1) Plotting a Democratic Comeback

Pennsylvania’s governor says the tea parties will throw up flawed GOP candidates like Rand Paul and that his party should run on the success of the stimulus.

By Matthew Kaminsky, Wall Street Journal

“Here’s how the 66-year-old Pennsylvania governor would run his campaign in Rep. Sestak’s shoes: “Joe called me to touch base and asked what are the things he should be doing right now. I said, ‘Nothing different.’ Go out, hit those train stations and bus stations, just thank people. Don’t talk about the fall elections, just thank people. You won this because the people wanted you. Stay away from guys like me for a while. You’re the populist. You’re the guy who beat the establishment.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704852004575258261059419530.html

2) A Progressive Agenda to Remake Washington

By David Leonhardt, New York Times

“With the Senate’s passage of financial regulation, Congress and the White House have completed 16 months of activity that rival any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition. Like the Reagan Revolution or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the new progressive period has the makings of a generational shift in how Washington operates.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/business/economy/22leonhardt.html?ref=politics

3) Rand Paul Cancels “Meet The Press” Appearance

By Ian Schwartz, Real Clear Politics

“The campaign says Paul’s appearance on “Good Morning America” this morning is the last interview he will give on the Civil Rights controversy.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/mediawatch/2010/05/rand_paul_cancels_meet_the_pre.html#mce_temp_url#

4) Three Climate Change Reports: Set Prices on Carbon Emisions

By Dan Vergano, USA Today

“The reports reinforce that we know enough, now, to take sensible actions to address climate change,” says James Connaughton, former environment council chief for the Bush administration.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/environment/2010-05-20-climate20_ST_N.htm

5) Focus on This: Merkley-Levin Did Not Get A Vote

By Simon Johnson, The Huffington Post

The amendment had picked up a great deal of support in recent weeks, partly because of unflagging support from Paul Volcker and partly because of the broader debate around the Brown-Kaufman amendment (which would have forced the biggest 6 banks to become smaller).Brown-Kaufman failed, 33-61, but it demonstrated that a growing number of senators were willing to confront the power of our biggest and worst banks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/focus-on-this-merkley-lev_b_584674.html

This is a brilliant profile of Joe Biden. I had the privilege of seeing him speak last weekend at Iowa’s Jefferson Jackson dinner, the first time I’ve seen him since he became Vice-President. Thankfully, he has stayed grounded and is still the same old “Joe” despite the transformative role he is playing in the Obama administration and in the job description of the Vice President. This piece echos my observation. Mr. Biden himself admitted that he is among the most powerful occupants of his position in history, but hopefully for the right reasons unlike his predecessor. The article, which appeared in The New York Times Magazine this weekend, covers his relationship with the President, his role in Iraq decision-making, his relations with other power players in the Obama administration, how he is separating himself from Cheney’s legacy and many other topics. This is an absolute must-read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/magazine/29Biden-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=magazine

2) The Secret Details of Obama’s Afghan Plan

Les Gelb, who I rarely agree with but always find to be an interesting read, has used his insider sources to go slightly further than what most mainstream media sources have confirmed. We know that there will be a troop increase of 30,000-36,000 and a change in strategy. Yet we don’t know how many of these troops will be designated to train the Afghan forces nor what parts of Obama’s plan will be conditioned upon Hamid Karzai cleaning up his government. Leslie is right for once. I have maintained that Karzai poses as much of a problem to the United States as does the Taliban and al Qaeda. Kabul, and not Washington, must take the lead in fighting terrorism in the region in the coming years. Most conspicuous is the absence of what the economic and developmental commitments will be. As I argued, these are key to disabling terror and creating an Afghanistan that will be a reliable ally, allowing us to draw out our troops and focus on spending on solving our problems at home.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-25/the-secret-details-of-obamas-afghan-plan/?cid=bsa:mostpopular2

3) Corn Ethanol: A Growing Disaster

I have long said that corn ethanol is not smart policy, not even as a stopgap and increasing the amount of corn ethanol is gasoline is not a smart move. The United States has an abundance of corn, but that does not mean that we should turn it into ethanol. Sugarcane ethanol is cheaper and more efficient to produce. Unlike sugarcane, the process of growing corn for ethanol and converting it uses more energy than the finished product will give in the fuel tank of a car. Further, the change in the demand curve for corn raises the prices of corn as a commodity. Even worse, tile cropping of annual crops such as corn poses terrible environmental consequences and the model of farming in the United States is far from being sustainable. I applaud the New York Times for pointing this out. The influential farm lobby, the reason we use corn for ethanol, is much more powerful than a mere newspaper, but the dialogue is important and I am glad to see it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/opinion/28harding.html?_r=1

4) New US-India Green Partnership Improves Prospects for Global Climate Deal

In a guest post to Climate Progress, a leading blog on climate-related issues,Julian Wong of the Center for American Progress discusses the bilateral deal that the United States and India reached on green issues, largely mirroring what the United States agreed to with China just over a week ago. Yes, Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama did more together than enjoy a fancy dinner. The first and most interesting feature of the announcement is a commitment to a strong outcome in Copenhagen, grounded in “full transparency. While the United States and India have gone further in their rhetoric than ever before in declaring the need for efforts to comprehensively cover “mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology,” the areas that UN laid out, does this signal a commitment to a Kyoto-like agreement on a five or six page declaration of intentions? The other two I find far more positive and concrete – comprehensive collaboration on clean energy development and deployment, as well as capacity building in India for climate adaptation and effective environmental governance. No matter what happens this December, the United States, China and now India will be working together to improve their own climate futures. With an agreement between the United States and Brazil be next? An analysis of the strategy behind these agreements sounds like the foundations of a future column…

http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/25/new-u-s-india-green-partnership-great-week-global-climate-deal-copenhagen/

5) Historic: U.S. to pledge emissions target!

So progress is slow and invariably disappointing but, for the first time ever, the U.S. will make a pledge to the world community to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The pledge will be to reduce U.S. emissions by approx. 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050.

Senator John Kerry calls this a “game changer” that will help pave the way to an international agreement in December at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, but is it really? Let me just throw some different numbers at you: national emissions cuts in the range of 30 to 40 per cent, compared with 1990 levels, by 2020.

That’s the pledge many nations — particularly China — are asking us to make by next month. Sides seem a little further apart than Kerry is letting on to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/us/politics/26climate.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The best

(1) Report: Obama will not demand public option from lawmakers.

Wow. What ever happened to Obama willing to be a one-term president in order to enact REAL health care reform? Remember my most recent column about mission not so accomplished in which I asked: Is the whole ideal of Obama’s presidency over? This is literally the battle that tests his movement and the entire promise of his presidency and he won’t even throw his own hat in the ring? Call me naive, but the one thing I wanted most in my new president was the quality of being a fighter. I mean you are trying to tell me that we cannot even get a public option with huge majorities in the House and the Senate? Without a public option we are turning everyone who is currently uninsured over to the private industry and hoping that they’ll do the right thing. Hoping that they will for some reason have less of an insatiable appetite for profit. Hoping that without strong competition that they will finally control their costs. Is there even enough votes for a bill without the public option when so many progressives in the house are demanding that any bill they are willing to vote for must have it? What about labor unions saying they’ll sit out the next election without a public option? If Obama is going to give up on his movement already, why won’t he at least go down fighting? This isn’t change I can believe in.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26672.html

(2) WSJ: U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus

Win another one for Keynesian economics. With so much skepticism about the proposed increase in the government’s role in health care, maybe more people should be paying attention to good government intervention in the market. The good government has been doing lately doesn’t stop with the stimulus either. How about public universities, veteran’s hospitals, medicare, or even our national defense? I would go on, but we could be here for a while.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125185379218478087.html

(3) Obama Weighing Afghanistan Conundrum

This isn’t the first time a great empire hasn’t been able to subdue Afghanistan’s “fiercely independent tribes” — Britain had its go at that as well. In fact, if history is any indication of what lies ahead, Obama has potentially got a different Waterloo to deal with that posed by his push for health reform.

With the political circus known as health care reform now going in Washington, it is easy to forget that little thing called the war in Afghanistan. David Ignatius discusses the notion of Afghanistan being a “good” war (as opposed to Iraq being a “bad” one) and the important strategic decision Obama is faced with of either going with the more limited counterinsurgency proposed by Biden and others, or a new broader counterinsurgency doctrine being championed by General McChrystal.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/02/the_afghanistan_conundrum_98124.html

(4) Supreme Court Justice Stevens Begins to Pack Up his Office.

With the pending retirement of the Court’s oldest and perhaps most liberal Justice, what qualities should the next appointee have? Send us your thoughts as we prepare a column on the next pending vacancy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090902/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_stevens;_ylt=AmYA.9iwNVQlQxNrd0BorFSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlNnNpNHNoBHBvcwM4OARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNqdXN0aWNlc3RldmU-

(5) “Labor Draws a Line in the Sand On Public Option”

Speaking of the pending political fallout from dropping the public option, labor sends some credible warnings to the White House and lawmakers. I’m starting to sense a third-party candidate running in 2012, who actually will fight for things like the public option, and stealing enough votes to allow the GOP to take pivotal swing states like Florida and Ohio. Remember Ralph Nader in 2000? Remember just how close the vote count in Florida turned out to be?

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/01/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5279879.shtml

1) Japan Throws the Bums Out: But does the new crowd have better ideas?

Japan’s Electoral Tsunami

By Mary Kissel, The Wall Street Journal

By Jeff Kingston, Foreign Policy

This was a change election in Japan just as the United States chose to go the new direction of Barack Obama after eight relatively unsuccessful years under George Bush. The type of change that Japan chose, however, is quite different and will most certainly severely impact the US’s interests in Asia. The new Foreign Policy (it fairly recently transitioned from a bi-monthly publication to a leading web magazine) has been getting a fair bit of much deserved love from us recently, thus I also chose a shorter article from the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal to compare and contrast. Despite slight differences in perception, they both agree that the Democratic Party of Japan’s new leader Yukio Hatoyama seeks to embrace China and it’s rise to prominence, while distancing himself from the United States. Economically, Hatoyama is a devout follower of Keynes and will push for higher taxes, a higher minimum wage and more handouts to the elderly. It will be interesting to see what both his foreign and domestic strategies do for a nation with the world’s second largest economy.

http://sbk.online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574381700306393382.html?mod=asia_opinion

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/30/japans_electoral_tsunami?page=0,1

2) Ducking the Deficit Issue

By Robert Samuelson, Newsweek

Newsweek gets it right in pointing out that 1) the problem of government debt is mainly a political one right now (regardless of the billions of dollars we spend each on interest payments) and 2) someday there will be economic consequences to our deficit spending. The problem is we don’t know what those consequences may be and when they will occur. Without some impending calamity, politicians have very little incentive to address the issue. Sure, adding more debt is great in that it allows both parties to advance self-serving positions, but it is akin to throwing my generation under the bus in that we will, somehow, have to discover a way to pay for the current irresponsibility. I can’t stress how glad I am that reputable sources such as Paul Krugman and Newsweek are running with this issue right now.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214487?from=rss

3) Something New On Health Care: Deal-Breakers From The President

By Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic

I may not be the most enthusiastic fan of President Obama, but I don’t doubt for one second that he’s quite the intellectual heavy-weight. It has been pretty widely accepted that Bill Clinton failed by crafting a complex and complicated bill and then handing it to Congress with the hope that it would survive. It didn’t. Barack Obama initially took the complete opposite approach by giving little to no direction in order to avoid mistakes of the past. The result has been this fierce and vigorous public debate with each committee committee assigned to the bill coming up with its own plan except for the Senate Finance Committee, which hasn’t been able to agree on much of anything. Finally, Barack Obama has intuited that he needs to be somewhere in the middle of those two approaches if he wants to prevent Health Care from becoming his “Waterloo.” Marc Ambinder gives us a preview of what we might see when Obama releases his “deal-breakers” next week. Will the public option be one of them?

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/09/something_new_on_health_care_ultimatums_from_the_president.hp

4) New Presidential Study Directive an Unprecedented Step Forward on Development

By David Beckmann and George Ingram, Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network

This is really exciting. Barack Obama signed a landmark Presidential Study Directive on Global Development Policy.  The directive establishes clear White House leadership on modernizing our country’s approach to global development, adding to the tremendous momentum generated by actions taken by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the State Department. This administration has taken the first step towards making elevating development a core pillar of U.S. foreign policy and make our approaches to alleviating poverty and hunger, fighting disease, and creating economic opportunity more effective. Bravo!

http://www.modernizingforeignassistance.org/blog/2009/08/31/mfan-new-presidential-study-directive-on-global-development-an-unprecedented-step-forward-on-development/

5) The Coming War Over Climate

By Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

A controversial piece in the Washington Post worries about the fear tactics that will begin next month when the Senate takes up cap-and-trade legislation. Kevin Drum responds and adds some additional insights. The take home point is this: according to polling data, 60% of Americans will support the bill if it adds an additional $10 to their electric bill. If the added cost is $25, 60% oppose. Will it be hard for the right win propaganda machine that was so successful in manufacturing lies in the health care debate to convince people that their bill will actually go up by $25 and not $10? Or even that it will go up by $100? Watch out and be ready to fight. This will be a truly trying battle when the bill finally comes to the fore. Best of luck to Babs Boxer and the Senior Senator from Massachusetts.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/08/coming-war-over-climate