What's bringing a 'smile' to my face today? Impotent whining.



Some good analysis of what's been going on with this committee here.

Just a pair of painfully funny Daily Show / Colbert clips from last night.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Baracknophobia - Obey
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a District - New York's 25th - Dan Maffei
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

I'm seeing a marked uptick in lefty griping in my feeds, often with some variation on the phrase "washing my hands of the Democratic Party." I'd say this sort of proclamation was unfair, but I guess its time has come; Obama has been president, after all, for two whole months and yet puppies still die.

Confidential to my fellow travelers: What I wrote about pragmatism during the primaries (1, 2) still holds. I don't like the way the financial crisis is being handled either, but unless you foresee wholesale Constitutional reforms before 2012 you're going to have either a Democratic or Republican president. You have to pick one, and there's only one who will ever even listen to people like us. The happy feeling you get from not voting for a Democrat is worth exactly nothing.

Elections have consequences. To take just one example that passed across my newsreader yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency has now blocked mountaintop-removal coal-mining. That happened because the far-too-centrist, corporatist, hopelessly compromised Democratic Party is now in power. And not just in power, but more unabashedly progressive than it's been for forty years. Drag the country to the left with one hand, hold your nose with the other, but we're stuck with the Democrats if we ever want to get anything accomplished. You don't have to like it—but if you want to be a politically relevant actor in America you have to come to terms with it.

I would have thought the example of the last eight years would have proved this point well enough. Have our memories gotten so short?

Steve Benen says it's not just Chu—Obama's whole environmental team is top-notch.

Chances are, the only folks who are going to complain about this team are polluters and global-warming deniers. Given the severity of the climate crisis, and the ambitious quality of Obama's energy vision, he couldn't have picked a better team. These aren't officials you pick if you intend to just make a few tepid changes around the periphery of energy policy; these are officials you pick to overhaul the system and implement a bold, 21st-century agenda.

A little-known provision in the Congressional Review Act of 1996 will allow the Democratic Congress to painlessly undo any and all Bush regulations from the last six months of his presidency, including those that have already taken effect—something the White House's strategy of last-minute malfeasance seems to have failed to take into account. The news just keeps getting better. Via MeFi.