At The Denver Post, Ed Quillen writes:

One of the few positive media developments in 2008 arrived after the national political conventions, when Rachel Maddow got her own nightly hour on MSNBC.

Not that I always concur with her politics, but unlike most such hosts, she doesn't badger, talk over or needlessly interrupt her guests. She might argue with them, but she always offers them a chance to speak. Nor is she full of herself like Keith Olbermann, who can elevate pomposity to stratospheric levels.

Lately Maddow's show has offered a nightly feature called "Lame Duck Watch," which observes that George W. Bush is still president of the United States of America, and thus in position to issue regulations, pardons and executive orders that deserve scrutiny, especially when most eyes are focused on the impending presidency of Barack Obama.

This got me to wondering about the origin of the phrase "lame duck." We use it to describe an office-holder whose replacement has been elected but not sworn in. It connotes a sense of being crippled, even though the lame duck still holds the full powers of office. ...

The phrase did not originate in politics. According to my favorite bathroom reference book, "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," the expression originally came from finance, and referred to "a stock-jobber or dealer who will not, or cannot, pay his losses" and has to "waddle out of the alley like a lame duck." It also applies to a defaulter on a loan, and goes back to 18th-century London.

What Mister Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney defaulted on was not a loan but rather their oath of office. Scarcely a more appropriate pair of lame ducks in U.S. history deserve to be flipped the bird.

• • •

The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story Anti-apartheid campaigner Helen Suzman dies at 91.

Plenty of people are getting back to work and asking each other, “So how was your break?”

One of Xy’s fellow teachers answered thusly:

He was taking a shower in his house in Algiers when the police kicked in his door and sent in a K-9 unit. The dog rampaged through the house, somehow got up into the attic, and then fell through the ceiling on top of the guy as he emerged from the shower. The dog then attacked the guy, biting his leg. The guy had a grip on the dog’s jaws when the police entered and told him to leave the dog alone. They were searching for a young man with dreadlocks. This teacher is middle-aged and bald.

He wanted to sue but his lawyer told him to forget it, there are so many people waiting in line to get a settlement from the police department.

I don’t know what to make of this tale. It seems so fantastic. But Xy heard it directly from the guy’s mouth. And he was walking with a cane.

So how was your break?

This evening's Rescue Rangers are Louisiana 1976, taylormattd, jlms qkw (pulling a double shift), dopper0189, and grog with shayera editing.

• joetex recounts how he and his neighbors got through the power failure following Ike in Hurricane: Saved by the Electric Mini? (Louisiana 1976)
• Vladislaw gives us a potpourri of science and science fiction news in Burt Rutan: "Houston, we have a problem." Kennedy Quote. Poll Results. (jlms qkw)
• Michael Alton Gottlieb writes an essay speculating what the future holds after the breakdown of the current international order: End of Empire: Beginning of Wisdom. (dopper0189)
• supak wanders through depression, chemistry and emotional demands in A Crock Full of Happiness. (grog)
• Schopenhauer Telescope contrasts his current teaching position and the children of a private school with his previous experience in a public one in The Educator Diaries, Part I: Educating the Elite. (Louisiana 1976)
• newfie53523 shares an easy way to make someone happy in Making a difference in the life of a child one birthday cake at a time. (jlms qkw)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: January 4, 2009.

Eddie C has Top Comments 01-05-2008 Sixty Years Ago Today Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Oops:

h/t: Media Matters

In the following I make three claims, which I will state upfront in exaggerated terms, both to get the point across and so my errors are more visible. (1) The United States (or factions in it) has more of a stake in the outcome in the Israel/Palestine conflict than Israel does. (2) Israel does not need the U.S. (3) Understanding (1) and (2) is key to resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or so anyway I want to try to argue. My argument will take the form of a discussion of a post from Juan Cole, although what I want to say is not primarily about Cole's post.

On Sunday, Juan Cole posted a longish piece about Israel, Palestine, and the current fighting between them. Typically for a Cole piece, it provides a good bit of historical background and original thought. He makes a more-or-less elaborate argument about The Big Picture for the two peoples, to which I will get in a moment. The argument he makes is worthwhile and non-simplistic; but I think he overlooks or slides past an obvious point -- and I think that addressing that obvious point requires making the Big Picture, Bigger.

As an aside, I am not here attempting to argue for a position in The Standard American I/P Debate. I have a position in the SAI/PD -- I largely agree with david mizner's recent diary -- but knowing my position in the SAI/PD is about as helpful, I think, as would be knowing my opinion of the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense in chess, if the real issue were that Sicily was burning down. Chess has nothing much to do with the flammability of Sicily, and The Standard American I/P Debate has nothing much to do with the problems in Israel and Palestine. The frame of the SAI/PD is all wrong. The debate misses the point. And what is "the point"? Well, (1), (2), and (3) above. I'll get to them. First, back to Cole. The next few 'graphs are about his piece.

Cole argues that the fighting between Israel (or "the Israeli government" if you prefer, though at the moment Israeli opinion polls show that most Israelis support their government's actions, or did prior to the ground invasion) and Palestine, and more generally the ongoing and often violent dispute between Israel and her neighbors, is ultimately a war for global public opinion. How the conflict is resolved will depend crucially on what the world thinks about the players in the region. This is so, Cole argues, because Israel relies heavily on commerce, tourism, and immigration of Jewish people from abroad. Israel can win every battle, but if in doing so Israel disgusts the world so much that the world wants nothing to do with it, Israel will collapse. Israel knows this, and so do her neighbors. Cole writes:

The Israeli leadership knew that it could not reply to Hamas's microwar without engaging in total war on the Gaza population, and that this step would be unpopular with the world's publics. But the Israeli leadership has successfully thumbed its nose and world public opinion so often and so successfully that this sort of consideration does not even enter into their practical calculations (except to the extent that they are careful to do a lot of propaganda for their war effort). Their estimation that they will suffer no practical bad consequences of attacks on civilians is certainly correct in the short to medium term.

-- snip --

Israel will suffer no practical sanctions from any government. Egypt and Jordan are afraid of Hamas and are more or less handmaidens of Israeli policy toward Gaza. Syria and Lebanon are weak. Iran, for all the hype it generates, is distant and relatively helpless to intervene. European governments have largely ceded the Palestinian-Israeli issue to the US and Israel.

-- snip --

War on them [the Palestinians], circumscribe them, colonize them all you like. They aren't going anywhere, and you can't keep them stateless and virtually enslaved forever, occasionally exterminating some of them as though they were vermin when they make too much trouble. That, sooner or later, will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state.

It may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war.

As a related factor, Cole makes the sometimes stated but often overlooked point that the one of the real goals behind Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks is to scare Jewish people from immigrating to Israel, or to provoke Jewish moral condemnation of Israel's response -- in any case, to keep Jewish people from wanting to move there. Israel is small enough, the thought would go, that Hamas and Hezbollah can ultimately win even if they lose every battle, simply through demographic attrition. This seems like it should be a sobering thought for Israelis: no one wants to live in a place like the one the conflict creates, no matter who wins the conflict.

In any case, let me restate Cole's conclusion:

It may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war.

There is a curious and non-trivial lacuna in Cole's argument, here. As he surely knows, Israel has lost "the war of global public opinion." The people of planet Earth have made up their minds about this issue, even if America has not. March 2007 BBC report quoted at the University of Maryland's PIPA (PDF, page 5):

Israel is viewed quite negatively in the world, possibly because the poll was conducted less than six months following the Israel/Hezbollah war in Lebanon. On average, 56 percent have a mainly negative view of the country, and just 17 percent have a positive view, the least positive rating for any country evaluated. In 23 countries the most common view was negative, with only two leaning towards a positive view and two divided.

Unsurprisingly, the most negative views of Israel are found in the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, with very large majorities in Lebanon (85%), Egypt (78%), Turkey (76%), and the UAE (73%) having negative views.

Large majorities also have negative views in Europe, including Germany (77%), Greece (68%) and France (66%). Indonesia (71%), Australia (68%) and South Korea (62%) are the most negative countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Brazilians (72%) are the most negative in Latin America.

The two countries with mostly positive attitudes about Israel do so in modest numbers. Forty-five percent of Nigerians and 41 percent of Americans have positive views of Israel’s influence in the world, while nearly one-third in each country has negative views. Kenya and India have populations with divided views of Israel.

This would seem to refute Cole's argument. World opinion is against Israeli actions towards her neighbors; the world takes Israel to be a belligerent nation. Yet, this fact is not, so far, doing anything like, in Cole's words, "lead[ing] to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state."  So that would seem to undermine the Big Picture being painted by Cole.

But, why not? If I could ask a blockheaded question: why isn't Israel subject to more boycotts? After all, there have been more U.N. resolutions against Israel than any other country, both in the General Assembly and the Security Council, even if the U.S. tends to veto the latter.  

Well, it's obvious. Israel doesn't get boycotted because it is an ally of the United States. But that makes the following remark from Cole all the more interesting: "sooner or later, [Israeli actions] will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state." Cole is here imagining a future in which "rising economic powers" and "Europe" are willing to cross the U.S.  

This means we can't discuss the future of Israel or Palestine without discussing the future of U.S. dominance in the world.  The three are, at the moment, inextricably entwined.  I take it that this is the primary reason that we as citizens of the U.S. have such a hard time discussing the I/P conflict -- the range of acceptable opinion in the U.S. on this matter is even more restricted than it is in Israel itself. In a funny kind of way, the U.S. has an even bigger stake in the I/P conflict than Israel does. Hence, (1), my first claim in the first paragraph of this post.

Now, (2): Israel does not need the U.S.  Let me put this as strongly as possible, so it can be most easily disagreed with: The United States creates more problems for Israel than it solves, and it creates more problems for Israel than Palestine, or Hamas, or Hezbollah do.  In exchange for military assistance, Israel is willing to play the part of the US's Western Bulldog in the Middle East; it is willing to make itself into practically a giant military base for US control of ME resources. This is a bad deal for Israel: it creates the illusion of necessity of conflict, strife, and ill feeling between Jewish and Arab peoples. It creates, and this is the devilish part, the illusion that Israel needs all that military assistance in the first place. Thus, we have a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one whose spell can be broken.

Perhaps the longstanding dream of a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Israel and Palestine is itself just a trick, meant to keep us from seeing that what is really needed is for Israel to broker a peace between the U.S. and Palestine, and between the U.S. and the Middle East more generally. But in order to see things this way we have to readjust a lot of perceptions and biases -- perceptions and biases even deeper than the ones motivating the endless Standard American Israel/Palestine Debate. Dare I call those biases "racism against Arabs and Jews"? Sure, why not; this is just a blog post, and if I am accusing everyone in America of getting sucked into it then I am also accusing myself.

Thinking about the good of Israel, as opposed to the good of the U.S., perhaps the best thing Israel could do is make its own peace, and tell the U.S. (or, as I say, factions in it) to piss off -- to abandon the bulldog deal. Now that would be giving peace a chance. And that would be (3), and my conclusion.

I don't know if this is right, but I do know that engaging in the same old Standard American Israel/Palestine debate is no better. My suspicion is that the SAI/PD is not about Israel and Palestine at all (two peoples who would both do well to tell us to shove it), but about us, and the occasional American vanity -- even on the left -- of trying to rule the world while convincing ourselves we are saving it.

Update 10:28 pm: further discussion of Cole's article is in Lefty Coaster's diary Juan Cole on Gaza the West Bank and global public opinion.

A post at HuffPo jumps the megladon. Now admittedly, I don't know much about the site. But most of the articles I've read there were decent. Which makes this one all the more out of place for a premier website like Huffington Post:

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable.

For starters, the author spends several previous grafs implying that changes in climate contributed to everything from the fall of Rome to charred witches. From which he then, somehow, draws the curious conclusion that climate change is an oxymoron, and then goes on to make the even froggier leap that it's a big lie and should therefore be casually dismissed. It manages to go downhill from there.

The writer, I'm sad to say, lives in my beloved hometown of Austin. A cursory search reveals he runs talkingabouttheweather.com, which is a non stop tirade of wingnut catnip, antiscience buzzwords employing every transparently dishonest trick in the fossil fuel lobby's big black oily book. I gotta assume this nitwit doesn't represent the views of HuffPo, in which case we have to wonder why his incoherent screed shows up under the 'green-as-in-environment' tab.

Is it flamebait looking for links, sloppy editorial control, or some kind of too clever by half attempt to portray the right in the most unflattering light possible? Beats me. But none of those possibilities reflect particularly well on HuffPo. Because, there really is such a thing as credibility. And this kind of crap is a big step on the road to losing it.

Further discussion and debunking is going on in A Siegel's recommended diary.

After two months of counting and recounting every eligible ballot in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, Al Franken has won fair and square and will be the state's next U.S. Senator. Nonetheless, he won't be in DC tomorrow as the rest of his class gets sworn in because Norm Coleman is vowing a legal fight to delay the inevitable.

Lest there be any question over how this will turn out, Harry Reid has flatly stated that it's over for Norm Coleman.

"Norm Coleman will never ever serve [again] in the Senate," Reid told Politico’s Manu Raju. "He lost the election. He can stall things, but he'll never serve in the Senate."

...Reid added that he will not be trying to seat Franken in the Senate on Tuesday.  When asked if Franken would be sworn in tomorrow, Reid said: "No."

In his victory statement today, Franken said he was "ready to go to Washington and get to work just as soon as possible." But a Franken campaign spokesman said he has not yet made plans yet to travel to Washington.

Despite the fact that Al Franken is still in Minnesota, RNC chairman Mike Duncan is accusing Franken of having stolen the election.

Fortunately, Duncan is on a bitter little island of his own. Nobody (outside of the far right) who's looked at the situation thinks that Coleman won the election.

It might not cause that much harm to humor Norm Coleman for a short period of time, but Democrats need to spell out Coleman's legal wrangling for what it is: petty, obstructionist tactics from the GOP in the middle of a national economic crisis.

Because it's not good enough to set up drillling rigs in the sightline of national treasures, or poison more water, or gut the endangered species act, BushCo is upping the potential permanent damage one more notch.

In a massive FU to the people of Montana and Senators Tester and Bingaman (who've been battling this effort for months), former timber lobbyist and current Forest Service chief (for just 15 more days, thankfully), is granting Plum Creek timber company one of its fondest desires.

The shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

But as Plum Creek has moved into the real estate business, paving those roads became a necessary prelude to opening vast tracts of the company's 8 million acres to the vacation homes that are transforming landscapes across the West.

Scenic western Montana, where Plum Creek owns 1.2 million acres, would be most affected, placing fresh burdens on county governments to provide services and undoing efforts to cluster housing near towns.

In one of his many visits to Montana during the campaign, Obama took aim at the Bush administration over this very proposal: "At a time when Montana's sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off." Hence, Rey's rush to push this last effort through, despite united opposition in local and state government.

Missoula County, the entity that would have to provide all those services to would-be mountain residents, has strongly objected to Rey's proposal, and has demanded to see all of the documents relating to this decision, documents which still haven't been released, and won't be, if Rey has anything to do with it, which, of course, he does.

Rey suspects Missoula County's request for documents is a tactic - "an attempt to run out the clock."

Because if a decision is not made before the Bush administration - and along with it, Mark Rey - leaves office, then perhaps the amendment push will falter.

"They're hoping they'll get a different legal decision from a different administration," Rey said, adding that "elections are meaningful in that way."

McCubbin, however, insists "you cannot amend a document that you haven't identified and they still haven't identified the documents. We made our request six months ago and they've just now made what they themselves call a ‘cursory review of the documents?' This isn't Missoula County delaying anything."
According to McCubbin, the Forest Service recently identified 176,000 documents that are "directly relevant" that have not yet been provided.

Rey said he remains committed to providing all relevant information needed to make an informed decision, which is not the same as providing "every last scrap of paper."

Like most of BushCo's midnight efforts, this one will inevitably end up in court, because there's no way Rey is not signing the easement that would allow Plum Creek's development. Missoula County has substantial ground to sue, and will very likely do so. So this is essentially an obnoxious and arrogant exercise in futility, likely to do nothing more than secure Mark Rey an extremely healthy salary with some timber interest in the not too distant future. But it's also placing a large financial burden a small Montana county that has plenty of other demands for its resources.

Update: Breaking news on this issue, via MTMofo in the comments. Plum Creek is inexplicably doing the right thing here:

Plum Creek Timber Co. is abandoning a controversial deal brokered with Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, citing strong public opposition.

"Although we continue to believe that the easement amendment would be beneficial to the general public, given the lack of receptivity, we have decided not to go forward with the amendment," Plum Creek President and CEO Rick Holley wrote Monday, in a letter to Missoula County.

They probably don't want to have their legal department tied up in knots for the foreseeable future.

The second full-length album for the Florida indie-pop band features cover songs by a variety of artists including Nancy Sinatra, Bob Marley, David Bowie, The Ramones, The Jesus & Mary Chain, and The Pointer Sisters. [Rock, Indie, Pop]

The fourth album for the New York indie-pop band was produced with Peter Katis and Dave Fridmann. [Rock, Indie, Pop]

Editor B posted a photo:

What you missed on Sunday Kos ....

It was an unusual Sunday in that we were treated to three stellar reviews:

• Devisltower reviewed Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air, a look at Joseph Priestly and the discovery of oxygen.
• MissLaura reviewed Milk, proclaiming it a winner: "Its representation of a politics at once pragmatic and radical, suffused with seriousness of purpose but open to fun, pushing hard from outside and in, makes it a valuable primer on movement politics for anyone tempted to believe elections and legislation are all."
• Adam B brought us insight into Frost/Nixon, with the observation: "The achievement of Frost/Nixon, and of the actors involved, is that you may not look at another political interview the same way ... or, perhaps, may finally recognize how you've been subconsciously watching them all along."

Additionally, we had a retrospective of the Bush administration's constant denial of problems as we headed toward economic crisis in Jed L's The Bush Recession In His Own Words.

And finally, we looked to the future with brownsox's rundown of upcoming electoral hotspots in Next Year's Model: New Hampshire Through Ohio, and Trapper John's brilliant and passionate call to arms in Why the Employee Free Choice Act Is So Important: The Power of Organization.

With Rahm Emanuel having resigned from Congress to become Chief of Staff to President-elect Barack Obama, embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has quickly set the special-election date for Emanuel's Chicago North Side seat.

Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) announced today that he has set April 7 as the date for the special election to fill former Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s (D) 5th district seat.

...

Blagojevich represented the north Chicagoland seat before Emanuel, who was re-elected to his fourth term on Election Day. Even with scandal-ridden Blagojevich still in office, the district is expected to stay in Democratic column.

The seat should be safe for whatever Democrat manages to win the nomination. With one blip on the radar (the 1994 election of Republican Michael Flanagan after the incumbent, Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski, was indicted on corruption charges) the seat has been in Democratic hands since time immemorial, and sports a PVI of D+18.

The primary is only two months away, on March 3, and is almost certain to draw a host of competitors:

In a statement from his official office, Blagojevich designated a special primary election for March 3, 2009.

"I am pleased to set these election dates so that the people of the Fifth Congressional District can have a representative in Congress as quickly as possible," Blagojevich said in a statement. "With our nation in a recession, we need to ensure that Illinois’ voice is being represented in Washington D.C. to get our economy back on track."

With so little time before the primary, the advantage goes to the candidates who can raise the most money in the shortest amount of time, and have the greatest name recognition. However, given that the primary could be won with 25% of the vote or even less (as there are expected to be as many as 10-12 Democrats running), it's by no means a certainty that the more established candidates will win. With such a big field, the race for the nomination is wide open.

The NYT, WSJ, and Paul Krugman take a look at the emerging details surrounding President-elect Obama's stimulus package, particularly the roughly $300 billion in proposed tax cuts.

Overall, the package will cover a two-year period with a price-tag of $675 billion to $775 billion, $270 billion to $310 billion of which would be spent on tax cuts. The balance -- $405 billion to $465 billion -- would be spent on infrastracture, health care, and other programs.

One thing to keep in mind is that in early 2008 Congress passed a $131 billion tax cut stimulus plan covering one year. Therefore, while $300 billion over two years might seem like a lot, it's actually the same level of spending as we saw in 2008.

The problem, of course, was that the 2008 tax cut stimulus didn't do much, if any, good.

Since the tax cut portion of the stimulus will more or less be a continuation of the 2008 tax cut stimulus, the real change from 2008 will be the $405 to $465 billion in spending on infrastructure, health care, and other projects.

On an annual basis, this is about $203 to $233 billion dollars in actual stimulus spending.

In 2007, the U.S. GDP was roughly $13.8 trillion, so that means the "new" part of the stimulus package will be about 1.5% of GDP.

Milton Bradley was expected in Chicago later this week to undergo a physical, and if all goes well, could sign a three-year contract with the Cubs.

So Steny Hoyer goes on FOX News Sunday, and here's the headline he's rewarded with:

Hoyer Says Don’t Expect Stimulus Package Soon

Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, expressed doubt on Sunday that the Jan. 20 goal set by some for getting a stimulus package before the new president could be met.

"It’s going to be difficult to get the package together that early," he said. Instead, he told "Fox News Sunday," lawmakers hoped to have it to the new president by mid-February. [Like the others appearing on the day's talk shows, Mr. Hoyer made his comments before it was known that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had withdrawn as the Commerce nominee.]

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, was more cautious about any deadline, saying simply, "We will work this just as quickly as we can." As to the amount of a stimulus package, he said only, "It’s whatever it takes to bring this country back on a fiscal footing that’s decent."

But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, agreed with Hoyer that the Jan. 20 goal was impractical.

Put aside the question of whether Hoyer should have gone on FOX for a second. The issue here is that on the first major legislative agenda item for the Obama Administration, the second-ranking Democrat in the House is already unilaterally declaring that it won't be ready on time.

Whether Hoyer intended to or not, the message he sent is that Democrats don't think the legislation is all that important. Instead of talking about delay, Hoyer should have focused on the urgency of getting something done quickly rather than his estimation that it will take longer than we originally thought.

(He should have been more like Harry Reid, who was actually reasonably good on the stimulus package.)

Aside from the fact that Hoyer undercut the sense of urgency surrounding the stimulus bill, he failed to adequately explain the most likely source of the delay: Senate Republicans. In fact, if Hoyer would have just kept his mouth shut, it's quite possible that the headlines would have focused instead on Mitch McConnell, who signaled his intent to drag out the process as much as possible:

Throughout the full interview, McConnell spoke in very partisan terms, and consistently called the stimulus plan a $1 trillion plan.

That should be a wakeup call to Democratic strategists.

First, no matter how much Democrats talk about bipartisanship, they are never going to get it from Mitch McConnell. Instead of playing an inside game for McConnell's support, it's much smarter to play an outside game and to try to steal 6-10 moderate Republicans like the Maine senators by delivering a popular bill that they can't refuse.

Second, the only reason to cap the stimulus plan at $775 billion is if that is the amount of money they believe will do the job. If they are trying to avoid having Republicans call this a $1 trillion stimulus plan, that boat has sailed.

Returning to Steny Hoyer, the problem here isn't so much the substance of what he said, but rather the fact that he blew the opportunity to advance the narrative that the stimulus plan is the top priority in Congress, and that the only thing slowing it down is the GOP.

The fact that yesterday Mitch McConnell, through his vows of partisan roadblocking, was probably a better spokesman for the Democratic Party yesterday than was Steny Hoyer tells you all you need to know.

::::

Update (2:32PM): Today, President-elect Obama sounded a far more urgent note than either Hoyer or McConnell:

Obama predicts quick OK on economic rescue plan

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama declared the national economy was "bad and getting worse" Monday as he began crisis talks with congressional leaders on emergency action. He predicted lawmakers would approve hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending and tax cuts within two weeks of his taking office.

"The economy is very sick," Obama said before meeting with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. "The situation is getting worse. ... We have to act and act now to break the momentum of this recession."

Obama, whose inauguration is two weeks from Tuesday on Jan. 20, said he expected quick approval of rescue legislation by the new Congress.

"I expect to be able to sign a bill shortly after taking office," he said. Pressed on the timing, he said, "By the end of January or the first of February."

spablab posted a photo:

A perfect cold day.

Roland Burris heads to Washington today, hoping to be sworn in tomorrow as the newest Senator from Illinois. He'll do it without a certificate of election signed by the Illinois Secretary of State, without the approval of the Illinois Senate, and in the face of overwhelming opposition from the Democratic leadership, but according to Burris, he does have one powerful ally on his side:

"They can't deny what the Lord has ordained."

Hallelujah.

The Cubs were expected Tuesday to finalize the deal with Colorado and send pitcher Jason Marquis to the Rockies in exchange for reliever Luis Vizcaino.

It's official: the Minnesota canvassing board has certified Al Franken as the winner of November's U.S. Senate election in the great state of Minnesota. Nonetheless, despite having virtually no chance of victory, Norm Coleman is vowing to file suit in an attempt to drag out the process of Senator-elect Franken's victory.

Now is a good time to remember what Norm Coleman said about this exact situation two long months ago:

"Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed," Coleman said Wednesday at a news conference. He noted Franken could opt to waive the recount.

"It's up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," Coleman said, telling reporters he would "step back" if he were in Franken's position.

The key difference between Franken and Coleman: Franken won, and he did it without a cherry-picking legal strategy. At this point, Coleman is a sure loser, his only flicker of a hope is dependent on the success of a "count my votes, but not his" legal strategy that is doomed to failure.