Description: At the G20 Summit last week in Cannes, Nicolas Sarkozy held only four private meetings. One was with Barack Obama and a second was with Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. (It?s not clear whether Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, met alone with the French president or whether his country was a fully deserved separate topic on the agenda, perhaps as a ?disaster in the process.?) The other two privileged to have Sarkozy alone face-to-face were Hu Jintao, president of the People?s Republic of China, and William Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, literally the only people in attendance representing enterprises that are financially solvent. Take a look at these primarily optimistic documents and try to assess the honesty of the reports. Actually, this is the measure of our politics: deception, self-deception, duplicity, hypocrisy, pretense. It was at this jamboree of whoppers that Sarkozy chose to confide to President Obama that he ?can?t stand Netanyahu anymore. He is a liar.? And the president responded, sort of in kind: ?You?re fed up with him. But I have to deal with him every day.? Of course, this was one of those moments that journalists dream about. The microphone was on when it was supposed to be off. Now, Sarkozy is not exactly known for his verisimilitude and neither is Obama, whose foreign policy, in particular, is based on the silliest improvisations of history. He has certainly made up his narratives on Muslim culture, in general, and on American-Arab relations, in particular. This accumulated flim-flam has made U.S. policy in the orbit of the crescent a laughing-stock for, well, everyone.

Description: While all of Washington fastened its gaze on Chris Christie, the most important issue of the week?maybe of the year?was playing out on the floor of the Senate. By a margin of 79 to 19, senators agreed to consider a measure that would allow the United States to impose tariffs on another country if the Treasury found its currency to be ?misaligned.? As the Wall Street Journal points out, this is a less demanding standard than current law, which ?requires a finding of intentional manipulation.? If this newfound bipartisan comity in Congress over the issue of confronting China culminates in a bill that passes both houses, it will put Obama in a serious bind: either adopt a similarly hawkish stance and risk a trade war, or issue a veto that would expose him to attack from the Republican nominee and provoke a populist backlash from workers and communities throughout America?s hard-pressed manufacturing sector. The huge bipartisan majority on the procedural question this week virtually guarantees that the bill will make it through the Senate, and it illuminates the changing contours of the China trade issue. Nearly every Democrat voted to proceed; Washington?s Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and (intriguingly) Claire McCaskill of Missouri were the only dissidents. And fully 31 of the 47 Senate Republicans supported the motion as well, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, Policy Committee Chairman John Thune, and John Cornyn, who heads the committee responsible for electing more Republicans to the Senate in 2012. Among the party?s leadership, John Kyl stood alone in opposition.

Description: As the world grants an audience to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, we would be better served to look upon Samiye Tohidlou. Samiye is a child of the Iranian revolution, born in 1979, when the current regime came to power. She comes from a family of educators; her father was a teacher who declared, after the arrest of his daughter, that he had been a staunch supporter of the revolution. Samiye was herself a doctoral student in sociology at Tehran University?the country?s oldest and most venerable institution?and an active member of the Islamic Student Association. And she was a volunteer for Mir Hussein Mousavi?s presidential campaign in 2009. When the regime announced Ahmadinejad the winner even before the polls closed, in Tehran alone three million people took to the streets to protest what they considered to be an electoral putsch. Samiye had a brilliant and elegantly simple idea. She suggested that protesters create an uninterrupted chain of humanity, from Tehran?s rich, northern neighborhoods to the south?s poorest ghettoes. The only connective thread of this long chain was a green ribbon, symbolizing the movement that had emerged in opposition to the electoral coup.

Description: Ron Paul doesn?t like Rick Perry. And if Thursday?s debate is anything like the last two, you?ll hear about it tonight. At the first GOP debate to feature Perry, Paul pointed to the governor?s past as a Democrat and cited his support for Clinton-era efforts at healthcare reform. In an ad earlier this month, Paul?s campaign dredged up Perry?s 1988 support for Al Gore. ?America must decide who to trust,? a voice in the ad proclaims, ?Al Gore?s Texas cheerleader or the one who stood with Reagan.? And in an open letter to Perry, Paul?s campaign chair spelled out the line of criticism once more: ?We don?t think the fact that you used to be a Democrat is the big problem here. The real problem is that, too often, you still act like one.? For all Paul?s efforts, however, the criticism just hasn?t stuck. Indeed, if anything, Perry has garnered attention, both negative and positive, for the ways in which his criticisms of Medicare and Social Security?stated most clearly in his 2010 book Fed Up!?mirror those of his cranky rival from the right. And, in an ironic twist of fate, while Perry is reaping the benefits of such radical stances, Paul, their longtime proponent, is struggling to stay relevant. Despite his third place standing in most polls, Paul gets hardly any media attention. He has almost no friends in the GOP establishment. And when he ends his quixotic presidential bid, he plans to retire from Congress rather than run in his newly redrawn district, which state GOP legislators recently made much more difficult for him to hold onto. As Jason Stanford, a longtime Democratic campaign consultant in the state, puts it: ?The paradox of Ron Paul is that he?s never been more influential or less popular in Texas.? What happened?

Description: In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post about the independence of South Sudan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a conspicuous example of the Obama administration?s policy of equivocation when it comes to the world?s newest nation and the country it split from last weekend. Namely, the op-ed disingenuously equated the Khartoum regime with its adversaries in South Sudan, in the embattled regions of South Kordofan and Abyei, and in Darfur. The evident logic of such false equivalence is that it?s necessary to keep Khartoum engaged in negotiations: If ?both sides,? as Clinton refers to them repeatedly, are equally responsible for violence and for the failure to resolve outstanding issues like the North-Southborder delineation, then diplomacy will be able to exert pressure to compromise. Never mind that compromise?indeed, many compromises?have already been made by the South; the real problem here is that President Omar Al Bashir?s regime has refused to live up to the agreements.

Description: When America traded George W. Bush for Barack Obama, few thought the result would be an escalation in the American war on terror. Swathes of U.S. conservatives (but also some liberals) were ready to dismiss President Obama as too naïve and idealistic to be president in the face of a heightened terrorist threat. Moderates did not believe that a campaign based on hope and change would cause Al Qaeda terrorists to fear this president more than the previous one. In Europe, meanwhile, Obama was seen as someone who would roll back the vulgarities of the war and make Europe feel good again about its more police-driven approach to terrorism. Today, however, the handful of dissenters from this line of thinking looks prescient. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, it is clear Obama won?t be outflanked by the right on counterterrorism. Sending a team of operatives into Pakistan without that country?s knowledge because we believed (correctly) that bin Laden was there is not the work of a softie. Yet that decision is only one achievement in Obama?s well-established, hawkish approach to the war on terror?an approach that, whatever one thinks of its ethical merits, will serve him well in his reelection campaign.

Description: Al Qaeda has been on the run and in deterioration, unable to launch a spectacular attack like that of September 11 for quite some time now. With the death of Osama bin Laden, this demise will continue?and perhaps be expedited. Still, the threat of jihadist terrorism remains, namely in the short-term, and the American counter-terrorism community would be well-advised to maintain its vigilance in the coming months. The immediate reaction of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers to bin Laden?s death is sure to be one of shock and dismay, but it?s only a matter of time before those emotions give way to anger. And the irate have a tendency to lash out. Al Qaeda was depreciating before bin Laden?s death. For nearly a decade, U.S. military operations have had its senior leadership in disarray. As drone strikes escalated under the Obama administration, the core of the Al Qaeda seemed to be more concerned about surviving the night than seizing the day. This, in part, explains why the organization was never able to re-group after September 11 to launch another major attack against the U.S. Even when Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, were able to release messages, they increasingly fell flat.

Description: The big news on Sunday was the announcement, from senior White House adviser David Plouffe, that President Obama plans to make a major policy speech about how to reduce the deficit. And I am worried--not about the substantive position Obama will stake out, but how that positioning will affect the rest of the debate about federal spending. The speech will be Obama?s formal response to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, who last week put forward a Republican blueprint for balancing the government?s books. And Plouffe made clear on several Sunday shows that Obama is no fan of Ryan?s proposed scheme, which would transform Medicare into a voucher program, dramatically reduce the federal commitment to Medicaid, and extend the Bush tax cuts.

Description: On December 12, 2010, a suicide bombing was committed in central Stockholm by an Islamic terrorist who denounced the Swedish government for its ?foolish support for the pig Vilks.? Vilks was the conceptual artist who had, in 2007, depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a ?roundabout dog,? familiar to tourists as a street display in Sweden. This had led to an outcry by outraged mobs in Islamic countries and occasional death threats by zealous Muslims (most definitely not to be confused with vast numbers of moderate Muslims). The terrorist found it intolerable that Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt would not intervene to deny Vilks the right to draw and to publish his cartoon. Mr. Reinfeldt had in fact been preceded in this principled stance by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Denmark, when mocking cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad were published in Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. He too had refused to yield to demands from the Muslim streets and from non-secular Islamic governments such as Pakistan and Iran?accompanied by threats of economic retribution against Danish companies and incendiary mayhem against Danish citizens and embassies?for censure and censorship of his country?s newspapers. And now we have a foiled plot by Islamic terrorists, residing in Denmark and Sweden, who aimed to bomb the Jyllands-Posten building and its occupants in a Mumbai-style attack. This plot was also inspired by anger against the refusal of these Scandinavian governments to censor their media and cartoonists.

Description: For the next several weeks, Anna Badkhen will be traveling through Afghanistan?s north, documenting life there during this pivotal year for the U.S.-led war. This is the first in a series of dispatches Badkhen will be writing for TNR Online about her experiences. Karaghuzhlah, Afghanistan?You can spot the village from miles away, quivering in refracted sunlight above a tract of Bactrian desert dun and tufted like a camel?s hide. The black crown of a sole pine, a rarity in these alkaline plains, marks the village?s eastern boundary. Churned trunks of mulberry trees weave into a palisade above the hand-slapped clay walls. Within these walls, narrow, centuries-old streets hug crooked irrigation canals, and men squat to chat by manual water pumps and in front of the lime-green mosque.

Description: With few declared candidates and no clear frontrunner, the Republican presidential primary appears to be as muddled as ever. But I actually think things are shaking out in a way as to clear the path for Tim Pawlenty. My view of the primary selection system is that it consists of two basic constituencies, the elites and the base. The elites want to find a candidate who is electable and committed to their policy agenda. The elites are the prime driver of the process; they can communicate, via organs like Fox News and The Weekly Standard, which candidates may be undeserving of serious consideration despite their emotional appeal to base voters. That?s how the elites have disqualified insurgent candidates like Pat Buchanan (too right-wing) and John McCain (too left-wing); they are now doing the same to Sarah Palin (too unelectable).

Description: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has used his state?s budget deficit as an excuse to attack collective-bargaining rights. He argues that Wisconsin simply can?t afford collective bargaining. Nevertheless, as has widely been reported, his claimed $137 million deficit could be addressed without touching these rights. Indeed, it?s simply false to argue that eliminating collective bargaining has really anything to do with the budget deficit, especially since unions have already offered pay concessions. But what is most surprising about Walker?s attack on collective bargaining is its speed. Walker was sworn in on January 3. He announced his proposal to strip collective-bargaining rights for public employees barely a month later, on February 11. (Despite his statements to the contrary, Walker did not campaign on this in his election.) A mere five days after the proposal was unveiled, the Wisconsin Senate Finance Committee held a markup and public hearing of the bill, and voted to pass it, on a party-line vote, in the dead of night. The bill also passed the Assembly with only Republican votes. Only because Democrats have fled to deny it a quorum has the bill been stopped in the Senate.

Description: It looks like Muammar El Qaddafi is preparing for what could be his last stand. Increasingly abandoned by his cabinet, diplomatic corps, and military, Qaddafi has turned to a desperate measure in order to shore up his regime: bringing in foreign mercenaries to fight his opponents. According to human rights organizations, these freelance fighters have already contributed to many deaths. And, with the number of protesters taking to the streets and the number of mercenaries entering the country growing simultaneously, an even more horrific collision could be in the making. The soldiers-for-hire could very well be the determining factor of Libya?s future.

Description: Up until now, a government shutdown because of a stalemate over the budget was a strong possibility, but it didn?t appear inevitable. That?s because House Speaker John Boehner stands to be badly hurt by the train wreck a shutdown would be, and I?m confident?from what he?s said and because he was around the last time it happened?that he realizes it. But his decision last week during House consideration of the must-pass spending bill to open up the floor to unlimited amendments reframed the issue in a way that gives Boehner much less room for compromise. Just to recap the mechanics here: The Democrats last year (inexplicably) failed to pass the appropriations bills that would keep the government running through the current fiscal year, opting instead to pass a temporary measure that runs out on March 4. Unlike the debt ceiling, this one is a hard deadline. If Congress and the president don't act, the government will shut down. National parks will close; most federal employees and most of the vast hordes of government contractors won?t get paid for the duration of the shutdown; and applications for visas, passports, Social Security, and veterans? benefits won?t get processed. A few days of that is an inconvenience. A couple of weeks, as Republicans found out in the mid-?90s, is a disaster.

Description: Not since Saddam Hussein?s regime was demolished in 2003 has an Arab head of state run a more ruthlessly repressive terror state than Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Tunisia?s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt?s Hosni Mubarak were small-government libertarians by comparison. The implications of the uprising in Libya are therefore much bigger than they were in Tunisia or Egypt: If ordinary citizens can overthrow Qaddafi, of all people, every other despot in the region may look vulnerable?including Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. I managed to finagle a visa for myself just after Libyan-American relations defrosted in 2004, and the U.S. government lifted the travel ban. I was one of the first Americans to legally visit the country in decades, and what I saw there was appalling. The capital looks and feels gruesomely communist, which wasn?t surprising, considering that Qaddafi?s ?Green Book,? where he fleshes out his lunatic ideology, is a bizarre mixture of the Communist Manifesto and the Koran (though references to Islam are stripped out). What did surprise me was how much terror he instilled in the hearts and minds of his people. No one I met said they liked him. No one would even speak of him unless there were no other Libyans present. Some were even afraid to utter his name, as though saying it out loud might conjure him. ?We hate that fucking bastard, we have nothing to do with him,? one shopkeeper told me when we were alone. ?We keep our heads down and our mouths shut. We do our jobs, we go home. If I talk, they will take me out of my house in the night and put me in prison.?

Description: I?ve been trying to add to my knowledge of the Arab countries now in the ?massacring-their-people? stage. All of the big powers have both rewarded and connived with Colonel Qaddafi to keep him and his family in power for 42 years. Not, by the way, that he is a king or anything. Moreover, he is not the first of the military colonels in the Arab world to take control of the state and turn it into a ?revolutionary socialist? regime, so-called. More formally: the Great Socialist People?s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. It?s been in power since 1969, which makes it the oldest continually ruling one-man regime in the world. Anyway, in my search for new viewpoints on the Arab world, I came across an article by Stephen Walt, who is the Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard (his chair was donated to the Kennedy School by a good Zionist family; so much for the control bought by Jewish money) and co-author with John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, of The Israel Lobby,in which I play a supporting role. I?ve written about this book on The Spine and so have others in TNR like Jeffrey Goldberg.

Description: The powers that be in Israel clamped a deafening silence on themselves when the Egyptian people rose up against Hosni Mubarak. There was precious little that Israel could do to sway events in one direction or the other, since this revolution did not have its origins in issues related to the foreign, strategic, or defense policies of Cairo. And so Jerusalem, for the most part, remained quiet. The silence of Israeli officialdom left the stage to a long line of doomsday observers and experts who competed with each other in spelling out a frightening list of new threats that will now confront the Jewish State. The rise to power, or at least to influence, of the Muslim Brotherhood and the potential collapse of other states that make up the region?s ?moderate axis? were just a few of the anxieties that Israel was said to be facing. Foreign observers and media personalities made constant use of the word ?fear? to describe the mood in Jerusalem. Jerusalem?s silence, in turn, created an ominous backdrop that nurtured and multiplied these prophesies.

Description: President Obama?s newly released budget avoids any offer to fix the long-term, structural deficits that his fiscal commission put on the table, and in doing so confronts his Republican critics with a choice: take the lead (and the heat) for proposing entitlement cuts or admit to your followers that you can?t meet your own long-term spending targets. After sending mixed signals for a few days, Republican leaders have decided to take the lead and hope for the best. In a joint statement, House Speaker John Boehner and Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan declared, ?Our budget will lead where the president has failed, and it will include real entitlement reforms so that we can have a conversation with the American people about the challenges we face and the need to chart a new path to prosperity.? Laying down such a clear marker makes it difficult to turn back. While Republicans have not decided on the details, it is now more likely that their FY2012 budget proposal will include substantial long-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. (Whether it embraces a Medicare voucher plan and the partial privatization of Social Security?two of many proposals that have made Ryan?s ?roadmap? such a lightning rod?is another question.) The conventional wisdom is that the president has made a smart tactical choice and that Republicans will end up inflicting political pain on themselves, without even the solace of policy gain. And there?s certainly no shortage of data to support this proposition: In survey after survey in recent months, Americans say they want the government to spend less?without cutting anything of significance.

Description: Conservatives and Republicans had a lot to say about the budget President Barack Obama released on Monday. None of it was good. The budget doesn?t do enough to stabilize federal finances, they said. And it doesn?t do enough to slow rising health care costs. Both criticisms have merit. Even if Obama got everything he wanted in his budget request, the federal government would still be committed to spending far more money than it will collect over the next few decades. And the single biggest reason for that discrepancy would be rising health care costs. But for all of those critics out there, furious that Obama hasn?t proposed a more fiscally responsible budget, I have a question: Do you have an alternative? More specifically, do you have an alternative that would both slow federal health care spending and be politically viable? The answer, I think, is no.

Description: When President Obama sends his latest budget proposal to Congress on Valentine?s Day, how will we know whether he is floating a serious proposal or just playing politics? I?ve written a guide to help TNR?s readers figure it out. In its latest long-term budget and economic estimates, the CBO looks at our fiscal future in two different ways. Its ?baseline? budget assumes that current law does not change. Under that scenario, the deficit declines to about 3 percent of GDP by mid-decade and remains there until the end of the ten-year budget window. Debt held by the public rises from $10.4 trillion to $18.3 trillion, net interest payments increase from $225 billion in 2011 to almost $800 billion in 2011, and debt held by the public reaches 77 percent, the highest level since the end of the Truman administration.

Description: It is an old adage that political opposites converge. But when it actually happens, it?s still a surprise. And in the last year or so, in Israel, it did: Extreme hawks on the right, and extreme anti-Zionists on the left, seem to have arrived at more or less the same plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The surprising change came from the right, which so far was vague on its vision of the future. What the moderate left wanted was clear for many years: a two-state solution. What the extreme anti-Zionist left wanted was also clear: accepting the Arab position which was in place ever since the idea of partition was first put on the table, back in the 1930s: one democratic state over the whole of Palestine. In the 1930s and 1940s Palestinians favored that solution since they were the clear majority. Those Palestinians who still favor it, favor it because they assume?rightly?that they will eventually be a majority. The anti-Zionist left adopts that position.

Description: The wave of popular unrest that has spread across the Arab world in recent weeks, toppling the regime in Tunisia, creating the mass protests in Egypt, and leading other governments in the region to scramble to choke off similar eruptions, has evoked images of 1989, when Communist governments fell like dominoes in Eastern Europe. Like today, those earlier events unfolded with surprising speed, catching the West (as well as the oppressive regimes) off guard. But President George H.W. Bush?s task in that period?and then Bill Clinton?s?was made far easier by the fact that there was an infrastructure in place in 1989 to assist and cajole Central and Eastern Europe?s political, economic, and military elites in the move from authoritarianism to democracy. In today?s Middle East, President Obama has far less to offer to encourage a similar transition. Long before the East European uprisings, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act?s human rights provisions gave opposition figures like Polish labor leader Lech Walesa and Czech writer Vaclav Havel opportunities to build ties to the West and helped create the civil society that enabled the development of democracy. After Communism collapsed, the United States and the European Union provided vast amounts of political, economic, and legal assistance. NATO and the EU also provided a powerful impetus for reform in the former Warsaw Pact, by conditioning membership in a free and united Europe on the protection of human rights and the rule of law, as well as the acceptance of interstate borders. And, believing that the institution most capable of halting reform in these states was the military, NATO created the Partnership for Peace to build military-to-military ties that would help build the accountability, transparency, and civilian control so crucial to the establishment of freedom and democracy.

Description: In January, southern Sudan held a historic self-determination referendum. Final results, announced this Monday, show that 98.83 percent of voters cast their ballots in favor of the region becoming independent, and Sudan?s president, Omar Al Bashir, is making all the right noises to suggest he is willing to let one-third of his territory go peacefully. The Obama administration, which played a major role in supporting the referendum and getting Khartoum to accept it, rightly sees this as an enormous achievement. But there is an uncomfortable footnote that does not fit into this success story: Darfur. Video footage shot there and posted last week by the White House raises questions about the level of attention the administration is giving the conflict-wracked region. While the international world was focused on the referendum, Khartoum was steadily ramping up its military offensive in Darfur. The hybrid United Nations-African Union mission tasked to the region, UNAMID, reports that over 40,000 people were newly displaced in December alone because of fighting between rebel and government forces, both of whom, Human Rights Watch reports, have been targeting civilians based on their ethnicity. More displacement means more people in need of humanitarian assistance?and here, too, the prognosis is bleak. A recent report by Tufts University concludes that international relief efforts have been impaired to the point that the population is more vulnerable now than at any time since the height of massacres back in 2003.

Description: Two weeks ago, before a lower federal judge in Florida declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, another relatively obscure government figure generated news about health care reform. It was Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. During a Capitol Hill hearing, Foster was asked to judge claims that the health law would ?hold down costs.? Foster said he thought the claim was ?false ? more than true.? Critics of the overhaul seized on his comments as proof that they have been right?and proponents have been wrong?about the law?s fiscal impact.

Description: As an American in Egypt, I?ve always been asked about my government?s support for President Mubarak. My usual response is to say, ?We don?t control everything our government does, just like in Egypt. I am here to write about your country so people in my country and in my government can read it.? Prior to this week, most people thanked me and the buck stopped there. But as this country?s social order upends itself, I?ve noticed a marked shift in the way people here react to authority. Egyptians who have for so long felt at the mercy of their government have started scrutinizing my answers?and the results are sometimes exultant, sometimes ominous. Walking towards the chanting, million-strong gathering in central Cairo, Magda, a middle-aged mother of three teenaged boys, begged me to eat one of the cookies she was bringing to the protest. ?Please, it?s going to be a long day,? she said, when I tried to refuse. After five minutes of expressing sheer joy at the gathering and the fact that I was a journalist who could cover it, Magda learned my nationality. Then, she turned to me and said, ?You know Egyptians hate America.?

Description: The Beltway is buzzing over former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman?s suddenly revived 2012 ambitions. Huntsman is reportedly about to resign as Obama?s ambassador to China in order to ?explore? a White House bid, and a cabal of advisers who were prominent in John McCain?s 2008 campaign is plotting his strategy. At least on one level, the Huntsman boomlet isn?t terribly surprising. He was, after all, considered a big future GOP star and possible 2012 candidate just before he accepted the role in Beijing, and, in fact, his appointment was interpreted by many at the time as a shrewd White House maneuver to sideline a potentially dangerous rival. He is heir to a huge fortune, is telegenic and unquestionably intelligent, and, in addition to having been a very popular governor, has the kind of resumé heavy in foreign policy that many D.C. insiders find most impressive in a potential POTUS.

Description: Item: ?In recounting Saturday?s deliberations, [administration officials] said Mr. Obama was acutely conscious of avoiding any perception that the United States was once again quietly engineering the ouster of a major Middle East leader. ? ?He said several times that the outcome has to be decided by the Egyptian people, and the U.S. cannot be in a position of dictating events.???David E. Sanger and Helene Cooper, The New York Times, January 30. Item: ?It is better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak ?It?s time for you to go.?? ?Mohammed ElBaradei, Cairo, January 30.

Description: Did Roger Vinson, the federal judge who on Monday ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, have a particularly conservative take on politics as well as the law? His ruling certainly suggests as much. There?s what looks like a shout-out to the Tea Party--specifically, a reference to the American Colonists' outrage over the tax on tea. (Page 42.) There?s the gratuitous reference to General Motors as ?partially government-owned.? (Page 45.) And there?s the use of President Obama?s campaign rhetoric against the law Obama now supports. (Page 68). Nor is the first time a judge invalidating the Affordable Care Act may have tipped his political hand. Henry Hudson, the federal judge who issued a narrower ruling against the law late last year, noted in his decision that the bill was rushed through the legislative process--which is a strange way to describe a law nearly fourteen months in gestation, unless you are trying to argue there was something fundamentally illegitimate about the process that produced it.

Description: The contours and consequences of the uprising in Egypt?which, after decades in which Hosni Mubarak destroyed the civil society of his country and stifled the most elementary aspirations of his people, was perfectly inevitable?are still unclear. About the justice of the protestors? anger there can be no doubt. But the politics of the revolt are murky. Its early stages have not been the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is hard to believe that the Islamist organization will not be tempted to play the Bolshevik role in this revolution: it has the ideology and the organization with which to seize control of the situation, and it is the regime?s most formidable political adversary. The army may decide, with the government seriously wounded and robbed of any semblance of legitimacy, to do more than bring order to the streets. Mubarak, in a characteristic act of a failing dictator, has fired his cabinet, as if the ire of the Egyptian people was directed at his ministers: a pathetic move that brings to mind the memory of the Shah of Iran?s eleventh-hour reshuffle of his doomed government. We know this script. The political popularity, and political authority, of Muhammed ElBaradei is also hard to measure. What is not unclear, however, is that the Obama administration, and American liberals more generally, have been caught intellectually unprepared for this crisis. The administration?s predicament, it must be said, is strategically complicated: since Mubarak may fall, it cannot afford to alienate the protestors, but since the protestors may fail, it cannot afford to alienate Mubarak. Our officials have been improvising, not altogether brilliantly. Joe Biden fatuously declared that ?I would not refer to [Mubarak] as a dictator.? Robert Gibbs said that ?this is not about taking sides.? Hillary Clinton, who used to speak warmly of Mubarak as ?family,? has called for ?restraint? and ?reform? and ?dialogue,? and warned that a crackdown could affect American aid to Egypt?as if anything but a crackdown is to be expected from Mubarak. And Barack Obama is also trying to finesse things, urging Mubarak to transform ?a moment of volatility? into ?a moment of promise??the eloquence is irritating: there are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed?and proclaiming that ?the United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Cairo, Egypt?The measures taken by the Egyptian regime over the last three days are not just targeting demonstrators; they are affecting everyone. Ahead of Friday?s post-prayers protest, the Egyptian government cut off every form of instant communication?namely, the Internet and cell phone service. The goal, it seemed, was not just to prevent people from organizing demonstrations or sharing their experiences with the outside world, but also to create an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty. Without the Internet and cell phones, there would be no way of knowing whether danger lurked in a nearby neighborhood, no way of knowing whether loved ones had returned home safely. Meanwhile, Mubarak?s riot police blanketed the city with tear gas. It rose up into apartment buildings, where it choked people who had stayed inside. It fell into subway stations, where it caused people to vomit uncontrollably onto the tracks just as they were heading home. It lingered along the highways, where people stopped traffic to beg passing cars for sanctuary. There was simply no avoiding the regime?s excesses. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: The ideas and policy proposals in Barack Obama?s 2011 State of the Union Address were anything but fresh and original. Much of it could easily have been harvested from any number of interchangeable speeches given during the last 20 years?not just by presidents by members of Congress, governors, mayors, and CEOs?from both parties. Yet that may have been exactly the point. By staking his claim to decades of well-worn political detritus, I think Obama has set a cunning political trap for his enemies. A crash program for economic competitiveness? We?ve heard it dozens of times, and Obama?s speech mainly substituted new global rivals for old ones. Harrumphing about how education and a skilled workforce are they key to national prosperity? Obviously an old theme. Reorganizing major federal departments was one of Jimmy Carter?s signature initiatives. Tax simplification was one of Ronald Reagan?s. Making government a lean, mean efficiency machine has been promised many times, most notably by Bill Clinton. Across-the-board spending freezes, support for small business entrepreneurs, growing green jobs, better infrastructure, boosting exports (without, presumably, those pesky imports)?we?ve heard it all. One conceit?the ?Sputnik Moment??was so old that you wonder if the president?s young speechwriters just found out about it. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Presidents frequently use the State of the Union address to introduce new ideas or try out new political themes. Not tonight. The Barack Obama you heard speaking to Congress was the Barack Obama who ran for president in 2008. And I think he's here to stay this time. Remember, Obama spent most of his candidacy sounding calls for long-term change--about appealing to the better instincts of both parties and finding bipartisan solutions to the nation?s problems, about making the ?hard choices? necessary to save the economy and, eventually, the planet. Plenty of us dismissed those notions as naïve or misguided. But it was clear that Obama was very serious about them, for better or for worse. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: This past December, when the host of the Wikileaks domain shut down the organization?s online presence, the Pirate Party came to the rescue. No, the saviors were not renegade Somalis or Internet bootleggers, but, rather, a small but growing five-year-old political party focused on copyright and intellectual property laws. There are between 30 and 40 Pirate Parties globally, and two Pirate Party members sit in the European Parliament. By reopening the shuttered Wikileaks on the Swiss Pirate Party?s site, the party linked up with one of the biggest stories of 2010. A tiny movement was suddenly on the global political map. While it doesn?t get a lot of attention in the press, America also has a Pirate Party. Founded in June 2006 by University of Georgia graduate student Brent Allison, the United States Pirate Party?s (USPP?s) aim, loosely summarized, is to completely change how information is shared on the Internet. At the time of its founding, Allison told Wired magazine, ?This party is all about raising awareness of issues that only geeks and lawyers have cared about until now.? Like its international counterparts, the USPP?s main practical concerns are digital intellectual property and privacy laws?specifically, the abolition of a 1998 digital U.S. copyright law, the reduction of copyrights to 14 years (from 95 years after publication, or 70 years after the author?s death), and the expiration of patents that don?t result in significant progress within four years (as opposed to 20 years). This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: The numbers may look identical. But it was not the same bombing. Early last week, the Times' Stephen Lee Meyers, based in Iraq, reported (and I commented on) the bombing in Tikrit that took roughly 50 lives--give or take a dozen, more likely give. The number of wounded was, of course, enormous and also uncertain. Alas, the Times news staff in Iraq is getting basic training in how cruel people can be to one another. On Thursday, John Leland, like Meyers, a brave and careful correspondent, brought us the grim news that 52 Iraqis in pilgrimage to the Shi'a holy city of Karbala were taken out in a series of three car bombings. About 150 people were wounded, just about the estimate for the wounded in Tikrit. Roughly 10 million Shi'a are expected at the shrine in the holiest days of their calendar. They are praying for the return of the "hidden Imam," the "guided one." Maybe soon. Maybe not at all. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: On one level, it?s hard not to see the regulatory review Barack Obama announced this week as a bit of a stunt. The idea, after all, isn?t to revisit the regulations his administration has supported in areas like health care, finance, or the environment. (Not something I?d like to see, to be sure.) The idea is to root out regulations from earlier eras that have either outlived their usefulness or contradict one another. This is all perfectly fine, and it could be effective politically. Still, the real surprise here isn?t that this administration is conducting a review. It?s that previous administrations haven?t conducted them on a regular basis, which seems a bit hard to believe. Whatever the case, what?s almost always underwhelming are the presidential op-eds that accompany these gestures. Defunct statesmen are invoked and countless superlatives are expended, usually in inverse proportion to the cosmic significance of the initiative. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see that Obama?s rendition in Tuesday?s Wall Street Journal was actually pretty useful. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Now that Republicans in the House have beat back health care reform (or, at least, passed a repeal bill that's destined to wilt in the Senate), it?s on to the next order of business?hacking away at government spending. Plenty of them can't wait. As Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake said on Thursday, ?Some of us have been anxious to start cutting for awhile.? No doubt. But the eagerness of some conservatives to cut the budget as quickly and deeply is already creating headaches for the GOP leadership. For starters, Republicans already differ over just how much of the budget to slash this year. Here?s the problem: Last December, Democrats passed a continuing resolution to keep funding the government at current spending levels until March. Republicans want to roll back this year?s budget to FY2008 levels, which would entail about $100 billion worth of cuts. Given that the fiscal year (which began in October) is nearly half over, and seeing as how Republicans aren't planning to touch Medicare, Social Security, defense, or homeland security, reaching that goal could mean slashing federal agency budgets by as much as 30 percent this year. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Salesmanship is, of course, a crucial part of politics. And most Democrats would concede that, over the past two years, they've done a miserable job of touting health care reform. "None of us did a good enough job," Steny Hoyer told reporters yesterday. In the run-up to the midterms, Republicans ran wild talking about the Affordable Care Act in apocalyptic terms, while many Democrats?especially vulnerable members?just tried to avoid the topic altogether. It didn't work. But that's changed in the past week. The Republican push to repeal the bill has forced congressional Democrats to rally around their health-care law?and they're just starting to hit their stride. The party is touting many of the most popular aspects of the bill?like the ban on insurance companies discriminating against people with preexisting conditions?while highlighting people who are already beneftting from the law's provisions. (A Democratic policy committee hearing yesterday featured, among other things, 45-year-old breast cancer survivor Vernal Branch, who testified that she'd previously been unable to receive coverage because of her condition.) This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: What happened in Tunisia over the past few days was reminiscent of scenes from Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and ?90s: people?s power in action. But it is another historical parallel?to Iran in 1979?that has something to teach the West as it figures out how to respond. The toppling of Tunisia?s longtime dictator, Ben Ali, recalled the last days of the Shah, when riots against poor living conditions and calls for human rights quickly turned into demands for getting rid of a dictator. The Iranian revolution did not start as an ?Islamist revolution,? but rather as a genuinely anti-authoritarian uprising in which liberals, communists, independents, and Islamists all took part. For a short period, the Islamists even worked with other political forces until they consolidated their power, then turning against their erstwhile allies and destroying them violently. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: House Republicans have postponed their vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act until next week, because of the Arizona shooting. And even when that debate resumes, Jennifer Haberkorn and Carrie Budoff Brown report in Politico today, the House Republicans will likely adopt a more measured tone. They won?t change their position on the issue itself. They remain committed to total repeal. But the Republican insiders that Haberkorn and Brown interviewed seem to think Republicans would talk in less dramatic and emotional terms, on the assumption that the country has less appetite for such rhetoric in the wake of the weekend's tragedy. I have no idea whether those insiders are right. But if they are ? and if Republicans focus more on actual policy details, as the insiders predict ? I wonder whether the repeal movement will start to lose some of its political strength. By and large, the actual policies in the Affordable Care Act remain popular, in some cases very popular. People overwhelmingly support requirements that prohibit insurers from excluding people with pre-existing conditions or that offer consumers the right to appeal treatment denials. Small businesses appreciate tax credits to help buy coverage and seniors like extra money for prescription drugs. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Wednesday night?s speech in Tucson could turn out to be the trickiest assignment of Obama?s presidency. Consider what the situation called for: Memorializing victims, comforting a traumatized community, unifying a country left even more polarized by the tragedy, projecting optimism about the future. Perhaps most challenging of all, Obama had to draw some larger lesson from an event that, we?re discovering, had little intrinsic meaning. But he had to do this without straying too far into the realm of the political, which would have been distasteful so soon after the fact. It was, all in all, an assignment more befitting a pastor than a president. And there?s a reason there are so many atrocious pastors out there. So how?d he do? There were genuine moments of inspiration, no question. Obama often shines in uniter mode, and that was certainly true Wednesday night. He was at his best when urging us to ?make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds? and cautioning us not to ?use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Saturday?s tragic shooting in Arizona still poses more questions than answers. But nearly all of the available reports paint a picture of the alleged gunman, Jared Loughner, as an individual who suffers from severe mental illness. At a local community college, according to the New York Times, Loughner had a history of outbursts that frightened students and instructors so much that administrators called police?and, eventually, forced him to withdraw. One teacher later told USA Today, ?I remember going home and thinking to myself, 'Is he going to bring a weapon to class?'? Meanwhile, multiple media outlets have described the confused rants on Loughner?s apparent websites and home-made videos, in which he talks about everything from reading Mein Kampf to resisting government control. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Conservatives are furious that the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is being pinned on them. Their indignation is justified. The mania of Giffords' would-be assassin may be slightly more right-wing than left-wing, but on the whole it is largely disconnected from even loosely organized extreme right-wing politics. The rhetorical attempts to connect Jared Loughner to mainstream politics take two forms, neither convincing. One is to condemn the use of combat metaphors in politics, such as Sarah Palin's web page superimposing gunsights upon Democratic districts targeted by the GOP. Glenn Reynolds persuasively notes that this is a well-established, bipartisan practice: This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: During the grim days of 2010, it became common to worry that President Obama was throwing his electoral prospects into disarray. He failed to win over key groups like the white working class, even as his actions divided and demoralized his own core coalition: an emerging, but still fragile alliance of minorities, young voters, moderate suburbanites, and other growing demographic groups. "One hallmark of 2009 and 2010 was the demobilization of the Democratic base," wrote pundit Brent Budowsky in The Hill, explicating this view. In this telling, Obama's compromises on health care, the economy, Wall Street regulation, and tax cuts for the rich had deeply alienated the president's core supporters; the Obama-McConnell deal to preserve the Bush tax cuts, especially, was a cynical feint that would bleed enthusiasm on the left. In reality, nothing could be more distant from the truth. Far from dividing Obama's coalition, the tax-cut deal is brilliant move that could cement it, in the process winning back some of the white working-class voters who deserted the Democrats in 2010. That's because Democrats' devastating defeat in the midterm elections resulted primarily from the weak economy and the government?s perceived failure to improve it, not from any lack of resoluteness in upholding liberal principles or applying liberal rhetoric. Therefore, the central task for the Obama administration after the election was?and is?to improve the economy by any means necessary. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: I respect honest disagreements about policy. You think health care reform is a bad idea? That it will run up the deficit or make it harder to find a doctor? I think you're wrong, but that's a reasonable debate and I'm happy to have it, just as long as you're truthful about what you are arguing and make some good faith effort to learn the facts. Often, though, the noisiest voices in the health care reform debate don't do those things. They see a headline, figure out its political utility and use it to score cheap points. And they do so without any apparent interest in the nuances of policy or science that might make the issue just a little bit complicated. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: It?s one thing that the United States will soon be taking orders from China (or already is). But what about when we?re becoming less forward-thinking than England? That?s the only possible reading of the fact that there, the former top drug official Bob Ainsworth has addressed the House of Commons and argued for the legalization of all drugs. Not just pot?all of them. His reasoning is simple, and has nothing to do with the ideology of Timothy Leary: ?We need to take effective measures to rob the dealers of their markets and the only way that we can do that is by supplying addicts through the medical profession, through prescription. We cannot afford to be shy about being prepared to do that.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: The last few months of 2010 have been illuminating when it comes to the priorities of the Republican Party. By jumping at the Obama-McConnell tax deal, Republicans underscored the fact that protecting the marginal tax rates of high earners?not reducing the federal deficit, and not even denying Obama legislative success?is their party?s primary focus at the federal level. It says something that most conservatives who opposed the tax deal did so on the grounds that it was not permanent, or that it did not completely eliminate the estate tax. As ever, to paraphrase Dick Cheney, Republicans seem to think deficits don?t matter. Yet that?s not the half of it. For a true litmus test of the lengths Republicans will and will not go to in order defend the incomes of the very rich, you have to look to the states, where budget deficits are generally not allowed. There, a new crop of Republican governors and lawmakers?huge numbers of which rode to power on the Tea Party wave?are focused not just on preserving upper-income tax cuts, but actually cutting taxes for the rich while slashing services and raising taxes on the poor and middle class. All this is happening at a crucial time, since the most dire fiscal conditions in decades are about get vastly worse, as federal stimulus dollars run out. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: It's starting to look more plausible that President Obama will try to cut a budget deal with Republicans. Bob Kuttner thinks Obama plans to spring a proposal in the State of the Union address: The tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is just the first part of a multistage drama that is likely to further divide and weaken Democrats. The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan ? including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president?s State of the Union address. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Minsk, Belarus?On Sunday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was reelected to five more years in office. He garnered 80 percent of the vote, according to official numbers. In past elections, Lukashenko, often called ?Europe?s last dictator,? all but prevented anyone from directly challenging him. But, this year, he earned widespread recognition for orchestrating an election that was ?much freer than the past,? featuring all the trappings of an open and fair process. There were nine opposition candidates, each of whom received two, uncensored, 30-minute campaign segments on state television and radio. There was a televised presidential debate (albeit one which Lukashenko declined to participate in). And there were campaign events for his rivals that weren?t busted up by authorities (though they did have to notify the government in advance). But the concessions Lukashenko made were ultimately meaningless. They were carefully crafted so that the race merely seemed democratic. I was in Minsk for the vote and learned of the lengths Lukashenko went to in order to assure he would win?and to assure that critics would be put in their place after the vote. Far from democracy, this was the epitome of despotism. ?With such small steps to democracy,? opposition candidate Viktor Tereshenko told me, ?it will take a minimum of fifty years before we are fully democratic.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: It would be a fine thing if Democrats took the advice of TNR?s Tiffany Stanley and spent more energy trying to win religious voters away from the GOP. But she misunderstands why their recent efforts to do so have mostly failed. One of the glories of religion in the United States is that, since the early nineteenth century, it has been a ferociously democratic enterprise: Pious Americans are free to join any of the dozens of faiths on offer, none of which is beholden to secular authorities for either financing or legitimacy. We have no national church or even one to which most national politicians belong. Before the 1960s, Americans took for granted that, like it or not, they lived in a Protestant country. But increasingly, millions of regular church-goers simply call themselves ?Christians? and belong to several denominations?and non-denominations?over the course of their lives. The problem for liberal Democrats is that pious Americans are also free to choose a place of worship in which the political slant is conservative or progressive, or where secular issues have little or no place. And, since the waning of the civil rights movement some four decades ago, the liberal churches have been losing both members and a dynamic sense of worldly mission. One traditional stronghold of liberal Christianity, the United Church of Christ, has only half as many members as it did when it was formed in the late 1950s. The other one-time citadel?the Episcopalians?are undergoing a nasty schism that may leave the conservative fragment as large as the parent body it has departed. According to American Grace, the marvelous new study of religion by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, ?liberal churchgoers who attend politically active congregations? comprise just 2 percent of the overall population. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: We are to bemoan that universities across the country are eliminating or scaling back their foreign language departments. Or, what seems to arouse critics most is the disappearance of French, German, and Italian departments?what with Goethe, Balzac and Dante being pillars of a liberal arts education and so on. Yet, former French major and great fan of foreign language learning as I am, I?m not feeling as bad about this new trend as I am supposed to. I have as deep-seated a sense as anyone that an educated person is supposed to be able to at least fake a conversation in French. But then I also have a deep-seated sense that the driver?s seat in a car should be on the left side. It?s all I?ve known, but hardly the choice all humans would make if designing a car from scratch with no cultural preconceptions. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Starting in the early 1980s, up through well into 2009, the individual mandate was an eminently respectable Republican position, embraced by conservative policy wonks and leading Republicans. Since then, virtually the whole of the conservative movement has coalesced around the position that the individual mandate is not merely misguided but actually unconstitutional, a fact conservatives somehow overlooked during the previous three decades. Indeed, conservatives now believe that the policy they once embraced (or at least tolerated) would amount to an abrogation of the very principle of limited government. The conservative argument, reflected in Republican judge Henry Hudson?s ruling against the individual mandate, is that purchasing health insurance is the ultimate individual decision, and that abridging this liberty would, in Hudson?s words, ?invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.? If the individual mandate is permissible, writes George Will, then ?Congress can doanything - eat your broccoli, or else - and America no longer has a limited government.? Megan McArdle echoes, ?On a reading of the commerce clause that allows the government to force you to buy insurance from a private company, what can't the government force you to do?? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Richard Holbrooke was a piece of work. He was a paradoxical man: a remarkably subtle thinker capable of the most egregious lack of subtlety, a brilliant diplomat with one of the least diplomatic temperaments anybody ever encountered. He was always cunning but never malevolent. Mentally, he was sleepless, relentlessly pondering the meanings of even the most trivial events and experiences. (An example: Decades ago Holbrooke was strolling down Madison Avenue with a friend. A man passed them and said ?Hi, Dick?. Holbrooke stopped in his tracks, turned to his friend, and said: ?I wonder what he meant by that.? Sleepless.) His powers of observation were extraordinary, the cognitive advantage of his utter extroversion; and they were matched by his massive powers of analysis, which never shut down. He was a disorderly man with an ordered mind; there was rigorous reflection at the heart of the whirlwind. He was, almost preposterously, in constant motion, a stranger to calm, a bull in search of a china shop; but in his thinking, and in his commitment to his country, he was one of the steadiest men on earth. The legend of his career, and the flamboyance of his person, has obscured a proper recognition of his commitments. Holbrooke was not only a student of power; he was also a creature of beliefs. What he believed in most of all, I think, was in the ability, and the duty, of the United States, by a variety of means, to better the world. He was, in his cast of mind, a realist, but his cast of mind was not his philosophy: this realist?the Democrats? most accomplished Machiavellian?was always returning to first principles, to moral considerations, to the alleviation of human suffering and the spread of political liberty as goals of American statecraft. He came away from his early years in Vietnam with lessons but without a syndrome. He was unanguished about the use of American force, when it was morally justified and intelligently applied?which is to say, he was the last of the postwar liberals. Even in his most virulent criticism of what he regarded as America?s military mistakes abroad, there was not a trace of the temptation to surrender a high sense of America?s role in history. Isolationism disgusted him. He had a natural understanding, it was almost an attribute of his character, of the relationship between diplomacy and force. He had no illusions about the harshness of the world, and therefore about the toughness that is required for the creation of a world less harsh. His last assignment, the increasingly Sisyphean attempt to bring Afghanistan into the community of open and decent societies, was a bet on this sober and unsentimental optimism. He cared famously about what worked, and he could be brazen in his pragmatism, but Holbrooke?s professional life was animated by goals and concepts that no mere pragmatist could share. American interventionism, for him, was not just a policy; it was a way of existing responsibly in the world, the measure of a national (and personal) ideal, the real greatness of a great power. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Richard Nixon was a psychopath for whom Henry Kissinger worked, first as national security adviser and then concurrently in that position and also as secretary of state. Nixon's psychopathology included his hatred of Jews, their intellectual character, their State, and them broadly as a nation and people. Still, he had many Jews around him, doubtless for what he thought to be their devilish smarts: Leonard Garment was his general counsel, Herbert Stein was his chief economic adviser, Arthur Burns was head of the Federal Reserve, Murray Chotiner was his campaign manager, William Safire (who conceded that "Nixon just didn't like Jews") was a trusted speechwriter. And, of course, Kissinger was Kissinger. Let's face it: the smartest, and perhaps the wisest caretaker of American diplomacy since Thomas Jefferson, who was the first. (A valued former staff member of TNR, David Greenberg, wrote about "Nixon and the Jews" for Slate in 2002.) Every so often as the secret tape recordings President Nixon made in the Oval Office are released we assume that some scarlet blush will come to Kissinger's face. No doubt Kissinger is very much embarrassed today. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Conservatives are jubilant that a Republican judge in Virginia has agreed with their contention that the individual mandate, formerly a pillar of Republican health reform proposals, is unconstitutional: ?Today?s ruling is a clear affirmation that President Obama?s health care law is unconstitutional,? Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the presumptive House majority leader next year, said in a statement. ...
This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: At this point, it's hard to overstate just how dysfunctional and inane the U.S. Senate is. Earlier today, Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal was shot down by a 57-40 vote. In other words, 57 senators were in favor of repeal, 40 were opposed?and the thing still failed. Okay, fine, plenty of critics have decried the fact that the filibuster gets overused and you need 60 votes to pass even the smallest piece of legislation in the Senate. Set that aside. What was particularly appalling about this vote was that the bill failed because of petty procedural objections on the part of individual senators?and not for any substantive reasons. First, there was the tug-of-war between Majority Leader Harry Reid and Maine Republican Susan Collins. By all accounts, Collins was sincere about wanting to scrap the policy. She just wanted four days of debate on the defense spending bill (which included DADT appeal). According to Greg Sargent, after hours of haggling, Reid concluded that this was unworkable?four days of debate would be acceptable if that was all, but Republicans like Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn would've been able to drag things out for far longer with constant cloture votes and other procedural gimmicks. And there's just not a whole lot of time left in the Senate's lame-duck session. So Reid pushed for a vote this afternoon. And while Collins ended up voting for repeal anyway, the whole fracas over floor time gave other wavering Republicans an excuse to vote no. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: President Obama doesn't like the suggestion that he "triangulates"--i.e., that he tries to position himself between the two political parties. His advisers don't like the suggestion, either. So when Politico's Ben Smith invoked the "t" word earlier this week, he got some pushback: A White House official emailed yesterday to dispute my labeling President Obama's rebuke to liberal critics yesterday "triangulation." This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: On Tuesday, just days before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Beijing embarrassed itself in front of an international audience. ?I would like to say to those at the Nobel Committee, they are orchestrating an anti-China farce by themselves,? said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. ?We are not changing because of interference by a few clowns and we will not change our path.? ?Clowns?? Why would Chinese diplomats, once praised for deftness and charm, revert to the language of the Cultural Revolution? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Here's a quick sketch of how environmental policy will get made for the next two years. Congress won't pass any new laws. The EPA will try to use the authority it already has to mop up pollution from coal plants, factories, and vehicles (and the agency has a fair bit of existing authority to do so). Industry groups, Republicans, and more than a few Democrats will moan about the costs. And the Obama administration will then have to decide just how much confrontation it can really stomach. Any bets on how this will all play out? Today brings a sneak preview: The EPA just announced that it is asking for a year-long delay in crafting new rules that would lower toxic pollution from industrial boilers and solid-waste incinerators. The D.C. District Court had given the EPA until January 16, 2011, to set new standards that would reduce mercury and soot pollution from sources like oil refineries and paper mills. This isn't just some abstract tree-hugging measure; it would arguably do more for public health than any section of Obamacare: EPA experts found that cutting toxic pollution could prevent 5,000 deaths and 36,000 asthma attacks each year. (All told, the rule would have cost an estimated $6.4 billion each year while delivering between $138 billion and $334 billion in annual health benefits?not a bad deal.) But the affected industries all griped that the costs were way too burdensome and buried the EPA in angry comments. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: While tout Washington is furiously debating the deal between President Obama and the Republican congressional leadership, it?s time to look ahead. Assume that some form of the deal survives the cross-fire and is enacted into law. What then for the president? There?s one thing we already know for sure: the agreement will light the fuse on a bomb timed to explode at the height of the 2012 presidential campaign. Unfortunately for Obama, taxation is an issue on which Republicans have long enjoyed an advantage in the court of public opinion, a situation not likely to change anytime soon. On the other hand, the president could not accept a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts without destroying the possibility of long-term deficit reduction. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: This year's Republican sweep, says the conventional wisdom, stopped at the Sierras in large part because California?the ?left-out coast??is a liberal outlier from the rest of the country. In this telling, the Golden State is a broken relic, a basket-case which has lost its status as the vanguard of American politics. While America embraced the angry politics of the Tea Party, the story goes, California reelected Jerry Brown, a nostalgic throwback to the 1970s. In fact, the exact opposite may be occurring: California, and indeed much of the West, is far ahead of the country, as it often has been?demographically, economically, politically, socially?and it points to a future in which the whole nation will look much like California does now: multi-ethnic, increasingly tolerant of gays and other minorities, more global in outlook, and more environmentally conscious. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: WASHINGTON?From Ohio, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy describes "the worry, the anguish and sometimes despair" among her constituents and urges President Obama to spend more time with people who don't make "six-figure incomes." From Pennsylvania, Rep. Joe Sestak says Americans are angry at a government that failed to guard them against economic catastrophe. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Two weeks after a mid-term election in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce helped thwart Barack Obama and the Democrats, the group?s CEO, Tom Donohue, gave a speech that read like a doubling down of sorts. ?We cannot allow this nation to move from a government of the people to a government of the regulators,?he said. ?Regulation is the vehicle by which some seek to control our economy, our businesses, and our lives.? Nor did Donohue leave any doubt about how he intended to prosecute this fight: ?The Chamber will mount a vigorous defense and aggressive offense in support of the right to lobby, communicate with voters ? and to do so without government harassment or undue restriction.? In other words, Donohue plans to spend gobs more money on lobbyists and ads to undermine Obama. But, if you look at what Donohue had to say in a less scripted moment, it?s not clear that he and the Chamber feel quite as triumphal as they?d have you believe. Asked about Republicans? mounting criticism of the Federal Reserve, Donohue sounded positively frustrated. ?The Fed has over many, many, many years been particularly helpful to this government and to this country,? he lectured reporters. ?We must maintain the independence of the Fed and be very, very careful not to louse that up on Capitol Hill.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: WASHINGTON?As I was passing through security at Boston's Logan Airport on Tuesday night, a TSA worker discovered a penny in one of the bins that had just gone through the screener. He picked up the coin, turned to a colleague and said with a grim smile: "This is your Obama bonus." This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Today we get yet another new proposal on how to restore some balance to the federal budget. Tomorrow we will get another. That will bring the number of new proposals to five or to six, depending on how you count. But, make no mistake: These latest additions to the mix are absolutely essential. In fact, they are what make the whole deficit reduction conversation worth having. Today?s proposal comes from the Century Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute, and the think-tank Demos (where I?m a senior fellow, although I had nothing to do with this proposal). The coalition calls itelf the ?Our Fiscal Future? group. Tomorrow?s proposal will come from a coalition calling itself the ?Citizens? Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America?s Economic Future.? This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Will the latest Wikileaks dump really matter that much? It?s true, as both Laura Rozen and Kevin Drum have observed, that many of the secret messages don?t seem to reveal big secrets. As Rozen wrote yesterday: one is struck overall that the classified diplomatic discussions on Iran revealed in the cables are not all that different from what one would expect from following the public comments senior U.S. officials have made on the Iran issue the last several months. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: In January 1973, William Ruckelhaus, the administrator of the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency, traveled to Los Angeles to break the bad news to residents: They were going to have to drive less. Automobile smog was choking the city, in stark violation of the Clean Air Act, and the EPA had hatched a plan to clear the air, by promoting mass transit, parking fees, high-occupancy lanes, and gasoline rationing. The reaction from car-loving Californians was a combination of shock and outright rage. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," fumed one resident. "Wouldn't it be cheaper," one reporter asked Ruckelhaus at his Biltmore Hotel press conference, "to take the people that have asthma and send them to Arizona?" The backlash against the transportation plan was the first time that ordinary citizens, rather than big polluters, were attacking the EPA. ("The most searing experience I lived through," one agency staffer later called it.) And in the ensuing years, indignant Angelenos opposed nearly every attempt by local officials to tamp down on driving, from transit to land-use controls. True, the city's air did get cleaned, but only because of the invention of catalytic converters that filtered tailpipe emissions?vehicle miles traveled, meanwhile, continued to soar. And the episode offered a warning to anyone trying to promote walkable urbanism or get people to drive less. Americans adore their cars and clogged freeways, and only a fool would try to change that. (As Josh Patashnik reported for TNR, Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of climate activism has explicitly avoided trying to persuade Californians to alter their motor habits.) This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: President Obama is currently engrossed in a battle over the ratification of his New START treaty with Russia?along with the urgent news that North Korea?s previously covert uranium enrichment program is up and running, and now affords it something else scary to export. Yet, there is another related issue that Mr. Obama must decide upon, which could easily do as much damage to his drive toward zero nuclear weapons: How will America handle the overt spread of civilian nuclear technologies which other countries might divert to make bombs? Last year, President Obama finalized a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The deal would allow the United States to provide technology to help the UAE generate nuclear energy, but only if the UAE meets a new set of nonproliferation conditions. First, the UAE must forego making nuclear fuel. Second, it must open its nuclear facilities up to intrusive nuclear inspections established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under a set of rules known as the Additional Protocol. The administration proudly proclaimed this arrangement as the international nonproliferation "gold standard." This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Spineless spiral" is Maureen Dowd's quite apt characterization of Barack Obama and his initiatives. Even his most cherished initiatives like the one to get a New Start of the old Start nuclear weapons treaty agreed to by the Russians and then, of course, by the U.S. Senate. The Russians have done so. I agree with Ms. Dowd and Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and Senator Lugar and Robert Kagan, the hard-nosed sometime contributor to TNR, that the treaty should be ratified. And since it has no chance of getting ratified in the new Senate it should be brought up when the Democrats still have a comfortable margin. Which is now! Actually, the treaty is not exactly a matter of life and death. No one in Europe is going to blow anybody up...except the jihadists. But they are, so to speak, outside the realm of negotiated agreements. Still, if we please the Russians on this -something they actually care about- they may just team up with us on other matters. Like Iran or North Korea. But who knows? In any case, China is the key to Pyongyang. And they cooperate about nothing. This podcast brought to you by Leonard Peikoff. You can listen to his podcast at www.peikoff.com by OutloudOpinion

Description: Havana, Cuba--You see them on stage, on passenger flights, and at trade fairs: Americans in Cuba legally, and hoping to travel here more often. The American Ballet Theater has just performed here for the first time in 50 years. It was a wildly popular performance, featuring two Cuban-American dancers?Jose Manuel Carreno and Xiomara Reyes, who was in Cuba for the first time since fleeing the country with her family 18 years ago. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: I haven?t run the numbers carefully, but the back of my envelope tells me that tripling the Federal alcohol tax?still leaving it below Korean War levels in inflation-adjusted terms?would bring in on the order of $15 billion a year in net revenue, after adjusting for the (entirely desirable) reduction in volume. As Phil Cook points out, moderate taxes on drinking?tripling would put the federal tax at about 30 cents a drink?have almost all of their impact on drinking by heavy drinkers; if you?re having the proverbial ?two beers,? tripling the tax adds a negligible 40 cents to your tab. But if you?re soaking heavily, the bill starts to mount. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Despite my enthusiasm for the latest debt commission plan, I should say that I continue to be puzzled by the Washington establishment's belief that the deficit constitutes the gravest crisis to the Republic. Check out Fareed Zakaria's latest column: The fate of the U.S. is going to be decided over the next year. O.K., I know that's overly dramatic, but here's why I say it. The deficit-reduction commission co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson has put the long-term fiscal health of the country front and center on the national stage. If we're lucky, we'll have a serious debate about it. We could decide that we are willing to undertake real reforms and fix the problem. Or we could once again kick the can down the road. If we do the latter, things get worse, the political deadlock hardens, and costs rise. Historians may well look back and say this was the point at which the U.S. began its long and seemingly irreversible decline. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: On Thursday, the House Democratic caucus selected Nancy Pelosi as the minority leader. A few hours earlier, Quinnipiac University released its latest survey, which sheds some interesting light on that decision. Included in the survey was a standard question that Quinnipiac has asked for several years: Is your opinion of Nancy Pelosi favorable, unfavorable, or haven?t you heard enough about her? This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: So how's that Republican war on pork holding up? All week, conservatives like Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn have been pushing their fellow senators to put a two-year moratorium on earmarks. They've managed to persuade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and even Mississippi's prime porker, Thad Cochran, has just grudgingly acceded ("I remain unconvinced that fiscal prudence is effectively advanced by ceding to the Obama administration our constitutional authority to determine federal expenditures, but an earmark moratorium is the will of the Republican Conference."). And yet? the odds that this ban ever amounts to much are pretty slim. For one, there are still a few defiant holdouts. James Inhofe has said he'll continue to request earmarks for Oklahoma, ban or no ban. Inhofe isn't the Senate's biggest earmarker?last year, his $73 million worth of pet projects ranked him a measly 70th among senators, according to OpenSecrets. Mostly he just seems to have principled reasons for defending pork. After all, he told colleagues, eliminating earmarks won't actually save taxpayers money; it just means that the executive branch has more discretion over how to spend the funds in appropriations bills. As he put it in a letter to his colleagues, eliminating earmarks just means "ceding Congress's authority to President Obama." This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Kanye West yelling that George Bush didn?t care about black people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was not, in itself, interesting. He had a CD to plump for (Late Registration), as well as just plain himself to plump for, as he was a newer phenom then than the source of regular episodes of galumphing megalomania that he is now. Interesting, however, is West?s acute discomfort in his recent interview with Matt Lauer at actually being confronted with footage of his accusation, good and loud and right in his face. With all of his cockiness about so much, he couldn?t take it. The sight of this was especially haunting in that West, like so many artists, is hyperarticulate in his creations but not especially so when speaking casually (not a knock on rappers, mind you ? there were times when it was hard to believe that the George Gershwin of interviews was the man who wrote Porgy and Bess or the opening to Concerto in F). Both verbally and emotionally, when having to actually own calling Bush a bigot, West falls to pieces. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: There is no mystery as to why President Obama went half away around the globe shortly after the election. Actually, I suspect that he and his folks scheduled the trip precisely to free him from the inevitable (and certainly annoying) queries about his responsibility for the Democratic disaster. There is another reason, however, why he leapt into the arms of foreign leaders (even those who don?t especially like him). And this is that international affairs is his fail-safe bailiwick; and since his only structurally contingent competitor is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and it is in Democratic hands (though barely after mid-January) he is likely not to receive much rivalry??advice and consent??let alone opposition, from its members. One has to look back to LBJ?s presidency to find a Senate in the recent past which took its constitutionally sanctioned responsibilities seriously. Even Lyndon Johnson?s vanity couldn?t stop his Vietnam opponents who quickly became his antagonists on virtually everything: J. William Fulbright, who looks uglier in retrospect than his academic pretense then, was more than his match, as were Gene McCarthy, Wayne Morse, even aging Ernest Gruening from Alaska. And they beat him to a pulp in 1968. Until Richard Nixon beat all of them that same year. (Then, they beat him up in return in 1973, after he had won his second term in the biggest trashing of a Democratic candidate in history. Poor George McGovern, an old Stalinoid and still one, so far as I can tell, captured only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Not bad, actually, for someone sympathetic to ?progressive? dictatorships.) This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: If you?ve been following the debate about the future of the Bush tax cuts, Thursday was a busy day. It was also a depressing day. The activity started early, when the Huffington Post reported that the White House was ready to cut a deal with Republicans?and temporarily extend all of the Bush tax cuts, including those that affect higher incomes exclusively. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Only brain-dead populists believe that the people are always right. Still, in a representative democracy, elected officials who want to remain in office and get something done should listen carefully to what the people are saying. All the more so for a president challenged to reorient his administration after a devastating rebuke. Two recent surveys should help President Obama chart a new path for the next two years. A just-released Pew survey finds that 55 percent of respondents want Republican leaders in Washington to ?try as best they can to work with Barack Obama to accomplish things, even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.? Only 38 percent disagreed. Conversely, 62 percent want Obama to work hard to cooperate with Republicans, even if it means disappointing some of his supporters. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Senator Alan Simpson, the chairman of the bipartisan deficit commission, spent much of his life scolding people for being dependent on Social Security and Medicare and complaining that they didn?t save enough. Now, based on the draft proposal released yesterday, it appears that he and his co-chairman Erskine Bowles never departed from this attitude in steering their thinking. Given the state of the economy, the co-chairs? report reads like a document from Mars. Just to remind those of us who earn their living on planet earth (outside of Wall Street), the country is suffering from 9.6 percent unemployment. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. Tens of millions of people are underwater in their mortgage and millions face the prospect of losing their home to foreclosure. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: As seen from Beijing, President Obama no doubt appears to be embarked on a ?2010 Containment Tour? of Asia. While he is making stops in India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan, China is conspicuously absent from the president?s itinerary. The reason is obvious: When it took office in January 2009, the Obama administration declared its intention to broaden and deepen all aspects of America?s longstanding policy of ?engagement? with China. In addition to cooperating to resuscitate the world economy and slowing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, administration spokesmen suggested that the two Pacific powers would now work together to tackle big new global problems like climate change. Contentious issues (like China?s human rights record) would be downplayed, even if they could not be avoided altogether, and, both countries would be at pains to reassure one another about their benign intentions. While the United States would maintain significant military capabilities in East Asia, the Pentagon would focus heavily on winning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on preparing to meet similar challenges from insurgents and terrorists, rather than arming itself to fight some imagined future high-tech, high-intensity war with China. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Most of the coverage of President Obama?s interview on ?60 Minutes? focused on his body language (glum, weary) or his message about legislative compromise (open to some, within reason). The part that got my attention was his discussion of government and whether, under his administration, it had gotten too big. While defending the component parts of his agenda, Obama acknowledged that opponents ?were able to paint my governing philosophy as a classic, traditional, big government liberal. And that's not something that the American people want." No, it?s not. And, as my colleague Jonathan Chait has pointed out many times, it?s not exactly what liberals want, either. For conservatives, smaller government is an end in itself. For liberals, bigger government is more a means to other ends, like policing the banks or making health care available to everybody. If a market works fine on its own, liberals are happy not to meddle with it. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: If there is one thing everyone can agree on after last week's midterm elections, it is that we are entering a new age of politics. But that new age might be defined less by whether our government is led by Democrats or Republicans than by the fact that an increasing number of seats in Congress?and the House in particular?are more competitive than in recent times. The permanent campaign became a feature of American politics long ago, but, with the disappearance of many ?safe seats,? we are now facing a permanent campaign almost everywhere. Writing in Polity in 1974, Yale political scientist David Mayhew described the ?vanishing marginals??the fewer and fewer House seats that were truly in play every election. Mayhew was noting a phenomenon that would only become more pronounced in the decades that followed. Between 98 and 99 percent of House incumbents who stood for reelection were successful in 2002 and 2004, making those the least competitive House elections since World War II. As recently as 2004, only 7 percent of House elections were close enough to feature winners who won less than 55 percent of the vote. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Barack Obama may have mangled a few Indian words in his address to India?s parliament today, but he got the important things right. Stating the obvious is often berated as a platitudinous impulse, but in some cases it can be a virtue, particularly when your audience is of a thin-skinned kind that actually craves the obvious. And no audience fits this bill better than an Indian one. So it was that President Obama came to say in New Delhi that the United States and India can ?forge a truly global partnership.? He also stated things that are obvious to Indians, but less so to Americans (although even this excessively trusting nation is starting to grow wise to the truth): ?Terrorist safe havens in Pakistan? he said, ?are unacceptable.? For Indians who were champing at the bit for Obama to utter the P-word in some unflattering form, this was somewhat reassuring.. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Suppose I told you one of the political parties was determined to increase wasteful government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, to pay the salaries of countless extra bureaucrats and to degrade the quality of medicine in the U.S. If you?ve been paying attention to politics for the last few months, you?d probably assume I was talking about the Democrats. Not so. I?d actually be talking about the Republicans who want to repeal health care reform. Confused? Well, don?t blame yourself. The Republicans and their allies have spent a lot of time--and a lot of money--attacking the Affordable Care Act and promising to undo it. And they have done so with such a fury that almost nobody seemed to notice they are making a pair of arguments that are fundamentally incompatible. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Is Yemen the new Pakistan, which was the new Afghanistan, which was the new Saudi Arabia, which was the new Egypt for jihadists seeking to strike the West? The recent attempted cargo-plane bombing certainly gives credence to those who fear that Yemen is the Al Qaeda hub most likely to kill us. Yet even though Yemen has many of the component parts that make for an ideal holy warrior laboratory, Pakistan still has a clear jihadist edge - philosophically and operationally - over what?s developing in the land once called Arabia Felix. But let us not belittle Yemen?s possibilities. First and foremost, Yemen?s been an intellectual mess for several decades. Religious tribal Shiites have warred against pan-Arab secular tribal Shiites (Yemen is the historic home of the Zaydi, or "Fiver," Shiites, who had ruling dynasties - the Zaydi "Imamate" - in the country more or less continuously from 897 to 1962); Sunni and Shia Yemenis have, of course, disliked each other through the centuries; many Sunni and Shia Yemenis, especially in the south of the country, once zealously fell in love with Communism. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: This is a pretty telling window into the House GOP's strategy for taking back the majority: The PowerPoint slides presented to House Republicans in January 2009 seemed incongruously optimistic at a time when the very word ?hope? belonged to the newly ascendant Democrats and their incoming president, Barack Obama. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Last night's returns contained a few surprises, but for the most part, were only surprising to people who hadn't been paying much attention, and to those conservative commentators who had been predicting a Republican takeover of the Senate and House gains in the neighborhood of 80-100 seats. It was indeed a Republican "wave" election, but not what you'd rightly call a tsunami. When it's all said and done (projections of outstanding votes are very favorable to Michael Bennet of CO and Patty Murray of WA), it's likely that Democrats will retain a 53-47 margin in the Senate, which means Republicans will not be in a position to tempt Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman to "flip" and give them control. Had things gone a little differently in the very close Senate races in PA or IL, the margin could have gone even higher, but Democrats aren't complaining. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: No doubt we?ll be talking about the 2010 election for a long time, and dueling explanations for the Democrats? defeat will abound. Although I plan to make my own contribution to this explanatory surfeit, my topic right now is more modest?to trace the contours of what actually happened on November 2. Let?s begin with the basics. In the midterm election of 2006, Democrats received 52.0 percent of the popular vote cast for House candidates, while Republicans received 45.6 percent. This year, projections indicate that the Republicans will end up with 51.8 percent, versus 45.1 percent for the Democrats?in short, a Republican gain of 6.2 percent and a Democratic loss of 6.9 percent since 2006. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Last week I wrote that economic conditions plus the swollen Democratic majority would predict a 45 seat Democratic loss. So, I concluded, before we even have the "what did Democrats do wrong" conversation, we need to first establish that they did anything wrong at all, with "wrong" being defined as a loss in excess of 50 seats or so. Now that we see Republicans gained some 20 seats more than mere fundamentals would predict, let's have the "what went wrong" conversation. I think the root of the Democrats' political troubles lies in the initial flurry of activity--the stimulus, restructuring TARP, and the auto bailout. In the public mind, this all become jumbled together as "the bailouts" -- a conflation carefully nurtured by Republicans--even though obviously Keynesian fiscal policy is not the same thing as a bailout. But the truth is that all those policies were highly unpopular, and all came to symbolize big government rescuing bad actors while average people paid the bill. It became a frame that colored perceptions of the entire Democratic agenda. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Last week, I cited a model showing that based solely on the number of seats held by the Democrats going into a midterm and personal income growth, Democrats would be expected to lose 45 seats in the House. That's based solely on fundamentals, with no consideration of the president's approval rating or anything else about how the public views his priorities. I did say I thought that total was probably 5-10 seats too low, "because President Obama rode a wave in 2008 that was unusually dependent on sporadic voters like the young and minorities, who tend not to turn out during midterm elections. He swept in a lot of House candidates who are going to have trouble winning a midterm election with a disproportionately old and white electorate." The exit polls from today's election show how this happened. The non-white share of the electorate fell from 24% in 2008 to 19% in 2010. But the age gap is the real tidal shift. In 2008, Republicans won voters over 65 years old by 8 points, but were crushed among voters under 30 by more than 30 points. The under 30 vote outnumbered the over 65 vote. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: A lot of liberals are going to be panicking on Tuesday night. President Obama probably won?t be one of them. At least, that?s the impression I get from Ron Brownstein?s latest column for National Journal. Brownstein compares two interviews he did: one with then-President Clinton, just before the 1994 midterms, and one with Obama, just last month. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Demonstrators have been coming to Washington since Coxey?s Army trudged up the steps of the Capitol during the depression of the 1890s. So it was probably inevitable that the traditional repertoire of protest would, by now, have grown rather stale. These days, passionate orators, earnest singers, and fist-shaking marches down the National Mall rarely matter much. The ?One Nation? rally held by the NAACP, labor unions, and other liberal groups on a perfect day in early October barely managed to fill the lawns around the Reflecting Pool and offered no coherent message other than hostility toward the Tea Parties and their favorite candidates. Most of the nation probably didn?t even know the event had occurred. In contrast, Glenn Beck?s call to ?Restore Honor? drew twice as many people, nearly all of whom were united by the strong twin desires to crush the left and praise the Lord. Still, even with its clear purpose and large turnout, the rally slipped from the limelight very quickly. This weekend, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?s massive ?Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear? was, at least, a novel sort of political demonstration. And I do mean political. Granted, Stewart and his merry band of satirists, as promised, presented themselves as the bards of civil discourse and didn?t suggest how people should vote this year?or whether they should vote at all. They talked, and/or joked, about how to think, not what to think. Yet nearly every sign I saw and conversation I had, or overheard, among the masses gathered near the Capitol confirmed what should have been obvious to anyone who has ever watched The Daily Show or The Colbert Report: This was a liberal crowd of mostly young, white people who voted for Obama and are contemptuous of his conservative opponents. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: This is your comprehensive hour-by-hour guide to Election Night 2010. It will help you follow all of the bellwether indicators throughout the day and interpret the returns. So what are you waiting for? Print it out and keep it close during every minute of the agonizing countdown. What to Look for Early on Election Day: There will be lots of anecdotal reports during the early hours of voting about turnout and the expectations* of both parties and many candidates. It?s colorful, but don?t believe any of it. Much of this chatter can be safely ignored as too unsystematic or, worse, as spin designed to suppress or motivate turnout. It?s also good to remain skeptical about charges of ?voter fraud,? often peddled by Republicans in order to enrage the base and offset Democratic charges of voter intimidation and polling place chaos. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: On the eve of the November elections, we are suddenly awash in books, articles, and monographs about the Tea Parties. Some of these?I would single out Sean Wilentz?s historical piece in The New Yorker?deepen our understanding, but most of them don?t get it right. They are too quick either to dismiss or to stigmatize the Tea Parties. And the mistakes they make are not just academic; they contribute to a misunderstanding of what it will take for liberals and the left?not to mention the Obama administration?to turn around American politics after November. Here are some of the most common misconceptions: 1) ?The Tea Party is not a movement.? In a front page story in last Sunday?s Washington Post, Amy Gardner wrote that the Tea Parties are ?not so much a movement as a disparate band of vaguely connected gatherings that do surprisingly little to engage in the political process.? As evidence, Gardner cites the lack of a common platform, the lack of a common national candidate, and the absence of a single dominant national organization. The Tea Parties, the author suggests, are a much weaker brew than commonly thought. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: California's ballot-initiative system has a way of touching off culture wars that dwarf the buzz surrounding mere state and congressional elections. (Think of Proposition 8 or Proposition 187.) But even by California standards, this year?s Proposition 19 is becoming something of a legend. In case you haven?t heard, Proposition 19 would legalize the possession and cultivation of small quantities of marijuana, while enabling the state and/or local governments (in theory, at least) to license and tax larger commercial pot-growing enterprises. The initiative has been hailed not only by Californians with a taste for cannabis, but by economic boosters, who hope it would transform California by creating a massive new growth industry that solves the state?s chronic fiscal problems. In fact, there's so much interest in Proposition 19 that polls show nearly everyone in California already knows about the initiative?without advocacy groups spending more than a few dimes. As Firedoglake?s Jon Walker explains: This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: First, a question: Have the last two years, with Obama in the White House and Democrats running Congress, really been that great for environmental policy? It depends how you look at it. There was that debacle in the Gulf, which obviously wasn't handled well. Then the Senate failed to pass a climate bill, and the Copenhagen talks dragged along without much resolution. But it hasn't been all grime and tar: Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ratcheting up fuel-economy standards and knuckling down on air pollutants from coal-fired plants?including greenhouse gases. And the stimulus kicked in $80 billion for clean-energy and efficiency projects, which was a hefty sum by historical standards. So when Republicans take over the House and expand their Senate numbers this fall, there's plenty of room for major shifts on the eco-front. Things can always get worse. That's especially true when you consider that, by and large, the new crop of conservative candidates doesn't believe in global warming (quite a few of them even believe that climate scientists are engaged in a sinister conspiracy). So here's a rundown of what to expect from a GOP Congress in the next two years: This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: WASHINGTON--Imagine an election in a Third World nation where a small number of millionaires and billionaires spent massive sums to push the outcome in their preferred direction. Wouldn't many people here condescendingly tut-tut such a country's "poorly developed" sense of democracy and the inadequacy of its political system? That, of course, is what is going on in our country as you read this. If you travel any place where there is a contested race for the House or Senate, you are bombarded with attack ads, almost all against Democrats, paid for by groups that do not have to reveal where their money comes from. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: You can sense that the good times are back in Israel the moment that you step through?or try to step through?the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem?s Old City. During the four years that I lived in Jerusalem, between 2000 and 2004, this main portal to the country?s number-one tourist attraction was often deserted, a consequence of the Al Aqsa Intifada?s violence. But when I returned two weeks ago, I found myself trapped in the tourist traffic jam from hell. Sightseeing groups from every corner of the planet?Russia, Poland, Nigeria, Spain, Brazil, Korea, Japan, the United States?coalesced into a solid mass at the entrance, a swarm of yellow baseball caps, purple flags, and matching t-shirts. Herded through a corridor by the police to avoid construction going on around David?s Citadel, I stood, immobilized, in the horde for nearly ten minutes. The scene was similar at almost every place I visited during my week-long sojourn to the Holy Land. The American Colony, the King David, the Citadel, and other luxury hotels in Jerusalem were filled to capacity. The tourist influx has grown so large that the Israeli government recently granted special permits to Jewish tour-bus drivers to enter the West Bank town of Bethlehem, normally off limits to Israeli Jews. Now a constant stream of tour buses from Israel passes through the single gap in the Wall leading to the city of Jesus?s birth. Inside the Church of the Nativity, deserted during the bad times, the wait to visit the grotto is more than two hours long. (Having written a book about the church during the Intifada, I led a friend through an obscure passageway inside the 1,600-year-old complex, and was able to circumvent the thousands waiting in line.) If anyone needed further evidence of the strength of the Israeli economy, the shekel, Israel?s currency, was trading at its highest level against the dollar in a decade. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: Democrats are warning that if Republicans capture the House?and perhaps also the Senate?in this November?s election, they would abolish cabinet departments, repeal Obamacare, and privatize social security. They might want to do these things, but they won?t be able to overcome a Senate filibuster or a presidential veto. What they will be able to do, however, is undermine the work of regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Obama administration has appointed good people to these agencies and increased their funding, and they are beginning to revive after being crippled during George W. Bush?s presidency. A Republican Congress wouldn?t be able to close them down, but it could make life very difficult for them to function by cutting their funding. That?s exactly what happened after the Republicans captured the Congress in November 1994 when Bill Clinton was president. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: No one really knows what the final numbers will be when the dust settles, but we already know the most important outcome of the November 2 elections: The strategy Democrats used to pass legislation during the 111th Congress will no longer be operative. Even if Democrats retain narrow majorities in both the House and Senate (a bet I wouldn?t take), Republican gains in the Senate will be too large to allow the Democrats to get to 60 votes by uniting their party and picking off two or three Republican moderates. So the options for the 112th Congress reduce to two: either confrontation and gridlock, or a new discussion across party lines. The majority prediction inside the Beltway is the former, but as frequently happens I find myself in dissent. To be sure, the majority can draw upon a lot of supporting evidence. An already polarized party system will become even more so; the new Republicans will be even more conservative, and the remaining Democrats will mostly be liberals. Lots of new Republicans in Congress will either represent Tea Party views or be beholden to its supporters, and veterans will be looking over their shoulders to see whether primary challengers are coming up behind them. In the early months of next year, anyway, conservative enthusiasms will find vociferous expression, and confrontation will predominate.. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: There are still two weeks left until the midterm elections, but it?s not too early to declare a winner in the contest for the most despicable political ad of this campaign season. On Friday night, Jack Conway, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, released a 30-second spot questioning the Christian faith of his Republican opponent Rand Paul. Conway?s ad focused on two episodes from Paul?s days as a college student in the early 1980s. At Baylor, Paul belonged to a secret society known as the NoZe Brotherhood which, according to the ad?s narrator, ?called the Holy Bible ?a hoax? [and] was banned [from campus] for mocking Christianity and Christ.? It was also during his time at Baylor that Paul and a fellow NoZe brother allegedly tied up a female classmate, tried to get her to do bong hits with them, and then took her to a creek where they made her worship ?Aqua Buddha??which, as the ad points out, is ?a false idol.? During a candidate debate on Sunday night, Conway repeated these charges, while Paul accused Conway of ?descend[ing] into the gutter? and ?demean[ing] Kentucky.? When the debate was over, Paul refused to shake Conway?s hand. Frankly, I don?t blame him. First, no candidate over the age of, say, 30 should be held politically accountable for anything he or she did in college?short of gross academic misconduct or committing a felony. Second, and more importantly, a politician?s religious faith should simply be off-limits. If it?s disgusting when conservatives question Barack Obama?s Christianity, then it?s disgusting when Jack Conway questions Rand Paul?s. This podcast sponsored by GoToMeeting - Visit gotomeeting.com, click the try it free button and use promo code: Podcast. by OutloudOpinion

Description: PORTSMOUTH, N.H.?The Republican Party is running a three-level campaign this year that gives its candidates a wealth of advantages?in flexibility, deniability, and determination. At the first level are the party's candidates, who can be as reasonable or as angry, as moderate or as conservative, as their circumstances require. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a conference call with some bloggers and reporters on Wednesday. She spent a great deal of time exuding confidence and predicting that Democrats would fare well on Election Day. I think the word ?momentum? came up more than once. I don?t know whether she is really that optimistic. I'm certainly not. I?d like very much to see the Democrats maintain control of Congress and, I agree, there have been a few encouraging signs lately, particularly on the Senate side. (Christine O?Donnell is the gift that keeps on giving.) But the odds are still against the Democrats, particularly in the House. Then again, the last time Pelosi defied conventional wisdom so brazenly was in late January and early February, when she kept insisting health care reform would pass. Maybe she knows something the rest of us don't. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Midway through her recent TNR article ?Building the Progressive Brand,? Sara Robinson makes one essential point: Progressives, she writes, ?have always been at our best when we speak from a place of strong moral authority, rooted deeply in a daring vision of the kind of world we?d like to create.? Unfortunately, she completely ignores how such visions emerged in the past and, worse, assumes that a clever ad campaign can substitute for serious political thinking and organizing. Powerful, history-changing ideologies?whether of left or right?are not commodities. They take shape gradually as activists, intellectuals, and politicians respond to mass grievances and desires, make demands on existing institutions, and build new ones of their own. The original progressives, circa 1900, were motivated by a fear of corporate domination and inspired by the Social Gospel and an equally fervent belief that applied social science could fix the injustices and inefficiencies of industrial society. Their successors in the 1930s advocated a mild, but quite moral, version of Social Democracy; while liberals from the 1950s through the 1970s shifted the focus to winning equal rights for black people, women, and homosexuals. The website of Robinson?s own organization, the Center for American Progress, includes an excellent, ongoing series of essays that outline the key ideas and achievements of these earlier progressives: Despite their differences, I suspect that all would have found either ludicrous or appalling the suggestion that they should ?brand? their ideologies as if they were marketing executives at Coke, Ford, or McDonalds (all of which Robinson praises for establishing ?corporate identities?). William Jennings Bryan, FDR, Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and their followers vigorously resisted the notion that the market should be the main arbiter of winners and losers in American life. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: So this month?s flap over someone ?using a word? is between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown in their battle for the California governorship. The word this time, given the personnel, is not the N-word, of course--although wouldn?t you know, exactly that word has been brought in as a comparison. This time it?s whore, on a tape from last month that turned up of a conversation between Brown and an aide. The aide suggests that a useful campaign response to Whitman?s offering a deal to the Los Angeles policeman?s union on pensions would be to frame her as a ?whore.? This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: My former colleague Jamie Kirchick, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, surveys the rise of Islamophobic far-right parties in Europe, and flays American liberals: Anyone who has traveled throughout Europe knows that its image as an exemplar of progressivism, and ethnic and religious diversity, is a fabrication of the American liberal mind. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The executive branch appointment process, both nomination and confirmation, is broken. I know it, you know it, the civil servants who work at the departments and agencies know it, the Senate knows it, and above all the people who who under normal circumstances would be eager to accept appointments know it. Two more data points from late last week. First, Ezra Klein spotted Steve Rattner?s lament about what he had to go through on his way to working for the government, including what he says was $400K to attorneys. That?s four - zero - zero - zero - zero - zero. In order to get a government job. Second, from the San Antonio Express-News: Michael McCrum, the leading candidate to be the top federal prosecutor in the San Antonio-based Western District of Texas, withdrew his name from consideration Thursday, frustrated with a dragging nomination process that had put his life on indefinite hold. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Every American over the age of ten knows what the GOP and the conservative movement stand for. Sing it with me now: low taxes, small government, strong defense, traditional families. See? You know the tune, and the harmony line, too. OK, now: What do Democrats and progressives stand for? Take your time. It's a tough question. Give up? So have most progressives. Even the movement's most deeply committed members often have a hard time answering this one. And that's a problem. Specifically, it's a branding problem. Conservatives have worked hard for the past 40 years to create a long-term brand identity for their ideas. Progressives haven't. And that has made all the difference. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Every so often a confluence of individual events points toward an emerging reality. Today, that's true regarding global trade. Consider the following: ·On Monday the Wall Street Journal published a stunning but not surprising piece headlined ?Americans Sour on Trade.? As recently as a decade ago, more Americans thought that free-trade agreements helped than hurt the United States. Last month, more than half said that these agreements were harmful, versus fewer than 20 percent who still think they are beneficial. The article noted that support for a policy of getting tough with China on the currency issue now crosses occupational, economic, and political lines: last week?s House vote to that effect gained the support of more than half the Republican caucus as well as nearly all Democrats. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Yet again this Sunday, Thomas L. Friedman used his column in The New York Times to issue an ominous warning about America?s decline. Quoting from Lewis Mumford about the moral decadence of imperial Rome, he commented: ?It was one of those history passages that echo so loudly in the present that it sends a shiver down my spine?way, way too close for comfort.? He ended the column with a call for a third-party candidate in 2012 with the courage to say to the voters: ?I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world?s leaders, not the new Romans.? Friedman is sounding a popular theme. A Google search for the phrase ?America?s decline? turns up 42,500 hits. Comparisons to Rome and other once-powerful empires abound, as in Cullen Murphy?s popular 2007 book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. From the Tea Party right comes the constant, screeching cry that President Obama and the Democrats are ?destroying America.? The National Intelligence Council itself, a few years ago, predicted the ?erosion? of American power relative to China and India. Clearly, the most popular classical figure in America today is that high-strung Trojan lady, Cassandra. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Yet again this Sunday, Thomas L. Friedman used his column in The New York Times to issue an ominous warning about America?s decline. Quoting from Lewis Mumford about the moral decadence of imperial Rome, he commented: ?It was one of those history passages that echo so loudly in the present that it sends a shiver down my spine?way, way too close for comfort.? He ended the column with a call for a third-party candidate in 2012 with the courage to say to the voters: ?I am going to tell you what you need to hear if we want to be the world?s leaders, not the new Romans.? Friedman is sounding a popular theme. A Google search for the phrase ?America?s decline? turns up 42,500 hits. Comparisons to Rome and other once-powerful empires abound, as in Cullen Murphy?s popular 2007 book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. From the Tea Party right comes the constant, screeching cry that President Obama and the Democrats are ?destroying America.? The National Intelligence Council itself, a few years ago, predicted the ?erosion? of American power relative to China and India. Clearly, the most popular classical figure in America today is that high-strung Trojan lady, Cassandra. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The pre-election polls seem to trending, ever so slightly, back towards the Democrats. But it still seems likely that the Republicans will control one, and maybe two, houses of Congress come January. That's obviously not good news for liberals or for liberalism. The Republicans will try to slash taxes for the wealthy, shrink the federal government, and repeal major legislation starting with health care reform. They probably won't get too far as long as President Obama wields the veto stamp. But majority status and committee chairmanships will give Republicans plenty of opportunities to wield power, whether by controlling the appropriations process or by issuing subpoenas. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: This sounds like a seminar topic from my college class in moral reasoning. But the story is real, as are the consequences for a Tennessee man named Gene Cranick, whose house caught fire last week. Via Joshua Holland at Alternet: Cranick hadn?t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county?s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick?s house burned to the ground. According to the local NBC TV affiliate, Cranick ?said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late.They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.? The fire chief could have made an exception on the spot, but refused to do so. Pressed by the local NBC news team for an explanation, Mayor David Crocker said, ?if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.? This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Every so often a confluence of individual events points toward an emerging reality. Today, that's true regarding global trade. Consider the following: ·On Monday the Wall Street Journal published a stunning but not surprising piece headlined ?Americans Sour on Trade.? As recently as a decade ago, more Americans thought that free-trade agreements helped than hurt the United States. Last month, more than half said that these agreements were harmful, versus fewer than 20 percent who still think they are beneficial. The article noted that support for a policy of getting tough with China on the currency issue now crosses occupational, economic, and political lines: last week?s House vote to that effect gained the support of more than half the Republican caucus as well as nearly all Democrats. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: In response to a couple entreaties to Bibi Netanyahu to abandon the settlers and form a more centrist, pro-peace coalition, an exasperated Matthew Yglesias replies: At some point don?t we need to give this game up? You can make the case that even if the current Israeli government were much more reasonable than it in fact is that there still wouldn?t be a peace deal thanks to bad behavior on the Palestinian side. But it?s actually not puzzling at all why Netanyahu doesn?t form a different coalition and agree to a settlement freeze?Netanyahu favors settlement building. This is the whole trajectory of his political career, from leading the charge against the Oslo Agreement to rump Likud in a rebellion against Ariel Sharon to forming a coalition with Avigdor Lieberman. The guy?s not a fool. He knows what he?s doing. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Here's a headline sure to give the White House and its allies grief today: "McDonald's May Drop Health Plan." It's for an article by Janet Adamy in the Wall Street Journal. It's only a matter of time until it becomes fodder for conservative blogs, Fox News, and Republican campaign commercials. But it's not really bad news about health care reform--at least, not for the reason you might think. First, the basics: One of the new regulations about to take effect under the Affordable Care Act requires that insurers spend no less than 85 percent (in some cases, 80 percent) of premium dollars on actual patient care, as opposed to overhead, marketing, or profit. McDonald's isn't happy about that. In a memo it submitted to the Obama Administration last week, the company says that the insurance it provides some 30,000 employees won't meet that standard and that, without some kind of special waiver, they would likely drop the policies. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Rahm Emanuel is out as Chief of Staff and Pete Rouse is in, at least for the time being. Should Rahm?s many critics, particularly progressives, celebrate the changeover? Other journalists, including at least one at this magazine, are better qualified to answer that question than I am. But my hunch is that, for better or for worse, Rouse will change the internal culture of the White House more than he changes either the substance or message. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Tired of the famous Churchillian formula about how hard it is to understand what goes on in the Kremlin (it?s a riddle, a mystery, an enigma, etc.), the American diplomat Chip Bohlen reportedly once joked, ?No, it?s not?it?s a secret.? A crucial distinction, confirmed by president Medvedev?s dramatic firing of Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov on Tuesday. It would be nice, of course, to know whether the decision really put Medvedev at odds with his predecessor and patron Vladimir Putin. But we don?t, and almost surely won?t. Even so, there?s plenty that we do know that makes the ouster of Luzhkov a landmark event in Russian politics?with interesting implications for American policy. Let?s start with the last point. For some time, there has been one strong but little noticed dissonant note in the successful ?reset? of Russian-American relations. With every jailing of a Russian human rights activist or opposition leader, the White House has put out a statement expressing ?concern? about the denial of basic democratic freedoms. Because many of these confrontations revolved around the denial of a permit to hold a rally, the official ultimately responsible was the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. (And when Putin said in August that those who demonstrate without a permit deserve a good beating, he was explicitly backing Luzhkov.) This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Noam Scheiber?s profile of David Axelrod is a classic example of Washington personality journalism: It?s full of intimate details and smoothly written but accepts, with little comment, its subject?s opinion about what ails the administration Axelrod, the erstwhile liberal reporter from Chicago, helped put in office. The central flaw in the piece is the unexamined notion?which, it seems, Scheiber and Axelrod share?that the problem is ?Washington itself? a ferociously stubborn, possibly irredeemable system.? The same charge is routinely voiced by liberals, conservatives, and nearly everyone in between: If we could transform ?how Washington works,? then our country would once again accomplish great things. But, like all tales about a bygone political golden age, this notion ignores historical reality. Since the Gilded Age, when both a large and permanent federal bureaucracy and massive national corporations emerged, there has been a Washington ?system.? Corporate lobbyists, lavish donations, arcane and undemocratic Senate rules, dishonest campaigns bankrolled by millionaires?all were familiar to perceptive commentators from Henry Adams and Lincoln Steffens to Walter Lippmann and I.F. Stone. As long as the United States is a capitalist nation with a government ruled more by self-interest than great ideals, the system will endure. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Sunday's parliamentary election in Venezuela saw Chávez's governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela slump to a landslide. Chavistas walked off with 59 percent of the seats in Venezuela's single-chamber National Assembly on the back of just 48 percent of the vote, all thanks to a well-known list of unfair voting conditions that left the playing field far from level: an aggressively gerrymandered map, massive rural overrepresentation, and blatantly biased election rules approved by a blatantly biased Elections Commission. Though routed in the seat count, the vote felt like a win?and a coming of age?for opposition activists. Gone are the days when the words "Venezuelan opposition" conjured a hodge-podge of ancien regime holdovers and reactionary cranks. The vote was a milestone in the opposition's gradual transformation into an organized mass political movement able to credibly challenge Chávez for the allegiance of everyday Venezuelans. Working in tremendously challenging circumstances against a hyper-empowered petrostate that had put all its resources into the campaign, the opposition's umbrella Roundtable for Democratic Unity (the unfortunately anagramed M.U.D.) went toe-to-toe with chavismo, coming within 90,000 votes (out of eleven million cast) of matching their tally. (A small anti-Chavez left-wing party got the remaining 3 percent.) This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: After nearly three decades in Washington, I?m not as easily shocked as I once was. But Gretchen Morgenson?s article in this Sunday?s New York Times quietly blew the lid off the CDO collapse that sparked the Great Recession. She reports that in testimony given last week, D. Keith Johnson, former president of a company that analyzed mortgage pools for the Wall Street firms that sold them, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that almost half the mortgages his company examined between the beginning of 2006 and the middle of 2007 ?failed to meet crucial quality benchmarks that banks had promised to investors.? When he personally took these data to officials at three major ratings firms, they all declined to take it into account in assigning risk levels to different ?tranches? of securities. The details show how compelling these findings should have been. During the period covered in Johnson?s testimony, his firm reviewed 911,000 loans for 23 investment or commercial banks. Fully 46 percent failed to meet the lenders? own underwriting standards, and 28 percent were ?outright failures??loans that had no positive factors that might conceivably have been judged to compensate for their shortcomings. And yet 39 percent of these loans went into mortgage pools sold to investors. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The assertion of Newt Gingrich and of the conservative author Dinesh D?Souza that President Obama?s actions can somehow be explained by a ?Kenyan, anti-colonial? worldview has already been greeted with the ridicule it deserves. But the funny thing is that while this theory (let?s call it the ?Kenya paranoia?) is silly, it also isn?t entirely new with Gingrich or D?Souza. In fact, the two men were borrowing, modifying and taking to the extreme some bizarre ideas about Obama that have been aired, in less publicized ways, ever since the beginning of his presidency. And I?m not talking here about simply the ideas of Republicans, the right wing or the political fringes. Rather, the Kenya paranoia has been showing up in the politest society, among journalists and even high-ranking diplomats. In particular, the idea started with the British, those former colonialists, who have repeatedly invoked Kenya to explain every perceived slight from the Obama administration. If the Obama White House doesn?t always treat British leaders the way Ronald Reagan treated Margaret Thatcher, if Obama doesn?t give a Clinton-like hug to a British prime minister, if he doesn?t bow in front of Winston Churchill?s bust each morning, it must be because of Kenya. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: With the fatuousness that has marked his administration from the outset, the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, has now issued a document called ?Keeping the Promise,? timed to coincide with the 2010 meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and the summit on the organization?s so-called Millennium Development Goals that is taking place simultaneously. Agreed to at the United Nations in 2000 by all member states, these goals?the ?MDGs" in international bureaucratese?include eradicating ?extreme poverty and hunger,? achieving universal primary education, and assuring environmental sustainability, as well as such difficult but at least not impossible projects as promoting gender equality and reducing child mortality. In reality, of course, these are not millennium goals but millennial ones, their ambition made all the more hubristic since what would amount to, quite literally, the salvation of humanity is to be accomplished by 2015, according to the relevant U.N. documents. I am not making this up. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Today on ?Meet the Press,? NBC kicked off a weeklong special called Education Nation, a series of events and broadcasts about the state of U.S. public schools. David Gregory?s guests were U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten, and head of Detroit schools Robert Bobb. But the real star of the show was Waiting for Superman, the much-hyped documentary about school reform that opens nationwide this week. Gregory started the program with a clip from the movie that shows how poorly we rank, education-wise, against other developed countries. And he closed the show with a discussion of what the average person, inspired by the film, can do to help our ailing schools. He himself had seen it and said he was moved as a parent. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: One intriguing thing about the Republican Party's "Pledge to America" is that it doesn't include that many goodies for the Tea Party?or, more precisely, that it concedes far more to the Tea Party in terms of rhetoric than actual policy. Here's the breakdown: The preamble and foreword are dominated by dog whistles and direct appeals aimed at the Tea Party movement. It contains all sorts of grave, don?t-tread-on-me rumbling about the unprecedented emergency facing the country, the arrogance of Washington Democrat elitists, and the righteous indignation of the people, as expressed ?in town halls and on public squares.? There?s a big shout-out to constitutional originalism, and particularly to the Tenth Amendment, which many Tea Partiers rely on when they claim that states have the right to nullify expansions of federal power. In general, the language suggests that the Obama administration is not simply wrong, but lacks legitimacy. The rhetoric also bows to the religious right?which overlaps heavily with the Tea Party Movement?with references to ?protecting life? and ?traditional families.? It also includes a finely tuned dog whistle that places the Declaration of Independence, with its references to the Creator and to natural rights, on a par with the Constitution as a founding document. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Maybe it was just coincidence that House Republicans unveiled their vision for America on the same day new consumer protections from the Affordable Care Act went into effect. But it felt like some higher power was sending Americans a message?about which political party wants to act like a bunch of grown-ups and which one does not. The consumer health care protections that took effect on Thursday will help millions of Americans--by making it easier to afford preventative care, guaranteeing that children with pre-existing conditions can get insurance, etc. And these reforms are just a down-payment on the much bigger changes the Affordable Care Act will eventually bring?changes that will allow most of the uninsured to get coverage while starting to change the practice of medicine, in ways that hopefully will make it less expensive. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: If this is true, I'm significantly downgrading my opinion of the Barack Obama presidency: As several outlets have reported, top administration officials want to replace Summers with somebody from the business community--i.e., a current or former CEO. (Ideally, they'd like to get a woman, since Romer's departure means the economic team is nearly all-male now.) The idea is to disarm critics who say Obama is reflexively anti-business--or that, at the very least, he's getting bad advice because none of his top advisers come from the business community. That's Jonathan Cohn, in an excellent post about Summers and liberals, referring to reports such as this one. But getting back to the main point here: this is a remarkably stupid plan, if true. It will not ?disarm? critics who say that Obama is reflexively anti-business, any more than having Bob Gates at Defense ?disarmed? critics of Obama's approach to terror -- indeed, actually expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and killing a lot of terrorists didn't slow down those who were intent on claiming that Obama was some sort of secret bin Laden sympathizer. It doesn't work like that. Critics will say what they will say, and it mostly doesn't matter, and at any rate there's nothing you can do about it. What you can do, however, is have a well-run White House and do your best to have a well-run government. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: I haven?t yet read all the way through Freedom, the new novel by Jonathan Franzen. But like every sentient person in the United States, I?ve read a good deal about it, and I?ve been especially intrigued by the way reviewers have characterized Franzen?s attempt to write the political history of the George W. Bush years. The strand of the novel that deals most directly with the Iraq war has to do with Joey Berglund, the college-age son of the main characters, Patty and Walter. Joey ends up involved in a moral dilemma straight out of All My Sons: Having contracted to supply truck parts to the American army in Iraq, he can only fulfill the deal by using defective parts, thus possibly putting soldiers? lives at risk. This moral dereliction is presented as the logical culmination of Joey?s narcissistic, inhumane attitude toward world events. On September 11, 2001, for instance, Joey reacts to news of the attacks by feeling an ?intensely personal resentment,? since the horror violated his feeling ?that his life was destined to be a lucky one.? This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Jonathan Bernstein touches on an interesting question below: Who, exactly, speaks for the Tea Party movement? Many Tea Partiers would say that no one does. It's a grassroots movement, decentralized, self-organizing, bottom-up?all that jazz. Apart from Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, it doesn't really have any leaders. And yet, there are plenty of groups that would love to channel the Tea Parties' energy (and rage, let's not forget rage) for their own purposes. On top of that, the Tea Party movement may need a bit of centralization and coordination to survive and prosper in the future. But all those competing priorities can create an awful lot of tension. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: What a president does communicates a message to the American people, and, sometimes, what he does not do communicates a message as well. It can inform the public?s opinion about what he thinks is wrong and what he thinks is right; what needs fixing and what is working. This principle helps explain why, despite saying he is on their side in helping the economy improve, President Obama has struggled to convince the American public that he understands and wants to alleviate their suffering. Research jointly sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund (my employer) and Democracy Corp recently found that, if voters don?t see or feel the progress Democrats say that we are making (and that Republicans are trying to undo), they will interpret that to mean their leaders are content with the state the economy. ?People are intensely dissatisfied with the economy and are looking for solutions, anything less sounds like excuses,? the research said. Echoing this report, a recent New York Times poll found that 60 percent of people don?t think Obama has made significant headway in fixing the economy?and 53 percent don?t think he has a plan to create jobs. (Only 38 percent think he does.) This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: There?s an old joke in advertising circles that goes like this: A big firm gets an account to launch a new brand of dog food. It?s an all-hands-on-deck operation, with people working flat-out on logos, slogans, music, endorsements, product placement, and ads suited to every medium. Launch day comes, and everything goes perfectly. But after a couple of weeks, sales are miserable, and it becomes clear that the campaign is tanking. The entire firm gathers in the big conference room for a gloomy post-mortem. Each element of the launch is second-guessed, and recriminations are flying. Finally, a junior writer in a seat against the wall timidly raises his hand and ventures his opinion: ?Maybe the dogs didn?t like it.? Leading Democrats and pundits are dismayed that the president and congress haven?t gotten credit for an impressive record of accomplishment. Rescuing the banking system and the U.S. auto industry, passing the stimulus, health care, financial regulatory reform?it?s hard to deny that these are major steps, taken in dauntingly difficult circumstances. Even some of the president?s frequent critics, such as columnist Robert Samuelson, concede that without bold measures to stabilize financial institutions, we could well have faced a global depression. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: America inclines to wars of the rhetorical absolute. Adversaries readily turn into menaces; menaces into irresistible blobs and imminent devastations. Fights burst into wars and wars are declared holy. As the nation strives to protect itself from actually existing enemies, the Manichaean strain in American life packages them into the Enemy to End All Enemies. The enemy, like the monotheist?s God, is single and omnipresent. Behind every jihadi with a rocket grenade launcher stands Stalin and Hitler. Once again, everything is said?shrieked?to be at stake. All-or-nothing minds crowd the center of what is sometimes too respectfully called ?the national conversation.? And sometimes the center does not hold. We are not the only nation that has been drawn to the apocalyptic mood, God knows, but it is a leitmotif to which we return as if to primordial ooze. America was, after all, a promised land from before its inception. Before the English settlers had spied the Massachusetts coast, they knew it to be the yet unseen site of a ?new Israel.? When they discovered the land was already occupied, they wrestled with the question of how to come to terms with that inconvenient fact. Not all their reactions were extreme, but extremes were always a live option. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Reporter-researcher Tiffany Stanley is still at the Values Voter Summit, where attendees just heard from the event's most talked-about guest, Christine O'Donnell. First, she trumpeted the conservative revival: The conservative movement was told to curl up in a fetal position and just stay there for the next eight years, thankyouverymuch. Well, how things have changed. During those dark days, where commonsense, patriotic Americans were looking for some silver lining, they stumbled upon the constitution. You see, a funny thing happened on the way to our seats on the sideline. Those who had toiled for years in the values movement suddenly found ourselves surrounded by Americans who had found the most important value of all: liberty... The small elite don't get us. They call us wacky. They call us wingnuts. We call us "We the People." This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Congress is back, and one thing is obvious: There is no way they can complete the amount of work they have left before the November election. They still need to pass most of the spending bills for a fiscal year that starts in less than three weeks. On top of that, they must deal with energy; the small business tax-incentive plan; the new Obama ?don?t call it a stimulus? stimulus package, which includes business investment tax cuts; child nutrition and food safety; the plan to aid stricken 9/11 workers; the START treaty; and the Big Enchilada: expiration of the Bush tax cuts. With Democrats determined to get on the campaign trail ASAP and the GOP still in obstruction mode, only a fraction of these tasks will actually be accomplished. So we're likely to end up with a dreaded lame-duck session. Republicans have already been agitating against such a session for months. Back in August, Congressman Tom Price of Georgia, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, forced a vote on a resolution to block passage of any controversial policy proposals during a lame duck. He warned against secret Democratic plans to use the session to pass card-check, an energy tax, and a slew of big government programs. (The resolution failed on a largely party-line vote.) This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: It will force a lot of people to pay higher premiums. It will lavish subsidies on the private insurance industry. It will put life-and-death decisions in the hands of bureaucrats. And it will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal debt. No, I am not talking about the health care reform law. I'm talking about the Republican proposals to repeal it. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: In most of the discussions of why Mike Castle lost the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware to the wacky conservative insurgent Christine O?Donnell, commentators emphasize that Castle crossed conservatives by voting for gun control, climate-change legislation, and TARP ? as well as being pro-choice. In none of the analyses I've read has this last factor been emphasized, or treated as anything more significant than another indicator of his ?moderation.? Ignoring abortion as an issue is an inveterate habit of the chattering classes, particularly on the progressive side of the aisle. Few people, other than celebrating right-to-lifers, have noted how much the already slim ranks of pro-choice Republicans were thinned this primary season. Aside from Castle, Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Lisa Murkowski, and Representative Tom Campbell, have lost in major statewide contests. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The dynamics around the Christine O'Donnell campaign are going to set the stage for Sarah Palin's presidential campaign, if she chooses to wage one. O'Donnell is kind of a more Palin-y Palin, an attractive female committed social conservative who excites the base. Much of the establishment considers her totally unelectable, and some people who have worked with her consider her totally unqualified to hold national office. Yet she has attained an iconic standing that makes opposition very tricky. One commonality is the issue of "respect." Fred Barnes explains that Mike Castle lost, in part, because he "didn?t respect a Tea Party-backed rival." The context of this claim is not that Castle failed to take O'Donnell seriously as a threat, but that he failed to treat her with appropriate deference. This is exactly the same dynamic that Palin's potential rivals are trying to navigate -- run against her without seeming to endorse the calumnies of the dread liberal media. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The election is seven weeks away and the outcome, obviously, is far from certain. But a Republican takeover of the House seems more likely than not. And people are already starting to speculate about what it means for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Politico's lead story yesterday was "Dems Plan for a Future Without Pelosi." It quoted several sources suggesting that Pelosi was likely to step down, among them an anonymous House member who said "If we lose it badly, Pelosi would have to leave." The source didn't define "lose it badly," but I've heard political professionals on and around the Hill say similar things. As the argument goes, if Democrats lose the House then it means Pelosi has failed. She'll have to go. I understand the logic. I also don't agree with it. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The conservative movement has spent the last 20 months sowing hysteria about President Obama's agenda. The most respectable Republicans call the president a socialist, a radical, a threat to freedom. The less respectable Republicans, many of them highly influential, call him an alien, a sympathizer of radical Islam, a conscious enemy of the United States who is trying to wreck the economy. Obama is a dangerous figure, he cannot be compromised with, and the fight against him is a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic. And so it has been amusing to watch Republicans as they desperately attempted to persuade Republican voters in Delaware to support moderate Mike Castle over Christine O'Donnell. The political logic is obvious: Castle would have been a near shoo-in to win, while O'Donnell is a near shoo-in to lose. Castle may be a moderate, but half a loaf is better than none. Here is John McCormack of the Weekly Standard: This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: It's been a good year for climate skeptics. Not, mind you, because they've been vindicated at all on the merits. Quite the opposite: 2010 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record, Arctic sea ice continues to thin out, heat waves have been torching Russia, and nearly one-fifth of Pakistan has been submerged underwater. The science on global warming is still overwhelming. But politically, skepticism is at its zenith. Consider: During the sweatiest U.S. summer in recorded history, and in the midst of a major oil catastrophe in the Gulf, the Senate didn't even bother to take a vote on a bill to limit carbon emissions. Skeptics managed to inflate the Climategate non-scandal into a breathless media event and launched a high-profile attack on the IPCC over?what was it again??a minor misstatement about Himalayan glaciers. Republicans and coal-state Democrats are now trying to chip away at the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and in California, coal and gas companies are making a major push to repeal the state's sweeping climate law, AB32. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Finally! A sense of urgency about Sudan. In a major foreign policy address on September 8, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the country as a "ticking time bomb." Yet it may already be too late. The ?bomb? has been ticking for over five and a half years, and neither the Bush administration nor the Obama administration has been willing to devote the appropriate attention to defuse it. Self-determination referenda are scheduled for early January 2011, in both Southern Sudan and the contested border enclave of Abyei. There is precious little time to avert a return to civil war in the next 120 days, as unresolved issues between the Khartoum regime and the Sudan People?s Liberation Movement in the South threaten to derail the voting process spelled out in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). A host of important electoral mechanics and procedures remain to be agreed upon, and Khartoum gives every sign that it is trying to run out the clock, thereby forcing Southern Sudan either to delay the referenda or to make a unilateral declaration of independence. Either could easily become a casus belli, as could Khartoum?s blunt refusal to honor the results of the referenda?or an attempt to preempt those results militarily. So how can we maximize the chances of a peaceful separation within Africa?s largest, and ethnically most diverse, country? How can we deal with the perverse fact that Sudan?s oil reserves lie so near the North/South border, as do vast quantities of arable land? The question is made especially difficult by the fact that these oil reserves are chiefly in the South?80 percent is a common figure?while Chinese-constructed oil infrastructure lies mainly in the north. Moreover, the border regions, including Abyei, are among the most populous in Sudan, and ethnic tensions are close to boiling. How can we resolve the various disputes that have festered for so many years? This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Should we promote public health by providing extra funds for HIV prevention, cancer screening, flu vaccination, and the like? Or should we zero out these funds in order to repeal a small health reform provision that clamps down on rampant tax evasion? That?s the choice Congress is likely to face next week. Some prominent Republicans want it to choose the latter, although you likely won?t hear about it?at least, not in those terms. Instead, you will hear about how Republicans are trying to undo some of the damage health care reform supposedly inflicts upon small business. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: In the next few days?perhaps Thursday?the Korean Workers? Party will begin its national conference, the first since 1966. The meeting, according to state media, will ?mark a meaningful chapter in the history of our party.? Some reports indicate that the gathering already started on Monday, with the registration of participants. The event, the third in the history of North Korea, is the result of a national mass mobilization. South Korean sources say military units have been converging on Pyongyang, presumably to take part in a show of might. China?s Xinhua News Agency has issued dispatches about rehearsals in the North Korean capital for a grand celebration, with participants waving red and pink plastic flowers. In all probability, the party conference will coincide with Thursday?s celebration of the sixty-second anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People?s Republic of Korea, as North Korea formally calls itself. As such, the event looks like it has been scheduled to boost the legitimacy of Kim-family rule. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Early last week, Alvin Greene paid a visit to the studios of WBT Radio in Charlotte. Ostensibly, he was there to drum up support for his campaign to unseat South Carolina Senator Jim Demint. But, as is always the case with Greene, politics quickly gave way to farce. For two hours, he offered up his daffy policy proposals (like selling action figures of himself to end the recession) and fumblingly dodged embarrassing questions about his involuntary discharge from the military and his recent indictment for allegedly showing pornography to a University of South Carolina coed. The most surreal moment came when the show?s host, Keith Larson, played a viral rap hit about the candidate (sample lyrics: ?Greene?s a new face in politics / And he don?t show porno to college chicks?), spurring Greene, to the delight of Larson and the six cameramen filming the radio interview, to get up from his chair and dance. It was only a matter of hours before the clip of Greene shimmying went viral itself. Which, of course, is why, according to the Charlotte Observer, WBT shelled out $575 dollars for a limo to chauffeur Greene the 230 miles from his home in Manning, South Carolina, to Charlotte to do the interview in the first place. The radio station knew that, one way or another, Greene would make news. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Toward the end of Defying Hitler, his extraordinary memoir of the rise of Nazism in Germany, Sebastian Haffner describes how the Nazis had ?made all Germans everywhere into comrades.? This, he argued, had been a moral catastrophe. This emphatically was not because comradeship was never a good thing. To the contrary, as Haffner was at pains to insist, it was a great and necessary comfort and help for people who had to live under unbearable, inhuman conditions, above all in war. But Haffner was equally adamant that, in normal times, in ordinary civilian life, comradeship became a vice, for it relieved people of ?responsibility for their actions, before themselves, before God, before their consciences. ... Their comrades are their conscience and give absolution for everything, provided they do what everyone else does.? Anyone who was ever bullied in a schoolyard, or, more to the point, anyone who ever joined in the bullying or just stood by while it was going on, knows full well where that feeling that no blame attaches to you if you are doing what everyone else is can lead. You end up doing, or at least condoning, things that you would never do solo, and that you have a hard time justifying once the crowd disperses and you are on your own again. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: On both sides of the Atlantic, it has been an uncomfortable summer for immigrant groups. Here in the United States there have been the quarrels over the "Ground Zero Mosque," ?anchor babies,? and Arizona?s new illegal immigrant bill (not to mention yet more calls for the deportation of our ?Muslim? president to his ?native? Kenya by the surprisingly large proportion of the Republican Party that seems to have taken up permanent residence on Planet Zorg). Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, faced with removal from office by the voters in 2012, has continued to push legislation outlawing the wearing of the burqa in public and acted to expel several hundred Roma to Romania and Bulgaria. This last move in particular has earned him widespread criticism from the media, and widespread support from the French public. Sarkozy?s actions and France?s continuing struggles with the immigration issue have gotten relatively little coverage in the United States. They are worth taking a closer look at, however, because they starkly illustrate many of the issues that arise from the world-wide movement of populations?issues that the United States will be confronting more and more over the coming decades. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Lord have mercy. These days, a man can?t even strap on a bunch of explosives, take a network building hostage, and get himself shot dead by police without touching off a partisan slap fest. Before I fired up my computer this morning, I assumed that conservative partisans would have been busy little beavers during the night. Sure enough, not one but two e-mails awaited me, crowing about James Lee?s environmental extremism. Since then, I?ve run across plenty more Web posts with headlines dubbing Lee a ?Violent Liberal Environmentalist? or a ?Liberal Ecoterrorist? or otherwise crowing about his not-a-conservative status. I was more surprised, I confess, by a post at the liberal blog Think Progress, detailing how Lee?s online manifesto ?Echoes Anti-immigrant Groups? Malthusian Screed,? then walking readers through the sinister phenomenon of nativism?s greenwashing. It?s not that I think liberals are necessarily above that sort of opportunistic bashing. But linking Lee?s behavior to an ugly right-wing ideology took considerably more creativity and chutzpah than the right?s gloating about Lee?s fondness for An Inconvenient Truth. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: Here's a paradox for you. Most ecologists would agree that we're ravaging the Earth's natural resources at an unsustainable rate?and pushing up against some dangerous thresholds in the biosphere. (See my old piece on planetary boundaries for the gloomy version of this tale.) Broadly speaking, the planet's ecosystems are in terrible shape, and this is widely believed to have negative consequences for humanity. And yet, at the same time, human well-being has never been better. People are living longer, healthier, and richer lives. If you could rev up a time machine and choose to be plopped at any point in history, 2010 would be a sound choice. So what gives? Why the disparity? And does this mean that we shouldn't worry too much about global warming, ocean acidification, and other ecological crises-in-waiting, since it sure looks like we'll just continue to get richer even as we cause irreversible damage to the planet? (Jim Manzi has argued a version of this position in our debates on climate change.) Those are all good questions. And in the September issue of BioScience, a team of researchers led by McGill's Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne tried to come up with a bunch of explanations for the "environmentalist's paradox." Here are the big four: This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion

Description: The returns are pretty much in from the mainstream media: Glenn Beck?s ?Restoring Honor? rally this past weekend on the National Mall was a largely a noncontroversial event focused on religion, not politics, and it may have augured a kinder, gentler Beck whose egomania is now devoted to less fractious causes than overthrowing the ?liberal? establishment. That?s pretty much the conclusion reached by Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, whose review of MSM coverage of the rally emphasized the outrages Beck did not commit. Chris Good of The Atlantic also summed up the prevailing impression: The rally was more of a religious, motivational event than anything else. It was political in that a lot of people with the same political leanings, many of them active in the Tea Party movement, convened on the mall to hear about things other than politics. What they heard was extremely basic statements about how the nation must restore its honor through a rediscovery of faith. This podcast brought to you by GoToMeeting - Save time and money traveling by using GoToMeeting. For a free 45 day trial visit Gotomeeting.com/podcast by OutloudOpinion