Daily Kos

Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow’s. We need to invest in clean, renewable energy. In the long term, that’s the answer. That’s the key to helping families at the pump and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

President Obama in this morning's weekly address laid out a plan to ease gas-price hardship for Americans already struggling in the down economy, focusing on upping domestic oil production, creating a task force to look into price manipulation and—most heartening for progressive listeners—ending the $4 trillion in taxpayer subsidies to the energy giants.

Most important in the long run, he said, is moving America to clean, renewable energy. And as is true of everything these days, that comes back to the arguments about the budget—in this case, the obstinacy of Congress and the recent proposals to slash funding for energy innovation:

Both Democrats and Republicans believe we need to reduce the deficit. That’s where we agree. The question we’re debating is how we do it. I’ve proposed a balanced approach that cuts spending while still investing in things like education and clean energy that are so critical to creating jobs and opportunities for the middle class. It’s a simple idea: we need to live within our means while at the same time investing in our future.

That’s why I disagree so strongly with a proposal in Congress that cuts our investments in clean energy by 70 percent. Yes, we have to get rid of wasteful spending—and make no mistake, we’re going through every line of the budget scouring for savings. But we can do that without sacrificing our future. We can do that while still investing in the technologies that will create jobs and allow the United States to lead the world in new industries. That’s how we’ll not only reduce the deficit, but also lower our dependence on foreign oil, grow the economy, and leave for our children a safer planet. And that’s what our mission has to be.

The full transcript can be found beneath the fold and on the White House website.

A press release this week by SpaceX unveiled a revolutionary abort system integrated into that company's Dragon capsule currently under development:

Due to their extreme weight, tractor systems must be jettisoned within minutes of liftoff, but the SpaceX innovative design builds the escape engines into the side walls of Dragon, eliminating the danger of releasing a heavy solid rocket escape tower after launch. The SpaceX design also provides crew with emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight, whereas the Space Shuttle has no escape system and even the Apollo moon program allowed escape only during the first few minutes of flight.

Smart engineering. Instead of being dead weight on a rocket where every extra pound means big bucks, it can be carried all the way into space, giving the spacecraft enormous maneuvering capability throughout the mission. And, with a few tweaks, the SpaceX idea might even be used to land a capsule on low gravity, airless worlds as large as the moon.

• Check out the largest intact fossil spider ever found,  and it looks like an Orb-weaver complete with the silk producing organs to back it up. Which means 165 million years ago, these gals could have been patiently tending classic spiral webs wide enough to stretch across the Nile.
• Happy birthday to Mr. Hubble's Telescope! If only Edwin Hubble could see the glorious sights his modern day namesake has stolen from heaven and brought to earth.
• Mother Jones has an excellent read on the denier fraud known as Climategate. A small taste:

  The press gave the think tanks and pundits a bully pulpit in the form of airtime and headlines—without bothering to dig into the hacked emails and figure out what the fuss was about. While journalists were quick to quote email snippets that were causing a ruckus, it wasn't until December 12—nearly a month after the initial release—that a team of Associated Press reporters finally parsed the entire set of emails and published a more accurate picture ...

• Last but not least, a gorgeous collage of earth photos to celebrate earth day.

Jibber your jabber

Visual source: Newseum

NY Times editorial:

Default is theoretically possible, though public outrage over the mess would likely compel Congress to raise the debt limit before then. The best approach, the most sensible and mature, would be to pass a clean and timely increase.

However, nothing sensible or mature is on the horizon. Republicans have vowed to extract more heedless spending cuts in exchange for their votes to raise the debt limit. To that end, they seem likely to demand changes to the budget process, like a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, or spending caps.

Stephen L. Goldstein talks about

Wealth care vs. health care.

That choice will frame the debate for the 2012 election. As a result, President Barack Obama has already won his second term, and Democrats will recapture majorities in both houses of Congress. Everything until then is a delicious denouement, when tea party extremists will have turned the Republican Party into a blip on the political screen — and Kingsley Guy will beg to become a Democrat.

Whiz kid wannabe, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will be the unwitting savior of the Democratic Party and cause of his party's humiliating defeat. He issued his penny-pinching "Path to Prosperity" before the president spoke about our debt and deficit. For the unveiling, image consultants gave the Wisconsonite a new hairdo to soften his usual menacing part and ghoulish gaze, but they couldn't change the mean-spirited, elitist strategy to which he committed Republicans: Adiós — Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid; Hola — tax cuts for the drowning-in-money.

Recently, when Kingsley and I were interviewed by Thomas Roberts on MSNBC, I mentioned the obscenity of extending trillion-dollar tax cuts to the richest Americans while bleeding the middle class. But Kingsley saw nothing wrong.

Gail Collins:

Right now you’re probably asking yourself: How are all the angry new governors doing?

Great! Fear and loathing may abound, but it’s business-friendly fear and loathing. In Ohio and Wisconsin, angry new governors John Kasich and Scott Walker are taking economic development out of the hands of state bureaucrats and giving the job to new quasi-private entities that will be much more effective and efficient.

In Florida, where the Legislature did all that in the 1990s, the angry new governor Rick Scott has a bold plan to improve economic development by creating a State Department of Commerce that will be much more effective and efficient.

Dana Milbank on the conservative nutters eating their own. It's so bad even the Villagers have noticed.

Two from the NY Times Room for Debate:

David O. Sears:

Racial resentment more strongly affected evaluations of his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, than it had before the campaign or since. And it more strongly affected evaluations of Obama’s issue positions on taxes and health care than it had before. The campaign in 2008 was the most racialized in recent history, despite little explicit reference to it during the campaign.

How is that relevant to the birthers? Consider three powerful principles in political psychology: strong prior attitudes can powerfully influence responses to an unfamiliar issue, especially if authoritative sources associate the issue with such attitudes, and if the new issue is inherently ambiguous.

Party identification and racial resentment are perhaps the two most strongly held contemporary political attitudes. But one might protest, no authoritative sources associate Obama with foreign birth. Wrong. The New York Times and other mainstream media are not considered authoritative sources to most birthers, especially compared with many low-level conservative political operatives, or their like-minded social networks.

If you were a birther, would you trust your neighbor who spends his evenings on the Internet and watching Fox News, or the Times? All of us have heard of forged official documents, from under-aged college students’ faked id’s to illegal aliens’ stolen social security numbers. Why not Obama’s birth certificate?

James T LaPlant:

We often ask why do people believe weird or silly things? It can provide them with comfort and consolation in a world that appears increasingly complex, globalized and difficult to understand.

I would also conclude that basic ignorance is at play. A poll of North Carolina voters in 2009 by Public Policy Polling found that 26 percent did not believe Obama was born in the U.S., and 20 percent were unsure. A question later in the poll asked if Hawaii was part of the United States.: 5 percent of respondents said no and 3 percent were unsure.

This is a story Daily Kos covered years ago, right down to the dangers for the GOP in being led by their fringe. This clip is Contributing Editor David Waldman from July 2009:

[Rachel Maddow, The Nation and Daily Kos won the AlterNet vote on who are the most influential media progressives. Thanks to all who voted for us. You can read about how others did in the poll in Don Hazen's story here.]

• • • • •

At AlterNet, Tara Lohan writes 5 Reasons to Be Hopeful We Haven't Totally Screwed Ourselves and the Planet ... Yet

And so here we are, another Earth Day older and I can't help but wonder if we've irreparably screwed ourselves (and the near-term survival prospects of much of life on this planet). We're headed toward a collision of crises -- water, food, energy, soil, climate. The world's scientists warn that we need substantial change: We need to drastically alter our appetite for consumer goods, the structure of our food system, the way we produce energy and how much we consume. But we're inching forward when we need to be leaping. We're buying green cleaning products, stuffing our reusable shopping bags with local food, and voting the lesser of the evils into public office.

But it needs to be bigger and better. We need to be bigger and better. Most of the politicians suck on environmental issues, frankly. But to quote a once-popular phrase from political eras past, "If you think the politicians are bad, you should meet their constituents." That's us. We voted the politicians in there and we either have to get them out or make them step it up. We need people with vision beyond the next election cycle. We need people not beholden to corporate polluters. And equally, we much change our own lifestyles to incorporate environmental sensibilities.

It's not enough to just to care anymore, we have to care enough to do everything we possibly can. That is going to mean changing the way we live our lives and not thinking of the Earth as something that is here for us to use up and throw away like so much of our disposable culture.

And while there are no shortage of headlines about the environmental catastrophes knocking on our door or the political ineptitude in Washington or the sell-out businesses or NGOs, there are at least five inspiring reasons to believe that it is not too late and it's possible to save our civilization and rescue the planet from meltdown.

These five reasons are what get me up in the morning and help me believe our cup is indeed half full. These are the folks making waves, rocking the boat of complacency, and they need our help:

Creating a Movement ...

Frack off ...

Ending Corporate Rule ...

No More Coal ...

We Are What We Eat ...

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:

With all of Iraq under US control, it's noteworthy that still no "weapons of mass destruction" have been found. It's even more noteworthy that Bush administration officials are losing hope any will be found.

With little to show after 30 days, the Bush administration is losing confidence in its prewar belief that it had strong clues pointing to the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction concealed in Iraq, according to planners and participants in the hunt.

After testing some -- though by no means all -- of their best leads, analysts here and in Washington are increasingly doubtful that they will find what they are looking for in the places described on a five-tiered target list drawn up before fighting began.

So how do you start spinning this massive failure? Indeed, thousands died in order to secure the world from this so-called threat. So what if there was no threat to begin with?

House:

• CA-26: More eliminationist rhetoric from the right (not that they'll ever cease): Anthony Portantino, the Democratic Assemblyman running against Rep. David Dreier, is featured on some second amendment-related Old West-style "WANTED" poster.

• LA-02: Daily Kingfish says that Public Service Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III (son of a former state senator of the same name) is rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Rep. Cedric Richmond in the newly-redrawn 2nd CD. The post points out that Bossiere's PSC district has a lot of overlap with the new borders of the 2nd, including a dog-leg up to the Baton Rouge area. (Bossiere, like Richmond, is also African-American.)

• NH-02: It's nothing like the town hall craziness of 2009, but it's nice to see idiots like Charlie Bass take heat in public forums for voting for Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing budget. Pretty pathetic political instincts on the Bassmaster's part. This vote will haunt him—and it's already haunting several other colleagues, like Bob Dold!, Lou Barletta, and Paul Ryan himself.

• NM-01: Oh no. I really had hoped we were done with Marty Chavez, but the maddening former Albuquerque mayor is apparently considering a run to replace Martin Heinrich, and is even supposedly meeting with the DCCC. The good news, though, is that ex-LG (and 2010 gubernatorial nominee) Diane Denish is also thinking about entering the race. This could be a very crowded primary.

• NV-02: You know Jon Ralston is enjoying this one. After a report came out in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which Ralston not-so-affectionately refers to as a "newspaper," in scare quotes every time) that state GOP chair Mark Amodei was planning to seek the 2nd CD seat being vacated by Dean Heller, Ralston spoke with Amodei who says he didn't announce anything. In the LVRJ piece (which oddly quotes Amodei himself, so I don't know how they got the story wrong), Amodei also said that Republican state Sen. Greg Brower told him he also planned to join the race (and Ralston confirms via Twitter.)

Of course, who knows what's going to happen with this seat, given the unsettled legal questions about how a special election should be conducted if Gov. Brian Sandoval taps Heller for John Ensign's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

• TN-06: I wonder what's up with Diane Black. The GOP frosh gave her own campaign two-thirds of a million bucks in Q1—not a loan, an outright donation. I'm guessing that she's trying to ward off a potential primary challenge, given that she won the open-seat Republican primary last year with just 31% of the vote (her two nearest competitors both got 30%, so there must have been much gnashing of teeth).

Other Races:

• NJ-St. Sen.: An administrative law judge ruled that Olympian Carl Lewis, who is running as a Democrat, does indeed meet state residency requirements. However, it sounds like Republicans plan to appeal this ruling.

• WI Recall: All sorts of recall news. First up, Dem state Rep. Fred Clark says he'll challenge Luther Olsen in the expected recall election, another strong get for Team Blue. Democrats also filed a huge 30,000 signatures against their fifth recall target, Alberta Darling. That leaves just three eligible Republicans left: Rob Cowles, Glenn Grothman, and Mary Lazich, the latter two of whom are in very red districts (so I wouldn't be surprised if they don't get hit with a recall).

Republicans also finally filed signatures against three Democrats: Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin, and Robert Wirch. Democrats, though, charged that the GOP's petition-gathering efforts were sloppy and flawed, and vowed to challenge the signatures.

Redistricting Roundup:

• California: California's new independent redistricting commission is set to release a draft set of maps by June 10th, with final maps due on August 15th (after a period of public comment).

• Colorado: Things don't seem to be going so swimmingly in Colorado's attempt to go back to the redistricting drawing board, with a special committee begging for more time to finish a new set of maps. The Republican co-chair says he thinks they can produce new plans in 10 days, but as Al Swearengen says, announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh.

Meanwhile, Gov. John Hickenlooper sounds like he has no intention of vetoing any map that the legislature sends him. Since Dems control one body and Republicans the other, this means they'll have to produce a compromise map—or no map at all, and kick it to the courts. I think Hick's hands-off approach (which is totally in-character for him) increases the likelihood of the latter, because it eliminates a key piece of Dem leverage which could be used to force an agreement.

• Missouri: Utterly embarrassing: Barely more than a day after finally agreeing to a conference committee to resolve differences between Republicans in the state House and Senate, work has ground to a halt, and nothing more will happen until Tuesday. One state Rep. offered this hilariously nonsensical assessment: "I think we're close, but obviously we're far." Meanwhile, the House passed a new map this morning that supposedly tries to address some Senate concerns, but given that there is no actual agreement, I'm guessing this is just a negotiating tactic.

• New Jersey: Teabaggers are suing to block implementation of NJ's new legislative map. It's not quite clear what the grounds are, but WNYC summarizes: "The suit alleges that the commission over-packed the southern half of the state and 'illegally split Newark and Jersey City from three districts each to two.'"

• Louisiana: The state House submitted its own map to the DoJ for pre-clearance, which I believe makes it the first such plan to go before Justice this cycle. The hotly-contested congressional map, though, has yet to be sent in.

• Victims: Dave Wasserman and Julia Edwards try their hand at the most likely redistricting victims this cycle, with separate lists for the 10 most endangered Democrats and Republicans.

Having bought and paid for a whole slew of new Republican members of Congress, apparently Wall Street feels they have to protect them from disgruntled constituents, as well. They're trying to stack the decks at town hall meetings with conservative activists asking softball quesitons.

Slate’s Dave Weigel reports that American Action Network, a relatively new conservative front group founded by a group of Wall Street bankers, is loading up conservative activists with softball questions and talking points to bolster Republican lawmakers on the Ryan plan:

Meanwhile, the American Action Network, the think tank and campaign shop run by former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, is making Ryan budget talking points and questions available for conservatives who want to buck up their members.

American Action Network did not return ThinkProgress’ request for more information on the budget talking points. As we reported last year, the group was founded by investment banker Ken Langone, former Goldman Sachs executive Robert Steel, and investor and former Nixon official Fred Malek.

If the tough questioning of these Republicans at town meetings continues, it wouldn't be at all surprising to see the Koch/Fox/Armey network really engage, and start busing in their minions to try to outnumber and shout down others. It's their playbook, after all, and they have an investment to protect, an investment that is working out for them so far:

The Ryan plan repeals provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that allow "the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to designate some firms as systemically significant and subject them to stiffer regulation"— a major reform Wall Street has lobbied aggressively to stop. The American Action Network board features a number of executives and lobbyists with a potential interest in rolling back financial regulations.

It's understandable when someone who has been genuinely skeptical but open-minded about the reality of human-caused climate change finally gets the message and comes around. It's cause for pondering cognitive dissonance when someone who previously believed that climate change is neither hoax nor bad science switches to the other side.

In the case of presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty, however, it's hard to believe it's anything other than a monstrous case of pandering. The former Minnesota governor has known since he started making the switch in 2008 that establishing his denier credentials would be essential to getting the presidential nomination in a party where Rush Limbaugh's pronouncements are taken more seriously than 98 percent of climate scientists'.

Pawlenty is no scientific dumbo. His time touring the state discussing climage change in tandem with famed environmentalist, educator and adventurer Will Steger, as noted by Tim Murphy, makes it clear he had at least some grasp of the impact of climate change and the need to do something about it. That he chose instead to ignore the fruits of extensive peer-reviewed research shows he is also no political dumbo. Just another politician willing to ignore what he knows to be true and take the dead-end approach regarding the most crucial issue of our era. Ignoring the world that will be left to his children and grandchildren—all for short-term gain. That's worse than pandering. And the fact that he says other Republicans also are doing this just reinforces my view that we should call what he's doing Pawlentying.

In 2010, on Meet the Press, as Brad Johnson pointed out at the time, Pawlentying made itself bold during an interview with David Gregory:

Pawlenty: The climate is obviously changing, David. The more interesting question is how much of it is man-made and how much is as a result of natural causes and patterns. Of course, we have seen data manipulation and controversy, or at least debate within the scientific community. . . . And the way you address it is we should all be in favor of reducing pollution. We need to do it in ways that don’t burden the economy. Cap and trade, I think, would be a disaster in that regard.

Just last month, in an interview with Laura Ingraham, he cranked it up a notch, calling his previous views about climate change, and especially cap-and-trade proposals, "stupid." Steger says he has not spoken to Pawlenty since the governor switched into denier mode four years ago. But, in his Mother Jones interview, he seemed genuinely surprised by those remarks:

"I'm baffled by that—did he actually say that?" says Steger, when asked about Pawlenty's recent statements. "I'm baffled by that. But I think he's getting information from the wrong source and it's really too bad for our children. It's reckless."

Things were different when Steger met Pawlenty in 2006:

"It was a real heart to heart," he recalls. "I really believed that morally we were on the same level. We saw the moral imperative. And he understood, and back then, he chose to veer in another direction [from his party], which took a lot of guts. I have to respect that."

Unaccountably, Will Steger still respects Tim Pawlenty. He just thinks he's getting information from bad sources. Proving, I suppose, what a merciful guy Steger is. Nobody can tell for certain what's in another person's heart. We can only judge them by what they say and what they do. By that measure, on climate change, Pawlenty deserves no respect whatsoever.

Jibber your jabber

Rep. Sean "I can't live on $174K a year" Duffy (R-WI) is among those Republicans getting some heat from constituents over his vote to end Medicare and keep tax cuts for the rich. He's also getting an education on what exactly it was he voted for.

CONSTITUENT: I hear you saying two contradictory things about taxes. One you want to reform the tax code so that corporations to pay more, and two you don’t want corporations to pay so much so that they’ll somehow stimulate business. So I don’t understand that contradiction. The CBO […] the Ryan program proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

DUFFY: It doesn’t, No it doesn’t.

DIFFERENT CONSTITUENT: Yes it does.

DUFFY: No, it doesn’t there’s no voucher.

CONSTITUENT: That’s what my understanding of what it is.

DUFFY: No.

CONSTITUENT: They count the cost to seniors if it goes into a voucher program, it’s going to be trillions of dollars for those young men like this guy in front.

DUFFY: It’s a premium support it’s not a voucher. The bottom line is if we do nothing, if we do nothing, you can all say this is all fine and dandy, you can get it and I know any young people here you can all get this program.

CONSTITUENT: I agree that if we do nothing we’re in trouble, that’s why we have to raise taxes on the rich, and raise taxes on the corporations who have never been richer than they have now. And you guys just cut their taxes again.

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: Oh, Yeah!

DUFFY: When you say cutting taxes, if taxes maintain the same level and rate is that a tax cut.

CONSTITUENT: To maintain the same level that was long ago, that was sold on the premise of creating jobs by giving more money to the wealthy.

OTHER CONSTITUENTS: Yeah! [inaudible]

So, here's the question of the day: are Democrats paying attention? Are they going to change their game plan on the budget and debt ceiling negotiations?

Coming up on Sunday Kos ....

• In the race to 2012, should the President appeal to the left or to the center? Steve Singiser will run the numbers, and the answer might come as a surprise to much of the pundit class.
• Meteor Blades will look at the economic damage rank-and-file Americans have suffered during a lost decade and ponder the decade to come.
• Dante Atkins will ask the GOP what happened to small government.
• As the civil war in Libya continues to produce stalemate, brooklynbadboy will make the case that the policy of regime change in Libya has a natural conclusion: another exercise in nation-building by the Western powers in an Islamic country.
• Chris Bowers will discuss how aiming to build a movement where people believe they are fighting for each other is preferable to building a progressive movement.
• Georgia Logothetis will explore the latest developments regarding Senator Dick Durbin, the "Gang of Six" and proposed cuts to Social Security benefits. Republicans have dominated the narrative so far. Can Democrats still get the upper hand at the negotiating table?

Red Cross Tornado Relief Site

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Ten Things I Pledge to Do for Mother Earth

• Save water by switching to tongue baths.
• Rent some Hercules cargo planes to airdrop thousands of hard-plastic recycle bins from 30,000 feet over major metropolitan areas to create awareness of this important issue. Plus they'll all be filled with loose change to remind people that recycling saves money!
• Encourage "teachable moments" by pointing at people drinking out of plastic water bottles and yelling into a bullhorn, "You resource-sucking energy whore, you're killing us!!!"  And then I'll give them a pamphlet.
• To improve fuel economy, retrofit the car with hybrid technology so it can either run on gas or be pulled by a team of kittens.
• Use only the sun and a magnifying glass to fire up the bong. Er…"water pipe."
• Restrict my use of "fracking" to its handiness as an adjective paired with the word "idiot" to describe people who displease me.
• Help save the whales by hiding as many as I can in the basement washtub.
• Contribute to healthy forests by teaching tea partiers not to use the blood of tyrants to water trees because it kills them.
• Dispose of my spent fuel rods properly instead of tossing them in the Burger King dumpster across the street.
• Hit myself repeatedly in the face with a two-by-four while blindfolded so I can get a sense of Earth Day from the perspective of a climate-change denier.

How 'bout you?

Your west coast (and eco!) friendly edition of  Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]