurate and succinct:

We have an imaginary deficit in this country where the source of that deficit, that imaginary deficit, is waste, fraud, and abuse, foreign aid, oil subsidies, and Nancy Pelosi's airplane.... The real deficit and the real causes of our deficit are a couple things. First of all we spend twice as much as any other developed country on health care, and that's true whether you look at it as a percentage of GDP or a per capita basis...the second is that we spend more than the next 14 largest countries combined on our national defense, and that simply is not sustainable, and it also causes like a hollowing out of the country because there's not the resources available to invest in things like education and infrastructure and high-value added research. And the third is that we give away half of the tax income in deductions and credits.

Bowles is a Democrat, but he co-chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Wyoming Republican Alan K. Simpson. The committee's Simpson/Bowles report was given scathing reviews by Democrats concerned at how deep some of its cuts were. Bowles is no softy on debt. He was also White House Chief of Staff in 1997 and 1998. President Bill Clinton's 1998 budget, you may recall, was the first since 1969 not to be in deficit.

So what does it mean to get serious on the deficit? Continue the health care reforms President Barack Obama started, making health care more cost effective and more accessible to all Americans. (Cutting government support won't do; the private sector is less efficient in its health care spending than the government.) Cut back military expenditure. (Properly ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would help here.) And reform the tax system — but do it properly, instead of pretending low rates can be sustained by closing corporate jet loopholes.

This is Alyssa Campanella, Miss USA in this year's Miss Universe pageant. The outfit in question was for a round (do these things have rounds?) in which contestants showed off their national costumes. I suppose this is the national costume for Americans who want to protest high taxes then go to a Lady Gaga show? 

Linda Blair's description is gold:

In case the flag distracts you from the other details of the outfit, here they are. The epaulets, the blue ribbon, and that glorious, glorious hat. It's like Washington crossing the Delaware to go to Hooters.

Meanwhile, I promise this blog is not about to transform into a respository for women wearing more flag than pant.

The proof of whether US politicians can rise above partisan ambitions and seriously address the country's economic distress will come as they debate these short-term stimulus measures and the earlier proposals for longer-term structural reforms to reduce government debt.

The presidential election in November next year is likely to draw Republicans closer to mainstream economic ideas, and push out the more radical camp which, as Obama described with only a little parody, thinks ''the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everyone's money, let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they're on their own''.

Al-Qaeda is not the only form of fundamentalism threatening America.

We'll disregard the tackiness in comparing the Tea Party to an international terrorist group, particularly in an editorial published the day after the tenth anniversary of a mass murder commited by that terrorist group. Let's instead try to understand the Herald's logic here: Economic fundamentalism is threatening the US, but the barrier preventing the country from "seriously address[ing] the country's economic distress" is American politicians unable to "rise above partisan ambitions"?

This is old-fashioned journalistic faux-balance, and it's hardly confined to the Herald, or to non-American media. But it makes no sense. The president and the majority of the Senate are Democrats who do not subscribe to economic "fundamentalism." Does the Herald believe Democrats' supposed partisan refusal to compromise with adherents to a "fundamentalism threatening America" will save America from the fundamentalism threatening it? How is this supposed to work?

If Republican politicians are the problem — and right now they are — It's not unfair to say so. There have been times in America's history when a bipartisan refusal to compromise has held the nation back. This is not one of those times.

My column at American Review on Thursday touched looked at the events of that morning, but I spent more time on the aftermath, and how Americans undertook the process of returning their lives to some kind of normalcy. In my piece, I referred to an article by Bryan Appleyard, in which he quotes Rupert Goold, the director of Decade, a show marking the anniversary of the attacks: "Two things were consistent: everybody wanted to tell you what they were doing on the day, and everybody had a different opinion about it."

I must admit to sharing that compulsion was no different, and my column begins as such:

I probably heard about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 earlier than many Americans did. I was watching Australian network Channel 10's late news that evening when anchor Sandra Sully announced that a plane had flown into the North Tower. It was just shy of 11pm on the east coast of Australia, and my parents and I watched as the TV screened the surreal sight of another plane colliding with the South Tower, then announcements that a third plane had struck the Pentagon, and a fourth downed in a field in Pennsylvania. Despite the continuous stream of reporting, little was clear: Who was behind this? Where would it end? As the night wore on, I wondered when and where the next attack would occur. Would they stay on the east coast of the United States, or was this a coordinated global assault?

Further attacks did not manifest themselves however, and I stayed up until three a.m. watching the inflow of news reports settle into a numbing cycle of interviews with experts and replayed footage of the attacks. At school the next day, my classmates and I ignored the task of studying for our impending end-of-year exams, and spent our time trying to make sense of what we had seen on TV the night before. I could not imagine how Americans were coping with an attack of such magnitude on their own soil.

Read the rest here when you have a chance. Today however, is a memorial for the victims of the attacks and the lives that have gone on without them. As the first ten years since the attacks comes to a close, let's hope the people — and the nation — affected will find some way to put the horror of that day behind them.

Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbours jobless, and a political crisis that’s made things worse.

This past week, reporters have been asking, “What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?”

But the millions of Americans who are watching right now, they don’t care about politics. They have real-life concerns. Many have spent months looking for work. Others are doing their best just to scrape by — giving up nights out with the family to save on gas or make the mortgage; postponing retirement to send a kid to college.

These men and women grew up with faith in an America where hard work and responsibility paid off. They believed in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share — where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits; maybe a raise once in a while. If you did the right thing, you could make it. Anybody could make it in America.

For decades now, Americans have watched that compact erode. They have seen the decks too often stacked against them. And they know that Washington has not always put their interests first.

The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours. The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy. The question is — the question is whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.

Those of us here tonight can’t solve all our nation’s woes. Ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers. But we can help. We can make a difference. There are steps we can take right now to improve people’s lives.

I am sending this Congress a plan that you should pass right away. It’s called the American Jobs Act. There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans — including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything.

The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working. It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for long-term unemployed. It will provide — it will provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and it will cut payroll taxes in half for every working American and every small business. It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and if they hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan right away.

Everyone here knows that small businesses are where most new jobs begin. And you know that while corporate profits have come roaring back, smaller companies haven’t. So for everyone who speaks so passionately about making life easier for “job creators,” this plan is for you.

Pass this jobs bill — pass this jobs bill, and starting tomorrow, small businesses will get a tax cut if they hire new workers or if they raise workers’ wages. Pass this jobs bill, and all small business owners will also see their payroll taxes cut in half next year. If you have 50 employees — if you have 50 employees making an average salary, that’s an $80,000 tax cut. And all businesses will be able to continue writing off the investments they make in 2012.

It’s not just Democrats who have supported this kind of proposal. Fifty House Republicans have proposed the same payroll tax cut that’s in this plan. You should pass it right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and we can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over the country. Our highways are clogged with traffic. Our skies are the most congested in the world. It’s an outrage.

Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us a economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads? At a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in America?

There are private construction companies all across America just waiting to get to work. There’s a bridge that needs repair between Ohio and Kentucky that’s on one of the busiest trucking routes in North America. A public transit project in Houston that will help clear up one of the worst areas of traffic in the country. And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school — and we can give it to them, if we act now.

The American Jobs Act will repair and modernize at least 35,000 schools. It will put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows, installing science labs and high-speed Internet in classrooms all across this country. It will rehabilitate homes and businesses in communities hit hardest by foreclosures. It will jumpstart thousands of transportation projects all across the country. And to make sure the money is properly spent, we’re building on reforms we’ve already put in place. No more earmarks. No more boondoggles. No more bridges to nowhere. We’re cutting the red tape that prevents some of these projects from getting started as quickly as possible. And we’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it will do for the economy.

This idea came from a bill written by a Texas Republican and a Massachusetts Democrat. The idea for a big boost in construction is supported by America’s largest business organization and America’s largest labor organization. It’s the kind of proposal that’s been supported in the past by Democrats and Republicans alike. You should pass it right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and thousands of teachers in every state will go back to work. These are the men and women charged with preparing our children for a world where the competition has never been tougher. But while they’re adding teachers in places like South Korea, we’re laying them off in droves. It’s unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong.

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get extra tax credits if they hire America’s veterans. We ask these men and women to leave their careers, leave their families, risk their lives to fight for our country. The last thing they should have to do is fight for a job when they come home.

Pass this bill, and hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people will have the hope and the dignity of a summer job next year. And their parents — their parents, low-income Americans who desperately want to work, will have more ladders out of poverty.

Pass this jobs bill, and companies will get a $4,000 tax credit if they hire anyone who has spent more than six months looking for a job. We have to do more to help the long-term unemployed in their search for work. This jobs plan builds on a program in Georgia that several Republican leaders have highlighted, where people who collect unemployment insurance participate in temporary work as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job. The plan also extends unemployment insurance for another year. If the millions of unemployed Americans stopped getting this insurance, and stopped using that money for basic necessities, it would be a devastating blow to this economy. Democrats and Republicans in this chamber have supported unemployment insurance plenty of times in the past. And in this time of prolonged hardship, you should pass it again — right away.

Pass this jobs bill, and the typical working family will get a $1,500 tax cut next year. Fifteen hundred dollars that would have been taken out of your pocket will go into your pocket. This expands on the tax cut that Democrats and Republicans already passed for this year. If we allow that tax cut to expire — if we refuse to act — middle-class families will get hit with a tax increase at the worst possible time. We can’t let that happen. I know that some of you have sworn oaths to never raise any taxes on anyone for as long as you live. Now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise middle-class taxes, which is why you should pass this bill right away.

This is the American Jobs Act. It will lead to new jobs for construction workers, for teachers, for veterans, for first responders, young people and the long-term unemployed. It will provide tax credits to companies that hire new workers, tax relief to small business owners, and tax cuts for the middle class. And here’s the other thing I want the American people to know: The American Jobs Act will not add to the deficit. It will be paid for. And here’s how.

The agreement we passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years. It also charges this Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Tonight, I am asking you to increase that amount so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act. And a week from Monday, I’ll be releasing a more ambitious deficit plan — a plan that will not only cover the cost of this jobs bill, but stabilize our debt in the long run.

This approach is basically the one I’ve been advocating for months. In addition to the trillion dollars of spending cuts I’ve already signed into law, it’s a balanced plan that would reduce the deficit by making additional spending cuts, by making modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. What’s more, the spending cuts wouldn’t happen so abruptly that they’d be a drag on our economy, or prevent us from helping small businesses and middle-class families get back on their feet right away.

Now, I realize there are some in my party who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid, and I understand their concerns. But here’s the truth: Millions of Americans rely on Medicare in their retirement. And millions more will do so in the future. They pay for this benefit during their working years. They earn it. But with an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it.

I am also — I’m also well aware that there are many Republicans who don’t believe we should raise taxes on those who are most fortunate and can best afford it. But here is what every American knows: While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — an outrage he has asked us to fix. We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake and where everybody pays their fair share. And by the way, I believe the vast majority of wealthy Americans and CEOs are willing to do just that if it helps the economy grow and gets our fiscal house in order.

I’ll also offer ideas to reform a corporate tax code that stands as a monument to special interest influence in Washington. By eliminating pages of loopholes and deductions, we can lower one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Our tax code should not give an advantage to companies that can afford the best-connected lobbyists. It should give an advantage to companies that invest and create jobs right here in the United States of America.

So we can reduce this deficit, pay down our debt, and pay for this jobs plan in the process. But in order to do this, we have to decide what our priorities are. We have to ask ourselves, “What’s the best way to grow the economy and create jobs?”

Should we keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or should we use that money to give small business owners a tax credit when they hire new workers? Because we can’t afford to do both. Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires? Or should we put teachers back to work so our kids can graduate ready for college and good jobs? Right now, we can’t afford to do both.

This isn’t political grandstanding. This isn’t class warfare. This is simple math. This is simple math. These are real choices. These are real choices that we’ve got to make. And I’m pretty sure I know what most Americans would choose. It’s not even close. And it’s time for us to do what’s right for our future.

Now, the American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away. But we can’t stop there. As I’ve argued since I ran for this office, we have to look beyond the immediate crisis and start building an economy that lasts into the future — an economy that creates good, middle-class jobs that pay well and offer security. We now live in a world where technology has made it possible for companies to take their business anywhere. If we want them to start here and stay here and hire here, we have to be able to out-build and out-educate and out-innovate every other country on Earth.

And this task of making America more competitive for the long haul, that’s a job for all of us. For government and for private companies. For states and for local communities — and for every American citizen. All of us will have to up our game. All of us will have to change the way we do business.

My administration can and will take some steps to improve our competitiveness on our own. For example, if you’re a small business owner who has a contract with the federal government, we’re going to make sure you get paid a lot faster than you do right now. We’re also planning to cut away the red tape that prevents too many rapidly growing startup companies from raising capital and going public. And to help responsible homeowners, we’re going to work with federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4 percent. That’s a step — I know you guys must be for this, because that’s a step that can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket, and give a lift to an economy still burdened by the drop in housing prices.

So, some things we can do on our own. Other steps will require congressional action. Today you passed reform that will speed up the outdated patent process, so that entrepreneurs can turn a new idea into a new business as quickly as possible. That’s the kind of action we need. Now it’s time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for American companies to sell their products in Panama and Colombia and South Korea -– while also helping the workers whose jobs have been affected by global competition. If Americans can buy Kias and Hyundais, I want to see folks in South Korea driving Fords and Chevys and Chryslers. I want to see more products sold around the world stamped with the three proud words: “Made in America.” That’s what we need to get done.

And on all of our efforts to strengthen competitiveness, we need to look for ways to work side by side with America’s businesses. That’s why I’ve brought together a Jobs Council of leaders from different industries who are developing a wide range of new ideas to help companies grow and create jobs.

Already, we’ve mobilized business leaders to train 10,000 American engineers a year, by providing company internships and training. Other businesses are covering tuition for workers who learn new skills at community colleges. And we’re going to make sure the next generation of manufacturing takes root not in China or Europe, but right here, in the United States of America. If we provide the right incentives, the right support — and if we make sure our trading partners play by the rules — we can be the ones to build everything from fuel-efficient cars to advanced biofuels to semiconductors that we sell all around the world. That’s how America can be number one again. And that’s how America will be number one again.

Now, I realize that some of you have a different theory on how to grow the economy. Some of you sincerely believe that the only solution to our economic challenges is to simply cut most government spending and eliminate most government regulations.

Well, I agree that we can’t afford wasteful spending, and I’ll work with you, with Congress, to root it out. And I agree that there are some rules and regulations that do put an unnecessary burden on businesses at a time when they can least afford it. That’s why I ordered a review of all government regulations. So far, we’ve identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. We should have no more regulation than the health, safety and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common-sense test.

But what we can’t do — what I will not do — is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades. I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy. We shouldn’t be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labour and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe we can win that race.

In fact, this larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own — that’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.

Yes, we are rugged individualists. Yes, we are strong and self-reliant. And it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and the envy of the world.

But there’s always been another thread running throughout our history — a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party. But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future — a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad — launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

Ask yourselves — where would we be right now if the people who sat here before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports? What would this country be like if we had chosen not to spend money on public high schools, or research universities, or community colleges? Millions of returning heroes, including my grandfather, had the opportunity to go to school because of the G.I. Bill. Where would we be if they hadn’t had that chance?

How many jobs would it have cost us if past Congresses decided not to support the basic research that led to the Internet and the computer chip? What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? How many Americans would have suffered as a result?

No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. And members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.

Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight is the kind that’s been supported by Democrats and Republicans in the past. Every proposal I’ve laid out tonight will be paid for. And every proposal is designed to meet the urgent needs of our people and our communities.

Now, I know there’s been a lot of skepticism about whether the politics of the moment will allow us to pass this jobs plan — or any jobs plan. Already, we’re seeing the same old press releases and tweets flying back and forth. Already, the media has proclaimed that it’s impossible to bridge our differences. And maybe some of you have decided that those differences are so great that we can only resolve them at the ballot box.

But know this: The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here — the people who hired us to work for them — they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.

I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It should not be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose. What’s guided us from the start of this crisis hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet. It’s been a commitment to stay at it — to be persistent — to keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it.

Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we will have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country. And I ask — I ask every American who agrees to lift your voice: Tell the people who are gathered here tonight that you want action now. Tell Washington that doing nothing is not an option. Remind us that if we act as one nation and one people, we have it within our power to meet this challenge.

President Kennedy once said, “Our problems are man-made – therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.”

These are difficult years for our country. But we are Americans. We are tougher than the times we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been. So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and let’s show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.

Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

If administering the ultimate punishment is the most serious use of government power it should at least be treated as such. The gravity of execution and the ability of a state to kill its own citizens is not something over which people should strut, ever.

It makes more sense, though is no less ghoulish, as a celebration of political grit. I linked yesterday to an Erick Erickson post about Sarah Palin, in which he describes the appeal the former Alaska governor had for Republicans:

a lot of us fell in love with Sarah Palin because of her enemies and a lot of us have fallen out of love with Sarah Palin because of her fans. 

This seems a common sentiment among conservatives; someone who enrages liberals must be doing something right. It seems a nihilistic and fruitless brand of politics to me, and while partisans of all stripes can fall prey to the pleasures of point-scoring against the other team, it's something liberals seem to have a lot less interest in. (Is there a left wing leader liberals love "because of her enemies"?) But Perry's triumphalism over the 234 people he condemned and his callous disregard for suggestions that not all of them were guilty won't really matter to the conservative base, whether they value human life or not. The outraged response from death penalty opponents will just make Perry's blithe surety more attractive to Republican primary voters.

Republicans therefore are a lock or lead in 24 states for 206 electoral votes, and Democrats have or lead in 19 states for 247 electoral votes. That's why seven super-swing states with 85 electors will determine which party gets to the magic number of 270 electoral votes: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13).

Prior to Obama's 2008 victories in each of these states, several had generally or firmly leaned Republican since 1980. Virginia, which hadn't voted Democratic since 1964, was the biggest surprise, and its Obama majority was larger than that of Ohio, which has frequently been friendly to Democrats in past decades. Massive Hispanic participation turned Colorado and Nevada to Mr. Obama, and it helped him in Florida.

The GOP has gotten a quiet advantage through the redistricting following the 2010 Census. The Republican nominee could gain about a half-dozen net electors from the transfer of House seats—and thus electoral votes—from the northern Frostbelt to the southern and western Sunbelt. Put another way, the Democrats can no longer win just by adding Ohio to John Kerry's 2004 total. The bleeding of electoral votes from Democratic states would leave him six short of 270.

I think predictions about the 2012 election this far out are basically useless, but two things:

1. Sabato gives Indiana and North Carolina, which Obama won, to the Republicans. Sure, OK, but even so, Dems have a lot more paths to victory than the GOP does. From Sabato's seven toss-ups, if Obama were to just win Florida, he'd still win the election. Ohio and Iowa stay blue? An Obama victory. If the Republican candidate wins Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia, leaving Obama with just Ohio and New Hampshire, that's still only good enough for a tie. The Democrats have a formidable defence.

2. The redistricting advantage is really overstated. Sure, red states have been picking up electoral college votes at a greater rate than blue states, but they've also been turning more purple. The movement of voters from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt has resulted in Democrats being competitive in Southern and Western states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado, that even a decade ago they had little hope of winning. The Electoral College is a bogus system, but it's still pretty keyed to population, and the occasions on which it contradicts the popular vote are exceedingly rare.

Nonetheless, close analysis of the Electoral College this far out is particularly useless. State-by-state returns tend to follow national swings, and those are a better guide at the moment. This fantasy football approach to elections is fun, but it's not instructive right now.

Excuse my cynicism, but does this quote from Republican Congressman Eric Cantor seem too good to be true?:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican who has fostered a reputation as Mr. Obama’s nemesis, in a statement cited two proposals Mr. Obama was expected to make in his address — for infrastructure spending and for job training for the long-term unemployed — as “areas where we can work together to produce real results that will help job creators get people back to work.”

If true, I have no criticism to make. Eric Cantor has identified two measures that are exactly the kind of Keynesian stimulus the American economy needs to bring the unemployment rate down. Putting Americans to work by having the government employ them to build things like roads and bridges is the sort of common sense measure that the US should have begun a long time ago. Is this the beginning of the end of that good ol' Congressional deadlock?

Are photos presenting Detroit as a Midwest Pompeii likely to bring people back? Would you move to Detroit? Start a business there? Raise a family there? More than a million people might have left the city in the past 60 years, but 713 777 remain, and things aren't going to get better for them if folks are printing eulogies for a patient whose condition is critical —  not terminal. Detroit utopianism is unhelpful, but I understand why residents of the city might, for instance, want to push back against lurid news stories that theirs is a city without grocery stores. 

Photo by Jonathan Bradley

The challenge when presenting Detroit is to present it accurately, and both the blank canvas of out-of-town artists or the blank slate of young white creatives are unsatisfying portrayals of the city. I sure don't have an answer for the city's problems, but presenting it accurately, obscuring neither the good nor the bad, seems to be a necessary first step.

If fixed terms for justices would help to reduce the stakes, it might be worth considering, even if it would have the side effect of making yet another branch of government much older than the population it serves. But court appointments are by their nature political, and 18 years is long enough an appointment to make the it worthwhile for partisans to fight very hard for judges of whom they approve. As it is, I can see a real advantage to a system with incentives to put younger people in positions of power.

His record as Texas' governor proves that he knows you grow the economy with less government, by controlling spending, cutting taxes, reforming tort laws and reducing regulatory red tape for employers. One of the important areas is reigning in over-regulation.

Perry is running for president, and the federal regulations presidents oversee are not the type identified by Friedersdorf that are burdensome to the average American. In fact, the regulations Inhofe points toward, such as those governing the environment and the workplace tend to benefit the general public. The freedom to breathe polluted air, drink polluted water, or experience dangerous conditions at work is not one many voters are interested in pursuing.

I suspect though that when politicians like Inhofe talk about "over-regulation," voters have in mind the kind of absurd laws put in place by local governments rather than the standards the Federal government has jurisdiction over. Voters, however, are wont to take out their frustrations on the most visible politicians, whether they are responsible for the problem or not. Presidents get blamed for the actions of Congress. State politicians suffer for economic conditions largely out of their hands. And if voters feel over-burdened by regulation, they may well gravitate to candidates who speak out against regulation, even if those candidates have no jurisdiction over the regulations displeasing voters.

This may well explain why Barack Obama has ordered his administration to review its regulations and remove unnecessary ones. (Though he probably thinks that doing so is just a sensible idea, as well.) The public will be much more amenable to sensible regulations if it isn't regularly stymied by silly ones. But this is a fight the presidents' political allies must also pursue at a local level. A council that makes it easier for someone to run a small business might also make it easier for a president to curb the excesses of a larger one.

Ross Douthat has a smart column today, which I enjoyed because he says better some of the things I tried to say in my final paragraph here. Douthat:

First, conservative Christianity is a large and complicated world, and like other such worlds — the realm of the secular intelligentsia very much included — it has various centers and various fringes, which overlap in complicated ways. Sometimes teasing out these connections tells us something meaningful and interesting. But it’s easy to succumb to a paranoid six-degrees-of-separation game, in which the most radical figure in a particular community is always the most important one, or the most extreme passage in a particular writer’s work always defines his real-world influence.

Conservative Christians hold views many Americans do not, but they're still just regular ol' Americans. It's tempting, particularly for critics of their political views, to attempt to portray them as some kind of strange and threatening other. Sure, explore their ideas, criticise the wacky ones, and hold accountable the politicians that support the worst ones. But don't treat a part of society as complex and fine-grained as any other as if it were a monolith. 

UPDATE: Take a look, as well, at Mike Barthel's commentary on the issue:

But no matter how carefully a writer tries to paint these issues as influences on a politician’s thinking rather than a JFK-in-1960 pope-like “taking orders from the dominionists” sort of thing, it’s really hard for readers not to draw that conclusion, and I think it’s playing off our ignorance of conservative culture to make politics seem way more sinister than they almost ever are.

I swiped the title of my latest column for American Review from this Bright Eyes song, one of the better tunes from Cassadaga, the last album I bothered with from this band. I'm talking about mobility in the United States, the American tradition of heading for new horizons to better themselves, and why it's been in decline during this recession. I made reference to On the Road, The Great Gatsby, and The Grapes of Wrath as cultural examples of mobility, but I could also have mentioned Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst, who started his band in Omaha, Nebraska, then shifted to New York and made the very Big Apple-focused records of Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. (He's wandering again on this song, declaring he's "headed for New England or the Paris of the South.")

Anyway, here's a snippet from the column. Read the rest, and then check out American Review on Facebook, as well as the iPad edition [iTunes link] of the brand new issue. 

America's success throughout its history has been driven by its people's ambition and entrepreneurial spirit, and that has often come in the form of being prepared to physically uproot their lives and start over somewhere new. Of late, that's involved heading south and southwest, to states like Georgia and North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. Unsuprisingly, some of those states were the ones to benefit most from the housing boom of the last decade, and are among those who have suffered most from the bust. (Rick Perry's Texas Miracle resulted from this strong internal migration, but his state was protected by unusually good mortgage regulations...

• FamousDC has some pictures of the, um, devastation following yesterday's east coast earthquake.
• Household debt is holding back the economic recovery, argues Ezra Klein.
• Brad DeLong lists ten things Obama could have done to put the economy in better shape.
• Mitt Romney will be relieved Paul Ryan isn't contesting for the GOP nomination, says Jennifer Rubin.
• Barack Obama is right to read fiction and genre novels, writes Alyssa Rosenberg.

As the experience with Perry has shown, dream candidates lose a lot of their lustre when they're forced under the harsh light of a presidential campaign and are required to do the hard work of campaigning. That doesn't mean that they are destined to lose next November. It's just how politics works. It's a tough business.

And the array of fantasy candidates pundits assemble? They're just that. Fantasies. 

[Howard] Sharp, who is now a doctor in Salt Lake City, says Huntsman was a practical joker who loved to douse an unsuspecting bandmate with a bucket of water or smoke a cigar in the office of someone who couldn’t stand the smell.

...or Rick Perry as a college student at Texas A&M:

On one occasion, Perry put live chickens in the closet of an upperclassman and left them there during Christmas break. “You can just imagine the smell,” [John] Sharp said. “Needless to say, he didn’t mess with Perry again.”

Another more elaborate prank took Perry months to execute. It involved M-80 firecrackers and an acquired knowledge of the plumbing in A&M buildings. Perry learned that he could drop something down the second floor toilet and get it to come out the first floor toilet. Then he learned M-80s had waterproof detonators — a perfect combination. His accomplice, Sharp, would give the high sign out the window when a potential target wandered into a stall.

Perry, from the floor above, would flush the lit firework down.

"It kind of launched the guy off of the seat,” Sharp told the Tribune in June. "It was quite a hoot. It was one of our more perfect deals.”

On this count, I'm  not sure it's a fair fight. Anyone have word on how conversant Mitt Romney was with practical jokes?

• Chart of the week is this handy Venn diagram by Nate Silver, which breaks down the Republican field's strengths and weaknesses.

• Nate Silver ponders Rick Perry's electability:

Over all, Mr. Perry has won his three elected terms with an average victory margin of 13 percentage points. That’s certainly not a disaster, but it lags the 19-point margin for other Texas Republicans running in those years. In the most recent two elections, Mr. Perry was losing quite a few voters who were voting for Republican for almost every other office.

• Michael Agger explains why the Internet likes President Obama so much.

Obama also benefits from his blackness and perceived coolness. Successful memes often approach sensitive subjects, like race, but stop short of being offensive. Many of the positive memes surrounding Obama emphasize his decisive, almost Shaft-like authority.

• Vogue profiles Jon Huntsman:

But when Huntsman speaks, he doesn’t act like he’s pinned down behind enemy lines or tailor his explanation of why he’s running to the audience. He says he’s running on his rec­ord as a “conservative problem-­solver” in Utah and on his grasp of America’s economic challenges.

• The Daily Beast has a neat infographic listing every book Obama has read while in office.

• Social Studies DC has produced this handy guide to the stereotypes defining different Washington neighbourhoods.

• Sean Fennessey thinks Mitt Romney is utterly compelling:

It wasn't what he was saying—the hybridized big-business conservative rhetoric dancing awkwardly with East Coast liberalism leaves me cold, bored, and sometimes revolted. It's how effortful and cheerily programmed he seemed. It was as if he had never had an actual conversation with a human before, though he had been hardwired to assume the tendencies of someone who had. It was cyborgian.

• Damon Young outlines the phenomenon he calls "Eating while black":

From a race perspective, a manifestation of this mindset is you wondering if all things that happen to you are somehow related to you being black; a too heightened racial awareness that makes it increasingly difficult to discern between legitimate racism and race-based discrimination — both of which definitely still exist — and mere happenstance.

• Conor Friedersdorf suggests what CEO recruiters might ask the Republican presidential field:

[T]he focus among political candidates is often on what they'll endeavor to do if elected, whereas a CEO candidate, brought in for an interview, is inevitably pressed not just on what he or she would accomplish, but how it would be accomplished.

• Song of the Week is from country singer Miranda Lambert's new project, a band called the Pistol Annies. This is "Hell on Heels," and is as fiery as the title suggests.

Now, suggests a study by Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell, they're back. In fact, they've been back for a while. We just haven't realised it until now:

Beginning in 2006 we interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans as part of our continuing research into national political attitudes, and we returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously — isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.

[...]

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

This is a problem for the Republican party, say Putnam and Campbell. Yesterday in this spot, Emily McCosker discussed a previous Putnam and Campbell study that found the American electorate was more hostile to atheists than they were toward other relatively unpopular groups, like gays or people who'd had a marital affair. According to Putnam and Campbell's new study, Tea Partiers are even more unpopular than atheists. The Christian Right is not particularly popular either; despite that group's political energy in the early '00s, Americans didn't like the direction in which they wanted to take the country then, and they don't like it now.

These were interesting findings, but they seemed a little odd to me. I've met some Tea Party folks, and my impression wasn't that they were Christian conservatives who were pretending to care about government spending because they thought it was more electorally palatable. They didn't seem, however — and Putnam and Campbell confirm they are not — like former independents enraged by government excess. They came across as fairly traditional conservatives who had found some organisational prowess and new energy. (And a penchant for silly costumes.)

So how does my anecdotal experience fit with Putnam and Campbell's data? Ryan Lizza's New Yorker profile of Tea Party-favourite Michele Bachmann offers a clue:

 Liberty is the concept—or at least the word—most resonant with the Republican Party’s Tea Party faction, which Bachmann’s Presidential aspirations depend upon. It is a peculiarity of the current political moment that a politician with a history of pushing sectarian religious beliefs in government has become a hero to a libertarian movement. But Bachmann’s merger of these two strands of ideology is not unique. In fact, the Pew Research Center, in its recent quadrennial study of the American electorate, noted that “the most visible shift in the political landscape” since 2005 “is the emergence of a single bloc of across-the-board conservatives. The long-standing divide between economic, pro-business conservatives and social conservatives has blurred.”

The two wings are now united by the simplest and most enduring strain of conservative ideology: a dislike and distrust of government. Religious and fiscal conservatives have been moving toward this kind of unity for decades, and Bachmann, in her crusades against abortion, education standards, gay marriage—as well as in her passionate opposition to raising the debt ceiling—has always cast government as the villain, often using terms that echo Schaeffer’s post-Roe warning that America risked falling into the hands of “a manipulative and authoritarian élite.”

The Religious Right didn't vanish after its Bush-era disappointments. It has just been steadily morphing into the Right: a political movement centred around a shared view of what America should look like. On average, that movement's preference appears to be for a nation that is more Christian, more white, with lower taxes, and spending priorities concentrated on social order rather than welfare.

A final note: When looking at distinct, politically influential subsets of society, it's tempting to ask whether they represent America at large, and if they do not, to declare them somehow separate from the mainstream. Conservatives have applied this rubrick to marginalise "coastal elites" for decades. The Tea Party shows how flawed this dichotomy can be. This is a group whose views are not shared by a lot of Americans, but they are not a granular foreign bloc distinct from the mainstream. America, like Walt Whitman, is large. It contains multitudes.

Southern politicians did not use [their dominance in all three brances of federal government] to buttress state's rights; quite the contrary. In the 1830s Congress imposed a gag rule to stifle antislavery petitions from Northern states. The Post Office banned antislavery literature from the mail if it was sent to Southern states. In 1850 Southerners in Congress plus a handful of Northern allies enacted a Fugitive Slave Law that was the strongest manifestation of national power thus far in American history. In the name of protecting the rights of slaveowners, it extended the long arm of federal law, enforced by marshals and the army, into Northern states to recover escaped slaves and return them to their owners.

And there's the true subterfuge in Perry's argument: It's based on just enough fact to almost look respectable. The federal government was instrumental in dismantling slavery, but before that it was instrumental in maintaining the institution. But even if it were moral to do so, slavery could never have remained a matter for individual states to regulate. As Abraham Lincoln said, "this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free." Southerners needed to spread slavery to new territories to prevent it from dying out, and no nation could effectively function with some of its people considered citizens in one state and property in another.

This is a mistake too often made when people remember the civil war. It is formulated as a conflict between two sides — the slaveholding South and the abolitionist North — leading to the strange notion of a slaveholding country with no actual slaves. It's better to see the battle as being between at least three parties: The South, who wanted to maintain slavery, the North, who wanted to preserve the Union (and, later, emancipate the slaves), and an entire population of black people who, for centuries, had wanted to be free. And if you were a slave in antebellum times, Perry's idea of states forcing one another's interpretation of the law on each other does not particularly matter. If a government is intent on enforcing your bondage, it's of a little concern whether that government is a state government or a federal one.

As you may or may not know, until recently, this blog appeared both here at the USSC and at the website for the USSC's magazine American Review. This weekend, the American Review website launched a rather gorgeous looking re-design (check it out!), and so the shape of the blog will change a little. I'll be introducing a few new writers over the coming week or so — you can see the first of these, ABC journalist John Barron, discussing Rick Perry's potential here. Check over at the American Review site over the coming few days for some more new faces. 

We've also launched American Review as an iPad app, which you can — and should — download here [Link goes to iTunes store].

Mitt Romney's goal continues to be the kind of candidate party insiders can get behind on the basis of electability. He's the frontrunner, the next in line, and has gubernatorial experience and a record of economic conservatism. His route to the nomination involves outlasting his competitors. The base may loathe his track record on health care, be suspicious of his flip-flopping on abortion, and fear his Mormon background, but if he's the last man standing, they'll unite around him nonetheless.

Rick Perry makes things much more complicated for Bachmann and a bit more difficult for Romney. Unlike Bachmann, Perry has credibility and experience as a governor, and party insiders can support him. Unlike Romney, the GOP base feels that he is one of their own — and, unlike Bachmann, he hasn't achieved that status by giving nutty interviews to cable networks. I cautioned last week not to assume Perry will be a great campaigner until he actually starts campaigning, and I continue to believe that. He does, however, have a good shot at becoming the unity candidate Tim Pawlenty wanted, but was unable, to be. If he is, Michele Bachmann may well struggle to find continued relevancy.

Look to this article from Ed Kilgore for an indication of the threat Perry's entry poses to Bachmann's candidacy:

Finally, even if Bachmann can maintain her lead in Iowa, she has yet to win over conservative elites, even among those whose views are as reliably extreme as her own. Any plausible path to the nomination for Bachmann includes a win in South Carolina, a state whose Republican voters are a lot like those of Iowa, with the exception that the Palmetto State’s Tea Party movement is highly organized and active. But early indications are that Senator Jim DeMint, himself an important national power-broker, has succeeded in convincing most SC pols and donors to “keep their powder dry” in the presidential contest until such time as he has scrutinized the candidates and made his own choice. Bachmann, who visibly annoyed DeMint by initially refusing to take the “cut, cap, and balance” pledge on the debt limit issue (she eventually relented after previously vowing to vote against the CCB legislation on grounds that a repeal of ObamaCare should also be a condition of any debt limit increase), is not off to a great start in the DeMint Primary. It also doesn’t help her with party elites that she’s closely (if somewhat unfairly) associated with Sarah Palin, and thus might be expected to emulate Palin’s pattern of steadily growing disapproval ratings from political independents and more moderate Republicans.

There's a reason Rick Perry kicked off his campaign in South Carolina. Iowa may seem the be all and end all now, but when its caucuses are over, states with quite different political landscapes will start to matter a whole lot more.  

As for Mitt Romney, his mission is the same as ever, though Perry's entrance has made it tougher: Stay alive until the party has no other real choice.

It’s a portrait of two black men thinking through the idea of success in America; what happens when your view of yourself as a suppressed, striving underdog has to give way to the admission that you’ve succeeded about as much as it’s worth bothering with; and how much your victory can really relate to (or feel like it’s on behalf of) your onetime peers who haven’t got a shred of what you’ve won.

• America has lost the will to build great stadiums, laments Peter Richmond:

How can the former architectural capital of the globe (the Chrysler Building; Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim; that black cube balancing on one of its corners down on Astor Place in the East Village, about which two generations of stoners are still wondering whether it really moved when they leaned on it or it was just the weed) erect three buildings so irrelevant in design that they were greeted by a collective, global yawn — when they were greeted at all?

• Tumblr of the Week is Sad Guys On Trading Floors, which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.

• Highly informative video of the week: Abraham Simpson lectures on American history.

• A number of conservative states are lightening harsh prison sentences, reports the New York Times:

More than a dozen states in recent years have taken steps to reduce the costs to taxpayers of keeping so many criminals locked up. As crime rates have steadily declined to 40-year lows, draining the political potency from crime fears, the fiscal crunch has started to prompt a broad rethinking about alternatives to incarceration.

• Above: the Center for American Progress illustrates that because the recession was deeper than first thought, the stimulus was far more effective than supposed:

Using the most updated data, we can see that in 2009 there is actually about a $544 billion difference between what GDP would have been had it continued to contract as rapidly as it did during the fourth quarter of 2008 and what it actually was. As Holtz-Eakin points out, the total amount of fiscal stimulus during that year was $260 billion. This suggests the Recovery Act produced about $2.10 in economy activity for every $1.00 in spending or tax cuts. That’s a pretty good multiplier.

• Yoni Applebaum suggests progressives look to the early 20th Century for political inspiration:

At the beginning of the last century, the movement from which modern-day progressives take their name capitalized on a crisis of government legitimacy to increase dramatically the scope, scale and responsibilities of government. If progressives wish to recapture popular support, they might reflect on that earlier example.

• Rick Perry's confidence in the death penalty's infallibility is "downright pathological," writes Radley Balko:

In the Hank Skinner case, Perry has actively fought DNA testing that could confirm the innocence (or guilt) of another Texas man on death row. Skinner was at one point hours from execution before the Supreme Court intervened (the intervening justice was Antonin Scalia, believe it or not). In Skinner’s case, the prosecution actually began to conduct DNA testing on crime scene evidence, then stopped when the first tests confirmed Skinner’s version of events.

• Song of the week is New York singer Lana Del Rey's sublimely melodramatic "Video Games," a song far better than Del Rey's self-description of being the "gangsta Nancy Sinatra."

And in 2012, Republicans have already looked to apparently exciting unannounced candidates, only to discover them to be significantly less exciting once they actually enter the race. Some were never serious contenders — Donald Trump or Sarah Palin, for instance — but Newt Gingrich seemed ripe with potential until he turned out to be unable to build a following and alienated the party's base from day one. Jon Huntsman looked the perfect candidate on paper, but he's shown a frustrating predilection for moderation that his party has no interest in engaging with at the moment.

Rick Perry might indeed break the streak of disappointing entrants. After all, the eventual winner must join the race at some point. And nor do I want to suggest that he will be a disappointment. However, it's going to be a long race, and Perry could as easily end up a campaign footnote as he could the next president. Let's let the man begin campaigning before we declare him the frontrunner.