Obama v Wall Street

“They’re not accustomed to being engaged in politics this way,” says a private-equity investor. “Their skin isn’t toughened. They actually take [the attacks by Obama] personally. This is a profession with a lot of smart people, but who aren’t necessarily terribly introspective. They think they actually deserve to make all this money. So any attack on their livelihood is, ahem, unpleasant.”

Obama Is From Mars, Wall Street Is From Venus

QOTD

Some of the right wing blogs are saying that this starts a slippery slope to a single payer system, and the end of the HMO industry as we know it.

God, they’re optimistic.

via mccarty.tim

On Conservatives and taxes

You see, a conservative is someone who would rather pay $5,000 for police and fire protection that’s only for paying customers than $2,000 for police and fire protection that helps everyone, even people who didn’t pay anything, even if the quality of service is exactly the same in both cases.

See also health care reform, school vouchers, attempts to mitigate the housing crisis (“We can’t do something that helps all of us! Someone might get something they didn’t deserve!”)

via straight on Mefi

Specter leaves GOP

Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) is switching parties today, leaving the GOP and joining the Democratic caucus.

This is big news for a couple of reasons. As soon as Al Franken is seated from Minnesota, this means that the democrats will have a 60-seat majority in the Senate. On party-line votes, this means that they’re filibuster-proof. They won’t have any excuses for not getting their agenda passed now. I hope to see a serious health-care package and better choices on infrastructure, moving us away from highway packages and towards more public transit.

Rumors had been swirling for a while about Specter. He’s facing a primary challenge from the right by Pat Toomey, and his numbers weren’t looking very good. By running as a Dem, he increases his odds of a victory substantially.

He’s always been a moderate anyway, and was a vocal opponent of executive power grabs by the Bush administration. He’s also pro-choice, pro-civil-unions for gays, and favors immigration reform that includes amnesty. As the GOP has shifted right in recent years, all of these positions have put him at odds with his own party. He’s been under increasing fire from the GOP’s right flank after crossing party lines to vote for the stimulus package, one of only three senators to do so.

He’ll still be a moderate as a Dem, and the party won’t be able to count on him for every vote without making concessions, but this is still big news.

Update: part of Specter’s statement:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

I also forgot to mention that Specter is a cancer survivor and huge advocate for funding the NIH and other science agencies. Another plus for the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania.

QOTD

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,”
– James F. Reda

Founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates and rich asshat extraordinare, in the NYT

Change (dot gov)

Promptly at 12pm, Obama’s media team launched the redesigned whitehouse.gov. Some thoughts:

• As with all of Obama’s sites, through the primaries and the transition, the design is beautiful, clean, and usable.
• It’s even XHTML compliant!
• The site has a blog and links to a twitter account
• It uses Creative Commons for copyright!

Perhaps most emblematic of a new, open government, though, is the site’s robots.txt file. For the uninitiated, a robots.txt file tells search engines like Google what they’re allowed to index. Things that aren’t indexed aren’t searchable. The old whitehouse.gov had a robots.txt totalling over 2400 lines, meaning that lots of stuff on the site was essentially hidden, or at least a pain in the ass to find. Obama’s site has just one exclusion, which is a directory used for scripts (useless information for search engines anyway).

Here’s to a new day in the US of A.

Wordle of inauguration speech

I’m sure I’m not the first to do this, but I threw the text of Obama’s speech into Wordle today. Here are the results:

(Click to enlarge)

Kit Bond is out

Here’s best news I’ve heard all day: Kit Bond is retiring. The four-term senator has had a stranglehold on the seat, but by stepping down, he’s creating a wide-open race. There’s no obvious successor, which could make for a crowded (and hopefully ugly) Republican primary. The top contender on the Democratic side is probably Robin Carnahan, though it, too, is a pretty wide-open race. Should be fun to see how this one shapes up.

In which I say something nice about George W. Bush

Today, President Bush is expected to designate several huge areas to be marine national monuments. This will limit commercial activity in the regions and protect a large number of endangered and threatened species. While his general record on the environment hasn’t been stellar (to put it mildly), this is great news. So here it is: Thanks, GWB. This is a good thing you’ve done.

Finally, a president who respects science

It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.

- President-elect Barack Obama in his weekly address

It’s about time we heard that from Washington DC, and it’s great to see that he’s backing it up by appointing several well known and respected scientists to key positions. From my perspective, it’s especially exciting to have Eric Lander on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He’s one of the biggest names in genomics and should do a great job of informing this White House about the power and potential of personalized medicine.

Update: How did I miss Harold Varmus? He’s a Nobel-laureate cancer researcher. As someone working on cancer genomics, this lineup makes me very happy.

New World Order

Barack’s new digs

1) Obama’s transition team has a website up and running already. Good to see that he intends to continue leveraging the internet for campaigning and dissemination of information.

2) Damn. Look at that site. His team continues to do amazing graphic design work. The coherence of the graphic design and branding throughout the campaign was phenomenal. His website, his signs, even the stage at which he gave his acceptance speech – they all meshed beautifully. Marketers and politicians, take note. That is how you build a brand.

3) Note the quotation on top of the site:

“Today, we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”

It’s going to be good to have the president I’ve always wanted.

The Demise of the Grand Old Party

Boy, I’d hate to be part of the republican leadership right now, faced with trying to piece together a fractured party. It’s always been an uneasy alliance between the religious right and big business/fiscal conservatives, but this year the cracks have turned into a chasm. The wealthy and well educated could give a rats ass about gay marriage. The poor could care less about tax breaks on capital gains.

I see two ways they can rebuild. The first is that Mike Huckabee or someone similar makes a serious play for the party in 2012. He’s got religious credentials, but is less fiscally conservative, because he believes in that “be my brother’s keeper” stuff. I think it will play to the center well, especially with the economy tanking. People are tired of wars, tired of trickle-down economic bullshit – if he can moderate the ‘values’ message a little to appeal to the middle, he could have a shot.

The other route, combining centrist social values with fiscal conservatism is more likely, in my opinion. Here’s why: The GOP is losing young voters, and the base of their party at a phenomenal rate. In just eight years, they’ve gone from a 48/48 split (Gore/Bush) to a 66/32 split between Obama/McCain. Also consider that Prop 8, banning gay marriage in California, was opposed 66 to 34 by young voters.

It’s just unsustainable to build a party on wedge social issues like gay rights. Change is going to happen eventually, so their party would do well get out ahead of it. (comparisons to the civil rights movement in the 60’s seem apt). Leading this side, think of people in the Mitt Romney mold: Unafraid of gay marriage (at least until he had to run for the current GOP’s nomination), but fiscally conservative and pragmatic. See, religious dogma has a way of hampering a politician’s ability to build coalitions through compromise. They’ll still get a grudging evangelical vote, but can focus on playing to the center instead of to a shrinking (and increasingly out-of-touch) right.

Either way, this election has proven that the real base of power is in the grassroots, in the working class, and in 5 and 10 dollar donations from millions of people. Until the GOP finds a face for the party who can connect viscerally with this part of the electorate, as Obama did, they’ll continue to be an opposition party.

Chill

President Barack Obama

Damn, that feels good to write.

This country is a mess, and there’s lots of work to be done, but just for tonight, let’s celebrate.

Yes We Can.

Woah.

Obama drew a crowd of 100,000 in St. Louis today. Incredible.

Photo: Associated Press

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

He speaks truth

The Problem with Palin

Sam Harris eviscerates the Palin pick:

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. . .

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages — and loses — both necessary and unnecessary wars.

The Daily Show highlights the usual lies and hypocrisy from conservative talking heads:

They must not realize that their words are being taped.

Dems pledge increased science funding

Reason number #482 to vote for Democrats this fall:

Democrats formally approved their platform, pledging to double federal funding of basic science research, lift the ban on funding embryonic stem cell research, and make the R&D tax credit permanent.

via The Scientist