Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Your one stop pundit shop.

Nicholas Kristof warns Barack Obama that he:

...needs a new approach to Russia if we want to avoid a new cold war, and we also need to get over our crush on Misha.

Chris Suellentropp makes the case that this has been the worst year ever for mavericks.

David Ignatius is concerned that Barack Obama is lonely.

Gary Andres says that an apathetic GOP cost John McCain the election.

Donald Lambro solemnly gleefully predicts that Barack Obama won't be able to keep his campaign promises of tax cuts and health care.

Karl Rove is worried about comity, legalities, and playing politics with the Justice Department.

Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant argue that:

While daylight time reduces demand for household lighting, it increases demand for heating in the early spring and late fall (in the mornings) and, even more important, or cooling on summer evenings. Benjamin Franklin was right about candles, in other words, but he did not consider air-conditioners. [...]

Eliminating daylight time would thus accord with President-elect Barack Obama’s stated goals of conserving resources, saving money, promoting energy security and reducing climate change. At the very least, we should abandon the notion that we are saving energy while enjoying the extra hour of sunlight on hot summer evenings.

Michael Kinsley says that smoking is a digusting habit that can kill, but Barack Obama should just quit pretending and light one up if it's what helps him keep his cool.

Joan Vennochi thinks that Mitt Romney wants to run again in 2012, and points out that:

If the auto industry could reinvent itself as quickly as Mitt Romney, it wouldn't need a bailout.

Let Detroit go bankrupt, Romney opined in yesterday's New York Times...Just last January, Romney won Michigan's Republican primary by telling autoworkers what they wanted to hear...

Back then, he never mentioned bankruptcy as the way to do it.

Never underestimate Romney's willingness to shamelessly reverse direction, to get where he wants to go.