Midday open thread

• In this post yesterday I attempted to list the Daily Kos staff list, and totally botched it. I said there were 8 full-time people working on the site, there are actually nine. Who did I miss? Jed, who is close to launching a new kick ass Daily Kos product. Yet another reason I suck.
• In a "stimulus" environment away with bailouts for unworthy industries, add another possible one to the list:

  A source of mine called to say that Obama's reached out to some newspaper publishers about giving papers a tax break in the stimulus package. Broadcasters are ticked that they're being left out.

  Hopefully, that's wishful thinking and not actual possible policy. And should bloggers be "ticked at being left out"? If certain media outlets get tax breaks, so should the rest of them (including us bloggers). But really, it's all freakin' ridiculous. No free money for newspapers, broadcasters, or bloggers! We've had enough taxpayer money stolen already.

• My Hill column this week:

  Last year, facing life in the minority and poor electoral prospects, scores of congressional Republicans jumped ship to K Street and other welcoming redoubts. Twenty-seven House Republicans called it quits prior to the 2008 elections, compared to just six Democrats — two of whom got promotions to the Senate.

  During the same cycle, five Senate Republicans retired. Not a single Democrat joined them.

  When the going gets tough ... Republicans quit.

  So, facing a 79-seat deficit in the House, and an 18-seat deficit in the Senate, the GOP retirement boomlet is fated to continue.

  Incidentally, that column is now a year old.

• NRO's Geraghty isn't usually this stupid.

  Come On, Guys, We Didn't Hurt Your Caucus by Holding Votes During Happy Hour
  Harry Reid's innovative new way to overcome Republican opposition: vote on Sunday. Only three Democrats missed the vote (including Kennedy, presumably for health reasons, and Biden, who's out of the country) but 17 Republicans did.

  I guess forcing your agenda through the Senate is easier when your caucus doesn't need to either go to church or watch football.

  1.) The vote took place at 2 p.m. Churches usually have mass services in the morning. (edit: yeah, I was raised Catholic...)

  2.) If football is more important to Republicans than the nation's business, then we have yet another reason why Republicans are out of power. Personally, I use my DVR to record games when I can't get to them in real time. And as a bonus, you get to fast-forward the two hours of commercials stuck in a typical NFL broadcast.

• Steven Chu, energy secretary nominee, loves nuclear power.
• Newspaper endorsements are obsolete.

  I thought [North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate] Pat McCrory wasted a lot of money in the closing stretch spending money on tv ads touting his newspaper endorsements instead of talking about something that might have been more compelling to voters. I was amazed at how hyper some of his internet supporters got about the endorsements, seeming to think they were the final nail in Perdue's coffin. They're of little interest to folks outside the 95th percentile of following politics, and those folks already have their minds made up by the time endorsements come out.

  The [North Carolina] papers were almost unanimous in endorsing both McCrory and Richard Moore but Perdue's the one taking office Saturday. Nothing wrong with papers endorsing and I know all candidates would rather have them than not, but they don't count for much.

• Bingaman Lands Bill passes cloture vote with plenty of GOP support. Not much obstructionism happening at this point. Is this what a "honeymoon period" looks like? From the subscription-only Roll Call:

  Republican leaders are consciously muting their rhetoric against President-elect Barack Obama for now for fear of a public backlash as he enters the White House with sky-high approval ratings.

  Even House Republicans, who have become significantly more conservative this year in makeup and in their leadership ranks, have largely held their fire at the behest of Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has personally talked warmly about Obama and privately urged other Members to temper their rhetoric.

  In the Senate, Republicans are temporarily opting against all-out partisan warfare as they wait to see how Democratic leaders will run the chamber in the weeks and months ahead.

  In the House, Boehner and other leaders have talked behind the scenes, including at last weekend’s leadership retreat, about making a distinction between Obama and Congressional Democrats — who are much less popular than Obama and are already tightening the rights of the minority in contrast to Obama’s message of bipartisanship.

• Wingnuts are hilarious.