Yes, it's FRIDAY FOLLIES!  I know, it's been a while, and I keep getting requests to bring it back so here it is.  (Two requests so far, one of them a relative, but still. . .)  I have no explanation for why I've neglected it for so long.  I could say I just wasn't feeling it but that's so unprofessional.

The Daily asked me to debate an able writer from the American Enterprise Institute about whether or not Mitt Romney's years at Bain Capital are worthy of our praise of criticism.  I think I was pretty even-handed here, as I really don't have it out for the private equity industry, or the finance industry in general.  I think we should have a healthy, vibrant way to help allocate resources towards people's business ventures.

So, Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary last night with 39% of the vote. The media is counting it as a big win, which is fair enough. 39% is a perfectly good win in New Hampshire, and very much in line with what many past winners have received. But there are two things that should worry the Mittster.

1) Voter turnout was basically flat from 2008, even though there wasn't a contested Democratic primary this time.

This week in The Daily, I wrote about the Federal Reserve's white paper urging Congress to act to make it easier to convert foreclosed homes into rental properties, in order to support the real estate markets.  I was happy to see the Fed come to this conclusion, four years too late.

I stumbled across a site called SOPAOpera that's keeping track of who is and isn't supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the PROTECT-IP Act, SOPA's counterpart in the Senate.  The site also tracks how much money congresscritters have received from the entertainment and tech industries respectively.  SOPAOpera lists the data source as OpenSecrets, which indexes FEC data.

Yesterday morning,  after watching "Up with Chris Hayes" (My never-miss-if-I-can-help-it, hands-down favorite political show on TV maybe ever -- except for "The West Wing" and Rachel Maddow), I was aimlessly flipping channels, looking for something equally smart and fun (as IF!) when I got to what I thought should be C-Span but realized it couldn't be because I thought I saw a wizard.

I see from Talking Points Memo that Mitt Romney has now rehearsed and mastered a response to questions about why he referred to corporations as "people."  Talking about some mega corporation, or even a small one, the way we talk about the neighbor next door might sound like a faux pas to us but I think that a lot of people are going to find Romney's explanation rather compelling and even convincing.

The obvious stories from the Iowa caucuses are that 1) Mitt Romney ended up tied with the long-long-long-shot Rick Santorum, with Ron Paul hot on their heels and 2) Romney still has exactly the same crappy vote totals he had four years ago. But there's an even more important story: the Republican turnout was pretty much exactly what it was four years ago, when the Republican electorate was depressed and demoralized.

Happy New Year, all. My spouse and I spent part of yesterday evening at our local revival house, watching a classic New Year's Eve double-feature of The Thin Man and After the Thin Man. Then we adjourned to a favorite bar for midnight; after all, that's what Nick and Nora would do.

Good morning and Happy New Year!  (The exclamation point is always required after "Happy New Year", if I'm remembering my Strunk and White correctly.  Also, "Happy New Years" is incorrect.  So is "Happy New Year's.")

Mitt Romney used to be Governor of Massachusetts, a commonwealth which has at various times been A) the closest thing to a theocracy America has ever had and B) the poster child for tolerant secular liberalism. Many vocal religious conservatives now insist that the tolerant secular liberalism is an infringement on their religious liberty, and that they can only fully exercise their religion when the state actively endorses and promotes their religious values for them.

Last night, thanks to Annie Laurie from Balloon Juice, I finally understood what the Republicans are about to do to themselves.

I've been thinking of primary voters choosing whether to run Mitt Romney or to run an undisciplined crazy person.

Of course, they will end up running Mitt Romney and an undisciplined crazy person. Of course they will. They're just working out which one.

If China were not the world's second largest economy and among the largest trading partners to the United States, I somehow doubt we would have friendly relations with its government which is oppressive, expansionist and, frankly, far more dangerous to world peace than many dictatorships we've toppled in the past.

Ron Paul's crazy (and racist!  and paranoid! and misogynist!) 80s and 90s newsletter has drawn a lot of attention here on the left, and for good reason.  Ron Paul holds a certain attraction for some of us, as he's the kind of guy who, given the power, woul reliably keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and who would dismantle America's surveillance state while also bringing an end to the ridiculous drug war.

It's Christmas time, which means "War on Christmas" time, which means a whole bunch of bizarre complaints about persecution by members of an overwhelmingly privileged religious majority group. This bad behavior is often understood as part of the most intense and fire-breathing American Christianists' fire-breathing intensity.

According to new census data, when you account for necessary expenses like rent, food and utilities, 48% of Americans are "struggling" economically -- living just above the poverty line.  I doubt this is news to everyone here, but it's a major problem and the subject of my latest for The Daily.

On Christmas Day, 1914, only four months into the brutality of World War I, a spontaneous miracle happened on the Western Front.  On that day German and British soldiers laid down their arms and gathered together in No Man's Land to share food and cigarettes, sing Christmas carols, and play a few games of football.
 

Named for the famous revolutionary who was stabbed in the bath, Marat Safin was about as talented and powerful as anyone that has played tennis. While the he earned a handful of good results on the tour, like defeating Sampras in the 2000 US Open and briefly claiming the #1 ranking, the rumor was that he spent too much time satisfying his female fans. Though charming off-court, he was known for angry outbursts on court and claims to have smashed over a thousand racquets. He once played the Hopman Cup, "sporting a bandaged right thumb, two black eyes, a blood-filled left eye, and a cut near his right eye, all suffered in a fight several weeks earlier in Moscow."

So he's well prepared for a life in Russian politics.

Marat Safin Reveals His Plans for His Future

I got another Keystone XL (KXL) email this morning, but it wasn't from Duncan Meisel or Bill McKibben:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing.  President Obama has heard from many Americans concerning the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project, and we appreciate hearing from you.

The President is committed to creating the most open and transparent Government in American history, and values your input.  Given your interest in this matter, you may be interested in reading a recent official White House response to a petition on this issue.  To learn more, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/Energy.

Thank you, again, for writing.

Sincerely,

The White House

Note to the reader: I had originally planned to divide what follows as a series of posts in order to better present the ideas herein.  However, I've decided to simply cram it all into one post in the interest of getting the ideas out there and hopefully sparking a discussion.  I know that this isn't in the interest of good writing, but I think the prospect of getting these ideas out, here and now, is a more pressing matter.