Senate election forecast from Nate

From 538.com:

Our latest Senate simulation has the chamber convening in 2011 with an average of 53.5 Democrats (counting Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders), 46.0 Republicans, and 0.5 Charlie Crists.

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Solar plane flies for seven consecutive days

Wow, that's impressive.

The military will want to use them as reconnaissance and communications platforms. Civilian and scientific programmes will equip them with small payloads for Earth observation duties.

Their unique selling point is their persistence over a location. Low-Earth orbiting satellites come and go in a swift pass overhead, and the bigger drones now operated by the military still need to return to base at regular intervals for refuelling.

But as Zephyr has now proved, solar UAVs can be left in the sky.

Their solar cells drive propellers during the day and top up their batteries to maintain the craft through the dark hours of night. An autopilot keeps them circling over the same spot.

The latest version of Zephyr is now 50% bigger than its predecessors.

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Sasha meets Big Bird

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Louisiana waters now open for sportfishing

For some reason, this doesn't sound very appealing.

The state’s seven-member Wildlife and Fisheries Commission announced Wednesday that approximately 86 percent of recreational fishing in state waters extending 3 miles off the coast would be reopened immediately to recreational fishing, including shrimping and crabbing. Excluded are “heavily oiled areas, areas associated with boom and areas of active cleanup,” it said.

The areas remain closed to commercial fishing, though charter boats, bait fishermen and “dealers who harvest for and sell to recreational fishermen exclusively” can resume operations.

The move makes Louisiana the first state hard hit by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill to lift strict restrictions on recreational fishing. Mississippi’s coastal waters in the Mississippi Sound remain closed to both commercial and recreational fishing, while state waters along Alabama and a 23-mile stretch of northeast Florida are open only for “catch and release” recreational fishing. (Texas, which has so far largely been spared by the oil, has placed no restrictions on commercial or recreational fishing.)

The federal government also has closed a wide swath of the Gulf to all fishing.

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Obama doesn't need to reinvent himself, just become the guy we voted for

From David Frum:

President Obama has placed big bets on the board: the $787 billion stimulus plan to generate employment, the Afghan surge to fight the Taliban, a bailout fund to cushion the financial crisis, diplomacy to stop the Iranian bomb. These are actions of historic scale; if they fail no spin doctor can explain them away.

But thus far, they are failing. And, especially with domestic policies, there is little reason to believe that will change.

Anti-Bush feeling among Democrats pushed the party to the left over the past eight years. Then the economic crisis created a seeming opportunity for a Franklin Roosevelt-style 100 Days. President Obama’s own rhetoric of hope and change overcame all inhibitions, and the administration committed itself to fighting the recession with pork-barrel spending and one-time tax rebates; stricter regulation of finance, health care and energy producers and users; and imminent increases in the tax burden on work, saving and investment. It has not worked.

What this president needs is not new messaging. It is new thinking.

Now wait a minute. The stimulus worked. CBO proved that, to the tune of millions of jobs saved and created. The problem is that the stimulus wasn't big enough to FULLY work, and that is the fault of the President, who refused to push for the larger stimulus he knew we needed, and the Republicans, who refused to endorse ANY stimulus. But to suggest that the stimulus didn't work - as in, it was a bad idea to do a stimulus - is simply wrong.

Then there's the bailout for the financial crisis. First off, it was Bush's bailout, thank you. Second, as even David Obey admitted, it worked.

Third, I'm not going to defend the one-time tax rebate - and, let's not forget, that was a Republican idea that Obama, God knows why, accepted. It was a dumb idea, and didn't work, but hey, the Republicans came up with it.

Then there's health care reform. It didn't work? It hasn't even started yet. Suggesting that health care reform didn't work only months after the legislation was passed is disingenuous. I'm as big a critic as anyone about the President's unwillingness to push for the health care reform he promised. But you can't criticize legislation that hasn't even been implemented yet.

Contrary to what Frum says, the President doesn't need new policies, he needs better messaging and MORE of the policies he's already adopted. Either the President didn't do enough of the policies he wanted - health care reform and stimulus - and/or he didn't do a good enough job defending those policies, and messaging on those policies. The problem, in few situations that I can find, at least on domestic policy, is not the WRONG policy (well, okay, there was that offshore drilling idea, and the decision not to prosecute torture, and the reversal on the Patriot Act...). Rather, the problem is usually that the President opts for policy-lite and then refuses to adequately defend his choice.

Obama needs to reinvent himself, to be sure. But he doesn't need to become a Republican. He needs to become the guy we voted for. Because, as Frum just showed, Obama will be criticized by Republicans for whatever he does - hell, the religious right is claiming, incredibly, that the President's defense of DOMA in the courts is actually, somehow, a secret pro-gay plot!

President Obama might as well do what he promised, full-bore, since he's going to be blamed for doing it full-bore, regardless of how much he actually waters the promise down. Read the rest of this post...

Obey: Obama admin. proposed food stamp cuts. Obey also talks about TARP, and explains how the stimulus got short-changed.

Obey quoted by Fiscal Times (h/t MyDD):

We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here. … Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice. Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.

On the TARP bailout of Wall Street, the economic stimulus package and the need for more action on the economy:

I think everything [President] Bush and [President] Obama have done on the economy is getting a needless bad rap. At least that’s everything Bush did after September of the last year he was in office. . . I knew then it would be costly political vote because I was ticked off, because I detested being in the position we had to help the very people [on Wall Street] who had caused the economy to implode in the first place. We had no choice. If you’ve got an epidemic going on, you’ve got to treat the people who caused the epidemic as well as the people treating it or everyone is going to die.

The public hates it, but it happens to have been a pretty damn good deal for the taxpayers. When all is said and done, that will not have cost the American people nearly as much as we feared. The cost will be less than $100 billion. And if you can save your economy by spending $100 billion, I’d say that’s worth it. Even if to do that you had to give some help to the dumb bastards who got us in trouble in the first place, and you can quote me.

The problem for Obama, he wasn’t as lucky as Roosevelt, because when Obama took over we were still in the middle of a free fall. So his Treasury people came in and his other economic people came in and said "Hey, we need a package of $1.4 trillion." We started sending suggestions down to OMB waiting for a call back. After two and a half weeks, we started getting feedback. We put together a package that by then the target had been trimmed to $1.2 trillion. And then [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel said to me, "Geez, do you really think we can afford to come in with a package that big, isn’t it going to scare people?" I said, "Rahm, you will need that shock value so that people understand just how serious this problem is." They wanted to hold it to less than $1 trillion. Then [Pennsylvania Senator Arlen] Specter and the two crown princesses from Maine [Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins] took it down to less than $800 billion. Spread over two and a half years, that’s a hell of a lot of money, but spread over two and a half years in an economy this large, it doesn’t have a lot of fiscal power.

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Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Politics is the main topic of the shows this morning.

You'll see Joe Biden on ABC.

The chairs of the House and Senate campaign commmittees (Senators Menendez and Cornyn and Reps. Van Hollen and Sessions) are on NBC.

And, who want to miss two of the most extreme and disturbing GOPers on the ballot this year? David Vitter, of prostitution and coddling criminals fame, is on FOX and JD Hayworth, who is definitely one of the biggest buffoons in the GOP, is on CBS.

Also on CBS, a discussion about the racism of the teabaggers between NAACP's Benjamin Jealous and a leading teabagger, David Webb.

Here's the full lineup. Read the rest of this post...

Rod Stewart - Every picture tells a story

The album (by the same title) was an excellent collection of music. Unfortunately things dropped off quickly following that release but it doesn't change the reality of this being a great song on a very good album.

More sunshine and mild weather over here. I'm finishing off some incredibly good apricots that somehow managed to get to Paris. Usually the really tasty fruits and veggies are too delicate for travel so you need to buy them in the country. Growing up I never cared much for apricots because they were bland. It was only when I bought some from a farmer in Le Drôme a few years ago did I realize how good they could be. Some people like the bland apricots but I have to admit I like the ugly but juicy apricots. The last juicy ones are probably off the trees by now so we're now into the season of the other kind. Read the rest of this post...

Poachers kill last female white rhino in Kruger Park

What a pity. When we were in South Africa they were facing a serious poaching problem related to abalone. Divers were even searching for them at night in the same area where tourists would go to visit great white sharks near Gansbaai. (I left Gansbaai with a very uncomfortable feeling about who was involved in the highly profitable poaching business.) Another similarity was that poachers were highly organized and selling to Asia for high margins. You have to wonder who in power is turning a blind eye to this problem. The poaching rates have increased enough where this should not be a problem that is suddenly an issue. As always, someone needs to follow the money.

Fears are growing for the survival of the rhinoceros as the last female in the popular Krugersdorp game reserve near Johannesburg was killed, bleeding to death after having its horn hacked off by poachers.

Wildlife officials say poaching for the prized horns has now reached an all-time high. "Last year, 129 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa. This year, we have already had 136 deaths," said chief game ranger Japie Mostert.

The gang used tranquilliser guns and a helicopter to bring down the nine-year-old rhino cow. Her distraught calf was moved to a nearby estate where it was introduced to two other orphaned white rhinos.

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RBS may sue Goldman over Abacus settlement with SEC

It's heartbreaking when old lovers fight like this. Modern separations can be so ugly and so public these days.

Royal Bank of Scotland could be poised to sue Goldman Sachs for hundreds of millions of dollars after the American investment bank paid out $550m (£358m) to settle fraud charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Goldman neither admitted nor denied the SEC's charges. However, as part of the settlement it did admit that it should have told investors in a controversial mortgage derivative known as Abacus that a hedge fund client which helped with the portfolio was betting on it failing.

RBS will receive $100m as part of the settlement but has the option of pursuing Goldman for more after the SEC said the case opened the door for civil claims. Another $150m will be paid to IKB Industrie Bank of Germany, which was the other big loser on the Abacus bond, with the rest going to the US government.

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