Posts Tagged ‘Lindsey Graham’
Wednesday!
* The University of Wisconsin at Madison has just received a $20 million grant for humanities development from the Mellon Foundation and the state government. Just to put this in perspective, that’s almost enough money to hire 80 assistant football coaches.
Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else.
* “When it’s all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch.” Hard to disagree with this assessment.
* The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has projected that the United States will lead the world into catastrophic global warming over the next twenty five years. Obama’s EPA is doing what it can, but without carbon pricing there’s really not much hope.
* The data shows the Supreme Court has been successfully captured by corporations. Via LGM.
* The obvious trouble with this “plan to restore airport sanity” is that it’s a call for racial and ethnic profiling. I’m as frustrated with security theater as anyone, but this isn’t a solution—it just shifts the costs.
* And Banksy swears Exit Through the Gift Shop was real. He swears, y’all.
Wednesday Is The Day When I Get Nothing Done
* Urban geography: where do locals (blue) and tourists (red) take their photographs? At right: New York. Via Alex.
* Cutting against its usual strategy of keeping its students completely isolated from the larger Durham community, Duke had contributed funding towards free bus service connecting the campus and downtown.
* Lindsey Graham, pathetic liar. More here from Ezra Klein, who denounces for the millionth time the inevitable failure of legislative outreach to Republicans, and Steve Benen, who denounces for the millionth-and-first time the inevitable failure of legislative outreach to Republicans.
* The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Via Kottke.
* And more fun from Nevada: Harry Reid’s opponent is strongly dedicated to the preservation of our precious bodily fluids.
Tuesday Night Links
* Amazing omnibus World Cup calendar. Related: Why aren’t the great powers dominating the soccer pitch? Both links via Steve.
* Bad news / good news: Blanche Lincoln wins in Arkansas after all. But it looks like Harry Reid will face a far-right candidate with ties to anti-government extremists the Oath Keepers.
* I’m shocked, shocked: Lindsey Graham will vote against his own climate and energy bill.
* More details on that Hurley/Ben Lost epilogue.
* Details coming out on Indiana Jones 5.
* The New Yorker on why teens love dystopias.
* Thinking Collapsistarianism. Could this be the fifty-first contemporary political ideology?
It Is a Far, Far Better Thing That I Do Than I Have Ever Done
Earlier today, Reid appeared to reverse course, saying climate/energy would be the next logical issue to address, followed only afterward by immigration reform. So everything’s groovy, right?
Far from it. Tonight, Graham told me that he will filibuster his own climate change bill, unless Reid drops all plans to turn to immigration this Congress.
I hope all the people who’ve been so eager to defend Lindsey Graham’s reasonableness these last few days take the time to weigh in on this. Can’t we all agree this is obviously a transparent attempt to take a losing issue off the table for the GOP? Now, that’s fine—I wish the Democrats would play this sort of hardball more often—but his tantrum is not some noble gesture, and we don’t have to give the guy cover while he throws it.
And this doesn’t even get into the near certainty that in the end he’ll find some reason to vote against his own bill anyway. How many times have we already seen this exact scenario play out?
UPDATE: Or, via Brad DeLong, what Greg Sargent said.
But we’ve been here before: Earlier this spring, Graham issued the same threat, saying that if Dem leaders moved forward on health reform it would kill the chance of compromise on immigration.
“The first casualty of the Democratic health care bill will be immigration reform,” Graham said in March, adding that movement on health reform would “kill any chance of immigration reform passing the Senate this year.” Time to wise up to Graham’s game?
Breaking News
In an event entirely without precedent, a Republican senator has negotiated with Democrats for months on a contentious, highly charged political issue only to back out at the last second out of obscure, bad-faith process concerns.
Senate Centrist Halfsies Moderate American Clean Energy & Security Act
To summarize, Graham et al. seem set to explode the fragile consensus formed around ACES in favor of a piece of legislation that will cost more. They’ll lose the coal utilities but are unlikely to pick up Big Oil. The broad range of recipients of pollution allowances under ACES, who were set to receive a steady, predictable income over decades, now face a future patchwork of subsidies dependent on the whims of legislators—just the kind of meddling and favoritism carbon pricing was supposed to transcend. Via Kevin Drum.
Thursday! Again!
Thursday again! How does this keep happening?
* Today is the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. MetaFilter remembers.
* Planetary #27 finally on its way. October.
* New Hampshire officially passes marriage equality. It looked for a while like nitpicking from the governor’s office might actually kill this; very glad it didn’t.
* Country first: Lindsey Graham admits he puts the Republican Party before the good of the nation.
* In the wake of Dr. George Tiller’s assassination, a frequent Fox News guest has put photos and addresses for the last two late-term abortion providers in the country on the Web.
* Obama speaks in Cairo.
* E.J. Dionne on the corporate media’s continued rightward slant. More from Steve Benen.
* The recession: a global view. It’s important to remember how good America actually has it—and that the current level of hardship in the States is, relatively speaking, not even all that bad.
* Here comes heath care. Donkeylicious says Team Edwards has something to crow about here. Maybe, but the health-care justification for Edwards’s (and later Hillary Clinton’s) candidacy long past viability was always weak—the plan you campaign on is never the plan that gets passed.
* And sad news: Bill, killed. Early reports declare David Carradine a suicide.
Gerry Canavan 