Motley Moose – Archive

That’s part of the title of a piece from The Times regarding this week’s visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

From this…

To this…

In the nearly 15 months since the 111th Congress was sworn in, the GOP has become known as the Party of No – no ideas, no votes, no, no, no. Their electoral plan seems to be to ride “NO!” to a return to prominence. I have serious doubts that this will prove to be a successful strategy.

The funniest thing about all of this, in an ironic way, is that they should be trumpeting the ascendancy of their ideas. They could rightfully claim to be the party of ideas, yet they have decided to go the other way.

Let’s take a quick look at what has happened in this Congress.  

In another indication of the growing chasms among the US political Right Pat Buchanan publishes two articles on Human Events that are either supportive of the actions of President Obama, unsupportive of the actions of the Republican leadership, or both.

Lest we forget, everything else aside, the man recognizes inevitability when he sees it.

Crossposted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.

The majority of farmers in sub-Saharan Africa- in some areas up to 80 percent- are women. The average female farmer in the region is responsible not only for growing food but also for collecting water and firewood-putting in a 16-hour workday.

Deforestation and drought brought on by climate change have further increased women’s time spent doing activities like gathering firewood and collecting water for bathing, cooking, and cleaning. Many women in Africa lack access to resources and technologies that might make these tasks easier, such as improved hoes, planters, and grinding mills; rainwater harvesting systems; and lightweight transport devices.

In Kenya, the organization Practical Action has introduced a fireless cooker to reduce household dependence on wood charcoal and other forms of fuel. Made easily by hand and at home, fireless cookers use insulation to store heat from traditional stoves that can then be used to cook foods over a longer period of time. Meals that are placed in a fireless cooker in the morning are baked with the stored heat and ready to eat later that day, reducing the need to continuously fuel traditional cook fires.

Meanwhile, biogas units that are fueled by livestock manure can save, on average, 10 hours of labor per week that would otherwise be spent collecting wood or other combustibles. The Rwandan government, recognizing the value of this time savings, hopes to have 15,000 households nationwide using biogas by 2012, and is subsidizing installation costs. (See also “Building a Methane Fueled Fire” and “Got Biogas?“)

The “Mosi-o-Tunya” (Pump that Thunders) pressure pump, produced by International Development Enterprises (IDE), is a lightweight pump that sits on top of a well and is operated by foot. The pump’s weight makes it easy to operate as well as to transport by foot or bike. Veronica Sianchenga, a farmer living in Kabuyu Village, Zambia, explained how, in addition to improving her family’s diet and income, the pump gave her more independence: “Now we are not relying only on our husbands, because we are now able to do our own projects and to assist our husbands, to make our families look better, eat better, clothe better-even to have a house.” (See also “Access to Water Improves Quality of Life for Women and Children.”)

In Ethiopia, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) helped women living in the rural lowlands near Ajo improve their incomes and livelihoods by creating a milk marketing group. Before the USAID-funded project was implemented, women were carrying 1-2 liters of milk for seven or eight hours to sell at the nearest market in Dire Dawa. The milk would sell for only some 20 cents a liter, and after spending the night in town, the women returned home only to make the same trip again days later, forcing them to neglect their homes and gardens. Now, the women take turns selling each other’s milk at the market, making the long trip only once every 10 days and keeping all of the profits from the day, putting some of the money into savings and using the rest to pay for food, school, and household supplies.

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President Obama announced today that the US and Russia have reached agreement on reducing the world’s two largest nuclear arms stockpiles.  This extends the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) which had expired in December of 2009 and provides an on-going framework for the two countries to manage their arsenals.  The treaty will be signed April 8 in Prague.

The President will be consulting senators from both parties on the START treaty, we’ll see if John McCain can bring himself to side with the US on this even if he has to agree with his President at the same time.

NY Congressman Anthony Weiner announced moments ago that a package containing white powder and a threatening letter was received today at his Queens, NY office.  

We have all been watching the cork leave the shaken bottle of political madness over the past few months and particularly the last few days.  We can only hope that all of this finds a way to defuse through less dramatic means than it did fifteen years ago.

[UPDATE 2] From WKRN.com:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage Thursday afternoon, all because of a political bumper sticker on his car.

Mark Duren told News 2 the incident happened around 4:30p.m., while he was driving on Blair Boulevard, not far from Belmont University.

He said Harry Weisiger gave him the bird and rammed into his vehicle, after noticing an Obama-Biden sticker on his car bumper.

Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him.

“He pointed at the back of my car,” Duren said, “the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute.”

But it didn’t end there.

Duren told News 2 that Weisiger honked his horn at him for awhile, as Duren stopped at a stop sign.

Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, “I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me.”

Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car.

He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV.

Duren said, “He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk.”

Police say Harry Weisiger is charged with felony reckless endangerment in the incident.

Attacking gerrymandering these days is as popular as saying Wall Street needs reform. It’s a truism; everybody agrees with that “gerrymandering is bad,” just as everybody agrees that breathing is good.

Gerrymanders do get pretty ridiculous. Consider Maryland’s 3rd congressional district:



Maryland’s legislature designed this gerrymander to favor Democrats. And it worked: Maryland is represented by seven Democrats and one Republican.

You can probably go search a few terrible gerrymanders of your own; they’re not exactly difficult to find. For the purposes of this post, however, I will be concentrating on one particular gerrymander: Arizona’s 2nd congressional district.

Here is how it looks:

To understand why this is a good gerrymander, see below the fold.

Crossposted from BorderJumpers.org, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack. This piece was originally featured on Cheapflights.

We understand why Barack and Michelle Obama made Ghana their first stop on the African continent.

When you touch down in Accra (or anywhere in Ghana), you are greeted with the word “akwaaba” or “welcome” and the place is buzzing with activity: construction projects, vendors hawking antennas and groundnuts to commuters, roads being built and new investment.

A startling development in the recent Senate reconciliation process:

Senate Republicans succeeded early Thursday morning in finding two flaws in the House-passed health care reconciliation package. Neither is of any substance, but the Senate parliamentarian informed Democratic leaders that both are in violation of the Byrd Rule.

J Taylor Rushing – Healthcare bill headed back to the House after marathon Senate push The Hill Post 25 Mar 10

So back to the House it must go, but here’s the thing:

Democratic leadership no longer has to worry that additional amendments would send it back to the House, since it must return to the lower chamber regardless. The Senate is now free to put to the test that much-debated question of whether 50 votes exist for a public option. Democrats could also elect to expand Medicare or Medicaid, now that they only need 50 votes in the Senate and the approval of the House.

Ryan Grim – Byrd Rule To Send Health Care Back To House, Rules Parliamentarian Huffington Post 25 Mar 10

The expectation is that if the Senate dared the will is there in the House:

The Huffington Post interviewed House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Wednesday evening and asked if he thought he could have gotten the public option back through a second time, when the House voted on Sunday, even without those members who had left. “Yes, sir,” he said emphatically.

Ryan Grim – Byrd Rule To Send Health Care Back To House, Rules Parliamentarian Huffington Post 25 Mar 10

Hmmm…

New England Journal of Medicine, Sep. 2009

The initial reaction of the Republican Congressional delegation to the historic passage of the health care reform bill seemed predictable and unequivocal.  They are going to run on repealing it in the 2010 midterm elections.

Even before the bill was passed Republicans were publicly insisting that repeal was their strategy:

While the GOP still awaits the outcome of competitive primaries in many states to pick its candidates, all of the major Senate hopefuls in Kentucky, Nevada, Kansas and Missouri have pledged “sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care-takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government.”

[…]

“Democrats think by passing the bill they’ll be able to get it behind them and change the subject to something else, like jobs,” said Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “But this will do the opposite. This will make sure health care is the number one issue that the election is won or lost on in November.”

Perry Bacon Jr – Health-care bill not yet a law, but Republicans already organizing to repeal it Washington Post 17 Mar 10

Only one problem.  It is not going to happen.  Unless some major game-changer appears from over the horizon, they’re pretty much screwed.