Gabe says this just happened. I believe the previous position was that he'd definitely veto it. Don't call my bluff, Eric.

Now that Claire McCaskill has signaled she's open to the idea, it seems Obama doesn't have a united caucus, and is trimming his sails.

You know how I just did an optimistic post? Here's more cheer. Drink the sweet, sweet tears of Dave Wiegel.

Obama might cave?!?!?!?!? RT @jbendery: Carney won't say whether Obama will veto payroll tax cut bill with Keystone in it.

?!?!?!?!?

There is no clearer window into a man's emotional state than his punctuation choices. (!!!! & LOL & (g) and )

Thanks to Gabe and JohnE.

More: Obama and Reid are facing a revolt in their caucus over green-pandering on American jobs?

Moe says there could be 60 votes for the Keystone XL deal-- a magic number.

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (142)
Post contains 180 words, total size 1 kb.

I had a feeling last night. That feeling was, for the first time in a long time, We're not doomed.

Maybe I'm a sell-out or a cheap date or whatever, but I actually found that debate last night to be reassuring. We had five conservatives up there (plus Ron Paul) debating, essentially, whether or not we'd be taking the government to the most rightward point it's been since either the 80s, the 50s, or the 20s.

I thought Perry did well. He's still my pick.

Then again, Newt Gingrich brought up the fact of his 90% lifetime ACU voting record. 90%? Come on, that's not bad. Certainly not enough to get dispirited over.

Sure, 92% would be better. And 93% better still. But... 90% is certainly livable, and not the sort of thing anyone needs to claw the skin off their face over.

In previous cycles you wouldn't have 90% ACU rating people running because they'd be considered too "extreme" to get moderate backing. That's partly why we nominate so many governors, as their "extremism" isn't as well evidenced by a raw number.

I don't know Mitt Romney's real politics -- I'm not sure who does -- but he is basically a conservative guy. Very conservative? No, not very conservative in this environment. But more than likely, as conservative as George W. Bush, and I would guess a fair amount more. I do not expect President Romney to spend, spend, spend like Bush did, for example.

Now, any of these three guys would likely have the whole of the Congress in Republican hands. And not just Republican hands, but rightwing hands. The party has been largely (though not entirely) purged of moderates, and even more entirely purged of liberals. And yes, we used to have those.

The media likes to attack the current Republican Party as "extremist." Let me note this, just this once: Compared to the Republican Party of 10 years ago, or even 3 years ago, it certainly is more "extremist."

We are basically threatening to hang ourselves over the question over whether the next government will be quite rightwing or very rightwing.

Worse case scenario? Let's say it's merely "quite rightwing." The government would be more conservative, overall, than it ever, ever was under Reagan.

Let's have some perspective! It's not all bad!

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (365)
Post contains 398 words, total size 2 kb.

And shockingly, one fellow rival rose again to the occasion.

Michele Bachmann's attacks tend to be effective. But they also seem to cost her support as she tears down a rival -- the party is not liking red-on-red attacks, which partly accounts for Gingrich's rise (he hasn't attacked his rivals much) and also for Romney's persistent good showing (he attacks Rick Perry, but not really anyone else).

Like I said, I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but one conspiracy theory I'm entertaining is one I see a lot in the comments, that Michele Bachmann's real goal is to be Mitt Romney's VP, and she's debuting for the attack dog part of the job.

In the previous debate (the one before last night's), she did make a rare attack on Romney, calling Romney and Gingrich "Newt Romney," and blasting them both for supporting individual mandates.

It occurred to me that that was a sort of attack that actually helps Mitt Romney though-- For if Mitt Romney can establish the predicate that he and Newt both have the same sins of flip-flopping and moderateness, then the it comes down to a question of electability, which many would argue benefits Mitt Romney.

Late in the debate, Bachmann claimed that Newt Gingrich said he would not work to oust Republicans who supported partial-birth abortion. Based on the quizzical look on Newt's face when she said this, I thought she was making it up. But then Newt seemed to concede a bit of it in his answer.

Is it true? Well, I won't play PolitiFact here. But there does seem to be something to the charge.

PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION

Gingrich helped quash an effort to deny Republican Party funds to candidates who opposed legislation outlawing so-called partial birth abortions, according to a Jan. 21, 1998, article by the Associated Press.

The Republican National Committee at its winter meeting that year wanted to deny party campaign funds to Republican candidates who opposed banning most late-term, or partial-birth, abortions.

Gingrich addressed the RNC meeting on Jan. 16, 1998, calling for tolerance of candidates who support partial-birth abortion, saying he would campaign for them.

“It’s the voters of America who have a right — in some places they’re going to pick people who are to my right, some places they’re going to pick people who are to my left and in both cases, if they’re the Republican nominee, I am going to actively campaign for them, because when they get to Congress, whether they are a moderate Republican from the northeast, whether they are a very conservative Republican from the south or west, whatever their background.”

The AP reported that Gingrich said he opposed the “barbaric” abortion procedure, and would continue to vote to ban it. But he argued that the resolution was the wrong way to eliminate partial-birth abortions.

In case you think I'm just trying to tear down Gingrich --

Yes, I still support Perry and I continue to think he has the least baggage and the least deviations from orthodoxy.

But I'm not just trying to tear down Gingrich.

The party is in the mood to disqualify candidates based on deviations from mainstream doctrine. So in a case like this, primary voters need to know this. If they come to peace with it, and find that it is not worthy of disqualification, that's fine.

On the other hand, it would be bad if the party nominates someone who it actually can't live with and only discovers this post-nomination.

At around this time in 2007, polls showed that most Republican primary voters thought Rudy Giuliani was pro-life. He wasn't. When the bulk of the party finally found that out, his support cratered. (He was also hurt by a passivity and lack of gravitas in the debates.)

One can imagine a disastrous hypothetical in which the party nominates Giuliani thinking he's pro-life, and then actually turns on its own candidate when they discover he's pro-choice..

Learning about candidates' warts has a useful effect: Innoculation. Either people decide they can live with this or that, or they can't. But they do need to discover if they can or can't before selecting someone.

Personally I get why Gingrich would say this. But I'm a tactically-minded guy. People call me out for supporting mere political position over "principle," and I suppose they're right in the way they mean that.

But the reason I've long kind of liked Newt, and considered him a realistic-minded guy, is he is also a very, very tactically-minded guy.

So I can live with the Tactical Positioning in Support of Political Advantage stuff.

But, based on how so many speak lately -- making very broad and black-and-white statements about principle and such -- I'm not sure a lot of those currently under Newt's banners can live with it. At least, in the past, many of them have made strong pronouncements against this sort of thing.

For the sake of disclosure: I am more on Team Perry now than I was the day before. But if it comes down to Newt vs. Mitt, I'm sort of neutral, but no longer necessarily favoring Mitt. I see the appeal in Newt's tart tongue and quick wits.

I still think that Romney is unacceptable to most of the base. I also think that Newt would be unacceptable to most of the base, if they knew more.

For example, many of Newt's supporters are seniors. I imagine they're more traditionalist about morality and such. Even though they're currently signaling they're okay with Newt's previous adultery, I do wonder if they're really okay with it. Like when details come out (and they will), are they going to say, "Ugh! Repulsive!"?

If they're really okay with it, fine, then we have reached a new normal in politics, and we can proceed.

But -- and this is my worry -- if they are just telling themselves stories to avoid contemplating this...

That's a problem. Because once we have a nominee, we have a nominee. No take-backs.

Drew Responds: Drew writes:

Something to consider on Newt and partial birth abortion: When he was Speaker he twice brought to the floor and personally voted for (scroll down a bit) a bill to ban it. It didn't become law until Bush was willing to sign it but it wasn't due to any lack of support on Newt's part.

I'd say Bachmann's attack is pretty weak.

I responded:

Drew there's no doubt that Gingrich voted to ban partial birth abortion.

But Bachmann's attack was specific: He would not deny funds to, and would in fact campaign on behalf of, Republicans who were themselves partial birth abortion.

That doesn't mean Gingrich is pro-partial birth abortion.

It means what it means. that he will support candidates who are.

A lot of politics comes down to not just your position but how dedicated you are about it. This is obviously an attack on his dedication on the issue.

I think Drew is sort of right, but there is a lot of absolutism in the primary right now.

Why Drew May Be Right: I assume most people find PBA horrific. However, the general stance of any party, and any party leader, since the beginning of parties, is that there is virtually no political position that makes someone a persona non grata.

In other words, what was being asked of Newt was, essentially, "Will you do something about PBA supporters which the party has never done on any other issue?"

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (212)
Post contains 1267 words, total size 8 kb.

Good get.

"The election next November will have ramifications for generations," Haley said in a statement released by the Romney campaign. "Neither South Carolina nor the nation can afford four more years of President (Barack) Obama, and Mitt Romney is the right person to take him on and get America back on track."

This may count for Romney more outside of South Carolina. Jake Tapper points out Nikki Haley is actually not all that popular in her state at the moment.

But I think she's being derided for being a prisoner of the Tea Party. If that's the case, it helps Romney a bunch, since her endorsement will help him with the cohort most resistant to him.

Domenech says it's largely because she had a bad legislative session.

Anyway, it certainly can't hurt Romney to have a Tea Party darling on his team.

One thing it definitely does is remove a possible boon to Perry, who polls at only 9% in South Carolina.

Thanks to BenK. and DrewM.

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (133)
Post contains 176 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm really thinking about getting a Kindle.

But lately I've made a couple of comparisons among books I was interested in. Among three books, one ebook was actually more expensive than the real, physical version of the book. (Or as I call it, the Material Download version.)

In the other two cases we're talking about a buck or two cheaper.

Publishers seem hostile to this technology. Hostile enough to try killing it off early.

The digital price increases are the result of a decision by the six biggest publishers to set their own consumer e-book prices, a move that effectively bars retailers from discounting their e-books without permission. No such agreement exists for printed books—where retailers are free to set their own prices. So while a best-selling e-book price is often less than half of the hardcover price, heavy discounting of the print version closes the gap.
Industry executives say this new state of affairs may already be hurting e-book sales, which have skyrocketed over the past three years and are today 15% to 20% or more of major publishers' revenue.

"Some people who see $12.99 and $14.99 for e-books may find those prices a little expensive," says Scott Waxman, a literary agent and digital-books publisher.

Slublog writes:

You've got to love the backward thinking here. The cost of producing an e-book has got to be nothing compared to printing millions of hardcovers, so ebooks are the closest thing to pure profit that exists for everyone involved, but these publishers still feel the need to gouge and piss off customers. I loves me some capitalism, but hate what some industries do to it.

It's a dumb manner of pricing.

Let's say I accept that they are going to over-charge for an ebook. I do understand that. Prices are set not just by costs but by comparison to close alternatives. Since the close alternative here is a real book, I understand that the ebook price is going to be close-ish to real book price, even though the ebook costs practically zero to produce on the margins.

But the ebook really is much, much cheaper for publishers. They don't have to print books that they might never sell -- this is completely on-demand publishing. Furthermore, it is cost-free to actually produce a new unit. You don't even have to push a button; it's all automated.

Someone sends in real money, whether $12 or $15, and in return you send back $0. This is profitable.

But to me, this only makes sense if I'm saving, say, $5 on a $15 fat trade paperback, and $10 on a new $25 hardcover. I'll over-pay for content, but I do want a substantial discount to reflect the fact that I'm really saving the publisher printing, warehousing, and shipping costs. That's a lot of costs right there. It should be worth something to a publisher that I'm sparing them that. If they don't see it that way, then it just doesn't seem like a deal to me. I'd rather have the Material Download, then.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (237)
Post contains 529 words, total size 3 kb.

Here's the Rabbi:

I have spent my entire career engaged in dialogue with people of all faiths while speaking out passionately against intolerance and extremism. I have the deepest respect for those who are committed to their faith, including Mr. Tebow. I realize the way in which I attempted to make my points was clumsy and inappropriate, calling to mind the kind of intolerance and extremism my article was intended to disparage. I sincerely apologize to Mr. Tebow, his family, the Broncos and Patriots and all those whom I may have offended.

There is a social penalty to public expressions of some hatred. This tends to make them infrequent and tempered when they do arise.

But other hatreds continue to be tolerated if not outright encouraged. Resulting in spectacles such as this.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (145)
Post contains 164 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Monty at 08:22 AM | Comments (58)
Post contains 4 words, total size 1 kb.

Friday!

Looks like Congress tucked a temporary (read election year) reprieve of the light bulb ban into the budget bill. Of course that does nothing to restore the jobs lost, because nearly* all the manufacturing has already moved overseas.

There's not a whole lot the government can do to create jobs, but there's a hell of a lot it can do to destroy them.

* OK, my bad. There's a small plant in S.C. that employed 15 workers making them as late as last March. Down from 50. That's -35 jobs saved! in Obamamath.

An incandescent bulb may burn for 750 to 2,500 hours, while a compact fluorescent can last up to 10,000 hours, according to the Energy Department. (emphasis added)

Can last up to 10,000 hours. Can. But in practice they don't really last appreciably longer than the incandescents now, do they? Certainly not enough to justify the much higher price, even when factoring in the decreased energy use. Keep on spinning, DOE.

Posted by: andy at 02:55 AM | Comments (571)
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.

Bill Whittle has a new video out that once again shows his mastery of distilling complex themes and arguments down to their brutal essence. His latest feature is a Voter's Guide to Republicans which explores some of the often repeated falsehoods that the Left attributes to the GOP. Apparently, the claims that Republicans are Fascist, racist, Nazis are untrue. H/T Prof. Reynolds
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:03 PM | Comments (38)
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

Cancer is horrible.

He was 62. When I saw him a few years ago (the famous getting-into-shit-with-Syrian-Nazis-affair), he acted as if he was 25.

I guess I can mention this. I saw him last year at Union Station. His hair was thinning from cancer treatment.

He was outside, smoking. Puffing away.

Something about his defiant character in that, I guess. Or foolishness. Or both.

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 PM | Comments (407)
Post contains 70 words, total size 1 kb.