Great.

After marathon talks, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders appeared near agreement with Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson late Friday night to provide the crucial 60th vote needed for Senate passage of health care legislation.

Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to unveil a final package of changes in the long-debated legislation on Saturday "and is confident that it will prevail," his spokesman, Jim Manley, said in a late-night statement.

Nelson, the Senate's most conservative Democrat, has been seeking fresh concessions to restrict access to abortion coverage in the legislation, as well as more money for his home state of Nebraska and other changes.

He told reporters "real progress" had been made, but he offered no details and said nothing final had emerged from the talks.

...

That gave Nelson enormous leverage as he pressed for concessions that included stronger restrictions on abortions to be covered by insurance policies offered in a newly overhauled health care system. Officials said he was also seeking to ease the impact of a proposed insurance industry tax on nonprofit companies, as well as win more federal funds to cover Nebraska's cost of treating patients in Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor. These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said the administration and Democratic leaders had offered concessions on those points.

Another payoff to a particular state, what a shock.

Can anything be done? I don't know; may be too late. Dick Morris sent along this request for donations to run an ad in Nebraska warning Nelson off voting for the bill; maybe that's something.

(I don't know anything about the organization, by the way.)

Cthulhu Pic: Sent by ArthurK, via Moonbattery, and via The Corner.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 PM | Comments (393)
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TGIF and welcome all M&M-types. Believe it or not you now have 6 shopping days left. Feeling happy yet? Well that may depend on where you live.

States Ranked From Happiest Down to New York
So New York beat out Michigan and New Jersey for the least happy state. Wow. And note that the Louisiana survey was done before Katrina.

Top 5:
1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona

Bottom 5:
47. New Jersey
48. Indiana
49. Michigan
50. Connecticut
51. New York

And here I'm just going to toss out some possible theories for the differences:
1. Sunlight levels/cold vs. temperate winters
2. Population density
3. Religiosity
4. Tax rates
5. Conservative vs. liberal political views (Okay I'm guessing that 3, 4, and 5 are highly correlated)
Some of all of the above or just this. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 05:50 PM | Comments (580)
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"This can be a catalyzing moment. It's a powerful signal to see President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma agree on a meeting of the minds. These are the four horsemen of a climate change solution..."

Unintended, yet remarkably apt.

Unless I've got him all wrong. I which case, I wonder which one he thinks is Arn Anderson?

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:40 PM | Comments (119)
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Apparently getting a lot of hype, because it's "unprecedented," for real. One of the co-creators of Lost called it something like revolutionary film-making.

Yeah, apparently this is legit. This is an epic 70+ minute panning that describes (in a funny, but astute way) why one single movie sucked so badly.

Language/Pure Weirdness Content Warning. Not for everyone.

He nails, pretty early, one of the biggest (possibly the biggest) flaw in this fatally flawed piece of crap: The film simply has no main character.

More of the parts here.

I'm on Part II: Seriously, this guy is kind of brilliant. He's not just hilarious. He's pretty much giving a master class on movie making.

He's Actually Making a Movie: Watch Part II all the way through. He introduces drama and mystery into his review.

This guy is seriously a genius.

Okay... Finished. As Amused Observer notes, the beginning is stuff of general applicability -- general stuff about movies and story -- but around Part III he just gets into the details of PLOT FAIL, basically just ripping every poorly-thought out we're-doing-this-for-no-other-reason-than-it-says-so-in-the-script plot point.

And that stuff continues to be amusing, but I'd be lying if I said I was watching it. A lot of the times I was half-listening to it as I read news stuff.

He gets back to general stuff about movies (mixed in with personal attacks on George Lucas' basic competence) at the end.

He also does pay off that "dramatic arc" I mentioned, but doesn't stay with it as much as I thought he might.

Pretty good, and certainly one of the most weirdly ambitious and successful YouTube stunts I've seen.

Posted by: Ace at 03:29 PM | Comments (120)
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Unexpected? Entirely expected.

Stephen King's

S C H O O L

C L O S I N G S

and/or

Phllip Roth

S N O W

C O U G A R

and/or

David Drake's

L O S T

J U N K E T

Posted by: Ace at 02:58 PM | Comments (164)
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Due to the schedule of things he must file, and the required 24 hours for them to "ripen" after filing, and stuff.

Read the whole thing (it's very brief) but here's the nub:

While a lot of people are focusing on Christmas Eve, the key vote will be that first cloture vote on Monday. If he gets 60 votes on that, the rest of the process will be a mere technicality.

So, while it sounds dramatic, the future of the nation's health care system may be decided in the next 34 hours.

Can Al Gore save us? Someone, who sends the story, says DC might get shut down due to snowfall over the weekend.

Stephen King's

B L E A K

P L O W M A N

7:30 AM Tomorrow? Rich Lowry adds the motion must be introduced by 7:30 AM tomorrow.

Corrected: Introduced, not voted for cloture on. Not apparently any conflict between him and Klein. I misunderstood someone's tip.

someone, again.

Stephen King's

S N O O Z E

B U T T O N

And Lieberman's Already Headed Out of Town: Does that mean no 60? I think it does.

Lieberman skips town!

With a major winter storm moving in, Senate staff is setting up cots in Hill offices to spend the night in preparation for an important procedural vote early Saturday morning that all 60 Democrats are likely needed for — except TPMDC has confirmed that Sen. Joe Lieberman has beat it back to Connecticut for the Sabbath.

Stephen King's

B L O O D

S H A B B A T

Posted by: Ace at 02:14 PM | Comments (186)
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By the way.

Progressive standard bearer MoveOn is opposing the Senate bill and asking its millions of members to sign a petition calling on liberal Sens. Bernie Sanders, Roland Burris, and Russ Feingold to block the bill's passage until it can be strengthened.

From the email:

The latest Senate health care bill has no public option. No expansion of Medicare. And it does too little to guarantee that uninsured Americans will actually be able afford the coverage they'll be required to purchase.1

Former insurance executive Wendell Potter put it best: the bill is "a big bailout to the [healthinsurance] industry."2

But it's not too late to fix the bill. And as Joe Lieberman has shown, just one senator willing to stand in the way can force legislation to be changed dramatically.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a strong proponent of the public option, has already made clear that he's opposed to the legislation in its current form—and he could decide to block it until it's fixed.3

But there's enormous pressure from all sides to pass a bill quickly, no matter how weak it is. Let's show Bernie and other progressives that we're counting on them to block this version of the bill—and we'll get their backs if they do.

There's an old saying: "Fascism is forever descending upon America, but always landing in Europe."

Similarly, "Turmoil is always threatening to engulf the Republican Party, but always immolating the Democrats."

Thanks to someone.

Is MoveOn.org "Insane"? ... as Gibbs said of Dean and anyone else on the left who wanted to kill the bill?

I guess they are.

Am I required to pretend I disagree with this as I felt I had to with Howard Dean?

I don't know if I can pretend that much.

President Betrayus?

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (108)
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(A series of daily-ish roundups of the day's Climate news and commentary.)

This is by no means a comprehensive recap. The stories come from a variety of sources, and I highly recommend exploring the linked sites for more breaking news.

I want to take a moment to thank Ace for the opportunity to do some prime-time posting.

More importantly I'd like to thank the readers, as they both keep a fellow grounded by pointing out mistakes, and give the occasional atta-boy which makes reviewing stories from so many sites seem a little less tedious. I read far more than makes the page here; much of what I find is duplicative; much else is too populist and/or simplistic to add anything to the debate.

My goal is to try to screen out the banal and provide informative links that give everyone a fuller understanding of the underlying science behind the war we are waging with the AGW hysterics.

(after the break)
more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:37 PM | Comments (15)
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"Unprecedented," Obama says of himself. Gee, didn't see that one coming.

President Barack Obama announced Friday a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" on a global effort to curb climate change. But Obama said, "It is going to be very hard, and it's going to take some time" to get to a legally binding treaty.

An accord which is non-binding is also known as "dudes blowing smoke up each other's asses," and also, sometimes, "not an accord," but that doesn't mean this is harmless.

There is no binding part of this deal. That's why China, India, etc., have agreed to it. It doesn't require them to do anything.

Instead, it asks countries that are stupid enough to slit their economic throats to do so, so that India and China and so on can reap the rewards.

Guess which country is foremost among those currently headed by a man stupid enough to do this?

A senior administration official, speaking to ABC News, heralded what he called a "significant breakthrough" at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this afternoon.

The president faces pressure to salvage an agreement on climate change.
President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and South African President Jacob Zuma have agreed to a political "accord" that the official said will "provide the foundation for an eventual legally binding treaty."

In the accord, the official said, "nations will list their actions and stand behind them."

World leaders were looking to President Obama to help break a deadlock at the climate conference in Copenhagen, but prospects had looked bleak as White House officials indicated that Chinese officials were refusing to budge on their refusal to allow a transparent verification system, a stance that would have made a deal difficult to achieve.

Now, Obama will take this meaningless piece of paper and claim that by signing his name to it the US is morally obligated to live up its commitments (commitments we haven't actually made, given that there is no treaty, and further, given the Constitution is rather specific on the point of what makes a binding treaty, and it's not just Captain Wonderful's scribbling) and will pressure the Congress -- and crucially, the EPA -- into shooting more bullets into an already bleeding-out economy.

And oh yeah -- as a coblogger noted today, he's also promising a mere $33 billion of your money every year to pay undeveloped countries to plant tries and develop solar power and a bunch of other things they won't do anyway. Since, in case Obama hasn't noticed (and I guess he hasn't), undeveloped countries already take money meant for food and medicine and spend them mostly on tanks and guns and buying off tribes to keep their ruling class in power, and the rest of the money goes into their own stock of CDs and T-bills and, of course, hookers.

[Update PA]
It appears the "warmist in chief" will be greeted with around a foot of global warming as he returns from Bizarrohagen. Scheduled to return tonight, its looking ugly for the east coast, and D.C.is predicted to get a foot or more of paralyzing global warming over the next 36 hours. God just emailed me to say: "I just love tweaking pinheads like this".

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (166)
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Cause pissing off the guy underwriting your idiotic spending plans is teh Smartz!

Mr Obama met Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, tonight in attempt to repair relations after Mr Wen had taken offence at his insistence on the need for reliable monitoring of every countryÂ’s emissions.

In his speech Mr Obama said: “Without any accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.”

Mr Wen apparently interpreted this as an attempt to subject China to external scrutiny, despite Mr ObamaÂ’s insistence that the monitoring system would respect national sovereignty.

This is where it gets confusing. Obama is right, if you are going to do this, you have to be able to monitor it. Thing is, I don't want to see this treaty happen. Call me crazy but I like living in the modern world and that means emitting carbon, lots of it, which is fine by me.

So, I think Obama is an idiot for insulting the Chinese but I'm glad he's that stupid because the Bizarro World in which we now live, the Chinese are right and I hope they kill the damn thing.

Meanwhile, it looks like the deals have fallen through and they are giving up on a binding treaty but likely to issue a statement calling for even crazier shit than they could pass now.

With time running out to forge a comprehensive climate agreement, negotiators at the U.N.-sponsored talks are considering a new draft agreement that would not require a binding treaty by 2010 but would lay the groundwork for a more ambitious target in limiting the rise of temperatures around the globe.

...Many environmentalists, as well as leaders from both Europe and the developing world, have said they are disappointed there will not be a legally binding treaty finished here in Copenhagen. To delay it until 2012, as the new drafts states, could cause a major outcry from some groups.

The proposal, a political statement labeled "the Copenhagen Accord," also lacks the kind of independent verification of emission reductions by developing countries than the United States and others are insisting on. It calls upon the world's nations to collectively reduce their emissions 80 percent by 2050.

These people really are insane. They can't get enough people to commit economic suicide this year so their plan is to demand even more stringent targets in the future. If people are going to walk the comparatively easier plank now, who in the world thinks they will agree to a worse deal in a few years?

I give the enviro-socialist a gentleman's B+ for their logic.

*Something went screwy with the blog software and it ate the original version of this post. The original comments are here (for now) if you are interested.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:41 PM | Comments (21)
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