Juan Cole’s most recent post on Libya. So far, so good. He thinks the new government will reject NATO bases, which is not surprising. He also thinks China will be frozen out of new oil investments in Libya. Heh.

Alexander Keyssar, “The Real Grand Bargain, Coming Undone.” Interesting —

In the presidential election of 1912, 75 percent of the vote went to candidates who called themselves “progressive” or “socialist.”

Republicans are going all out trying to pin a $4 trillion national debt on President Obama. But see this nice graphic I picked up at Steve Benen’s place:

Anything else?

Update: The artist who painted (warning — if you’re at work, turn your volume off before clicking) this painting sent me a nice letter asking if I wanted to buy a print. Gee, what should I say?

Has Michele Bachmann peaked? I’ve been thinking the same thing.

A Brit has to explain to other Brits that not all Americans are crazy.

I am cheered by Juan Cole’s explanations of what’s going on in Libya. He is a smart guy and knows the region a heck of a lot better than I do. If something really hinky were going on, I believe he would have sniffed it out.

However, now that the forces of liberty and democracy appear to be on the edge of a victory in Libya, what do we hear from Republicans in Congress? Nothing good about President Obama, of course.

See Juan Cole, “The Great Tripoli Uprising.” He seems genuinely pleased about developments in Libya.

“Congressional Republicans Want to Raise Your Taxes.” Like I said.

I’ve seen a lot of “if only we’d elected Hillary” whining lately, so it is good to see someone who supported Senator Clinton for the nomination in 2008 admit that’s a stupid argument. Rebecca Traister writes,

The empirical choice between Clinton and Obama was never as direct as those on either side made it out to be; neither was obviously more equipped or more progressive than the other. The maddening part, then and now, is that they were utterly comparable candidates. The visions — in 2008, of Obama as a progressive redeemer who would restore enlightened democracy to our land and Hillary as a crypto-Republican company man; or, in 2011, of Obama as an appeasement-happy crypto-Republican and Hillary as a leftist John Wayne who would have whipped those Congressional outlaws into shape — they were all invented. These are fictional characters shaped by the predilections, prejudices and short memories of the media and the electorate. They’re not actual politicians between whom we choose here on earth.

If she had won her party’s nomination and then the general election, Hillary Clinton’s presidency would probably not have looked so different from Obama’s. She was, after all, a senator who, for a variety of structural and strategic reasons, often crossed party lines to co-sponsor legislation with Republicans, who voted to go to war in Iraq, who moved to the center on everything from Israel to violent video games. You think Obama’s advisers are bad? Hillary Clinton hired, and then took far too long to get rid of, Mark Penn. And her economic team probably would have looked an awful lot like Obama’s.

Thank you. I would add, to those who believe a President Hillary Clinton would have been “tougher,” take a look at her senatorial career. If you can identify a single piece of unambiguously progressive legislation that she sponsored, fought for, and won, do let me know. And she spent eight years in the Senate.

And I’ll say one more time, if we want a more progressive president after 2012, stop navel gazing over President Obama and work to elect a more progressive Congress.

An editorial in the New York Times (“Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet“) appeals to Big Business — and Small Business, for that matter — to support raising tax revenues. It would be not just the responsible thing to do; it would be in their own fiscal interest.

“A responsible argument by business for a balanced approach to reviving the economy and reducing the deficit could change the debate in Washington,” the editorial says. Maybe.

Steve Benen says,

Corporate leaders may love their Republican allies, but do they love the GOP more than their own profits? Is the business community willing to gamble its earnings on the preferences of a radicalized party that nearly pushed the nation into voluntary default, even when private-sector leaders begged them not to play the game?

Private-sector leaders did speak out on the default, and while the establishment Republicans probably listened, the Tea Party element did not. My sense of things is that the baggers, in and out of office, are beyond worrying about the real effects of baggerism on the economy.

It’s a bit like Rick Perry’s weird defense of abstinence education. In the bagger mind, the inherent virtue they perceive in the “cuts only” approach outweighs any empirical evidence that it doesn’t actually work. So they are perfectly capable of seeing themselves as pro-business even as they ignore what business actually thinks about anything.

For a variation on this phenomenon, see Faux Nooz’s re-casting of Warren Buffett as a socialist after the billionaire’s call for higher taxes. That Buffett was arguing for the best policies to stimulate the economy — and thereby his own fiscal interests — flew right over their heads.

On the other hand, Steve M. argues that business isn’t hurting nearly enough to pry it loose from demands for tax cuts and deregulation.

In “Nature Without the Nanny State,” Timothy Egan writes about the record number of fatalities in national parks this year. The parks are receiving record numbers of visitors — it’s a cheaper vacation than Disney World, I assume — and also record numbers of people who lack the sense to not fall off cliffs or over waterfalls.

I’ve already written about the three damnfools in Yosemite who climbed over a guardrail to wade in rapids just a few feet above a 317-foot waterfall, and surprise! They lost their footing on slippery rocks and were swept to their deaths.

I mean, it’s one thing to be killed by something unexpected. Egan discussed one hiker who was aggressively stalked and gored by a mountain goat, which is unusual behavior for a mountain goat. Stuff does happen. But people are doing things that anyone with the sense God gave igneous rocks would not do. The Forest Service is responding by putting up more warning signs and guard rails, but as one Yosemite park ranger said, “We’ve got more than 800 trails and 3,000-foot cliffs in this park. You can’t put guardrails around the whole thing.”

Nor should you, I say. And, anyway, several of the fatalities have occurred in places that were already guardrailed and warning signed. I don’t know what else the Park Service could do.

Egan writes, “My experience, purely anecdotal, is that the more rangers try to bring the nanny state to public lands, the more careless, and dependent, people become.” I suspect, however, that people are not becoming more careless because the rangers are trying to nanny them. I suspect it’s a combination of people with no experience with wilderness who also have no respect for government warning them to not be damnfools and try to pet the bears.

And from here I’d like to go into a rant on how a generation of people who have enjoyed consumer and workplace and other safety regulations have been bamboozled into thinking they don’t need those regulations, but I have to go somewhere now. I may take this up again when I get back.

Update: OK, I”m back. Buckyblue said in the comments that you don’t find as many warning signs and guard rails outside of the United States. That squares with what I observed in my trip to Britain a few years ago. I noticed a widespread assumption that people had the sense to not plunge out of castle turrets to their deaths on the rocks below, and that they didn’t need to be warned, for example. And I suspect Buckyblue is right that the signs and guard rails are as much about limiting liability as anything else.

Which leads me to wonder if signs and guard rails actually do any good, if people dumb enough to wade in rapids just above a waterfall don’t heed the warnings anyway. My suspicions are that the signs and guard do some good. There are people who may not be all that bright, but neither are they risk takers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t draw too many conclusions about our crazy times without knowing if the ratio of deaths to visitors in National Parks is going up, or whether it’s about what it has been for years. However, I’d be willing to pay money if someone could do psychological autopsies of people who do damnfool things in National Parks and get themselves killed, to see if there are any commonalities to explain the phenomenon. And why do I suspect a disproportionate number of them may be teabaggers?

It was startling enough when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called out Islamophobes who were throwing fits over his appointment of a Muslim judge:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie appointed Muslim-American judge Sohail Mohammed to the state bench this week and has no patience for his detractors.

“Ignorance is behind the criticism of Sohail Mohammed… He is an extraordinary American who is an outstanding lawyer and played an integral role in the post-Sept. 11. period in building bridges between the Muslim American community in this state and law enforcement,” Christie told reporters.

When asked about fears that Mohammed could bring Sharia Law into his practice, Christie (who is known for his combative interchanges with reporters) snapped back:

“Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all, it’s crazy!”

Now Christie is saying that he thinks global climate change is real and probably man-made:

“I can’t claim to fully understand all of this,” he said. “Certainly not after just a few months of study. But when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts.”

He added that climate science is complex and “we know enough to know that we are at least part of the problem.”

He said this while he was explaining why New Jersey is backing out of a 10-state initiative to curb greenhouse gasses, mind you, but he still said it. And the rightie blogosophere is apoplectic. “RINO” is one of the milder names they are calling him.

Christie’s problem is that if he’s going to be re-elected in New Jersey he needs to back off being too crazy. I believe New Jersey’s population has a higher-than-average percentage of college graduates in the sciences, for example. And although parts of NJ are pretty right-wing, and moderate Republicans win NJ elections regularly, the state as a whole will usually elect a liberal over someone who is far-far Right.

But by backing off being too crazy, he’s looking less and less like someone the Republican base is likely to support in the presidential primaries. The establishment still loves him, however, and I understand that unemployed Pawlenty staffers are hoping to snag a spot on the Christie team if he decides to run.

If he is thinking about running for POTUS, perhaps Christie plans to position himself as the guy who hates taxes and government spending but who is smarter than Perry, less crazy than Bachmann, and not as plastic as Romney. It could work.

Howard Fineman uses the same Frankenstein’s Monster analogy I used in “The Bed That Karl Made.” Fineman writes,

The Perry-Rove story is shaping up as the ultimate tale of dangerously unintended consequences, with Rove in the role of Dr. Frankenstein and Perry as his living, rampaging political creation.

Insiders know that Rove helped launch Perry’s career by advising Perry’s successful run for agriculture commissioner in 1990.

But the larger, deeper point is that Rove designed and built the Texas Republican machine that has now allowed Perry to go national — even after Rove and company tried (and failed) to stop him by running Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) against him for re-election.

Get this:

Rove and much of the rest of the GOP Texas establishment was and is embarrassed by Perry

They’re capable of embarrassment?

From a distance, it makes little sense for the GOP to be any more embarrassed by Perry than by that nitwit Michele Bachmann, or for that matter by that other nitwit Paul Ryan, who is being urged to run. There’s something unique about Perry that really puts them off.

I suspect that the problem is, as Fineman says, that Perry’s “down home” crudeness is not an affectation, as G. W. Bush’s was. That’s who Perry is, even at black tie dinner parties. In other words, he doesn’t clean up well.

Have I mentioned that Perry genuinely creeps me out, too? Although I admit I am mildly interested in seeing if he is competitive in New Hampshire, a state that is decidedly not Texas. I wouldn’t think he would do well anywhere in the northeast, as the Yosemite Sam schtick does not play well in these parts. We’ll see.

But Dave Weigel writes that the Republican field is so ghastly that part of the establishment is hoping for a brokered convention. Although that begs the question — if the GOP establishment could pick any candidate it wanted, who would it be?

It also occurs to me that if Jeb Bush is ever going to run for president, this may be the time. The contrast with Perry could make Jeb look, well, not at all like his brother George.

Elsewhere — Steve Benen considers the stupid factor. And a great-granddaughter of Herbert Hoover says that if the GOP loses the youth vote in 2012, the millennial generation will be lost to the GOP forever.

This reveals a lot:

Perry is struggling to answer a question about why a commitment to abstinence education makes sense when Texas has the third highest teenage pregnancy rate in the country. Shorter Perry — it works because I say it does. Also he has personal experience with abstinence. Right. See also Steve Benen and Paul Wildman.

In more Perry news — Bruce Bartlett called Perry an idiot. Yes, but he’s a ruthless idiot.

Update: See Ezra, “How much did illegal immigrants contribute to Texas’ economic boom?” Quite a bit, it seems.

Since I keep bumping into “Well, Obama hasn’t closed Guantanamo, so that means he didn’t want to close it,” I want to address that briefly. The short answer is that Congress passed a law in 2010 that prevents the Defense Department from transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason. This doesn’t leave the President with many options.

Before that —

– President Obama came into office in January 2009, and two days after his inauguration, he signs his first executive order, calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay within one year.

– Less than five months later, Congress — controlled by Democrats — votes overwhelmingly to neutralize that executive order, and to keep Gitmo open, by choking off the funds needed to enact the executive order by building new facilities, seeking deportations, etc. The vote in the Senate was 90 to 6.

– In November 2009, the Obama administration tried another tack: they plan to move 100 remaining Gitmo detainees (not including KSM and other 9/11 direct suspects) to an all-but abandoned, state-of-the-art prison in Illinois. The rural town wanted the deal, and the jobs that would come with it. Again, the deal was blocked, and demogogued, by Congressional Republicans, and as of today, the “Gitmo North” plan seems to be dead on arrival.

And then came the 2010 law, and there’s not much else President Obama can do other than get some other country to take them or turn them all loose. This is as good a one-blog-post summary of the mess as I’ve found anywhere. It shows the White House making a sincere effort to close Guantanamo but being repeatedly blocked by Congress, in particular Democrats in Congress.

Now, one could argue that the White House could have handled Congress better — we can always argue that — but reviewing what actually happened, I have to agree with the blogger that it is grossly disingenuous to conclude that Obama didn’t want to close Guantanamo.

And if he appears to have given up for the moment, I don’t blame him. This is not a fight to pick this close to the elections. Outside of us hard-core liberals there is not much pubic support for closing Guantanamo, I suspect. This may not be a fight that any first-term president could be expected to win.