... The Republican candidate in the coming election has the luxury of ignoring reality and telling the voters that he can do exactly what they want, create jobs, grow the economy, and ensure plentiful supplies of cheap energy. All this can be achieved without subjecting voters to any more pain than the incumbent administration has already caused them. Thus the Republican platform for the coming election likely will be one of lifting all possible restrictions on the domestic production of energy. Tax breaks for fossil fuel producers will be continued on the grounds that reducing them would amount to a tax increase, and support for renewable sources will be reduced on the grounds that they will not be needed after the bonanza of new oil, coal, and natural gas comes forth from eliminating regulations.

Democratic candidates will have to sell a more nuanced platform. As most Democratic politicians not representing fossil fuel producing districts profess some concern for the threat posed by carbon emissions, they have a more difficult case to make. While the responsible case in an era of depleting fossil fuels is to advocate energy conservation and efficiency first, and then to seek out policies to avoid or prepare for lower standards of living, these courses would require sacrifice on the part of voters who as yet do not see where they will be necessary. ...

President Obama is attempting to steer a course through this thicket by embracing policies which make long-term sense from an environmental point of view and yet do limited damage and leave him hope of reelection. In recent days the President has unveiled the energy plan he will take into the election campaign. The centerpiece is to embrace natural gas as a transportation fuel as it can be produced domestically, is currently much cheaper than oil, and while not carbon-free, emits less CO2 and other pollutants than do oil products. He has also opened more public land and offshore areas for drilling - although nowhere near what the industry and many Republicans politicians are calling for. ...
 

By Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2012

BRUSSELS — In a major milestone toward ending a decade of war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.

Mr. Panetta cast the decision as an orderly step in a withdrawal process long planned by the United States and its allies, but his comments were the first time that the United States had put a date on stepping back from its central role in the war. The defense secretary’s words reflected the Obama administration’s eagerness to bring to a close the second of two grinding ground wars it inherited from the Bush administration [....]

Romney, sans super PAC money, raised just $57 million, compared with Obama's $140 million from his network of bundlers and grassroots donations last year. But those numbers don't even come close to painting the whole picture, as the super PAC disclosures reveal. Republican groups outraised their Democratic counterparts by four to one, a fairly incredible ratio. This could very well be a year in which, stunningly, an incumbent gets outspent by the challenger.

Excellent article that within the body hits it:

Even though Romney paid for this Florida win on his debit card -- outspending Newt by millions -- he still couldn't nail down the rank-and-file vote.

Worth the read and has good insight into the current state of the GOP with this nut:

Almost two years after energy from the Tea Party swept Republicans back into congressional power, a politician who embodies the antithesis of that spirit stands on the verge of victory. This is regress, not progress, and the GOP will pay a severe price for the Faustian bargain of "electability" that it entails. A party that chooses power over principle will lose both.

By Julian Borger, Guardian.co.uk, Feb. 1, 2012

Document based on interrogations of Taliban and al-Qaida detainees says Pakistan is backing the resurgent movement

[....] The report, The State of the Taliban 2012, is the latest of a series drawn up by aUS special operations taskforce on the basis of interrogations with 4,000 suspected Taliban and al-Qaida detainees.

Its conclusions, that the Taliban's strength and morale are largely intact despite the Nato military surge, and that significant numbers of Afghan government soldiers are defecting to them, are in stark contrast to Nato's far more bullish official line [....] The report, leaked to the BBC and The Times, also portrays the Taliban as being under the thumb of Pakistan's powerful security agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but resenting that control [....]

By the New York Times Editorial Board, Jan. 31/Feb. 1, 2012

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats are expected to create legislation that would require million-dollar earners to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Even if the bill faces a brick wall of Republican opposition, which it will, a vote on this proposal cannot come soon enough.

The bill, to be introduced by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, would impose a new rate of up to 30 percent that would phase in gradually on incomes between $1 million and $2 million. The new rate would have to be paid if it is higher than the taxpayer’s current rate.  It would operate like the alternative minimum tax [....]

In his latest Salon post, Michael Lind promotes his new book, "Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States"  with a brief history of American Industrial Policy.   As a major proponent of the lost School of American Economics, it promises to be enlightening.

[I]ndustrial policy is as American as domestically produced apple pie.  George Washington supported Alexander Hamilton’s plan for promoting American manufacturing by means of subsidies and tariffs, and Hamilton’s opponents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison eventually reconciled themselves to federal support for American manufacturing.  Henry Clay proposed a similar “American system” of infant-industry protection and federal support for infrastructure.  During the Civil War, Clay’s disciple Abraham Lincoln presided over the enactment of a version of the American System, based on high tariffs to protect strategic industries and federal land grants and financial subsidies for transcontinental railroads.

Industrial policy was even more successful in the 20th century U.S.  After the Wright brothers invented the airplane, the federal government used airmail to subsidize the infant American civil aviation industry.  The U.S. Navy worked with American companies to create the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which spun off the NBC and ABC radio and TV networks.  During World War II the government built vast numbers of factories, which were turned over at low prices to private companies after 1945.

The most innovative entrepreneur in the 20th century was the U.S. government.  The federal government invented or developed nuclear energy, computers, the Internet and the jet engine.  And it built the interstate highway system and completed the national electric grid, creating a continental market based on the technologies of the second industrial revolution.

 

A revealing conversation between Robert Wright and Joanna Brooks, the "Mormon Girl" about growing up Mormon and being a Mormon. Learn all about funny undies.

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada.

The single dumbest person to ever stand behind a dais in a national debate by candidates for the Presidency of the United States of America just endorsed the single most evil person ever to stand behind a dais in a national debate by candidates for the Presidency of the United States of America.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to allow a further increase in the federal debt limit, permitting President Obama to borrow $1.2 trillion more to operate a government that spent about 55 percent more than it collected in revenue last year.

[Hey, remember when raising the debt ceiling suddenly became, on the margin, the equivalent of Armageddon last year?  Yeah, me neither.]