Mittwoch, 21. Januar 2009

Inauguration Day 2009 - This is the day where the change will begin!

"January 20, 2009 is the day we’ve all been waiting for! This is the day where the change will begin!" - I could find written in Internet, but i think the change was already beginning with the big and strong movement for change! Now the change must be continued. Yes this is correct: " The grassroots movement you helped build was always about more than an election. It's about bringing much needed change to Washington and our communities." ( David Plouffe )

Maybe people from Europe could not imagine what a big step for US:
Anne Nixon Cooper 106 years old Atlan interview Barack Obama

How the right wing were coming out to fight against progress - It's a great parody.:
Rush Limbaugh on Barack Obama (Live Call - Never Before Seen Footage) (Feb. 17 2009)

comment in YouTube: Nice! This is an instant classic. Can you do more of this?? Limbaugh is not the only target out there!!

The Future of the Grassroots Movement

A comment in YouTube: "Hurray for Barack Obama! In just 3 days he has signed a batch of orders that are righting so many of the wrongs of the past 8 years! That in itself is worth every dollar that I contributed to help get him elected."

February 17, 2009

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Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.

Let's find out the truth! Sign the petition for an independent investigation into Bush’s War on Terror.

Sign the petition here

Stop the AIG Bonuses

Thanks for all were active again: U.S. House Passes 90 Percent Tax on Employee Bonuses

And all with new "printed" Money!

"Every six and half seconds, AIG loses the equivalent of the median household income in the US. Americans spent at world's largest retailer Wal-Mart Stores in the fourth quarter is $67.4 billion, so AIG's loss amounts to 92% of the spending! In other words, It's more like, It would take a person spending $1-million per day, everyday, the next 169 years to spend as much money as AIG lost during the fourth quarter, which lasted just 92 days." - And one point more about tax money: over $ 90 billion were going from AIG to banks like Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS - good for Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), who got nearly $ 12 billions. (look article Bloomberg)

election vote

Mar. 20

Senate Dem 58 GOP 41 Ties 1

House Dem 257 GOP 178

Downloadable polling data

Previous report

Next report

	Strong Dem (57)
	Weak Dem (0)
	Barely Dem (1)
	Exactly tied (1)
	Barely GOP (5)
	Weak GOP (1)
	Strong GOP (35)

Map algorithm explained

Electoral College Graphs 2008

The graph above shows the current number of electoral votes for each candidate since Mar 22, The brown horizontal line shows the 270 electoral vote mark needed to be elected president. The gray vertical lines show the boundaries between the months.

The graph above shows the electoral votes again but omits the "barely" states. The electoral votes of a state only count in this graph if the candidate has a margin of 5% or more over his opponent.

Electoral College Graphs 2004

The graph above shows the current number of electoral votes for each candidate since May 24, The brown horizontal line shows the 270 electoral vote mark needed to be elected president. The gray vertical lines show the boundaries between the months.

The graph above shows the electoral votes again but omits the "barely" states. The electoral votes of a state only count in this graph if the candidate has a margin of 5% or more over his opponent.

News from the Votemaster

(and list some important steps chronological)

Net Gain/Loss in the House since 2002 (made before Nov. 25 2008)

The National Journal has compiled a list of how many House seats each party has gained or lost since 2002. The Democrats have picked up seats in all regions of the country. By region, the gains are Northeast (+20), South (+6), Midwest (+15), and West (+11). Here is the list sorted by amount of gain per state, using unofficial tallies in those states where the 2008 election is still undecided.

State	Dem net
New York	+7
Pennsylvania	+5
Arizona	+3
Colorado	+3
Connecticut	+3
Florida	+3
Illinois	+3
Ohio	+3
Virginia	+3
Iowa	+2
Indiana	+2
Michigan	+2
North Carolina	+2
New Hampshire	+2
New Mexico	+2
Alabama	+1
California	+1
Georgia	+1
Idaho	+1
Kentucky	+1
Maryland	+1
Minnesota	+1
Mississippi	+1
New Jersey	+1
Nevada	+1
South Dakota	+1
Vermont	+1
Wisconsin	+1
Alaska	0
Arkansas	0
Delaware	0
Hawaii	0
Kansas	0
Massachusetts	0
Maine	0
Missouri	0
Montana	0
North Dakota	0
Nebraska	0
Oklahoma	0
Oregon	0
Rhode Island	0
South Carolina	0
Tennessee	0
Utah	0
Washington	0
West Virginia	0
Wyoming	0
Louisiana	-1
Texas	-5

Bush Accepts Timeline for Withdrawing Troops from Iraq (Nov. 30.)

After years of saying he would never accept a timeline for withdrawing U.S.troops from Iraq because that would help the enemy, President Bush has accepted a timeline for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq: Dec. 31, 2011. Nobody noticed. After the U.S. leaves, Iraq will be run by a pro-Iranian government that opposes everything Bush wanted to achieve in Iraq. There has been no political solution about dividing up the oil revenue, so civil war remains an option for the future as well. However, since the agreement will be signed on Bush's watch, if Iraq devolves into chaos later on, the question: "Who lost Iraq?" will have a clear answer: George W. Bush. While this doesn't get Barack Obama off the hook entirely, for him an easy course of events is to carry out Bush's agreement and keep Robert Gates on as secretary of defense to see it through. As long as Obama doesn't have to make an executive decisions about Iraq but just carries out existing policy, he probably won't be blamed if things go wrong.

Financial Crises for Dummies

If, like most people, you don't exactly understand how the financial crisis came about, this piece by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains a lot in detail. In a nutshell, Stiglitz sees five crucial errors that led to the crisis:

Pres. Reagan replaced pro-regulation Fed chairman Paul Volcker with anti-regulation Alan Greenspan
The Glass-Steagall act was repealed, eliminating banking safeguards
Tax cuts and low interest rates masked all the warning signs
The rating agencies gave good grades to companies in deep trouble
The administration's "cash for trash" bailout plan was a disaster

Bush Loans $17 Billion to the Auto Industry (Dec. 21.) President Bush brought down the wrath of a large piece of the Republican Party on himself for giving the big three car manufacturers a $17 billion stopgap loan. ... In other words, the $1.7 billion worth of labor costs in the (unionized) auto industry are a big deal but the $490 billion worth of labor costs in the (nonunionized) financial industry is a nonissue.

Final Presidential Results

State	Obama	McCain	Nader	Barr	Baldwin	McKinney	Others	Total
Alabama	813,479	1,266,546	6,788	4,991	4,310	0	3,705	2,099,819
Alaska	123,594	193,841	3,783	1,589	1,660	0	1,730	326,197
Arizona	1,034,707	1,230,111	11,301	12,555	1,371	3,406	24	2,293,475
Arkansas	422,310	638,017	12,882	4,776	4,023	3,470	1,139	1,086,617
California	8,274,473	5,011,781	108,381	67,582	3,145	38,774	57,764	13,561,900
Colorado	1,288,576	1,073,589	13,350	10,897	6,233	2,822	5,894	2,401,361
Connecticut	997,772	629,428	19,162		311	90	29	1,646,792
Delaware	255,459	152,374	2,401	1,109	626	385	58	412,412
District of Columbia	245,800	17,367	958			590	1,138	265,853
Florida	4,282,074	4,045,624	28,124	17,218	7,915	2,887	6,902	8,390,744
Georgia	1,844,137	2,048,744	1,123	28,812	1,305	249	62	3,924,432
Hawaii	325,871	120,566	3,825	1,314	1,013	979		453,568
Idaho	236,440	403,012	7,175	4,747	3,658			655,032
Illinois	3,419,673	2,031,527	30,952	19,645	8,256	11,838	1,160	5,523,051
Indiana	1,374,039	1,345,648	909	29,257	1024	87	90	2,751,054
Iowa	828,940	682,379	8,014	4,590	4,445	1,423	7,332	1,537,123
Kansas	514,765	699,655	10,527	6,706	4,148	35	36	1,235,872
Kentucky	751,985	1,048,462	15,378	5,989	4,694			1,826,508
Louisiana	782,989	1,148,275	6,997		2,581	9,187	10,732	1,960,761
Maine	421,923	295,273	10,636			2,900	431	731,163
Maryland	1,629,467	959,862	14,713	9,842	3,760	4,747	9,205	2,631,596
Massachusetts	1,904,097	1,108,854	28,841	13,189	4,971	6,550	14,483	3,080,985
Michigan	2,872,579	2,048,639	33,085	23,716	14,685	8,892	170	5,001,766
Minnesota	1,573,354	1,275,409	30,152	9,174	6,787	5,174	10,319	2,910,369
Mississippi	554,662	724,597	4,011	2,529	2,551	1,034	481	1,289,865
Missouri	1,441,911	1,445,814	17,813	11,386	8,201	80		2,925,205
Montana	231,667	242,763	3,686	1,355			10,638	490,109
Nebraska	333,319	452,979	5,406	2,740	2,972	1,028	2,837	801,281
Nevada	533,736	412,827	6,150	4,263	3,194	1,411	6,267	967,848
New Hampshire	384,826	316,534	3,503	2,217	226	40	3,624	710,970
New Jersey	2,215,422	1,613,207	21,298	8,441	3,956	3,636	2,277	3,868,237
New Mexico	472,422	346,832	5,327	2,428	1,597	1,552		830,158
New York	4,769,700	2,742,298	41,086	19,513	614	12,729	8,873	7,594,813
North Carolina	2,142,651	2,128,474		25,722			13,942	4,310,789
North Dakota	141,278	168,601	4,189	1,354	1,199			316,621
Ohio	2,933,388	2,674,491	42,288	19,888	12,550	8,513	7,142	5,698,260
Oklahoma	502,496	960,165						1,462,661
Oregon	1,037,291	738,475	18,614	7,635	7,693	4,543	13,613	1,827,864
Pennsylvania	3,276,363	2,655,885	42,977	19,912				5,995,137
Rhode Island	296,571	165,391	4,829	1,382	675	797	122	469,767
South Carolina	862,449	1,034,896	5,053	7,283	6,827	4,461		1,920,969
South Dakota	170,924	203,054	4,267	1,835	1,895			381,975
Tennessee	1,087,437	1,479,178	11,560	8,547	8,191	2,499	2,337	2,599,749
Texas	3,528,633	4,479,328	5,214	56,116	5,052	671	2,781	8,077,795
Utah	327,670	596,030	8,416	6,966	12,012	982	294	952,370
Vermont	219,262	98,974	3,339	1,067	500		1,904	325,046
Virginia	1,959,532	1,725,005	11,483	11,067	7,474	2,344	6,355	3,723,260
Washington	1,750,848	1,229,216	29,489	12,728	9,432	3,819	1,346	3,036,878
West Virginia	303,857	397,466	7,219		2,465	2,355	89	713,451
Wisconsin	1,677,211	1,262,393	17,605	8,858	5,072	4,216	8,062	2,983,417
Wyoming	82,868	164,958	2,525	1,594	1,192		1,521	254,658
U.S. Total	69,456,897	59,934,814	736,804	524,524	196,461	161,195	226,908	131,237,603

Printing Money Has a Price (Dec.28)

The NY Times has a good analytic piece on the upcoming stimulus of $700 billion or maybe more. We got into this mess by individually and collectively spending money we didn't have. Now the cure is more of the same--but on a larger scale. But someday the piper will have to be paid. There are various mechanisms (higher taxes, inflation, etc.), but all of them come down to a lower standard of living in the future. But just about all economists--none of whom foresaw the banking, credit, and foreclosure crises--agree that the stimulus is the lesser of many evils.

(appendix from me: the money is only like written into computer; you cannot print so much money in short time - it's not even printed! And better use to invest and not wasted for wars like in time of Bush administration!)

Barack Obama to Be Sworn in as 44th President Today (Jan. 20 2009)

Barack Obama will take the oath of office today at noon. You probably knew that. What you might not have known is the immense effort the Secret Service has put into protecting him from the estimated 2-5 million people who are expected to show up for the inauguration, most of them friendly, but a few probably not so friendly. He will speak from behind a huge bulletproof glass window and the whole town will be crawling with counter snipers, an elite unit of the Secret Service whose members are not only expert marksmen, but each of whom has a very high-performance rifle customized to the shooter's height and arm length. Normally the Secret Service doesn't like a lot of publicity (for example, about the security features of the beast, the James Bond-like armored limo the President gets driven around in), but they have publicized the counter snipers quite widely.

One thing the Secret Service can't protect Obama from is the weather. It is expected to be a cloudy day today with temperatures below freezing. No doubt Obama is aware of the fact that the ninth President, William Henry Harrison, gave a two-hour inaugural speech in freezing weather in 1841, caught cold, got pneumonia, and died a month after inauguration (although doctors and historians are still arguing about whether his inaugural address led to his death). In any event, it certainly led to a consitutional crisis as nobody knew whether Vice President John Tyler would become President or merely be the acting President. As usual in these matters, the Supreme Court got into the act and said he could take the oath and become President.

Obama's May Change the Image of the Black Family (Jan. 22 2009)

While much has been written about the historic nature of having a black President, there has been less attention to the impact having a fully functional, highly educated, loving, black family in the news all the time for the next four years. Unfortunately, many people have a stereotype of black families as dysfunctional in many ways, from unwed teenage mothers to oversexed. macho black studs. Watching the Obamas just be a normal family that doesn't fit any of the stereotypes may do more to change people's racial attitudes than anything since the Bill Cosby show (which was only TV after all). This is real. CNN has a story on this aspect of the Obama presidency.

What is also worth noting, is that whenever Barack and Michelle Obama are together, they look like they actually like each other and are not just play acting for the cameras (think: Al Gore's passionately kissing his wife for the whole world to inspect after getting the Democratic nomination in 2000). When Laura Bush was on stage with George Bush, she seemed more like a prop than a person, and to say Bill Clinton was wildly in love with Hillary would be a bit off the mark. In fact, one has to go back to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to find a couple comparable to the Obamas.

House Passes $819 Billion Stimulus Bill Along Party Lines (message from Jan. 29)

The House approved an $819 billion stimulus bill yesterday by a vote of 244 to 188. All Democrats voted for the bill except 11 blue dogs (Allen Boyd, Bobby Bright, Jim Cooper, Brad Ellsworth, Parker Griffith, Paul Kanjorski, Frank Kratovil, Walt Minnick, Collin Peterson, Heath Shuler, and Gene Taylor). Every single Republican voted against it except Ginny Brown-Waite, who didn't vote. So much for bipartisanship.

Part of the explanation here lies in the 2006 and 2008 elections. The Republicans lost a net of 56 House seats in these two cycles, largely because moderate Republicans went down to defeat at the hands of moderate Democrats. The consequence is that the center of gravity of the Republican caucus has shifted far to the right--to people who instinctively believe in Winston Churchill's remark that the duty of the opposition is to oppose.

But they are playing with fire. With the public solidly behind the stimulus and a vast majority of the population (minus Rush Limbaugh) wanting the popular young President to succeed, if the recession shows signs of ending in 2010, the Democrats are going to campaign in the midterms by saying: "Our bold action prevented a depression. All the Republicans do is whine. Washington would be better off with fewer of them." On the other hand, if the recession is still going strong in the Fall of 2010, Republicans will say "Democrats threw your hard-earned tax dollars down the toilet. Time to get rid of them." But this is a huge gamble for the Republicans. This recession has already been going on for a year and they rarely last three years. Even if the recession is not technically over, but jobs are no longer being shed and houses are no longer being foreclosed it will be a lot easier for Democrats to claim it was their leadership that improved the economy. What can the Republicans say? It was their courageous no votes against bills that passed anyway that saved the economy?

The stimulus bill is not law yet. It still has to clear the Senate, where it can be filibustered. The Democrats currently have 58 seats in the Senate, so the Democrats need two Republicans to vote for cloture. But the Senate is much more high profile than the House and having the Republicans filibuster an attempt to save the economy--something most voters want--could be an unparalleled public relations disaster for them. This would be especially bad if Harry Reid forces an old-fashioned Wayne-Morse-type filibuster, with senators reading the Bible on the floor of the Senate for 18 hours a day (on TV no less), a practice technically called "diaper time." Reid's strategy will surely be to try to peel off two Republicans to vote for cloture. Arlen Specter (R-PA) is from a hard-hit state and up for reelection in 2010. His vote against cloture could mean the end of his political career. Neither of the senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are up in 2010, but neither are they under the thumb of Mitch McConnell. Either or both could vote for cloture.

Minority Groups Worried about Gregg Running the Census (Feb. 04)

As Secretary of Commerce, Judd Gregg will be responsible for making sure everybody is counted in the 2010 census, which will be used as the basis for allocating seats in the House. Minority groups are worried that Gregg won't try very hard to find poor people, transients, and homeless people, thus reducing the representation of states with a lot of them. Some people have advocated using statistical techniques to estimate the number of people missed, but the constitution calls for an enumeration, not a statistical model, so anything short of an actual count would probably be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, Gregg has a fair amount of discretion about how hard the enumerators try to count difficult-to-count people.

Stimulus Bill Passes Both Chambers of Congress (Feb. 14)

The Huffington Post summarized the stimulus bill nicely with the headline: "Stimulus 2, Bipartisanship 0." The conference bill passed the House yesterday without a single Republican vote. It (barely) passed the Senate, with senators Snowe, Collins, and Specter being the only Republican votes for it. The bill didn't pass until 10:30 P.M. because Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was in Ohio for his mother's funeral and had to be flown back to D.C. in a chartered plane. His vote was essential to make 60 because Ted Kennedy was in Florida recovering from a brain tumor, meaning that without Brown, only 56 of the 58 sitting Democrats were in D.C. to vote. President Obama will sign the bill next week.

In addition to allocating money for spending on infrastructure projects, education, and green jobs, the bill provides the middle-class tax cut Obama promised during his campaign. It amounts to $400 for single taxpayers and $800 for married ones, slightly less than the $500/$1000 he wanted. In addition, 11 of the 1073 pages of the massive bill (which probably nobody has read since it wasn't even available until Thursday at 11 P.M.) deal with exorbitant CEO pay. It limits bonuses to 1/3 of CEO's base pay and requires the bonuses to be in the form of stock options that can't be cashed until the company has repaid all its loans to the government. The 11 pages go into detail about precisely which employees are subject to these rules, depending on where they are in the corporate pecking order, how much money the company got from the government, and more. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, thought this would be better than a single sentence stating that no employee of a company getting government money shall have a total annual compensation exceeding that of the President of the United States until the loan is repaid. To hear that CEOs will have no incentive to work for a mere $400,000/year seems ludicrous when one realizes that an awful lot of people with important jobs, from doctors to airline pilots, do their work very conscientiously for less than that. Yet nobody challenges this myth.

Obama, and especially his chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, have taken the lessons of the stimulus bill to heart. In the future, there is going to be a lot less talk from the President about bipartisanship and a lot more about the merits of the legislation at hand. Their conclusion from this episode is that no matter how much they involve the Republicans in the legislation and how many concessions they make, all the House Republicans and all but three Senate Republicans are going to vote no anyway, so why bother asking for their help? Serious political observers knew this was going to happen, but it wa

Speichern

s considered impolite to say so in public. As Winston Churchill put it: "The job of the opposition is to oppose" and the Republicans are doing their job. If Al Franken is ultimately seated in Minnesota, the Democrats will have to pick off only one Republican senator to get things done.

Senate, House Members Rated (Feb. 21)

Progressive Punch has produced a sorted list of Senate members on how progressive their voting records are. They also have a similar list for House members. If you are a liberal, people at the top of the list are good and people at the bottom are bad. If you are a conservative, people at the top are bad and people at the bottom are good. Excluding new members of Congress who haven't voted many times yet, the three most progressive members of the Senate are Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The three least progressive (i.e., most conservative) senators are Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID), and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). The three most progressive House members who have served a full term or more are Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). The three least progressive members of the House are Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX), Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

The list shows the complete polarization of the Senate. Even the least progressive Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), is more progressive than the most progressive Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). The same is true of the House, where the least progressive Democrat, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-IN), is more progressive than the most progressive Republican, Alexander Rodney (R-LA) by a substantial margin.

What to Call Nationalization of the Banks (Feb. 23)

At this point it is perfectly clear to everyone that most of the large banks are insolvent (meaning their liabilities exceed their assets, often by huge amounts). The obvious solution is to have the government take over the banks, pour in money, clean up the mess, and later auction off shares in the now-healthy banks to private investors. Only calling that "nationalization" (which is what it is) is one of those little political no-no's in America. Only banana republics nationalize the banks.

The odd thing is that nationalizing the banks is as American as apple pie. The FDIC takes over failing banks all the time. We've even done it really big time before. In the 1980s, almost 750 savings and loan associations went belly up due to bad real estate investments (sound familiar?). What did President George H.W. Bush do? He nationalized them, only he didn't call it that. Instead, Congress created the Resolution Trust Corporation which gobbled them up, cleaned up the mess, and eventually shut down when its job was done. The same thing could be done now. The main problem is finding a nice word for nationalization that fits in with the spirit of the times. Today Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman cited Calculated Risk's coinage of "preprivatization." Sounds as good as anything else.

Obama: Tough Times Ahead So We Need Bold Action (Feb. 25)

In an address to a joint session of Congress last night, President Obama said the nation faces very serious problems that require bold action. He specifically named health care, education, energy, and the environment as areas where action is needed quickly. The speech was long on optimism, short on details, but when his budget is released later this week, it will contain thousands of pages of details.

For political junkies, perhaps more interesting than the speech was the rebuttal, given by Louisiana governor and possible 2012 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal (R). Some Republicans see him as a potential savior for the Republican party. At 37, the child of Indian immigrants, and unquestionably very smart, he could represent a new image for the Republican party. This was his national debut, a chance to show the country that Republicans have a different vision than Obama. But his speech fell flat. It was panned by Democrats and Republicans alike. David Brooks, a solid Republican, said there was plenty to fault in Obama's speech, but to say basically that government is the problem and what we need are more tax cuts is not going to fly right now. Even Fox News wasn't impressed. But 2012 is a long ways away still, so Jindal has time to sharpen his oratorical skills.

D.C. Voting Bill Passes the Senate (Feb. 27)

The Senate passed a bill yesterday that expands the House of Representatives from 435 members to 437 members. The House has been expanded many times in the past as states entered the union, so that by itself is not unusual. What is unusual is that one of the seats is given to the District of Columbia and the other to the state that came closest to getting an extra seat in the 2000 census, which is Utah. It is virtually guaranteed that the representative from D.C. will be a black Democrat (stronger yet, it will almost assuredly be Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is currently a nonvoting liaison from D.C. to Congress). The new Utah representative is very likely to be a white Mormon Republican. This is a compromise a few Republicans can live with. In fact, six of them voted for the bill.

However, the bill also contains a provision eliminating D.C.'s tough gun laws. The House version of the bill will not contain this provision because the Democratic majority is much larger in the House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi frankly doesn't care what the Republicans think of the bill. When the House bill is passed, probably next week, the two will have to be reconciled in conference.

A consequence of the bill is that Utah gets one more electoral vote but since D.C. already has electoral votes (3) it does not get any more. In fact, the 23rd amendment to the constitution limits D.C. 3 electoral votes, no matter what its population is. Thus the electoral college will be expanded from 538 to 539 members, meaning that we won't have to explain what happens in case of a tie any more. Of course, it could happen that a minor candidate wins one of the small states and gets 3 electoral votes with the Democrat and Republican each getting 268. But the constitution says to win you need more than half the electoral votes, so the election still gets thrown into the House.

Representation for D.C. in the Senate would seem to require full statehood, something Republicans will never allow if they can help it. However, if the Democrats can pick up a couple of additional Senate seats in 2010 and hit 60, Congress could shrink D.C. to cover just the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court buildings and make the rest a new state.

Another option is retrocession, that is, giving the land back to Maryland, where it came from. Virginia got its piece back in 1847.

With any option, it might be necessary to repeal the 23rd amendment at the same time (otherwise the President and his wife get 3 electoral votes). But such repeal would be fairly easy.

A lawsuit over this bill is likely although it is not clear who would have standing to sue. Conceivably it could be a governor who felt his state's representation in the House had been illegally diluted by the presence of a representative not from any state. It is doubtful that a Democratic governor would sue since the extra seat for Utah is only until the next census at which time the normal rules apply for allocating seats and the beneficiary of the extra seat might be a blue state. The representative from D.C. will be a Democrat until Hell freezes over, and what with global warming, that event is not expected in the coming decade.

Romney Wins CPAC Straw Poll - but look details (Mar. 02)

Mitt Romney won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of conservative activists in Washington last week. The breakdown was as follows.

Mitt Romney - 20% Bobby Jindal - 14% Ron Paul -13% Sarah Palin - 13% Newt Gingrich -10% Mike Huckabee - 7% Mark Sanford - 4% Rudy Guiliani - 3% Tim Pawlenty - 2% Charlie Crist - 1% Other - 4% Undecided - 9%

Here is a PowerPoint presentation of the results. As with a lot of things, the devil is in the details. First, the voters were only 1757 people, all of whom paid the registration fee (and their own travel and hotel expenses). The basic (early) registration fee was $125, but students could get in for $15. Tickets to the dinners were $250 per night so the students probably went out for pizza. So what happened? Well, 52% of the voters were conservative activist students, hardly a mirror of Republicans in the country as a whole. Of all the 1957 voters, 95% somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove of what President Obama is doing. Nationally, Obama's approval is 67%, not 5%. In addition, 70% of the registrants approve of the job the Republicans in Congress are doing. Nationally, their approval is 25%.

Interesting, the core ideology of 74% is libertarian (reducing the influence of the federal government on people's lives). Only 15% selected traditional marriage and abortion as their main concerns. Conclusion: Mitt Romney is the slight favorite among a small nonrandom sample of libertarian college students who don't give a hoot about gay marriage and abortion. But this story was carried all over the media all weekend as if it had some bearing on a nomination contest that will take place in 3 years. What was missing was the context--that Romney is the favorite of one fifth of the libertarian college students, hardly a mass movement for Romney.

A short video of the conference featuring WaPo columnist Dana Milbank is available here. It has the ambience of any other academic, business, or political conference. Worth watching just to get a feel of what people are talking about.

Republicans Have a Limbaugh Problem (Mar. 04)

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh caused a huge problem for congressional Republicans when he said he wanted President Obama to fail last week and then repeated this at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend. The new chairman of the RNC, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, said Limbaugh's remarks were "incendiary" and "ugly" but after Limbaugh attacked Steele Monday, Steele immediately backed down and apologized. Democrats are having a field day saying Limbaugh is the de facto head of the Republican Party--knowing full well that he turns off crucial independent voters. The DCCC even made a Website where anybody can apologize to Limbaugh (thanks to Political Wire for the tip).

Obama Hurt Democrats Chances in 2010 (Mar.09)

The LA Times has an article today on how Obama has seriously hurt the Democrats' chances to pick up Senate seats in 2010. He did this by putting very strong Senate candidates in the cabinet and thus eliminating them as Senate contenders. In Arizona, he plucked Janet Napolitano from the governor's mansion and dropped her at the Dept. of Homeland Security. Had he not done that, she would probably have challenged Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and might well have beaten him. Now McCain gets a free pass at being reelected. In Kansas, Obama took another Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and put her in the cabinet, at Health and Human Services. In the absence of this appointment, she would probably have run for the open seat being vacated by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and had a decent shot at winning. In Iowa, the appointment of former governor Tom Vilsack to Agriculture means he won't challenge Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a seat he might otherwise have won. By naming Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO) to the Interior Dept., Obama created a vacancy that has now been filled with a newbie, Michael Bennet (D-CO), who is far more vulnerable than Salazar. In New York, the appointment of Hillary Clinton to run the State Dept. has resulted in another newbie, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). While Gillibrand is a strong campaigner and fundraiser, had Obama not appointed Clinton to the cabinet, there wouldn't have been any special election in New York in 2010, as there now will be. And of course, there is the Illinois Senate seat he vacated himself, but there isn't anything he could have done to prevent it being filled by an appointee. All in all, by raiding the pool of potential senatorial candidates and by removing popular Democratic senators from office, Obama has made DSCC chairman Bob Mendendez' job much harder and NRSC chairman John Cornyn's job much easier.

Backgrounders on the People Behind Obama (Mar.09)

When the President--any President--says something, the whole world pays attention, but the ideas and words aren't always his own. Just as George Bush had Karl Rove to tell him what to say and do, Barack Obama has key advisors who stay in the background but play a key role in his administration. Two of them moved temporarily into the spotlight today. The NY Times has a piece on Obama's closest political advisor, David Axelrod, who vets everything Obama does and says for its political impact and the Chicago Tribune has a piece on Jon Favreau, who writes all of Obama's speeches. While normally behind the scenes, these two probably have more impact than any cabinet officer as they both get face-to-face time with Obama every day.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele May Be Pro-Choice (Mar. 14)

In an interview in February, newly elected RNC chairman Michael Steele said that it ought to be up to the woman if she wants to get an abortion or not. Half the Republican party is up in arms over this remark. Social conservatives are absolutely united that pregnant women should not be given the option of what they see as committing murder. Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and many others are denouncing Steele and some are already calling for his head. Coming a few days after he called Rush Limbaugh "ugly" and "incendiary" his days as RNC chairman might be numbered. But if the RNC were to fire him and replace him with the runner-up in last month's balloting, Katon Dawson, who for 12 years was a member of a whites-only country club, the GOP will take a terrible hit among minorities. On the other hand, if Steele were replaced by Blackwell, who is also black but a fire-breathing conservative, then the swap would probably be neutral since it would be clear that Steele wasn't being dumped due to his race but due to his views.

Dodd Allowed AIG Bonuses (Mar. 20 )

The news that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, inserted language into the stimulus bill that allowed AIG and other companies getting bailout money to pay executives huge bonuses may hurt his reelection chances. The bonuses are hugely unpopular and the Republicans smell blood here. Former representative Rob Simmons (R-CT) is running against him and others may join the fray.

However, Dodd says that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked him to put in the loophole for legal reasons and that he was just doing what Geithner thought best. Geithner has confirmed Dodd's position.

Furthermore, for the Republicans to attack Dodd on the bonuses, they have to make up their mind whether or not they think they were a good idea. Yesterday, a bill was introduced in the House to subject the bonuses to a federal tax of 90%. Nearly all Democrats voted for the special tax but Republicans were badly split, with 87 Republicans, including minority leader John Boehner (R-OH), voting no and 85 Republicans, including whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), voting yes.

Why only 90%, you may ask? Three reasons. First, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the states can take the other 10% (his idea of federalism). Second, a 100% tax by the federal government might not stand up in court since it could be construed as the government seizing private property without just compenstation. Third, a 90% tax is not a record. During the entire Eisenhower administration, the top marginal rate was over 90%, so in a court case a taxpayer could hardly claim a 90% rate was unprecedented.