An article by Alexis Simendinger in the National Journal says Obama will name Peter Orszag as Budget Director.

Orszag, currently Congressional Budget Office Director and a former economic adviser to Bill Clinton, will take on this important Cabinet post as Obama faces the $700 Billion mess he inherits from Bush.

Orszag is seen as an impressive, 40-year-old analyst with expertise in health care policy, Social Security, pensions, and global climate change.

He is not expected to have a problem in Senate confirmation.

Under The LobsterScope

Convicted criminal Sen. Ted Stevens is out as the write-in votes are added to the count. Looks like Palin won’t get to appoint herself to the post… or run for it in a special election. That puts her out of the national picture for the next two years.

Now we need to follow the Minnesota recount, which Al Franken has a reasonable chance of taking given the location of the questioned write-ins, and the Georgia Run-off, which I am not so sure of. It certainly would be nice to get that creep Saxby Chamblis out of the Senate.

Under The LobsterScope

I tried doing that for years. I gave up. Hard core Fetus People cannot take in even the simplest facts about gestation, abortion procedures, abortions rates, etc. Talking to them is like talking to a tree stump. All most of us can do is keep presenting facts and hope we get through to people who are not married to a movement.

SteveG, for your, ABORTION may not be about abortion. However, for a woman dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, abortion is, um, about abortion. It’s not theory; it’s not ideology; it’s her body and her life. And she is the one I’m concerned about.

For the left, it is about protecting hard fought gains in women’s rights and for the right it serves two purposes. First, it is the tip of the sword for those trying to Christianize American policy. Second, it is part of a cage and frame strategy to undermine feminist progress.

Cage and frame is designed to take an entire collection of discussions out of the public discourse. You take all of, say, women’s rights issues and put them in a rhetorical cage allowing out only one token issue which you then frame in a fashion most advantageous to you and begin yelling and screaming about it at the top of your lungs. Your opponent now has a choice, fight vigorously and use up all the money, energy, and media attention on this one issue or lose on the issue and give momentum and framing power to the other side.

When you take the bait, the mainstream sees the vigorous, red-faced discussants and assumes that there is fair and open debate on all issues thereby killing all possible progress on any other issue. You can see this rhetorical strategy on immigration, the environment, education, and many other places, but nowhere is it more effective in sucking all the oxygen out of the room than here.

‘Pro-life’ is another misnomer. Most anti-abortionists are also pro-gun and pro-war; so their commitment to the sanctity of life is conditional. There are in theory some ’seamless garment’ pro-lifers, against abortion, guns, war, the death penalty, and so on; but in practice even they must compromise with violence, to live in the world as it is. In practice all life must compromise with violence, to live in the world as it is. In the final analysis, there is no such thing as a pro-lifer.

And as for America, it’s clear this country leans both pro-abortion and pro-guns. Call it liberty, call it savagery, it’s what we are, deal with it.

And I agree with you, maha, about the dispositionals and the ideologues. In the end, the cynics always get the fanatics under control. It’s inevitable. But… it can take awhile.