Saps

Marc Ambinder: "BTW: senior administration officials tell my colleague Ron Brownstein they have no trouble with Nelson and Bayh voting no given their support for earlier measures and given their electoral situation." Nelson, sure. But what the hell is Evan Bayh doing here? He's extremely famous in Indiana. Barack Obama just won his state, a studding 22-point swing towards the Democrats. Unless Mitch Daniels challenges him there are no viable opponents, and even then he'd beat Daniels in a walk. His campaign war chest is huge, and he doesn't share it with anybody. Can't he find some other way to cultivate a moderate image besides voting against the President's budget?

Frank Blethen Strikes Again

You can, in some sense, blame the passage of the estate tax amendment on Frank Blethen. Blethen is the majority owner of the Seattle Times and one of the prime members of a group that has been spending millions to save billions, or at least try to save billions. And he uses his paper as a bully pulpit for this issue; almost any Washington State Democrat whose district is at all competitive tends to support estate tax repeal (or in this case, steep cuts in the tax), if only to avoid going twelve rounds with the Times editorial board and risking negative coverage. What's more, the state party remains traumatized by 1994, when Washington was Ground Zero for the Gingrich revolution. Of course, in addition to the national party falling apart, the state's governor appeared at the University and made noises about legalizing marijuana, vetoed bill banning the sale of violent video games to minors, and proposed his own statewide version of Clintoncare. Needless to say, the current governor isn't going to make those mistakes. Thus while from the outside, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray appear extremely safe, in their own minds they're just one false step away from crushing defeat. Hence their ridiculous votes on the Lincoln-Kyl amendment. Had both Washington Senators voted "nay", the amendment would have failed.

Put this one on the list of "things to be killed in conference".

A Theory Of Gingrich

Newt Gingrich:

"If the Republicans can't break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012."

Or whatever. I think the correct general theory of Things Newt Gingrich Says is that they're produced not by adherence to some norm of truth wherein the speaker tries to accurately describe reality, but by adherence to a norm of maintaining Newt Gingrich's position as the voice of the Contract With America. As long as he talks that way, he'll be the patron saint of the death cult faction of the Republican Party. Insofar as he has any sort of future that's relevant to politics, it's something that comes out of the love that the Mike Pence faction bears for him, and that's why he talks the way he does.

Which must complicate his life. Does he get in a cab and ask the driver to take him as far away from the United Nations as possible? Does he order pizza with extra cheese, tort reform, and Medicare cuts? Does he ask his doctor for pills that will help him cut taxes in the bedroom, like he did back in his younger days? It must be a weird way to live.

Deep Thoughts With Barack Obama

"In life there are no guarantees, and [in] economics, there are no guarantees. The people who thought they could provide guarantees, many of them worked at AIG, and it didn't work out so well." —Barack Obama, April 2, 2009

Life Imitates Blog

Keith Olbermann: "Congressman Ryan's budget offers lower deficits, lower spending, lower taxes, and at least two million more jobs. Apparently he forgot to include the pony for everybody."

True.