Open thread

Read the rest of this post...

Biofuels are not the answer

Biofuels can perhaps play a limited role, they are not the answer. Just imagine what new ideas and new starts we could have had if we dropped $1.5 trillion into new energy instead of invading Iraq. Of course, the special interests who put the GOP in power wouldn't like it, but the rest of us would have. When Bush tried jumping on the sugar cane biofuel bandwagon in Brazil, that should have provided enough warning that this was not the long term answer. We need to be looking at the complete picture and not just one benefit, such as reduced emissions. More on biofuels, after the jump.

Efforts to work out which crops are most environmentally friendly have, until now, focused only on the amount of greenhouse gases a fuel emits when it is burned. Scharlemann and Laurance highlighted a more comprehensive method, developed by Rainer Zah of the Empa Research Institute in Switzerland, that can take total environmental impacts - such as loss of forests and farmland and effects on biodiversity - into account.

In a study of 26 biofuels the Swiss method showed that 21 fuels reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 30% compared with gasoline when burned. But almost half of the biofuels, a total of 12, had greater total environmental impacts than fossil fuels. These included economically-significant fuels such as US corn ethanol, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol and soy diesel, and Malaysian palm-oil diesel. Biofuels that fared best were those produced from waste products such as recycled cooking oil, as well as ethanol from grass or wood.

Scharlemann and Laurance also pointed to "perverse" government initiatives that had resulted in unintended environmental impacts. In the US, for example, farmers have been offered incentives to shift from growing soy to growing corn for biofuels. "This is helping to drive up global soy prices, which in turn amplifies economic incentives to destroy Amazonian forests and Brazilian tropical savannas for soy production."

Read the rest of this post...

Bush: "economy is on a solid foundation"

Clueless. The Democrats need to splash some cold water in his face to wake him up from his dream. Now is not the time to cave because the decisions made on the economy will have a major impact on the next president.

Just because we have a crisis on our hands doesn't mean we need to fold and give in. We are in this mess because of Republican policies. A Republican President along with a Republican Congress all lead the country into this trashed economy and they have no idea how to get us out. You wouldn't call an arsonist to put out a house fire and you don't ask the guy who ruined the economy to fix it. Read the rest of this post...

California files lawsuit against Bush EPA

The better news is that up to 15 other states will be joining. Only a kooky Republican administration could manage to turn the EPA into an extension of the pro-pollution lobby. You can't even make this stuff up any more. Well, not unless another kooky Republican administration wins next year. Read the rest of this post...

Our latest podcast: The Obama victory

Joe and I joined Internet reporter Jacki Schechner earlier today to discuss Obama's and Huckabee's victories in Iowa last night. You can listen to the podcast simply by clicking here, the episode is a stereo mp3 and is around 30 minutes. For those who don't know, a podcast is really just a radio show. Click the link and your computer should play it automatically, assuming you have speakers and your volume is turned up.

As always, you can subscribe to the AMERICAblog podcast via iTunes here, or you can subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed here. And you can listen to any of our old shows via either of the two links in the preceding sentence. Read the rest of this post...

More on the third party foolishness

Now, while I like Joe Klein more than many of my blogospheric peers, I also know it's true that he's sometimes susceptible to the siren song of centrism. So when you try for a sweeping bipartisan movement and he slaps down the idea, you probably should pack it in. In a post titled "Bad Idea", he writes:

New York Mayor Bloomberg's idea for a summit meeting of aging moderate poobahs to discuss an independent third party seems a bit moldy to me. Not that I'm opposed to centrism--as regular readers of Swampland know very well, I'm sort of an aging moderate not-quite-poobah myself. But there is no real potential for a moderate third party this year, and no real need for it, either. [...] Every four years, we get a group of high-minded Mugwumps who are just shocked and appalled by the messiness of the democratic process and yearn for something more pristine.

I love it! He goes on to explain why this is true, citing reasons more detailed (but similar to) mine, and I couldn't agree more. Read the rest of this post...

Bush talking about cutting taxes AGAIN

Will the Dems stop him? Fat chance. This is simply insane. Bush has run our economy, and our surplus, into the ground, and now he wants to cut government revenues even further. Reagan's tax cuts didn't generate enough income to make up for them. Bush's tax cuts didn't generate enough income. So now he wants to cut taxes even further. Absolutely ridiculous. And just watch the Dems in Congress cave, effectively taking the wind out of us yet again when we only just got our wind back as a result of Iowa, after a disastrous congressional session. Read the rest of this post...

Giuliani invokes 9/11 to explain why he lost in Iowa

From Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central:

Rudy Giuliani, speaking about his sixth place finish in Iowa yesterday:

"None of this worries me -- Sept. 11, there were times I was worried."

As a GOP operative I know loves to say, the man has "9/11 Tourettes." Can't help himself.

Read the rest of this post...

They Heart Huckabee

Evangelical conservatives, it sucks to be you.

I'm really quite astounded at the extent to which the Republican establishment loathes Huckabee. And I'm even more surprised by the fact that his incessant, crass Bible-thumping is part of the reason (Huckabee would have you think that Jesus died on the cross to give him a bump in the exit polls).

Yes, I've known for a while that not all Republicans embrace the religious right, the culture wars, the incessant gay-bashing and all the other "social" issues. But they certainly tolerated and enabled these folks for decades (that's why some of us left the party a long time ago). I suspected and hoped that there'd come a time when the Republicans would finally have enough of the holy-rollers in their midst, but I never thought the revolt would come on little cat feet. Almost without notice, something changed, and establishment Republicans are now turning on Huckabee and the "values voters" that he represents, big time.

After the jump, the days of trying to regulate your orgasm are over...

An illustrative example: some of the top right-wing blogs. We don't usually quote right-wing blogs on AMERICAblog, partly because I'm not convinced of their relevance to the political debate. I think conservative blogs reflect mainstream conservatism (which is different from mainstream Republicanism by being much farther to the right) and are thus a useful barometer of what the right-wing of the GOP is thinking, but I don't believe that the conservative blogosphere actually influences politics and policy (something the left-wing blogosphere does with abandon). But, they are the canary in the coal mine of conservative thought, so it's interesting sometimes to see what they're saying. And they don't heart Huckabee. The Guardian summarizes three of the top GOP blogs and their reaction to Huckabee's victory last night in Iowa:

Michelle Malkin says: "Obama gave the peppiest speech of the night - and his supporters registered the loudest on the applause-o-meter." She also gives Paul Mirengoff at Power Line a nod, quoting his reference to Huckabee as a "big spending governor who doesn't know much about foreign policy but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express". Who's side is she on, again?

Bloggers at the NRO's the Corner seem to be saying anyone but Huckabee..."

They can't stand the guy. And what I'm hearing from my sources is that a big part of the reason is his ties to, and proselytizing for, the religious right.

Republicans never liked or embraced the religious right. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the men at the Concerned Women for America were convenient tools, foils, for the GOP to get out the vote of the speaking-in-tongues wing of the Republican party. But when it came to the substance of the religious right's message - an overwhelming desire to federally regulate your orgasm - most Republicans politely coughed and looked the other way. Well it seems the days of polite indifference to political extremism are finally over. Hallelujah.

Read the rest of this post...

Politico: "GOP race in total disarray"

This is the legacy of George Bush and Karl Rove -- a party in disarray. It's great. The Republicans hate their candidates. The Politico examines this phenomenon:

The Iowa results, with a victory for a populist social conservative [Huckabee] deeply mistrusted by many people in the Republican establishment, also virtually guarantee that the nomination contest will not simply be a battle over personalities and credentials. Instead, the race will now be a deep and probably intensely negative fight for the direction of the party in the post-Bush era.

Here’s what still utterly uncertain: Who will emerge from this demolition derby? Iowa’s historic role is to winnow the field. In 2008, it has the effect of expanding the number of credible top-tier contenders. There are now five people who can conjure at least somewhat plausible paths to the nomination.

Demolition derby. We'll be seeing a lot more of these headlines and article over the next couple months. Hopefully all the way til November.

It's really amazing the contrast between the Democrats and Republicans at this point. Democrats are, by and large, feeling good. Republicans are a mess. Read the rest of this post...

Biden and Dodd drop out

That's too bad, but expected after last night's very poor showing:

Obama : 37.58%
Edwards : 29.75%
Clinton : 29.47%
Richardson : 2.11%
Biden : 0.93%
Uncommitted : 0.14%
Dodd : 0.02%

They both seemed quite smart and genuine. Odd that they didn't connect at all. Read the rest of this post...

December jobs report a disaster

The new report says only 18,000 new jobs last month. Holy cow, that's incredibly bad. Worse still, unemployment jumped from 4.7% to 5%. Yesterday estimates for new jobs were already low, with many thinking it would be between 40,000 - 70,000 with unemployment moving up slightly to 4.8% Take the keys away from Bush and don't let him damage the economy any more. We need urgent action, but we do not need Bush and Paulson to put out the fire that they created. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

That was a fun night...in that geeky, political way.

Still struck by how screwed the Republicans are. It's going to get really ugly...a lot uglier, which is going to be fun to watch. Over 15,000 GOPers voted for Fred Thompson after he basically said he didn't really want to run for President. That's desperation.

What's the buzz this morning? Read the rest of this post...

FDA to approve franken-meat

The good ol' Bush-FDA. They're always there for industry, when industry needs them. Just don't ask them to care about safeguarding the food for consumers though. I know it's asking for a lot, but could the Democrats in Congress back up the broad majority of Americans who hate this idea? Would this be asking too much?

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to declare as early as next week that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are safe to consume, the Wall Street Journal reported without naming its source.

Read the rest of this post...

Sarkozy demands equality on honors list

As much as I may disagree with certain policies and comments by Nicolas Sarkozy, he has always impressed me with his drive to modernize France and make it an all inclusive society. When he presented his new cabinet, it was a radical change from the past. Now, he's is refusing the initial annual honors list and demanding new faces from all backgrounds. This kind of change is long overdue. More on his campaign of diversity, after the jump.

Ministers are hurriedly working on new lists for the Légion d'Honneur, awarded to "eminent" French and foreign citizens, and the Ordre Nationale du Mérite, awarded for "distinguished" achievement. Announcements are expected in the next few days.

In the case of the country's second ranking honour, the Ordré du Merite, the new list, already almost two months overdue, is expected to include equal numbers of men and women for the first time. The list of recipients of the Légion d'Honneur, which was due on 1 January, may not be equally balanced but will contain more women than ever before. In future, President Sarkozy has made it clear, he wants to see parity between the sexes in the award of honours.

According to the newspaper Le Monde, President Sarkozy was also unhappy that the proposed lists contained too many civil servants and politicians and, implicitly, too many white people. He has asked for candidates who reflect "French diversity" and more people from businesses and charitable associations.

Overall, of 1,340 new nominations to the order, less than a third were women.

Read the rest of this post...