Sullivan makes a more general point while discussing the DOJ’s decision to not defend a challenge on Section 3 of DOMA:

Which is not the first time one can say that on many issues, where Obama’s caution and incrementalism have begun to create a legacy that is deeply unsatisfying in the present but looks rather substantive from the rear-view mirror.

I think this is exactly what drives the reactionary left, particularly on the blogs, crazy. We live in a media environment today that encourages instant reactions, and puts a very strong disincentive on reflection. And when you look at the Obama Administration’s actions on a very small time scale, things don’t really look that great. It’s only when you take a step back and look at things in a broader way do you really see the real progress that has been made.

It’s like a wise woman once said, Obama’s like a full-on Monet. In a good way.

One of the things that I took away from this speech is something that I usually just take for granted every day: Intel, by and large, manufactures in America. How many other high-tech firms can say the same thing?

This is one thing that I think a lot of people don’t really know. I’m sure that a lot of people think of Intel making high-tech products and automatically assume that it’s happening in China or Taiwan. But it’s not. That Core i5 you’re rocking was probably made in America. And if it wasn’t, then it was made in Israel or Ireland. Not China.

And in this day and age, I think that’s something to be proud of.

Ever since I first heard “Half Light I” off of The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, I thought I had heard it before.  Then I became convinced that an advanced copy had made it into the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack.  Then, I was actually listening to the song one day (er…today) while sitting at a computer and decided to do some research.

Turns out that the song isn’t in Little Miss Sunshine but sounds very, very similar to this Devotchka song called “How It Ends,” which very much is in Little Miss Sunshine.

You be the judge.

Skip to 4:18

Skip to 2:08

I still love the song and the album, and I’m not trying to knock anybody because sometimes this kind of thing can happen unconsciously, but boy am I glad I solved the mystery in my head.

UPDATE:

Ok. So I didn’t mention that the reason this came up is because I heard “Half Light I” on my Pandora Arcade Fire station. And now, not ten minutes later, Pandora decided to play “The Winner Is” which is probably the actual song from Little Miss Sunshine I was thinking of, not the one above.

So even Pandora agrees with me.

The External World from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Greg Mankiw thinks he’s really clever:

I have a plan to reduce the budget deficit.  The essence of the plan is the federal government writing me a check for $1 billion.  The plan will be financed by $3 billion of tax increases.  According to my back-of-the envelope calculations, giving me that $1 billion will reduce the budget deficit by $2 billion.

Now, you may be tempted to say that giving me that $1 billion will not really reduce the budget deficit.  Rather, you might say, it is the tax increases, which have nothing to do with my handout, that are reducing the budget deficit.  But if you are tempted by that kind of sloppy thinking, you have not been following the debate over healthcare reform.

I’m not going to attack this particular point about PPACA, because others have done it already.

I do think, however, it needs to be pointed out that this is indicative of the alternate universe in which most of the mainstream GOP resides.  In this alternate universe, tax increases are not a means to reduce the deficit.  They point this out as if it’s some sort of joke that you don’t get.  From Michele Bachmann’s “tax cuts shouldn’t be considered a deficit,” to CUTGO, to the new slash-and-burn budget plan straight out of Paul Ryan’s wet dream, it is clear that, in the mind of the modern GOP, the only path to a balanced budget is with spending cuts.

This is horribly unrealistic.

Any serious plan to take control of our budget situation must include an increase in our average tax rates.  And that’s no joke.

Today, President Obama will sign a bill repealing DADT, and watch the Senate ratify the new START treaty.  These are two things that were emphatically pronounced dead weeks ago.  So what’s going on here?

I think a lot of this is the power of the lame duck.  You’ve got retiring Senators, Senators that got beat, and a bunch of other Senators not up for reelection until 2014 or 2016.  It makes it easy to vote for things you otherwise wouldn’t vote for when they can fly under the radar.

But there’s one person that sticks out when I look at these roll calls: Lisa Murkowski.

Not that Lisa Murkowski has ever been particularly conservative (her DW-Nominate scores are typically around 0.25, which is somewhere in between the GOP average and Susan Collins), and she had plenty of company from the GOP voting for these two bills.

But there’s one vote that sticks out: the DREAM Act.  Lisa Murkowski was one of only 3 Republicans to vote yes.  The others being Bob Bennett of Utah (who just got primaried on the right and is leaving the Senate) and Richard Lugar (a frequent GOP maverick).  So what’s Lisa Murkowski doing voting for something that couldn’t even get Ben Nelson or Max Baucus on board?

She’s got freedom.

In an election season that was characterized by far right challenges to GOP incumbents, Lisa Murkowski survived.  Murkowski was the antidote to Christine O’Donnell mania.  So she’s got a brand new strategy.  Stop defending your right flank and shoot for the general, and if it means you no longer have a GOP label, then all the better.

I have a feeling there’s some other GOP Congressmen that might want to follow this model, and they’re paying attention.  So how much longer will it be until a new party forms, full of GOP moderates?

Just saying…

I think this is awesome. Maybe you do too:

In 2008, security researcher Dan Kaminsky discovered and helped develop a patch for one of the most fundamental flaws ever found in the infrastructure of the Internet. Lately he’s been working on a fix for a very different infrastructure problem: the faulty photoreceptors in my eyes.

So..

Kaminsky isn’t colorblind. But when he went with a friend to see the Star Trek movie last year, he was amazed to discover that his friend couldn’t see that one character in the film had green skin. “He thought she just had a very deep tan,” says Kaminsky. (Come to think of it, so did I.)

About 14 months of on-and-off development later, Kaminsky on Wednesday launched DanKam, an augmented reality app for iPhone and Android that aims to offer a quick fix for situations where colorblindness causes ambiguities. DanKam uses the phone’s camera to feed in images to the display in real-time, but tweaks those images with a collection of changeable color-shifting schemes that the user can choose. The most basic one, HueQuantize, exaggerates both red and green and moves them further to the extremes of the color spectrum, away from the indistinguishable middle ground where colorblind users get stuck. When I pointed an iPhone running DanKam at a collection of M&Ms on my desk, for instance, the reds popped out in a pinker, day-glo hue while the browns remained as brown as in the real world.

Fuck yeah, future.  Now where’s my jetpack/flyingcar/singularity already.

Alright y’all.

I see stuff like this:

And (tongue very in cheek, but still sorta eerie), I start thinking of this:

“Beginner’s luck!”

Not new as far as the internet is concerned, but incredible, regardless:

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve just drunk too much of the Kool-Aid because I seem to always find myself agreeing with Barack Obama.  I’m not exactly a my team/your team kind of guy (I’m always the one that admits a bad call in my favor in sports, for example), so I don’t really think this is what’s happening.  I just think my political disposition is squarely in line with this President, which apparently is something of a rarity among Democrats lately.

When I checked in on the blogs late last night and saw the tax deal that was struck, I stuck out my lip, slowly nodded my head, and said, “Hmm.  Not bad.”  Which is not to say that I was necessarily excited about the deal, but it had a little more “sugar” in it than I had expected. 2% payroll tax cut?  Sounds good to me.  UI extension for 13 months?  Not bad.  Temp extension of Bush tax cuts for 2 more years?  Could be worse.

I think thats the key phrase.  It could be worse.  But could it be better?  The kids over at DailyKos would have you think so.

But what is this magical solution that our President has so stupidly failed to see?

Is it to have a staring contest with a emboldened political party that will clearly not back down, while raising taxes on lower to middle class families during a sluggish recovery that is still posting 9.8% unemployment?  Is that the solution America is craving?

Is it the likely death of unemployment insurance for people who are out of work through no fault of their own?

How about a guarantee of zero fiscal stimulus for 2011?  Is that the silver bullet to economic recovery?

Do people honestly believe that anyone will remember this in 2012?  Or that they’ll even blame Republicans for it?  That ship has sailed.  The only real chance of using this issue as an electoral bludgeon was before the midterms, not after, which I will remind everyone is exactly what Obama wanted to do, but the Democrats in Congress punted.

So now the tricks and gimmicks are over.  It comes down to what’s best for the economy today.  Middle class tax hikes, or temporary extension of tax cuts for the rich?  Extended unemployment benefits, or an expiration?  Fiscal stimulus, however modest, or pro-cyclical contraction?

I’ll take the deal.

Hey gang. You might notice something different about the title syntax of this SiMH post. If so, that’s great, and I hope you take advantage of your situation. You might even consider trying something similar yourself someday. I think that’d be real cool. If you’re confused, ask a buddy.

I’ve been really enjoying these guys over the past few weeks. I think they sound like a mix between the Fleet Foxes and some Caribbean band that I’ve never heard of. When I listen to their music, I get the feeling that, in the future, when I revisit these albums, I’m going to be reminded of my current life state–my neighborhood in the fall, the current state of my relationships, watching Friday Night Lights for the first time–and I get all sentimental and excited. I hope they can offer you a similar experience. Enjoy, friend:

If you fall in love, you can pick up their two EPs at their website: http://lordhuron.com/

First off, sup Juice, it has been a while since we last talked. Did you lose some weight? Been hittin’ the gym? Either way, you’re looking good.

I know it’s somewhat rude to just jump into a rant after having not spoke in so long, but there’s something I have to get off my chestacles.

It is something that has become my bête noire for the last couple of days, something that fills me with almost seething rage. This “it” I refer to is none other than the concept (and practice) of Daylight Saving Time.

Want to know why? I bet you do, but it’s not going to reveal itself until after the metaphorical “jump”,  so make with it already.

(more…)

I think it’s pretty safe to say that any major legislation that hasn’t passed already is absolutely dead in the water. Cap and trade? Forget about it. Card check? No way. A second stimulus. Nope. And looking back, I’m really happy that health care reform passed when it did, because the Dems would have gotten clobbered either way. At least we still have that.

So what do we have to look forward to then?

The way I see it, the brand new House Republican majority has two basic options: punt or blitz.

In the punt scenario, the GOP can just sit back and quietly block any major pieces of Obama’s agenda, but not mount a serious fight against current legacy problems. No government shutdowns. No new major policy initiatives. No serious budget stare-downs. Just throw enough red meat at the base to keep them happy, but not enough to draw a bunch of attention to yourself (maybe some hearings on how Al Gore made up global warming).

In this scenario, the GOP would basically hope to survive 2012 by not taking ownership of what looks like a still pretty weak economy in 2012. Based on the latest Fed projections, we’ll still be looking at ~7.5% unemployment in two years, which might be enough to drag down Obama.

The problem with this strategy would be keeping the caucus in line. The class of 2010 has some pretty motivated freshman with Tea Party sentiments that may not want to sit on the sidelines while things drag on. If this is the path the GOP chooses, watch for a disgruntled GOP caucus stepping out of line here and there.

In the blitz scenario, the GOP would launch a major oppositional agenda and put it center stage, with big time fights between Speaker Boehner and President Obama dominating the media. This would be 1995 all over again. Budget showdowns and the whole kit and kaboodle (maybe even an impeachment!).

The problem with this strategy is it gives a clear foil for Obama, which he didn’t have during 2010. It was very hard for Democrats to differentiate themselves from Republicans when they were in the majority. The thing to keep in mind is that the Republicans still are not very popular. This was more a “not-Democrat” wave than it was a Republican one. If the GOP serves its agenda up as a target it will get wrecked by Obama. In an Obama v. Boehner fight, I pick Obama every time.

So what’ll they choose? My money’s on punt, but I’m hoping for the blitz.

The real wildcard here is what Obama does in response. He can try to force the GOP into either of these roles.

The one thing that seems extremely unlikely is that there’s actually some meaningful compromises that happen on major policies during the 112th Congress. Not that I wouldn’t welcome it, but color me skeptical.

(Which is sad, by the way.)

The first real test of this will be the lame duck tax cut fight. If the GOP brings the noise and mounts a full blown fight creating an impasse, signs point to blitz. If they agree on a temporary extension, signs point to punt.

I can’t wait.

Cool article about the rise of public radio in recent years, thanks to a reinvention of the medium by shows like This American life, Radiolab, and Sound Opinions:

I talked recently with Robert Krulwich, who first joined the NPR network just a few years after All Things Considered went on the air in the Nixon era and now cohosts the public radio program Radiolab, and he remembers those days as filled with invention:

“Radio was dead—it was top 40. All the smarties were at the Times or The Washington Post, or if you didn’t want to be Woodward and Bernstein you went to work for Walter Cronkite at the Tiffany network. This group of nutty people wandered in and said, let’s do radio. We’ll reinvent it. Jump thirty-five or forty years ahead and where is Walter Cronkite? What happened to The Washington Post? And guess what, the nutty radio people have suddenly emerged as the focus for a huge audience. And now they have a little of the swagger of the Timesmen.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/all-programs-considered/?page=1

The light on the floor of my room was doing cool things when I woke up this morning, due to a slight breeze sneaking its way through my open window and past my curtains. I grabbed my iPhone and took a few short clips. I hoped to capture the moment of opening my eyes from sleep, not yet ready to move, and watching the light dance on my floor on this crisp Fall Saturday morning. As a video, it’s not much, but it was a nice way to start my day, so I thought I would share it with you all.

Happy Fall.