In the House, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

First Vote of the Week... Tuesday (as early as 10:00 a.m.)
Last Vote Predicted... Friday p.m.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2009

On Monday, the House will meet at 10:30 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business. No votes are expected in the House on Monday.

Suspensions (13 Bills)

1. H.Con.Res. 199 - Recognizing the 10th Anniversary of the activation of Echo Company of the 100th Battalion of the 442d Infantry, and the sacrifice of the soldiers and families in support of the United States (Rep. Sablan - Armed Services)
2. H.Con.Res. 206 - Commending the soldiers and civilian personnel stationed at Fort Gordon and their families for their service and dedication to the United States and recognizing the contributions of Fort Gordon to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and its role as a pivotal communications training installation (Rep. Broun - Armed Services)
3. H.Res. 940 - Recognizing and honoring the National Guard on the occasion of its 373rd anniversary (Rep. Latta - Armed Services)
4. H.Res. 845 - Recognizing the United States Air Force and Dyess Air Force Base for their success in achieving energy savings and developing energy-saving innovations during Energy Awareness Month (Rep. Neugebauer - Armed Services)
5. H.R. 1672 - Northwest Straits Marine Conservation Initiative Reauthorization Act of 2009 (Rep. Larsen - Natural Resources)
6. H.R. 2062 - Migratory Bird Treaty Act Penalty and Enforcement Act of 2009 (Rep. DeFazio - Natural Resources)
7. H.R. 3940 - To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to extend grants and other assistance to facilitate a political status public education program for the people of Guam (Rep. Bordallo - Natural Resources)
8. H.R. 3603 - To rename the Ocmulgee National Monument (Rep. Marshall - Natural Resources)
9. H.R. 86 - To eliminate an unused lighthouse reservation, provide management consistency by bringing the rocks and small islands along the coast of Orange County, California, and meet the original Congressional intent of preserving Orange County's rocks and small islands (Rep. Campbell - Natural Resources)
10. H.R. 118 - To authorize the addition of 100 acres to Morristown National Historical Park (Rep. Frelinghuysen - Natural Resources)
11. H.R. 3388 - Petersburg National Battlefield Boundary Modification Act (Rep. Forbes - Natural Resources)
12. H.R. 3804 - National Park Service Authorities and Corrections Act of 2009 (Rep. Tonko - Natural Resources)
13. H.R. 1454 - Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal Stamp Act of 2009 (Rep. Brown (SC) - Natural Resources)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2009 AND THE BALANCE OF THE WEEK

On Tuesday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 10:00 a.m. for legislative business. Members are advised votes could occur as early as 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday. On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10:00 a.m. for legislative business. On Friday, the House will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business.

Suspensions (16 Bills)

1. H.R. 2278 - To direct the President to transmit to Congress a report on anti-American incitement to violence in the Middle East (Rep. Bilirakis - Foreign Affairs)
2. H.R. 2134 - Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission Act of 2009 (Rep. Engel - Foreign Affairs)
3. H.Res. 915 - Encouraging the Republic of Hungary to respect the rule of law, treat foreign investors fairly, and promote a free and independent press (Rep. Donnelly - Foreign Affairs)
4. H.Con.Res. 213 - Expressing the sense of Congress for and solidarity with the people of El Salvador as they persevere through the aftermath of torrential rains which caused devastating flooding and deadly mudslides (Rep. Mack - Foreign Affairs)
5. H.R. 3951 - To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2000 Louisiana Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the "Roy Rondeno, Sr. Post Office Building" (Rep. Cao - Oversight and Government Reform)
6. H.R. 4017 - To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 43 Maple Avenue in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, as the "Ann Marie Blute Post Office" (Rep. McGovern - Oversight and Government Reform)
7. H.R. 2711 - FBI Families of Fallen Heroes Act (Rep. Rogers (MI) - Oversight and Government Reform)
8. H.Res. 907 - Recognizing the Grand Concourse on its 100th anniversary as the preeminent thoroughfare in the borough of the Bronx and an important nexus of commerce and culture for the City of New York (Rep. Serrano – Transportation and Infrastructure)
9. H.R. 4165 - To extend through December 31, 2010, the authority of the Secretary of the Army to accept and expend funds contributed by non-Federal public entities to expedite the processing of permits (Rep. Larsen – Transportation and Infrastructure)
10. H.R. 1854 - To amend the Water Resources Development Act of 1992 to modify an environmental infrastructure project for Big Bear Lake, California (Rep. Lewis (CA) – Transportation and Infrastructure)
11. H.Res. 35 - Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that Congress should provide increased Federal funding for continued type 1 diabetes research (Rep. Gene Green - Energy and Commerce)
12. H.Res. 55 - Expressing support for the designation of a National Prader-Willi Syndrome Awareness Month to raise awareness of and promote research into this challenging disorder (Rep. Royce - Energy and Commerce)
13. H.R. 1319 - Informed P2P User Act (Rep. Bono Mack - Energy and Commerce)
14. H.R. 2221 - Data Accountability and Trust Act (Rep. Rush - Energy and Commerce)
15. H.R. __ - To extend the Andean Trade Preference Act and the Generalized System of Preferences (Rep. Rangel - Ways and Means)
16. H.R. __ - Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act (Rep. Rangel – Ways and Means)

H.R. __ - Tax Extenders of 2009 (Rep. Rangel – Ways and Means) (Subject to a Rule)

H.R. 4173 – Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (Rep. Frank – Financial Services) (Subject to a Rule)

• Conference Reports may be brought up at any time.
• Motions to go to Conference should they become available.
• Possible Motions to Instruct Conferees.

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 10:00am

Resume consideration of H.R.3590, Health Care Reform.

Following Leader remarks, the first 2 hours will be equally divided and with senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. The Republicans will control the first 30 minutes and the Majority will control the next 30 minutes. The remaining time will be equally divided and controlled between the two Leaders or their designees.

Roll call votes are expected in relation to amendments to the Health Care Reform bill after 3:15pm.

Twenty-nine suspensions tells you the House is in a holding pattern. There are a couple of bills waiting for the end of the week, and they're not small potatoes. But the House's main role for the beginning of this week is to stay in session so the Senate can work. And that work will continue to be on the health insurance reform bill.

The Senate is actually moving fairly briskly for a bill this contentious. They're getting through about two amendments a day, which is perhaps no great shakes, but considering that they could be hanging up endlessly on each amendment, getting agreements in place for scheduled votes at a pace of two or more a day isn't as bad as it could be. Outwardly, there's no indication of the stacks and stacks of amendments Republicans were threatening, though I have no doubt they could generate them if necessary. But so far they're play-acting, considering the heat of the rhetoric they brought into this game. We'll see if that changes. It may just be that the glut of amendments they've got prepared is jammed up behind the negotiations aimed at getting agreements for votes on the ones they consider must-haves, and only a few at a time are getting through that process.

We shall see.

Today's the day we'll start getting a look at how the truly contentious amendments might go, with the first shot at getting Ben Nelson's Stupak-like amendment to the floor possible. Will he agree to a 60-vote threshold for passage like everyone else has been doing, and (in all likelihood) concede the contest up front? For something he says he'll filibuster the final bill over, that wouldn't be a terribly convincing display of conviction. But the Senate's a weird place, and consistency sometimes doesn't appear to have the same meaning there as on the rest of the planet.

Plenty going on in the committees this week, though. And if you feel like you don't really know much about what's going on with the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act coming to the floor this week, that's probably because you (like most of us with lives) weren't watching what used to be considered the action "behind the scenes," that is, what goes on in committee. But if health care (not to mention hundreds of years of previous experience) have taught us anything, it's that the big battles that truly shape legislation take place off the floor, in committee. The fact that there's still some form of the public option still alive, against all odds, at this stage of the game is a testament to the value of involvement of activists and advocates in these early stages of the legislative process.

As tedious and eye-glazing as the charts appearing below the fold can appear -- and indeed, they appear below the fold precisely because readers were perturbed by the real estate they took up on the front page -- watching what happens there and taking advantage of the availability of the free streaming video coverage we link to is critical to the basic idea of what you're doing on a blog. By which I mean getting more of what you want out of your government.

Those tedious and eye-glazing charts require many hours of tedious and eye-glazing work, most of which is now graciously donated by Jeremy Koulish of Carrots & Sticks, whom I thank every week work it. If you value what this information brings to the table, maybe you can stop by and check out what they're up to, and return the love.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

I Hear 96 Is the New 40

Next time someone suggests to you that bloggers are just teenage loners in their pajamas posting from their parent's basement, send 'em a link to this post. It'll shut 'em up right quick.

Charlotte Lucas is, as far as we know, the World's Oldest Kossack, having turned 96 last month.  As they say, "It ain't the years, it's the mileage," and she's logged a few:

She's a self-taught expert on Asian history, particularly that of India and China, and on Irish history. ... From her home in California she's been to Morocco, Tibet, Turkey, Thailand, Italy, Indonesia, France, China (three times), Nepal, Sweden, England, Ireland (about 20 times), and...at least ten other countries. In her late 80s, she flew around Mt. Everest in a two seater plane and insisted on showing the photos to her squeamish children. She's ridden elephants in Thailand, camels in Morocco (or was that somewhere else?) and hiked up mountains everywhere. She's an accomplished tailor, knitter, cook and gardener (passersby take pictures of her gardens). She's worked for and/or contributed to every Democratic presidential candidate and countless statewide and local candidates for over 60 years.

I can honestly say I've never seen a nonagenarian so comfortable in a beanbag chair under the klieg lights before. It's a pleasure to welcome Charlotte for the latest installment of our C&J interview series, Yes, We're All Staring At YOU!

Cheers and Jeers: How long have you been blogging and what originally brought you to Daily Kos?
Charlotte Lucas: My first blog was in December, 2008. My youngest daughter has been a Kossack since about 2003 and told me I should read  it.

You were born in 1913.  Of the sixteen presidents who have been in office since then, who would you say has been the smartest, the most honest, and the best campaigner?
Obama on all counts.

You've been witness to a lot of major events and milestones in American history. Which ones had the biggest emotional impact on you?
JFK's, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations. The scenes in Little Rock prior to school integration. The passage of the Civil Rights Act. Obama's election.

What kind of music makes you feel invincible to the GOP horde?
Dvorak's New World Symphony.

What's the one book every Kossack must read?
Three Cups of Tea.

Would you say the Republicans are as off the deep end as they've ever been, or have they been cuckoo like this before?
I think they're in the worst shape I've ever seen them, but they'll bear watching.

I'm curious: Do you remember Franklin Roosevelt running into the same kind of resistance early on that Obama is running into now? He sure is getting a lot of guff from all sides it seems.
Yes, FDR got a tremendous amount of criticism, especially from Westbrook Pegler and his ilk. In spite of it, he went serenely on his way and got us through the Great Depression. I'm dim about this but I think he was sniped at about his cabinet choices Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins.

Finish this sentence: In the kitchen I make a mean...
Chicken Parisienne.

You're an accomplished traveler. Where should I book my next trip?
Turkey.

No waffling here: dogs or cats?
If I say cats, Willie's feelings will be hurt. If I say dogs, Serena and Harriet will be deeply offended. I live with and love all three equally.  

What's your secret to longevity? I'm hoping that rum plays a role.
Try it. You'll like it. You'll find new windows through which to look at the world.

My health has always been good and I haven't "retired." By that I mean I keep doing what I've done for years like cooking, doing  my own laundry, etcetera.

Not rum, but I like an occasional brandy and water and I have a glass of  port every night. I add a bit of water and in hot weather I put in two ice cubes.

I have one question left, but it would be rude not to offer it to you. Please ask and answer the final question yourself...
I've been  unable to think of anything brilliant or witty enough for your column so I take refuge in my old age and refuse to have anything to do with this question. I get out of a lot of iffy situations this way.

Foiled!

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Weekday wonkery from the people that know they know best:

Paul Krugman:

Of course, if things go well in Copenhagen, the usual suspects will go wild. We’ll hear cries that the whole notion of global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a vast scientific conspiracy, as demonstrated by stolen e-mail messages that show — well, actually all they show is that scientists are human, but never mind. We’ll also, however, hear cries that climate-change policies will destroy jobs and growth.

The truth, however, is that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is affordable as well as essential.

Ross Douthat:

Millions of Muslims have accepted European norms. But millions have not. This means polygamy in Sweden; radical mosques in Britain’s fading industrial cities; riots over affronts to the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark; and religiously inspired murder in the Netherlands. It means terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, from London to Madrid.

And it means a rising backlash, in which European voters support extreme measures and extremist parties because their politicians don’t seem to have anything to say about the problem.

WaPo website notes that Bush's Obama's decision to invade Iraq still resonates with the editors:

The military and US voters may be surprised to learn that Obama is fighting this war single-handedly. The sad part is that teabaggers will believe it.

Wait, wait! Don't tell me! Fred Hiatt squares the circle because Obama IS George Bush. And since Bush bravely and resolutely won in Iraq all by himself, Obama should invade Iraq, too. Oh, gosh, now I'm confused. What is the WaPo saying?

WaPo:

President Obama made a rare Sunday visit to the Capitol to urge a fractious Democratic caucus to pull together to pass landmark health-care legislation.

More to come on this. He did too much! He didn't do enough! Passing health reform in the Senate makes Iraq look easy.

Flu news from IL:

Blacks and Hispanics in Illinois have died from swine flu at double the rate it has killed whites in the state, and swine flu has hospitalized the two minority populations at more than triple the rate for whites.

Less access to health care, more chronic health problems and lower vaccination rates among the two minority groups probably play a role, Illinois officials said Friday at a meeting in Chicago where minorities were encouraged to be inoculated.

Health reform, anyone? And on vaccine safety:

An extensive review of adverse effects from the swine flu vaccine indicates that the vaccine is safe, with side effects no different from those of seasonal flu vaccines, health officials reported on Friday.

No one knows if there's a third wave to come, but the second wave is declining (still lots of flu around, and typical flu season is a month away.)

Update [2009-12-7 8:38:33 by DemFromCT]:
This ad will run in CT and MD tomorrow. More here and here:

.

Want unconventional? The fellow in the video is an independent running against Chris Dodd. You can sign a petition here for Joe asking him to represent his constituents.

Stephen Messenger reports on how every silver lining has a cloud.

Good News and Bad News About the Ozone Hole: Good news: The hole is getting smaller. Bad news: It was keeping temps lower. Alarming new research has come to light that further illustrates the severity of global warming. According a recently published report [giant pdf]  from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, the ozone hole, which is linked to causing skin-cancer, cataracts, damage to plant-life, and a reduction of the plankton population--has also been reducing the effects of global warming in Antarctica by keeping the temperature at the pole artificially low. As the ozone hole continues to get smaller because of increased regulations regarding the use of ozone depleting gases in recent decades, the temperature of the icy continent will rise--causing more melting, more ice-sheet separation, and a more dramatic effect on global weather systems than previously thought. The ozone, which is important for deflecting UV rays cutting through the atmosphere, plays a primary, though delicate, role in shaping the planet's climate systems. When solar energy passes through the ozone layer, the temperature in the stratosphere is warmed, keeping the temperature cooler in the troposphere, or surface layer, underneath. Having a hole in the ozone has altered this dynamic by allowing the energy to pass through the stratosphere, keeping it cooler. The artificially cooled stratosphere then absorbs the heat from the troposphere, which creates cooling on the Earth's surface. In a word, the dynamic between atmospheric layers are switched underneath the ozone hole above the South Pole, making the area colder than it would be if the ozone were not damaged. "Removal of the cooling effect of the ozone hole as it diminishes in extent will exacerbate the problem (of warming,)" says the report.

• • • • • • •

Green Diary Rescues appear on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The diary rescue begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.

• • • • • • •

RLMiller went meta in the title and poetic in the text, but the reality of our predicament is anything but elegiac. Slouching Toward Copenhagen: "The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere. A survey delving into the past 30 years in sub-Saharan Africa reveals that temperature changes match up with a significant increase in the likelihood of civil war.  Both the 1994 Rwandan civil war and the 2000s Darfur conflict are generally seen to be wars for scarce resources.  The Pentagon begins to war game the implications of climate change including famine, rising sea levels, and natural resource competition."

In the weekly climate change round-up, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse looked at how Obama & the World Hit Back At Climate Deniers: "In the annals of right-wing hubris, the ‘climategate’ sham should be given recognition. For years, the deniers have intentionally engaged in a disinformation campaign to mislead and confuse the public about the existence and gravity of climate change. Two lawsuits were filed that included a cause of action for climate change civil conspiracy. The right-wing likes to flip things upside down, so now they cry that scientists have been part of a conspiracy to defraud the public into believing that global warming is real."

• • • • • • •

Interceptor7 has posted the Overnight News Digest.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are jlms qkw, sunspark says, dadanation, BentLiberal, noddem and grog.

• SlyDi publishes a diary reflecting her own theory of what is most affecting one segment of our population in The Trans Community... Swimming In PTSD? (sunspark says)
• pale cold writes of the war against women launched at Montreal's École Polytechnique in December 06, 2009. Dreaming for my daughters. (BentLiberal)
• behan reviews the dark side of Woodstock in the Bay Area in It Was Forty Years Ago Today. (jlms qkw)
• In a very brief but powerful diary, girlgeek expresses her own outrage over our lack of collective outrage after a suicide bomber attacked a University Graduation in Somalia. (sunspark says)
• Username4242 lost their dinosaurs but found something else in Siderthine the Runemaker. (jlms qkw)
• indiemcemopants looks at the ramifications of escalating a foreign war in Afghanistan in "We're going to be in the region for a long time." (BentLiberal)
• JimCummings looks at Bias in Military (or Conservation) Funded Ocean Noise Research. (grog)
• One of his own constituents, RDemocrat lays sharply into the Senate Minority Leader in Mitch McConnell: Stifles the Chuckle of the Beast. (sunspark says)
• Come math-phobes and geeks alike! Orinoco leads us through the "least common denominator" in Fundamental Understanding of Mathematics XLII. (jlms qkw)
• A Siegel explains an easy way to save energy heating public pools that is being neglected in Clean Energy Jobs should go swimming. (BentLiberal)

jotter gives us the day's High Impact Diaries: December 5, 2009 and the Week's High Impact Diaries, while carolita has Top Comments 12-6-09 – Creative Crafts Edition.

Shamelessly self promote your diary or pimp for a friend in this Open Thread!

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development. -- Aristotle

It is absolutely critical for everyone, not just the arms control community, to understand the history of the Cold War: its origins, its conclusion, and how the vast weapons programs on both sides are still a dangerous issue today.

Back in September of this year, Washington Post Contributing Editor David E. Hoffman published an extraordinary book.

It's called The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy. Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll called it "... a tour de force of investigative history," and that's not an overstatement. It is one of those rare books that presents a vast amount of information, but is written in an engaging and interesting narrative.

Mr. Hoffman was kind enough to grant me a very thorough interview this week. My questions are in bold and his replies follow.

Introduction And Background

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your career, how your experiences and your background led you to write this particular book.

I was a White House correspondent for the Washington Post in Reagan's presidency, then I covered the State Department, and then the paper sent me overseas, including six years as Moscow bureau chief.

In the Reagan years, I saw firsthand the centrality of the Cold War conflict. I covered the summits at Reykjavik, Geneva, I wrote about these things constantly. And then in Moscow, as a bureau chief, I got to see the other side, and I met the big players. So the book grew out of really twenty years of writing and thinking about this period that I saw from both sides, and I realized, almost at the end of that, that on both sides things had been missed. In Reagan's case, I didn't realize that he'd become a nuclear abolitionist, and I covered his first campaign in 1980, and you'll find not a word of that in my coverage, because I didn't know it.

On the Russia side, I realized that there's a whole side to their story, of what had happened in the late Cold War and after, that had never been told. So, my motive was to create a history in stereo that would tell readers, and help them understand, two big things that I had experienced but discovered late.

Growing up during the Cold War and as a teen in the Reagan years, we didn't realize that he was a nuclear abolitionist either.

You know, I was twenty-seven years old, I was a correspondent, I covered Reagan's presidential campaign from the very beginning, from New Hampshire all the way to the end. I wrote a lot of things about him. But then when I went back and read his diaries, looked at the original documents, twenty, twenty-five years later, I just realized that he personally, essentially hid from us this abolition, for a while. But it began to come out later in his presidency.

And of course now we see that he was much more radical in his thinking -- privately -- than he let on.

My favorite example of this is in January, 1986, before Chernobyl, Gorbachev proposed the liquidation of all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. The Americans immediately had the proposal translated, and George Shultz got the translation, and he got in his car, and he raced over to the White House to talk to Reagan. Of course the White House had it translated, and Shultz went into the Oval Office, and there's the President, and Shultz says, "Mr. President, what do you think? Gorbachev has proposed liquidating all nuclear weapons by the year 2000!" And Reagan just looks up and he says, "Well, why wait until the year 2000?"

The "Dead Hand" and "Perimeter"

The next question I have has to do with the "Dead Hand". When my mom asked me what I was reading, and I gave her a brief sketch of your book, her response was to gasp and say "Dr. Strangelove was real? There was a Doomsday Machine?" Of course, that's putting it broadly... so, let's talk about "the Dead Hand" and nuclear weapons command and control.

What was "the Dead Hand"? Tell me about the history of "Perimeter", who came up with the idea, and to what extent the Soviets deployed it.

In the late 1970s, at the time the Euro-missile crisis was gaining steam, when the Soviets had stationed their SS-20s and NATO was preparing to put Pershing II missiles in Europe (and they did), during all that period, the Soviet leaders began to really fear "decapitation". They began to fear the idea of a [nuclear] strike that would wipe out the leadership before they could respond. If they couldn't respond, and had no retaliatory capability, they felt vulnerable.

They feared this not out of the blue; they feared it in part because we signaled to them that this was part of our strategy, to "decapitate" the leadership. Jimmy Carter signed a top secret nuclear weapons command and control decision, in 1980, called PD-59. This was an evolutionary decision about how the President would manage a nuclear war. One thing in it that was new said the Soviet political leadership is in the cross-hairs. They're targeted.

And then, for maximum effect, according to top Pentagon officials, they leaked that part to the Soviets to make sure that they were aware they were in the cross-hairs.

It was psy-war, a little bit -- psychological. But then, of course the Soviets saw that, to counter-balance their SS-20 Pioneer missiles, we were putting these Pershing IIs in Europe, in Germany, and GLCMs -- ground-launched cruise missiles in England. The thing is, the Pershings were extremely fast, and the Kremlin feared they could fly from Germany to Moscow in maybe six to ten minutes.

So, the first thing about this is the Soviets feared this decapitation and the failure to retaliate. So they came up with a system that they hoped would guarantee a retaliatory strike. The system was called "Perimeter". It meant that the Soviet leader, if given a warning of an imminent strike, could switch on Perimeter, literally activate it, and pass the decision about retaliation to somebody else, that he wouldn't have to press the button, so to speak, in those six or ten minutes. He could pass it.

The "somebody else" were several duty officers, three or four, in a concrete globe buried deep under the earth in a small town outside of Moscow. Those three or four guys had a checklist of three conditions:

1. Was the switch on?
2. Had all communication with the Kremlin or the commanders been stopped, in other words, were the lines cut?
3. Was there seismic and other evidence of incoming nuclear strikes?

If the three conditions were met, the guys in the bunker were empowered to launch the retaliation. It was kind of a Rube Goldberg machine that would launch command rockets, that would in turn launch the bigger missiles, and so on.

But here are two critical things about Perimeter:

One, the Soviets thought for a while about automating it completely, without the men in the bunker. They drew up plans for this. This is "Dead Hand". But they backed off, because even they thought it was too risky to entrust this decision to computers. So they built the human firewall.

The second critical thing about it is that if they wanted to deter -- if they wanted to create guaranteed retaliation, so we would be deterred, so that we would have some fear of it -- they needed to tell us about it. And here's where I think they made a dangerous mistake -- they kept it secret. Throughout the Cold War, until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we did not know about this system, making it, I think, in a hair-trigger world, much more dangerous...

I think that if they'd have been transparent, and we had known about it... transparency creates a little bit more safety in a hair-trigger world, because then, before you launch an attack, as you interpret what's happening, you know it exists. But if you don't know about things like this, then it can be much riskier. Hair trigger alerts require fast decision-making, with limited information. This is part of our problem today.

(Continued below the fold.)

The "Democrats are Doomed" narrative is so pervasive that, at this point, even casual consumers of political news are well aware of it. Consider just a smattering of the political headlines involving the midterm elections, culled from the past six months:

Trouble Is Brewing For Obama, Democrats in 2010--U.S. News and World Report, November 25

More Signs of Trouble For 2010--The New Republic, October 26

2010 Election: Trouble Brewing For House Democrats--The Huffington Post, September 13

Signs Point To Democratic Trouble in 2010--Houston Chronicle (Guest Commentary), November 27

Trends Spell Trouble For Democrats--Southern Political Report, December 3

Of course, the conventional wisdom is often wrong. The purveyors of the CW did not catch the 2006 wave election until darned near Election Eve, only grudgingly conceding as late as mid-October that the Democrats had a better than 50/50 shot at seizing control of the House (even until the bitter end, almost no one projected a Senate majority).

And, last year, no less than three major media outlets (ABC, CNN, and Time Magazine) felt compelled to invoke the term "Bradley Effect" to cast doubts on the veracity of the Obama lead in the final weeks of the campaign. As it turned out, of course, the polls were unusually prescient. On the day before the election, the seven daily tracking polls gave Barack Obama an average lead of 7.86%. He won by around 7.3%.

Therefore, it is worth asking whether the dire projections about Democratic fortunes in 2010 are justified, given the (to put it charitably) mixed record of the pundit class in the past.

There is one aspect of the CW that is almost certainly true--and Democrats and progressives ought to prepare their expectations accordingly: the Democrats will almost certainly lose some seats next year. If they don't, it will be a miraculous effort on the part of the DNC, DCCC, and the individual campaigns.

There is both history and intertia at work here. For all the talk of the "Sixth Year Itch" in American politics (the much-discussed phenomenon of the president's party getting thumped in the sixth year of his presidency), there is a smaller-but-still notable "Second Year Itch" that also exists in the recent history of midterm election cycles.

Using data compiled by the Cook Political Report, we see that in the eight first-term midterm elections that have been conducted since 1950, the party in the White House has lost seats in seven of them. The lone exception was in 2002, when the GOP gained eight seats. The average loss in those elections was 16 seats for the incumbent party, while the median was 13.5 seats.

Therefore, there is a historical basis for suggesting Democratic loss of House seats in 2010, and it is based, in some respects, on a logical foundation. Any anger over the state of the nation is going to be visited on the incumbent party.

Compounding this potential peril is the fact that the Democrats are coming off of a pair of wave elections, which combined for a net gain of greater than 50 seats over the past two election cycles. Not since the New Deal era has a political party gained seats in the House after back-to-back gains of double digits in their House membership.

Wave elections create an inertia which generates a sort of coattail effect. Candidates that, in neutral or hostile elections, would be beaten (and often beaten easily), manage to emerge victorious with a strong enough wind at their back.

Will all, or most, of the class of 2006 and 2008 be defeated? The answer is, of course, no. Many of them have proven to be excellent fits for their districts, and others will benefit from a combination of political skills and the electoral benefits that come with incumbency. But some of them are, without question, swimming upstream.

What turns a tough election into a wave election, oftentimes, is the presence of open seats. The reason that much was made of the retirements in the past two weeks of Kansas Democrat Dennis Moore and Tennessee Democrat John Tanner is that both men serve districts that, in an election absent of incumbency, might prove difficult holds for Democrats.

Open seats were the epicenter of the 1994 political earthquake, where the Gingrich-led Republican Party seized 52 seats and, with it, control of the House. Nearly half of the seats taken by the GOP that year were in open-seat elections.

At present, the Democrats have done an excellent job of minimizing open-seat vulnerabilities. In fact, and it is a fact that often goes unreported in the traditional media, the GOP has more open seats to defend at present than do the Democrats (12 to 9).

And while much is made of the triumvirate of open seats in Kansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana (where Charlie Melancon is running for the Senate), it has to be pointed out that the GOP has an even tougher trio of open seats to defend in DE-AL (Mike Castle), IL-10 (Mark Kirk) and PA-06 (Jim Gerlach). To say nothing of the fact that in Joseph Cao (LA-02), they have the incumbent most likely to be a one-termer since Michael Patrick Flanagan upset Dan Rostenkowski in IL-05 back in 1994 (great trivia for political junkies: Flanagan was discarded in the next election in a landslide by none other than....Rod Blagojevich).

The early line on the House is certainly not as pretty as it was in 2006 or 2008, but some of the projections of sheer collapse are probably a bit too pessimistic, as well.

The statistic to watch, given the fact that the Democrats control both chambers of the Congress as well as the White House, is the right track-wrong track indicator. Democrats are going to have a difficult time being successful as long as over a third of their own party members believe the nation is off on the wrong track. Watch this stat, on our weekly tracking poll and others. If it doesn't improve, particularly among the Democratic base, that could make a perilous election even more so.

The Senate and the gubernatorial elections behave a little bit differently, because in both cases there are exigent circumstances that alter the dynamics of those races.

In the Senate, there is the nature of the six-year electoral cycle. Therefore, a party's fortunes in the upcoming elections will be dictated, in no small part, by how well they did six years ago. 2004 was a wash, more or less, and the inclusion of several special elections (New York, Illinois, Delaware, Colorado) make it an even battle heading into 2010. Democrats have 19 Senate seats to defend, as do Republicans. This was supposed to be the cycle where Democrats padded their already sizeable majorities, since the Democrats will be swimming upstream in 2012 and 2014, where they defend their huge gains from '06 and '08 (the ratio of Dems seats to GOP seats in those two cycles is nearly two-to-one). Those vulnerable special elections, plus a few very vulnerable Dem incumbents, make a net wash or even the shedding of a seat or two the most likely outcome.

Could Democrats pick off some vulnerable Republicans (and there are a few open seat opportunities where Dems could emerge strongly) and add to their 60-40 majority? Yes, it is possible. But it is a great deal less likely than it looked a year ago, when the Democrats had four fewer seats to defend.

On the gubernatorial side, the x-factor is term limits, which have put the Democrats in an excellent position to limit their casualties in the 2010 electoral cycle. There are open-seat gubernatorial campaigns in a total of four states where President Obama exceeded 60% of the vote: Hawaii, Vermont, California, and Rhode Island. To be fair, Democrats also have to defend open seats in places like Kansas and Oklahoma, which could prove to be an uphill battle, to say the least.

The second complicating factor in forecasting gubernatorial elections is, as mentioned here last month, the fact that the electoral climate for governors right now is nothing short of brutal. It is telling, for example, that according to one of the deans of electoral punditry (Stuart Rothenberg), fully half of the governor's races for 2010 are either toss-ups or already leaning to the challenging party.

As with any election that is still fully eleven months away, there is still an incredible amount of fluidity in the election dynamics.

However, there are a few things that, at this point, seem likely.

There is likely to be a lot of tumult and unexpected outcomes, given some unique dynamics to this cycle (the schism in the GOP, for example). A lot of assumptions being made now (about candidates and momentum, in particular) are going to be challenged as time goes on.

Also, with each passing day, it becomes more evident that the Democrats are going to need to find some way to inspire their base. The disparities in voter intensity are stark, and something Democratic officeholders need to be acutely aware of as they head into 2010.

• The first Netroots Nation Holiday Bazaar kicked off this weekend, with a treasure trove of crafty creations. For more info, check out mcjoan's excellent rundown of items up for bid.

  All in all, there are 115 items, something for everyone on your holiday list, and the vast majority of them under $20. On top of that, it's for a fantastic cause. In three four (already?) short years, Netroots Nation has become the premiere annual gathering for progressives. Proceeds from this auction will go toward Netroots Nation '10, and to the series of regional salons that happen throughout the country during the year.

  Did I already mention the truffles? Tempting, huh? Well, you have to act now. The auction ends next Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 10:00 pm, eastern.

• The Los Angeles Episcopalians elected an openly lesbian bishop yesterday.

  The Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, 55, will become the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church since Gene Robinson took office in New Hampshire in 2004, if she is formally approved.

• The New York Times has a guide to the climate change talks in Copenhagen.
• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for tightening loopholes in U.S. legislation to regulate the $605 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the US hasn't had any good intelligence on OBL's whereabouts in years, but National Security advisor James Jones seems to think otherwise.
• The DARPA challenge is underway. The Pentagon is using the $40,000 prize to study "how online groups share resources." (Update: A team from MIT already won! h/t John3.)

More details have emerged from the negotiations that emerged last night. What was reported last night as discussions with Lincoln, Pryor and handful of others has now emerged. Politico is reporting that it's a group that does include leadership in this debate.

The moderate Democrats –Lincoln, Mark Pryor (Ark.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Thomas Carper (Del.) and Mary Landrieu (La.) – attended each session. Harkin, Rockefeller, Brown and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) represented the liberals. Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), another participant, has served as an intermediary between the two sides.

The Senate leadership is still eyeing Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who has maintained regular contact with moderate Democrats in recent weeks. She participated in a separate meeting Saturday of moderates.

Here's Sherrod Brown's description of the latest non-public option compromise proposal:

Brown described it as a take-off of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan. With the Office of Personnel Management as the administrator, the program would be separate from the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates the insurance marketplace.

"It would be a national, not-for-profit," Brown said. "(The Office of Personnel Management) would administer it. It would be any number of national not-for-profits that would compete nationally and they would take the place – more conservative members hope – of the public option. They would be in states and be running a kind of lookalike to a public option."

The nonprofit insurance companies would "go to OPM and say I want to compete and then you show them you’ve got standing to compete," Brown said.

Existing insurance companies could participate as long as their plan is not-for-profit, he said....

Brown, however, said he is not a convert to the latest proposal. Supporters of the public option have already compromised enough, he said.

"Well, I don't think much of it, frankly, compared to a public option," Brown said. "I'm willing to talk to anybody about anything but they haven't sold it yet."

It's not a public option. It's essentially an exchange within the exchange. Now maybe it's a good substitution for the exchanges--just open up the FEHBP to people instead of creating, in the House's case a national exchange, or in the Senate version multiple exchanges. If they got rid of the exchanges in return for this, it would get rid of the Ben Nelson/Bart Stupak political problem (though it would still extend the Hyde problem to millions of women) by getting rid of the need for their amendment.

But it's still not a public option, like most of the "compromises" we've seen floated in the Senate. Here's Jacob Hacker, the healthcare expert who authored the original public option idea, on the latest developments.

They represent abandonment of the public plan idea altogether. One proposal that is being floated, for example, is the chartering of a national nonprofit plan, similar to the "cooperatives" that Senator Kent Conrad has advocated. But the whole point of the public plan is to create a plan that is up and running quickly and constructed on the existing infrastructure of Medicare so that it can create competitive pressure for insurers and serve as a backup for consumers on day one. In 35 states, after all, the largest private insurer enrolls more than half of privately insured patients. Many of these plans are nonprofits already--the problem is that they don’t face a credible alternative.

Another, even stranger idea is to offer the nonprofit plans available in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) within the exchange. Since the FEHBP is itself a form of exchange, this amounts to offer a new set of private plans within a new set of private plans. How is that going to provide real pressure on private insurers in a consolidated insurance market in which nonprofit plans already have a large presence (and often act little differently from for-profit plans)?

In short, the new compromise proposals are anything but. They represent calls for advocates of the public plan to eat their crumbs and be happy. But a majority of Senators support the public plan. At least two--Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and Senator Burris of Illinois--have said having a real public plan in the legislation is a precondition for their support. Those who believe in the public plan—and, more important, who believe in the principle it embodies: that no American who lacks access to good insurance should be forced to buy coverage from the private plans that got us into our present mess--should stand firm in the face of these non-compromises.

This includes President Obama. He made the public plan part of his promise of change in 2008. Now he needs to put his weight and influence behind the public plan and its essential goals, rather than allow them to be gutted. This is in our nation’s interest. It is also in his and his party’s political interest. A bill that forces people to take private insurance but doesn’t create competition or a public benchmark is a prescription for unaffordable coverage, runaway costs, and political backlash. The "middle ground" is nowhere to stand if it’s going to crumble beneath you. [emphasis mine]

Brown echoed that sentiment:

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has been publicly urging the president to get more involved, said earlier on Saturday that Obama should make a strong pitch for the current Senate bill.

"I’d like to hear him push what we’re doing," he said. "I like the bill now the way it is, the president pushing the people who are more reluctant to vote for it, to vote for it."

The President is meeting with the caucus now, and the negotiations within the caucus will continue this afternoon. We'll probably see tomorrow whether Obama has decided to use his bully pulpit to bring the handful of ConservaDems into the fold, or to force everyone else to bend to their will.

If this OPM thing does end up being the compromise they settle on and they abandon any semblance of a public option, there are a few things the progressives should insist upon in return: no mandate, increased affordability, and the idea that Howard Dean started floating this summer--lower Medicare eligibility to age 55 in year one. It wouldn't be comprehensive healthcare reform, but it would be significant help.

Update: Obama did not talk about the public option in today's meeting with Dem Senators, according to Lieberman and Reid.

The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory
By David Plouffe
Hardback, 387 pages, $27.95
Viking: New York
November 2009

"Let me get this straight," summed up one of our colleagues. "We should work for the candidate with no chance, no money, and the funny name?"

"As I keep telling you guys," [David Axelrod] wryly replied, "I am a terrible businessman."

And thus history was made.

David Plouffe, campaign manager for one of the most unlikely presidential successes in history, has written a gripping blockbuster of a book, manna for political aficionados and newcomers to elections alike, full of scrappy details, minute explanations of strategy, tales from the trail and candid assessments of mistakes made and lessons learned.

In Plouffe's telling, what made the campaign that elected Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States was the ability to ignore conventional wisdom, tap into overlooked potential voters and, most importantly, to throw out the old rule book. Being the underdog against the greatly favored Hillary Clinton juggernaut was, in retrospect, the first blessing bestowed upon the Obama camp.

The way I saw it, we were able to run such a disciplined campaign because most party leaders did not jump on the Obama bandwagon in the early going, and those that did were open to change. We were able to make decisions without a lot of guff from our leading political supporters because they were not in the driver's seat. We had a clear message and strategy to push forward, and volunteers were our engine. Groups and political leaders who supported us were the caboose.

Because the Democratic Party machinery was dominated by Clinton supporters, because Hillary's name recognition was so prominent, because she'd locked up most of the consultants considered "must haves" for a Democratic presidential campaign, the Obama group was forced to fall back on the grassroots and old-fashioned one-on-one retail politicking, painstakingly building up ground forces that recruited friends, neighbors and co-workers outside of the traditional party network, with non-traditional methods. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the campaign's early decision to focus on delegates instead of popular vote and to go all in for Iowa. Iowa was the Holy Grail of intense focus, and with the victory that came there, the strategy and tactics became the template for all the later states.

Before we even knew the contours of the final calendar, we pounded Obama with the mantra that the first contest held undue influence. If you stumbled as an insurgent candidate, you were done. "If you run," we told him, "you are going to spend all your time doing two things: raising money and campaigning in one of these four states, most often Iowa." Though this strategy would be tested vigorously at times, in hindsight having it pinned down and clear at the outset could not have been more important.

Most of this book is a return to examining the details of this winning template in different climates and different places, including the general election. Applying the Iowa lessons -- focus, delegates, grassroots ground game -- became amplified as the campaign built its phenomenal online presence and outreach. And while the web element was crucial, Plouffe makes clear it was merely a tool in the service of the change and empowerment message that was critical to the expanded voter base the campaign went to such great lengths to build and nurture.

Much was made in the media last month when The Audacity to Win hit the market of pieces of insider gossip that hadn't been known -- that the Edwards campaign approached both the Obama camp and the Hillary camp offering endorsement in exchange for the vice presidential slot, that the Obama team leaked the John Edwards haircut tidbit. For me (and perhaps I missed this evaluation in the heat of the primary campaign), the most startling factoid I hadn't known was that Plouffe and crew absolutely, unequivocally attributed Hillary's primary win in Indiana to the interference of a certain mischief-making conservative radio host:

If Rush Limbaugh had not encouraged Republicans to vote in the Indiana primary for Hillary as a way of extending our race. we would have won outright.... Over 12 percent of the Indiana primary vote was Republican and Hillary carried it, despite her through-the-roof unfavorable numbers with these voters, Limbaugh's project worked in Indiana--it cost us that victory--but it didn't matter. The die was cast.

While as a reader, I would usually welcome such candor, as a well-wisher for the Obama administration, I'm (probably naively) wondering if attributing such power to a vowed enemy of this administration--who hopes it fails, mind you--is a wise political decision.

Clearly, for those of us who lived and breathed the presidential campaign, such gossipy confirmations of suspicions and unguessed maneuvers as the Edwards endorsement bargain are juicy reads. But to get hold of this book for the small insider stuff really would do The Audacity to Win a disservice. It's a dense book. Fairly easy to read, but still ... dense. And for those of us who really, really followed the ins and outs of the primaries and the general campaign, the book is far more valuable in terms of explaining the minutiae of tactics and strategy, of explaining the campaign's internal reasoning about choices made and allocation of attention and resources.

Even internal second-guessing and admission of mistakes made--and how and why--is absolutely fascinating. Consider, for example, this rumination on the Texas primary outcome:

As I reflected on this and thought harder about our March 4 losses, I tried to go beyond the surface explanation that these were tough states for us and we had closed poorly. I bolted upright in my seat when it finally dawned on me: for the first time in the campaign our strategy had been off. We should have put aside our delegate chase for these contests and gone in for the kill in Texas, trying to win the popular vote. We should have focused at least two-thirds of our effort there instead of splitting our resources with Ohio. Thinking back through our efforts, I realized we hadn't even campaigned vigorously in the Hispanic areas of Texas or in many of the rural and small-town areas, where Clinton annihilated us. We focused our time and attention only on the areas where we could net more delegates.

If we had gone all-in, we would have had more time to campaign all over the state. If our schedule and other activities had been based on a statewide vote goal, we just might have pulled out a win in Texas. We lost by one 4 percent statewide; more time and focus might easily have changed 2 percent of the electorate.

Or for analysis about voting patterns, there's a wealth of material like this:

Some in political circles argue that the early vote doesn't matter--that the people who go to the effort to vote early are committed voters who will almost certainly show up on Election Day. We fervently believed that if a hurdle presented itself on Election Day--a family issue; a work emergency; transportation problems--nonhabitual voters are the most likely people to throw in the towel on making it to the polls. These are the folks we relentlessly encouraged to vote early and the yardstick to which we paid closest attention--not how many votes we were getting, but whose. Were enough first-time voters voting early? How about African American sporadic voters? In addition to allowing us to make sure we were voting large numbers of our most questionable turnout targets, it also gave us a window into overall changes in turnout from previous elections, which helped us determine whether we were really changing the electorate.

By far the biggest strength of Plouffe's campaign memoir are these kind of politically nerdy ruminations. They're spot on, candid and nuanced, and they not only are terrifically presented, they're frequent, making up the bulk of the book.

There is, however, still very little sense of Barack Obama, the man, in these pages. Don't expect to learn anymore than you already think you know about what makes him tick. You get glimpses of his self-confidence, of his high-mindedness when he scolds staff for ads or tactics he perceives to be dirty, of his competitiveness. Perhaps the most revealing passage in the book dealing even indirectly with "what makes this guy run" is Plouffe's discussion of how the Iowa staff was concerned with his lackluster performance and seeming lack of interest at the outset:

He hadn't embraced campaign life, and it was beginning to cause concern. The early-state staff in particular thought he was not locked in on the trail, either in his remarks or in his solicitations of political support. We weren't sure if Obama would turn out to be Secretariat, but we suspected he had some thoroughbred political talent; it just wasn't on daily display. ... But the reports from Iowa were that he was mostly going through the motions. After one event, Tewes called me and laid it on the line. "Unless he gets better, we might as well just not have him meet with people," he said. "They tell us afterward, 'He really never put the squeeze on me. It was a nice enough conversation but he doesn't seem like he really wants it.'"

That's about as good as it gets in terms of understanding Obama, and even then, we never learn exactly why he wasn't really putting himself out there, or why he was able to up his game so quickly and dramatically. We know he did, obviously, and Plouffe dutifully recounts the candidate promising to do better, but there is no real sense of why he was semi-off in the first place or what mental pumping up he did to turn it around. Perhaps we'll have to wait the President's own memoir when he leaves office to really find out. Or maybe he'll continue to loom over American politics as something of a high-minded, fascinating enigma.

So come to The Audacity to Win with your political geek hat on, and you'll do just fine. It's a "must have" for anyone building a political library or wanting to delve deep into campaign strategy. Then again, if you really do need a teaser tidbit to push you over the edge into reading it, consider this: Without reading The Audacity to Win, you will never, ever know how very, very close we came to ... Vice President Evan Bayh.

One final minor point/gripe about Plouffe's book: There's no index. He tries to pass this off as an intential ploy to foil the Washington Beltway crowd who turn immediately to the index to find the pages about themselves (and thus refuse to read a whole book), but this is too cute by half and wholly silly. This is an account of a historic, groundbreaking campaign--worthy to be read by political historians and strategists forever. Game playing with the index for whatever reason or point to be made is not audacious. It's irritating. And it can be corrected, one can have the audacity to hope, in a second edition.

Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
By Dr. James Hansen
Hardcover 270 pages
Bloomsbury $ 25.00

To be a top climate scientist today means being up to speed in graduate level physics, advanced mathematics, planetary astronomy, meteorology, paleontology, oceanography, bio and geo-chemistry, dealing with programmers and constantly shifting computer architectures, and now on top of everything else, you have to be a tireless political activist and media celebrity. No one book could fully substitute for those years of study or the crazy political twists and turns that makes up a modern climate scientist's life. But Storms of my Grandchildren comes about as close as you'll ever get. It is hands down the best, most informative, brilliantly written book on general climate science I've ever read.

The author is none other than Dr. James Hansen, the world's foremost expert on climate science. He is by his own account a shy, quiet man more comfortable among a close knit group of family, friends, and colleagues than standing before millions in a national spotlight. But he's a brilliant scientist who earned that distinction with the only currency of value in his profession: Hansen's predictions have been proven right again and again. The book seamlessly integrates that original analysis and the latest scientific findings with the author's growing realization that the news is bad, getting worse, and too many elected leaders are either green-washing the issue or denying it exists. You'll follow along as he is vaulted back and forth from a life of fascinating scientific discovery into the frenzied, decidedly unscientific world of politics, power, and unbridled greed where you are eyewitness to some extraordinary recent history. The latter by itself is a series of captivating stories, from inside Cheney's energy task force to being detained by police at a mountain top removal protest alongside actress Daryl Hannah.  

Storms of my Grandchildren skillfully guided this reviewer effortlessly through all that drama, accompanied by a piercing analytical alacrity few science books even try to match. Readers from all across the political spectrum will quickly come to respect the fiercely independent, brutally honest Hansen as he heaps both encouragement and criticism equally on people and party. He offers stark options rendered in science and engineering regardless of a reader's ideology or motives. Democrats and Republicans, Asia and Europe, the left and the right, all are recognized for better and for worse.

As the title plainly states, Hansen is driven by empirical data and internal scruples to preserve the future of his grand-children, and yours. The data presented and conclusions drawn are well placed in the many readable narratives and build to a point that is, frankly, sobering. After walking us carefully but steadily through the fundamental concepts in his field, stopping to lucidly explain the earth's incredible climate sensitivity to tiny perturbations past and present, the author skillfully lays out the case that we are closing in on tipping points beyond which the climate will soon spin out of control. How bad? You'll have to read the book to get a feel for the range of possibilities, but under one set of hypothetical assumptions Hansen states point blank that he concludes the Venus Syndrome is a "dead certainty".

Storms of my Grandchildren will make an ideal Christmas gift for the science aficionado or climate change skeptic in your life, especially on the tight budgets plaguing so many Americans this year. Include Censoring Science by Mark Bowen and you'll be gifting an integrated, unbeatable one-two holiday punch that will provide hours of enjoyment, a lifetime of knowledge, and help forge a much brighter future for all the world's grandchildren.

Dr. James Hansen is a senior climatologist and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA bio), an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University (University homepage), a prolific author of scientific papers and popular articles, and a frequent guest on various science and science policy news programs. Time permitting, he is available below to respond to a few comments. In the spirit of the season, we'll be giving away one signed copy of his book to the participant of his choosing! Rules here.

The Hill:

An amendment restricting abortions does not appear to have enough support to be attached to the Senate healthcare bill.

Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) said he expected that all but a few Republicans would support the Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-Neb) amendment, which would restrict access to abortions for women who receive federal subsidies.

But the amendment is likely to be subject to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, and Kyl does not expect 20 votes on the other side to back the controversial change.

And what is the Senate's 60-vote threshold?

Well, of course, it's something you only see if one of two things happens. Either:

1. there's a filibuster, and you need 60 votes to invoke cloture before getting a vote on the amendment, or;
2. there's a unanimous consent agreement to bypass the mess of cloture filing, and the amendment is withdrawn if it doesn't garner 60 votes to pass.

And what if it doesn't reach that 60-vote threshold?

The defeat of his amendment would be politically significant because Nelson has pledged to vote with Republicans to filibuster the health bill if it did not include the Stupak language.

"I’ve said at the end of the day if it doesn’t have Stupak language on abortion in it I won’t vote to move it off the floor," Nelson told reporters.

That's sort of where the story ends for the traditional media, even for specialty publications like The Hill.

But both Nelson and his fellow Democrats should be asked about their exit strategies for this fight. Because the mere fact that there's a 60-vote threshold isn't the end of the story.

If there's a 60-vote threshold because Democrats filibuster the amendment, what happens? Nelson offers his amendment, Democrats filibuster, and there are fewer than 60 votes for cloture, in which case debate continues indefinitely. That means the whole health insurance reform bill is stuck and can't move forward. Getting out of that jam either requires Democrats to produce votes for cloture and then shoot it out over whether the amendment gets a simple majority to pass, or requires Mr. Tough Guy Hard Liner to fold his tent and go home.

In other words, Nelson either has to surrender preemptively by voluntarily subjecting his amendment to a 60-vote threshold, or surrender later by voluntarily withdrawing his amendment when cloture fails, or Ben Nelson sinks health insurance reform.

Well, either that, or 22 Democrats have to go on record voting for cloture, but then at least nine of them have to turn around and vote no on the amendment. Perfectly plausible, but it means a 51-vote threshold for the amendment after all.

There is one more option, technically, and that's voting to table the amendment. Dems might be able to garner the simple majority vote to do that, but that leaves Nelson standing, uncompromised, on record as opposing final passage of the bill, and with a procedural excuse to do it.

I wonder which it's gonna be. Will all-of-a-sudden Mr. Hard Guy agree to set himself up for failure going into his big fight? Will he withdraw his amendment and just hope that the anti-choice voices he was hoping to placate in Nebraska don't notice that he was just kidding? Or will his fellow Dems engineer procedure to shunt him off onto a side track and leave his obstructionist ass behind?

We'll find out next week.

Sunday opinions, analysis, and wonkery.

WaPo:

But recent debate -- some scientists say the Earth hasn't warmed as predicted over the past 10 years -- show that climate science is still science, with researchers drawing different lessons from the same data. The problem is that it plays out before an audience that won't wait for certainty.

Politicians say, " 'We need to reduce the uncertainty,' and I think that's contributed to a certain mind-set where [climate scientists] try to reduce the uncertainty" when they talk about their research, said Judith Curry, chair of the school of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech. "I'm a little bit worried about that political pressure," she said.

But the climate establishment -- including the U.S. government's top scientists on the subject -- say that nothing in the e-mails disproves their bedrock ideas. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are still gathering in the atmosphere and trapping more of the sun's heat, and the consequences of that will still be dire in the long run, they say.

John Fund: Democratic Congressman are not obsessed with health care reform because they think it's a good idea. Democratic Congressman are obsessed with health care reform because you think it's a good idea.

Frank Rich:

Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from.

Nicholas Kristof:

The battle over health care focuses on access to insurance, or tempests like the one that erupted over new mammogram guidelines.

But what about broader public health challenges? What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air -- or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?

Thomas Friedman:

President Obama certainly showed leadership mettle in going against his own party’s base and ordering a troop surge into Afghanistan. He is going to have to be even more tough-minded, though, to make sure his policy is properly executed.

And since every President wakes up wanting and needing my advice on how to execute policy, let me give it to him.

David Broder:

The rejection of Obama's argument by the leading candidate in an overwhelmingly Democratic state shows how much the president has failed to convince his fellow partisans that he is right about the biggest national security policy decision of his tenure.

It is symptomatic of a bigger problem; Coakley and her rivals are emblematic of widespread Democratic dissent on Afghanistan.

Reminder to Broder (CNN 12/2-3/09 via Polling Report):
Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?"

Favor 46
Oppose  51
Unsure 2

Regardless of how you feel about the war in general, do you favor or oppose President Obama's plan to send about 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to stabilize the situation there?

Favor 62
Oppose  36

There are three very public groups of people that cannot deal with uncertainty: politicians (who must show they are in charge - see the Senate), pundits who exploit uncertainty (see John Fund), and pundits who must be certain because they give advice for a living (see Friedman) or see their job as setting narrative (see Broder.) They are responsible more than anyone for distorting discussion and debate, and are always looking for the "Democrats are not republicans in disarray" narrative. In the meantime, passions on Afghanistan are nowhere near what they were on Iraq or are on health reform and domestic issues.

UPDATE: Since the MoDo column is being discussed here's the link to the "you didn't invite me" bitterness.

President Obama made a list and checked it twice, and in doing so found out who's naughty and nice.

Then he went to enemy camp town.

In an unprecedented display of Christmas spirit, Obama promised to deliver 30,000 presents to the citizens of Afghanistan.

Some of the usual critics were pleased; others, not so much.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are mem from somerville, Blank Frank, vcmvo2, mtperson, and jlms qkw with vcmvo2 as editor.

The diaries up for rescue tonight are:

• In a moving diary about the homeless, Middlelines tells the story of a night he spent with a cop helping people to get out of the freezing cold and into a mission for the night in I'm Freezing my Ass Off: Mission to the Mission. (vcmvo2)
• dancewater shares the grim news that Secret prisons continue. (jlms qkw)
• Get the inside scoop on an effective and hard-working neighborhood group from Christy1947 who describes A Community's Victory- Columbia University expansion plan blocked for now at least. (mem from somerville)
• Self deception has real and global consequences, as Stuart Heady argues cogently and warningly, in Health Care, Global WARming, etc: what is being revealed. (mtperson)
• In Local Government is Ideological Vikingkingq notes that although most people accept that the National government is political, they almost invariably believe that local government is non-partisan. Big mistake! (vcmvo2)
• It's out of this world! NellaSelim wants us to help Free Spirit! (jlms qkw)
• Wattree yearns for real reporting in Cheney Certainly Didn't 'Dither' During Vietnam - He Hauled Ass. (mem from somerville)
• annetteboardman reflects on meaningful lessons learned in school, sometimes years after leaving the classroom in Teachers' Lounge: I'm Sorry. (mtperson)
• With a front-row seat in a community seeking justice, johnsonresult muses on vengeance in Death Penalty notably absent in Perugia... (mem from somerville)
• davidseth writes an interesting diary on the recent election in Honduras and posits a solution to the diplomatic difficulties involved: Honduras: Where's The Unity Government And The Truth Commission? (vcmvo2)
• Pretty pictures! Clubs and members! Not a party, rather Caj leads us through Probability for Kossacks: the Groucho Marx paradox. (jlms qkw)

jotter has the day's High Impact Diaries: December 4, 2009.

virgomusic brings tonight's Top Comments - First Snow Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries from the last twenty-four hours in this Open Thread.