Politics Wednesday!

* Ben Smith at Politco dreams the dream: Franken '16?

* More good news: God's told Joe the Plumber not to run for office.

* But bad news: Glenn Beck guest Michael Scheuer says America's only hope is a massive terrorist attack. Don't miss Beck nodding sagely towards the end. Adam Serwer says it well:

But understand, this is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you're not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health-care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying sub-prime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone's head. Unpatriotic is phosphate-free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States.

Patriotism is dead, long live patriotism.

* TPM and Washington Monthly tackle the EPA SUPPRESSION!!!!! "scandal" that's been making the rounds; turns out a hobbyist working on non-climate matters for the agency decided a memo no one asked him to write prepared in his spare time should be published alongside recommendations produced by actual experts in the field. Fox News, naturally, agrees. Inhofe (R-Jupiter) has gone further, demanding Monday a criminal investigation.

* Also in climate news: Thomas Friedman says Waxman-Markey is very, very bad and we should support it. For what it's worth Kevin Drum agrees.

I think this situation in Honduras is very instructive. Anybody who thinks that [Obama] intends to just constitutionally go away in 2016 is nuts ... These are people who seek power for reasons other than to serve. They seek to rule.

Rush Limbaugh, Cassandra: Will no one stand with Rush to stop Obama from seizing dictatorial powers and a third term in 2016? Wake up, sheeple!

Other stuff.

* William Jelani Cobb: 'Obama absent on gay rights.' Yes he is.

We long ago overdosed on comparisons of Obama and previous presidents, but it's hard to miss the way his administration had begun to echo that of John F. Kennedy. And not in a good way.

During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy ran as a forward-looking Democrat who understood the necessity of civil rights. He promised an executive order banning housing discrimination. Gestures like his phone call to a pregnant Coretta Scott King while her husband languished in an Albany jail and Robert Kennedy's judicial arm-twisting to secure his release endeared the young candidate to millions of African-Americans.

But once in office, Kennedy made civil rights a low priority. By 1962, Martin Luther King was openly critical of Kennedy and bitterly observed that the movement activists had become "pawns in a white man's game." It is worth recalling that the 1963 March on Washington was organized not only to ensure passage of a civil rights bill, but also to ensure that Kennedy would not cave to Southern Democrats on the issue.

Via Kinohi.

* Exactly what we don't want: "VP doesn't rule out his own presidential aspirations on Meet the Press Sunday."

* Can You Afford to Be an Adjunct? Don’t consider using adjuncting as a “back door” into a specific department. You are the academic equivalent of a fry cook. You will not be moved into district manager very easily. Perhaps your department grows their own. Ask. How many tenured, tenure-track profs started out as an adjunct? Take your answer as policy. Adjuncts are seldom promoted. You may, especially in smaller or community colleges, be able to enter by attrition, but this happens rarely and should be considered along the lines of winning the lottery. Think very carefully of your overall plan, especially if you have a family or dependents.

* The Ghostbusters' risky business model.

* Marvel's big Captain America news surprises exactly no one.

* Three-frame movies. Via MeFi.

Nate Silver sums up the consensus at the Dole Institute's post-election symposium.

3. The Republican bench is relatively inadequate at the present time in terms of candidates for national office.
3a. On the other hand, the 2012 Presidential cycle is already being looked at as something of a lost cause. Some of the stronger candidates -- both known and unknown -- might want to wait until 2016 to run.
3b. In the long-term, the future of the party probably lies in governor's offices. If the Republicans are smart, this may be their major focus in 2010-12, as opposed to the Congress and even perhaps the Presidency.

4. Sarah Palin is, for the time being, the public face of the Republican Party.
4a. This is not necessarily a good thing for the Republican Party.

Kevin Drum makes his bid for history as the first pundit to go on the record about 2012:

I project that Barack Obama will crush his Republican opponent and win the popular vote by 10 percentage points. You heard it here first.

Of course, I've already done him one better with my prediction that the 45th president of the United States will be a woman.

The Stump time travels to a scene from the 2012 Republican primary:

Gov. Palin: We are going to change America, change it from higher taxes, higher crime, and a quagmire in Afghanistan.

Fmr. Gov. Romney: I know how to make change. I'm running on 20 years of a record of change of commitment to America and conservatism, Gov. Palin is running on the strength of a speech from four years ago. Are we going to have change with results, or change with a teleprompter? We know what that has gotten us.

That's pretty much right, except my gut tells me it may be 2016.

The Sarah Palin pick has crystalized what I'll throw up here as my Boldest Prediction Ever: the next elected president of the United States, after Obama, will be a woman. Hillary Clinton exposed not only the potential political advantages of a female candidate—a surprising reversal of historical trends that she simply failed to capitalize on early enough—but also a palpable hunger that the "highest, hardest glass ceiling" be broken. And Palin's selection proves that this hunger extends even across the aisle.

We can't know right now, of course, but from where I'm sitting it seems likely that the next totally open election will take place in 2016, when Barack Obama steps down after his second term and presumably-still-VP Joe Biden (being just a few months older than John McCain is now) will be too old. I'd actually take odds, if that does come to pass, that both parties run women at the top of the ticket in 2016. In game theoretical terms there's just too much net potential advantage to be lost in allowing the opposing party to run a woman while you run a man. That hunger won't be getting any smaller in eight more years of waiting.

I hope I'm right. It'll be a very good day for America, and a better day still if she's a Democrat.