Versailles Bubble

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David Atkins writes regarding this hilariously sad post from the Wall Street Journal:

These folks live in a Versailles bubble, modern day edition. But even they're not the ones with the real money. The real plutocrats outstrip even these jokers by exponential leaps and bounds. And they're the ones who drive public policy in this country. Charlie Pierce, TBogg and Xenos all each have good takes.

On the Fiscal Cliff, Republicans Got Nothin’

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Daniel Gross, writing for The Daily Beast:

The reality should be seeping in to viewers of the Sunday shows that the Republicans don’t have a game plan. They don’t have a single, specific proposal to avoid the fiscal cliff. And even if they had one, they don’t have a roadmap to get there. They keep expecting Obama to come back with something more to their liking, which they’d also reject. Many Republicans literally don’t understand what is happening. Sen. Charles Grassley tweeted over the weekend that he was frustrated that President Obama hadn’t embraced the recommendation of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. Apparently, he is one of the many people in Washington who doesn’t understand that Bowles-Simpson recommended letting the Bush tax rates on the wealthy expire, while also proposing to cap or eliminate deductions primarily enjoyed by the wealthy. Above all, the Republicans have yet to grasp that the field is tilted against them. Republicans have every reason to expect, based on their scouting of past Obama performances, that he will start moving toward them and then, essentially, bargain with himself. But now he doesn’t have to. Right now, the policy choice isn’t between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and a preferred Republican proposal. No, the choice is between an Obama proposal the Republicans abhor and the fiscal cliff, which Republicans would like even less and the Democrats could live with for a while. The Republicans are losing, and time is running out. But instead of putting the quarterback on the field and rolling out an aggressive two-minute drill, they seem to be preparing to punt. I really get the sense that our team is winning this fight. Perhaps the first four years of the Obama administration were him building up his list of 'been there done that' situations that he can now look back on to make the right political situations this next go-round. The next four years of the Obama administration might be like the last four of the Clinton one (in terms of the economy I hope, not the scandals).

Joe Biden Goes Shopping At DC's New Costco

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What's not to love about this guy?

Biden “engaged in an extended Costco shopping spree, to the delight of shoppers and employees at the store,” according to the pool report. The vice president flashed his Costco card as he walked through the doors to loud cheers. Employee Ivey Stewart handled a cart for Biden, who stopped frequently for hugs and photos.

Back Into The Swing Of Things

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Over the last few months I've been caught up with work, and life, and have neglected posting to this site as often as I've wanted to. I've decided to step it up and update here more often than I've been able to do in recent memory. What does this mean? Well, I'll just keep posting things that I enjoy or want more people to know about. This mainly will focus on software, hardware, cool stuff I find, or politics. I make no promises that it will be in anyway focused, but then again, I never have. Recently I've just gotten home from a long trip that I took for both business and vacation out to San Francisco. For the first 10 days of my trip, I was managing all of the technology setup for a 25,000 attendee conference at Moscone West/South/North in downtown SF as well as the live-streaming of all of our major events at the conference. I do this annually, which involves about 6 weeks of prep work prior to the conference followed by an intense 10 day period of working 12-14 hours a day during the conference. My wife flew out the day after I was done and we stuck around in San Francisco for Thanksgiving with my best friend and his partner. This allowed us to also meet a lot of our "Internet Friends" and see some of them again. I left so soon after the election (on November 8) that I haven't had a lot of time to think about the win for our team and what this means. I'm so relieved that the President was able to win re-election. Also, during my trip, the picture below happened. I can't imagine any photo such as this ever being taken in a Romney White House and it makes me all the more grateful that the election turned out the way it did.

Geo-Politics And Dead Babies

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Andrew Sullivan, at The Dish:

In other words, without diplomacy toward a two-state solution, we are looking at a lifetime of constant Israeli warfare against all of its neighbors, deeper isolation in the region (with Turkey and Egypt already fast moving away) and growing international pariah status as Greater Israel becomes more fundamentalist and less democratic. And at some point, as America's energy revolution leaves us less and less exposed to Middle East oil, and as the national interest becomes more attuned to events in Asia and the Pacific, and as the occupation turns Israel into the South Africa of the 21st Century, the Jewish state will become a self-evident burden for America, spawning terror and conflict and anti-Americanism as far as the eye can see. If all Israel can count on then are America's Christianists and the current GOP, if they continue to spurn American attempts to unwind the conflict by undoing the settlements, then Israelis should be genuinely afraid for their future. I sure am. I think Sullivan gets it exactly right.