Is David Maraniss correct?

In any case, [Obama] comes to this term in a new place as a man and as a politician, not only forged by the experience of his mistakes but also more integrated in character. His will to survive is less likely to contradict his will to do good. That’s likely to be evident in how he handles his larger agenda. This doesn’t mean that he will suddenly become the schmoozer, glad-handing or cajoling, that so many pundits urge him to be; or that he will abandon his tendency to compromise with his opponents, especially on budget cuts, even to the point occasionally of exasperating some supporters; or that he will immediately pursue every progressive issue (immigration reform, yes; climate change, probably not yet). It does not mean that those who demonize him as somehow apart and alien will suddenly see that his story, and his instincts, are quintessentially American. It does not ensure success, let alone greatness.

But it does mean that he will act as president with more assuredness, delineate with more clarity, and be more willing to show people who he really is or what he has become in his slow evolution. As the nation’s first African American president, he has consistently paid homage to the civil rights heroes who made his ascent possible, especially Martin Luther King Jr., whose holiday will be observed on the same day as Obama takes his public oath. But he has always been very judicious in expressing his blackness as president, rarely going beyond that evening last January when he channeled Al Green crooning, “I — I’m so in love with you . . . ” It is a complicated endeavor that required time and comfort, but he now seems ready, friends and associates say, to show more of that side of his heritage and personality.

As Obama focused on his second inaugural, experts outside the White House who had been solicited for advice reported that he was more buoyant than they had seen before.

It's not surprising that Obama is modeling himself in part on FDR circa 1937 and in part on DDE circa 1953. After all, he could be only the second president since them (and the first Democrat) to serve two full terms without getting impeached.

One of the things Republicans would like to cut is spending on medical research. Well, here's one example why that is a bad idea, and how a relatively small investment by the government has led to medical breakthroughs in fighting influenza.

As early as next year, more modern and more effective vaccines will hit the market, thanks to investments by the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies. And even bigger scientific advances are expected in the next decade, including a "universal" flu vaccine given every five to 10 years that would fight many strains of a virus, making annual shots all but obsolete. [...]

In 2006, HHS provided more than $1 billion in contracts to six manufacturers to develop cell-based flu vaccine technology in the United States. Although its use in flu vaccines is new, cell-based vaccine technology has been around for years, offering a faster, more reliable alternative to egg culture.

In 2009, spurred by difficulties in growing vaccine for the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, HHS provided Novartis with nearly $500 million to build the first U.S. facility capable of producing cell-based vaccine for seasonal and pandemic flu in the United States. Novartis picked up the rest of the estimated $1 billion price tag. [...]

In 2009, HHS' five-year, $147 million investment helped bail out then-struggling Protein Sciences, and the tiny biotech has now produced the first gene-based vaccine to win FDA approval. [...]

In 2011, HHS awarded VaxInnate a five-year, $196 million grant to make a vaccine that combines a bacterial protein called flagellin, a potent stimulator of the immune system, with a very small portion of flu virus called hemagluttinin, the outside part of the flu protein that gives flu viruses the "H" in their names.

Pharmaceutical companies do not like the business of vaccines because it isn't terribly profitable. That is why the US Government's investment in research and facilities to make better, more effective vaccines was critical. If the Federal government hadn't stepped in nothing would have been done, and millions of Americans would be at far greater risk of dying from influenza.

Let me note that this was, at least on its face, a bi-partisan effort. One billion dollars was provided during a Republican administration in 2006, $650,000,000 in funding in 2009 under a Democratic administration, and just under $200 million in 2011. This means that infants, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems will stand a better chance of surviving each flu season, and also that the risk of a pandemic killer flu virus breaking out to kill millions will be lowered significantly.

Those investments led to medical breakthroughs in vaccine technologies, including the first gene based vaccine, and vaccines produced from faster, more reliable growth cultures that use dog kidney cells instead of eggs. Egg culture could take up to six months and the risk of contamination was always great, as we discovered in 2003, when contamination at a British plant led to the loss of half of the US flu vaccine supply for 2004. Well, lesson learned. The government had a vital role to fill, it took action and now we are reaping the benefits.

Those one time investments of approximately two Billion dollars in flu vaccine research and for a US based vaccine production facility do not amount to all that much when you compare it the what the roughly $600 Billion we spend yearly on our military. Imagine if our government invested $2.0 billion every year in medical research and development to combat viral infections? Or cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disorders? When you consider all the wasteful spending on behalf of our military industrial complex, and the little we often have to show for it in terms of the "common good," I think dedicating a small portion of our funding to government/private sector partnerships to insure the safety, well being and health of all Americans is more than justified. I'd even go so far as to call it a national security issue, one far more likely to save lives than most of the trillions of dollars spent on our armed forces over the last few decades.

The next time Republicans speak about cutting "stupid" or otherwise "nonessential" federal spending, show them this story, and ask if they consider government investments to improve the health of all Americans a stupid thing to do.

Because one thing we do know: the pharmaceutical companies were not going to invest any money in flu research and production plants without a significant commitment of federal funds to limit those companies' risk and maximize their profits when it came to the "flu vaccine business." It took the Federal Government to step up to the plate and see that this got done when the "free market" was not willing to do so.

It sounds like the Republican leadership treated their retreat like a giant therapeutic session for the Republican caucus. It's surprising that it seems to have gone so well considering that they were basically telling their rank and file that they had been acting so crazily that people would rather have the scabies than say anything nice about them.

People do not like hostage-takers, and they don't like people who talk about rape all the time. They don't like representatives that spend all their time doing pointless things like passing 33 bills to repeal ObamaCare that the Senate didn't even deign to smell.

Can we dare to hope for a little more sanity this year?

Do you care who is in the Super Bowl? I'd prefer to see the Patriots and the Niners, although Baltimore is almost local here, and it might be cool to see Ray Lewis go out on top. The Atlanta Falcons have a nice team, but I just can't get into teams that play indoors. I hope they lose today. The truth is, once the Giants are out of it, I don't really care. I used to root for the Steelers as my backup, but, you know, rapist quarterback put an end to that.

How are you spending your weekend?

David Brooks' column today was actually epic. Jon Chait's takedown was so masterful that it dissuaded me from trying to add anything even more devastating. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat. Still, I have to share this bit from Brooks because it's hard to believe he wrote it:

I may be earnest, but I’m not an idiot.

That is exactly backwards. Or, we must hope it is backwards, because if David Brooks is earnest then he needs a visit from Dr. Kevorkian.

I think I may revisit Brooks' column tomorrow (or relatively soon, anyway) not to mock it but to embrace a couple of points he tried to make but got wrong. Specifically, I agree with this advice for Congress, but not in the sense that Brooks intends:

As you know, I am an earnest, good-government type, so the strategy I’d prefer might be called Learning to Crawl. It would be based on the notion that you have to learn to crawl before you can run.

I believe he is right about this, and John Boehner is currently being given a crash-course in crawling. This isn't because the administration wants to be mean, or even because crawling can come in handy after a hard night's drinking. It's because we can't govern the country unless Boehner basically becomes the leader of the Democrats and a couple dozen moderate Republicans in the House. And that means he needs to go through a few iterations of the practice just to get him used to the idea.

But, more later. You know I've been saying this forever…

Girls or Shameless?

If this the best they can do, the Republicans ought to pick up their ball and go home. In agreeing to extend the debt ceiling for three months without any corresponding spending cuts, the GOP is finally acknowledging that the president was never going to negotiate with them and they would be blamed for a default. But, now we will be back here in three months with the Republicans again taking crap for creating uncertainty and undermining confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States. The one gimmick they've included here is a requirement that the Senate pass a budget or no one in Congress will receive any pay. The idea is to try to shift the debate from default to Senate dysfunction, and to get people thinking about the budget and deficit spending again. The problem with their strategy is three-fold. First, the Senate could refuse to agree to this stipulation. Second, the Budget Control Act of 2011 already sets spending limits for next year, so the Senate doesn't really need to pass a detailed non-binding budget. Third, almost no one in the country cares whether Congress gets paid or not. In fact, most people would like to see them go without a paycheck and see how it feels.

In the end, the Republicans will continue to anger everyone and then fold. Even though they are following Krauthammer's advice here, I think they need to consider the rest of his advice:

The party establishment is coming around to the view that if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.

There is history here. The Gingrich Revolution ran aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.

Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.

Tip O'Neill had to put up with this crap when Reagan was president. He never closed down the government or caused a downgrade in our debt ceiling, and people didn't say they'd rather have a colonoscopy than a drink with Tip O'Neill.

Steve Benen persuasively argues that the Republicans now believe that they cannot get anything worth having out of threatening the full faith and credit of the United States again, and they will give us a clean bill on the debt ceiling. The White House always believed this to be the case and never wavered publicly or privately, despite sometimes strong progressive skepticism. I believed them, which is why I thought the platinum coin argument was undermining their position rather than strengthening it. Once the coin was off the table, the GOP folded its tent in short order.

The problem is not solved, however. The Republicans plan on offering a series of short-term debt-ceiling hikes. Benen is probably correct in saying this:

There's apparently growing GOP support for a clean, short-term extension of the debt ceiling -- which, as we discussed yesterday, doesn't seem to make any sense at all -- which would presumably set the stage for additional talks. This will play out soon enough, but at a certain level its impact is limited. Once everyone in Washington -- Democrats and Republicans, the White House and Congress -- realizes that GOP leaders aren't prepared to allow a default on our obligations, the game is effectively over.

My hope is that the credit-rating agencies see things the same way that Benen does, because there is a risk of a downgrade if the debt ceiling threat isn't resolved and we continue to bump against it over and over. Remember, our credit rating is based on the confidence people have that we won't default. Leaving that in doubt in any way is risky and reckless.

In any case, the fight will move over to the debate over how to fix the sequestration. The risk there is a government shutdown. I am fairly certain that the Democrats would welcome nothing more, as any hope of winning back the House depends on a major shift in public opinion against the Republican Party, and nothing could do that more effectively than intransigence so extreme that it shuts down the government.

One of the difficulties for Speaker Boehner is that he would very much like to pass a fix for the sequester that he can use to go to conference with the Senate. If the Senate doesn't pass its own fix, Boehner can point the blame on them. If the Senate does pass a fix and they can't agree to a compromise in conference, then Boehner can argue that the House passed a fix and spread the blame for the shutdown.

That seems simple, but passing a fix means actually laying out what cuts he wants. And the cuts the Republicans are calling for are deeply, deeply unpopular. For this reason, Boehner fiercely resisted offering any detailed plan for cuts throughout all his negotiations with the president on the fiscal cliff. But he'll have to do it now, or he'll really look incompetent and he won't have any way to shift blame when the government closes its doors. Yet, laying out the cuts for all to see could be the most unpopular thing of all.

If I were him, I'd retire.

John Fund is trying to revive the outrage that surrounded the 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists. Remember, the right won that battle, probably to the detriment of the public's safety. This time, the outrage is over a report produced at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. In the introduction of the report, they attempt to inoculate themselves against any Republican freakout:

It is important to note that this study concentrates on those individuals and groups who have actually perpetuated violence and is not a comprehensive analysis of the political causes with which some far-right extremists identify. While the ability to hold and appropriately articulate diverse political views is an American strength, extremists committing acts of violence in the name of those causes undermine the freedoms that they purport to espouse.

In other words, it's a study of violent acts carried out by far right-wingers, and an attempt to understand the motivations behind the attacks. But it will be used to accuse the government of liberal bias and hostility to conservative political thought.

It should be good for a few weeks of Fox News programming. And it will feed into the paranoia that Obama's federal government is coming for everyone's guns. The last time we had federal gun laws debated in Washington, the result was a dramatic rise in far-right activity. The DHS and FBI need to be vigilant, but John Fund worries that they will take their eyeballs off of Muslim extremists if they keep a watch out for the next Sikh shooter or Timothy McVeigh. Fund needn't worry. After the 2009 freakout, the author left is position at the DHS, and he now has this to say:

[Daryl] Johnson's former unit has yet to recover from the onslaught. Before the conservative backlash, he managed a team of seven. Johnson says the agency "retaliated" against him by decimating his budget and staff. He and his colleagues were humiliated when agency chiefs conceded under oath that their report showed a lack of "concern for privacy, civil rights and civil liberties" of Americans. "They basically made life miserable for me," says Johnson, who resigned in 2010.

"There are currently between one and two officers responsible for analyzing the threat of non-Islamic domestic extremism," Johnson tells Media Matters. "Groups like the SPLC and the ADL have more people studying this threat than the entire federal government."

I'm pretty sure there are people at the FBI and probably in Naval Intelligence who are looking at far-right domestic threats, but if the DHS only has one or two people working the issue, I am also pretty sure John Fund's concern is misplaced and that he is totally full of shit.

See if you can spot the problem with where the Republicans chose to hold a conference in which improving their outreach to African American voters and other minorities is one of the prominent topics they will discuss:

After its general election battering, the Republican party has retreated to lick its wounds and ponder what went wrong – on the leafy grounds of a luxury golf resort in Virginia.

And what better place for today’s GOP to hold strategy sessions titled “Successful communication with minorities and women” than on the grounds of a former plantation in the south?

“When the first English foot was placed in Virginia, it was here on these grounds that once served as a central part of the area’s plantation life in the 1600s through 1800s,” boasts the website of the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, which draws a discrete veil over whatever events in the 1800s may have caused that to end.

Even better. Guess where the forums on minorities and women are to be held. If you guessed the "Burwell Plantation Room" you were right. More evidence that the GOP is dedicated to putting "The Onion" out of business.

It's early, yet, but it looks like the Algerian government screwed the pooch and went and got a bunch of Western oil/gas workers killed who were being held hostage by jihadists. And they didn't even call Obama or Cameron to warn them they were going to launch a raid. Big mistake. If Obama has proven anything, he's proven that you don't take Americans hostage and get away with it while he's in charge. But he was cut out of the loop, so he had no opportunity to organize a response. Europe is going to be even more pissed because this was a mainly English/Norwegian operation and most of the dead are going to be from those countries. I'm betting that the weapons used by the hostage-takers were seized when Gaddafi fell. I might have mentioned that that operation could have collateral effects that we wouldn't like.

Actual headline today from the Associated Press:

Can Obama keep warmer inauguration weather pledge?

This is journalism? (Rhetorical question - we stopped having effective news coverage decades ago). The Onion couldn't come up with anything that beats the AP's own self-parody. By the way, don't bother reading the article. It will only annoy the shit out of you that a supposedly major news gathering organization wasted time on something so frivolous.

Peanut butter and jelly or tuna fish?

Also, what kind of jelly, and oil or water?

It's interesting to read former Prime Minister John Howard's retelling of how he outlawed assault weapons in Australia. They also have a federal system with strong states' rights. So, all he could initially do is ban the importation of assault weapons. He had to convince all the states to enact a uniform ban. He was ultimately successful only because the urban population (60%) outnumbers the rural population in his country, and he could plausibly threaten to amend the Constitution if he didn't get his way. He also didn't have to contend with the 2nd Amendment or any organization as powerful as the NRA.

On the other hand, he led a coalition heavily-dependent on rural voters, and his decision upended political loyalties and gave rise to new parties.

I'm not sure what we can learn from his experience, but if the following is correct, we ought to investigate:

In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Journal of Law and Economics found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.

Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.

I could go for 17 years with no massacres.