Thursday News Roundup

* Spider-Man 4 apparently on hold after the shocking discovery that its villains suck.

* The CBO has scored the climate bill:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today released an analysis finding that the major climate and energy bill the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved in November would reduce the budget deficit by $21 billion over the next decade.

* Now Ben Nelson wants a pony too. Fantastic.

* Somebody tell Ezra Klein to keep his mouth shut about this.

And aside from all that, if you think we can get these pieces in reconciliation, why not pass the bill and then go back and get these pieces in reconciliation? If reconciliation is a good strategy, it’s a good “and” strategy, not a good “or” strategy.

More on the merits of passing an imperfect bill now and improving it later here.

* The Matt Yglesias theory of politics:

Just like I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming that campaign tactics don’t determine who wins presidential elections. But even though neither of those propositions is especially controversial among political scientists, both are hugely unpopular with political junkies. So people are bound to be mad about how casually the White House accepted the view that its job was to (a) discern what Nelson/Lieberman would vote for and then (b) sell everyone to the left of Nelson/Lieberman on voting for it.

Of course he’s right, this is how it works.

* Howard Dean: progressive hero or necessary sacrificial lamb?

* To put it bluntly, we had won the campaign, but were lied to by a small number of Senators. In particular, we were lied to by Joe Lieberman. If you have a post-mortem that could have prevented the lying, I’d love to hear it. For, were it not for the lying, the public option campaign would have been won. But this is why exactly reconciliation should always have been Plan B.

* And over there: Insurgents hack U.S. drones with $26 software.