Needlenose

David Dayen at Firedoglake wrote this morning about how Sen. Richard Shelby’s attempt to block 70 Obama administration nominees over a couple of earmarks “does amount to what you would call a ‘teachable moment’ about the dysfunctional Senate.”

In his initial reaction overnight, Josh Marshall went a bit further, noting that Shelby’s hostage-taking attempt showed “gallons more audacity than Obama ever could have hoped for”:

… I wonder if this story might not end up amounting to much more than the sum of its parts because it brings together three or four of the issues roiling American politics today in a bundle of smack-you-in-the-face arrogance that’s too much to ignore.

For Republicans and the Tea Party set you’ve got pork-barrel spending and earmarks… for Democrats, there’s the outrage at archaic Senate obstructionism.

Perhaps more important, it crystallizes the essential pettiness and hubris of the Republican in such a vivid way that even Democrats should be able to sell the image of GOP selfishness to a generally inattentive public.

It’s happened before, back in 1995 when Newt Gingrich led the newly Republican-controlled Congress in forcing a shutdown of the federal government, trying to force President Clinton to capitulate on budget issues.  Thanks to an inopportune remark by Gingrich about a personal snub he had received from Clinton, the White House successfully embarrassed the GOP into ending the standoff.

That Shelby would try such a stunt barely a couple of weeks after the Republicans snagged their coveted 41st Senate seat shows that his party hasn’t outgrown Gingrich’s penchant for overreach.   But, as D-Day also wrote today, President Obama and the Democratic leadership can’t let themselves be even less willing to stand up for their own interests than the famed triangulator, Clinton.

Perhaps Obama should make a high-profile visit to various GOP senators’ home states, asking locals if they’re as fond of Shelby’s earmarks as Massachusetts voters were of Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker kickback.”  Or maybe there’s a better attention-getting maneuver.

But hell, they need to do something.  Don’t let this teachable moment pass.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

We may have invented the solar cell, but China has taken the lead in manufacturing solar panels – and wind turbines as well, to add a little salt into the wound.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

That’s just rhetoric, Mr. President, Congress wants whatever their corporate masters tell them to want.  And in spite of what Justice Alito  may have been muttering during your speech, that’s regardless of where those corporate masters may live.  Multinationals just follow the money.

Every time Congress considers boosting vehicle fuel efficiency via CAFE standards, the auto industry lobbyists descend on the Capitol to bleat about how higher mileage targets will bankrupt the industry.

I was watching a recent episode of Mythbusters where they ‘dimpled’ a car to see if the dimples would improve the laminar flow and reduce drag like they do on a golfball.

In spite of adding 800 lbs to the weight of the pictured sedan (car was coated in clay rather than denting the metal to get dimples), they were able to increase cruising fuel efficiency 11% !!  Could you imagine what the auto industry could achieve by throwing some skilled engineers and designers on this?   Hell, if they’d just produce cars with an actual streamlined design (rather than what people think is streamlined), they’d greatly increase fuel efficiency.

Although Obama seems to be having some trouble getting unity among his own party in Congress, there is some good news – 8 Republican Representatives  crossed party lines to vote with the Dems on the recent climate change legislation.

Although I’ve occasionally decried the leadership of Pelosi and Reid, the looming GOP attacks on these 8 Representatives could give Pelosi something to work with in the form of a small group of ‘quislings’ to give the appearance of bi-partisan support to legislation and offset the more disloyal and conservative Democratic Representatives.  Definitely 8 Reps to keep an eye on!

In related and joyful news, Al Franken is now Senator Al Franken, because “he’s good enough, and smart enough, and doggone it, Minnesotans like him!”

While every talking head from Capitol Hill to the late night talk show hosts are focussed on how the corruptly crafted and rushed-through bailout legislation led to the infamous AIG executive incompetence bonuses, the real problem is far more insidious – nothing precludes the TARP recipient firms from using our cash to lobby for favorable legislation – which they have apparently taken to doing with gusto.

I’ve never really bought the argument that corporate lobbying is a form of ‘free speech.’  However, getting that banned is a change I doubt I’ll see in my lifetime.  Still, even the stupidest Federal Judge should be able to see how dangerous it is to allow a private firm to ‘recycle’ tax dollars into lobbying efforts to craft favorable legislation for the recipient.    It’s the type of feedback loop that distorts the market and creates institutional ‘winners and losers.’

• In any governmental bailout of a private firm, we need to insist on the following basic principles:
• The government holds an initial majority stake in the firm
• The goals of the investment and required restructuring and changes are clearly defined and milestones established
• The public stake is reduced in step with the achievement of the milestones
• The firm is barred from any and all political lobbying efforts while the government investment remains.

For the period of time in which the government is a large stakeholder in a private firm, the organization becomes, to some extent, a quasi-governmental organization.  It would be like having the US Post Office spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby Congress to expand their budget!!

Alan K. Ota reports for Congressional Quarterly today:

An early partisan skirmish is likely in the House next week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to move a rules package that would curb the GOP’s ability to derail legislation through a parliamentary maneuver it used on occasion over the past two years.

. . . A senior House Democratic aide said Pelosi, D-Calif., had not made a final decision on whether to move the two proposed rules changes when the 111th Congress convenes Tuesday, Jan. 6.

But Democratic leaders are definitely taking a hard look at preventing the minority party from scoring easy political points with motions to recommit a bill to committee with instructions to make contentious language changes and then report it back to the House “promptly.” In the outgoing Congress, “promptly’’ has meant an indefinite hold, because committees were not willing to adopt poison-pill amendments sponsored by the minority.

. . . “Republicans will still get a chance to make motions to recommit. But they would not be allowed to just kill bills in a way that was never intended,” said one Democratic aide.

This development was hailed as a breakthrough by behavioral psychologists studying learned helplessness, who look forward to analyzing Pelosi’s recent diet and other environmental influences to see if a similar shift in thinking can be provoked in Senate majority leader Harry Reid.

The coming Congress will be a case where those who pray for bipartisan peace are well advised to prepare for partisan war.  The Republicans clearly remember that they derailed the last Democratic president who had House and Senate majorities of his party simply by using every obstructive technique available to them.  Telling the GOP that this isn’t 1994 will do little good if they see the same weapons lying within reach — as the last two elections have shown, they’re very poor at seeing the downside to staying the course.

At a time when the country desperately needs action, Congress (and the incoming president) would be smart to realize that winning the cooperation of enough Republicans to succeed will be easier if you dismantle in advance the tools they would use to defeat you.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

I already wrote last month about the initial Abu Ghraib scandal being propelled by the inevitable release of other photographic and video evidence.

Looks like it’s about to happen again. As Christopher Hitchens (of all people) writes in Slate:

It is going to get much worse. The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe (“I’m outraged more by the outrage”) have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not. There will probably be a slight difficulty about showing these scenes in prime time, but they will emerge, never fear. We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see.

Hitchens has been a shameless apologist for the war, so if he’s throwing out warnings like this, the evidence must be both truly awful and just about to hit the airwaves.

I’d advise not reading his full article, though, unless you’d like too much information about Hitchens’ idle daydreams involving Osama bin Laden and pigs. (He does make a worthwhile point, though, about torture being a worthless interrogation technique, as demonstrated by the British experience with Irish Republican Army terrorists. Just, uh, skip over the Osama part.)

Remember when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before Congress a couple of weeks ago about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal?

In a much-belated burst of candor, he told the panelists, “”There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist … If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse.”

The candor was short-lived, however, as the Pentagon/White House chickened out of releasing the newfound evidence.

Didn’t matter. The Washington Post already has it:

In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in previously released still photographs — such as the stacking of naked detainees — but the video images render the incidents more vividly.

Also coming soon to a cable news channel near you, I’m sure.

The term “quagmire” was coined to describe the increasingly costly and unwinnable U.S. ‘intervention’ in Vietnam. Although the language used by Dubya and his Oily Men to describe the war on Iraq were borrowed straight from WWII (Saddam=Hitler, Anti-War=Appeasement, de-Nazification=de-Baathification), the conflict most closely resembles Vietnam.

Just as in that conflict (and unlike WWII), the U.S. never actually bothered to declare war. In both cases, Congress abnegated its constitutional rights to wage war (a point on which Senator Bryd droned on at great length, in a complete turnabout from his stand on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution). Fabricated evidence embraced by the Administration provided the causus belli for each conflict (Vietnam had the Gulf of Tonkin incident). Now we’re engaged in the futile endeavor of ‘imposing democracy’ (nation building) on a country that’s preparing to split into at least 2 parts.

And now, in the most chilling development, we’re starting to hear that dripping sound of American blood spilling into the desert as those stubborn ”pockets of resistance’ change their fighting tactics. By the end of the conflict Vietnam had cost more that 50,000 American lives – but of course that didn’t happen all at once. The first troops started dying in dribbles and drabs, 2 in 1959, 8 in 1963 and so on, in a steady escalation. I just hope this time the war doesn’t take 30 years and 5+ million dead Iraqis to play itself out.

In a break with history, however, I’d like to introduce a better metaphor for our unwinnable conflict – let’s replace ‘quagmire’ with ‘quicksand.’ I realize that the Iraqi desert is not particularly sandy, but it seems more appropriate than invoking a jungle/bog metaphor, and given time, the conflict is likely to spill over to Iraq’s sandier neighbors.