The breathtaking self-absorption of the Bushies leaves even Paul Krugman groping for words:

There has to be some word for the kind of person who considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people. But I can’t think of it.

What brings this to mind is this from Alberto Gonzales:

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Maybe it's a combination of the economic meltdown and a post-Christmas shopping hangover, but more and more people seem to be questioning our national priorities. First, Bob Herbert in the NYTimes:

Now that the reality of a stunning economic downturn has so roughly intervened, we at least have the option of being smarter going forward. There is broad agreement that we have no choice but to go much more deeply into debt to jump-start the economy. But we have tremendous choices as to how we use that debt.

We should use it to invest in the U.S. — in a world-class infrastructure (in its broadest sense) to serve as the platform for a world-class, 21st-century economy, and in a system of education that actually prepares American youngsters to deal successfully with the real world they will be encountering. [...]

And, finally, we need to start living within our means and get past the nauseating idea that the essence of our culture and the be-all and end-all of the American economy is the limitless consumption of trashy consumer goods.

Next, Tim Harford in Slate says maybe we should trade in some of our earning power for more leisure time:

Were an alien to pick up our news channels, it would conclude that human civilization depended on the production and purchase of cheap plastic rubbish. First came the concern that we might talk ourselves into not spending enough, then the fear that the banks wouldn't lend us the money to spend even if we wanted to. In November, our governments borrowed money and gave it to us in the hope that we'd catch on. Are we really so dependent on consumption?

In the short run, yes. [...]

In the long run, the picture is completely different. We earn — this is a very rough average — twice what our parents did when they were our age. When today's teenagers are in their 40s, there is no reason why they shouldn't decide to enjoy their increased prosperity by working less instead of earning more. Rather than being twice as rich as their parents, they could be no richer but start their weekends on Wednesday afternoon.

Conflict between scientific fact and conservative policy has been a hallmark of the Bush administration. A prime candidate for the Golden Shovel award is Julia MacDonald at the Department of the Interior. Inspector General Devaney of Interior makes clear just how much damage one determined political hack can do when given free rein:

Overall...MacDonald's zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity of the ESA[Endangered Species Act] program and to the moral and reputation of the FW [Fish & Wildlife Service], as well as potential harm to individual species. Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure...MacDonald's conduct was backed by the seemingly blind support of former Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Judge Craig Manson. Judge Manson so thoroughly supported MacDonald that even when a known error in a Federal Register notice, which was caused by MacDonald's calculations, was brought to Manson's attention, he directed that the notice be published regardless of error.

Michael Lind in Salon:

It is just as well that Barack Obama is emulating Abraham Lincoln by traveling to his inauguration in Washington by train. As the regional politics of the automobile bailout controversy demonstrate, the Civil War continues. If the major U.S. automobile companies go under, it will be partly because timely federal aid for them was blocked by members of Congress like Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, whose states have created their own counter-Detroit in the form of Japanese, Korean, and German transplant factories. The South will have risen by bringing down the North. Jefferson Davis will have had his revenge.

The most shocking thing about the alliance between the Southern states and America's friendly but earnest economic rivals to destroy America's most important industry is the fact that so few people find it shocking. Contrast the U.S. with the European Union. [...] Any British or French or German leader who proposed collaborating with Japan or the U.S. in order to wipe out industry and destroy jobs in neighboring EU member states would be jeered out of office. But it is perfectly acceptable for American states to connive with Asian and European countries in the destruction of industry elsewhere in the U.S.

Harold Meyerson in the WaPo:

During the [Walter] Reuther years, the UAW also used its resources to incubate every up-and-coming liberal movement in America. It was the UAW that funded the great 1963 March on Washington and provided the first serious financial backing for César Chávez's fledgling farm workers union. The union took a lively interest in the birth of a student movement in the early '60s, providing its conference center in Port Huron, Mich., to a group called Students for a Democratic Society when the group wanted to draft and debate its manifesto. Later that decade, the union provided resources to help the National Organization for Women get off the ground and helped fund the first Earth Day. And for decades after Reuther's death in a 1970 plane crash, the UAW was among the foremost advocates of national health care — a policy that, had it been enacted, would have saved the Big Three tens of billions of dollars in health insurance expenses, but which the Big Three themselves were until recently too ideologically hidebound to support.

Narrow? Parochial? The UAW not only built the American middle class but helped engender every movement at the center of American liberalism today — which is one reason that conservatives have always held the union in particular disdain.

Over the past several weeks, it has become clear that the Republican right hates the UAW so much that it would prefer to plunge the nation into a depression rather than craft a bridge loan that doesn't single out the auto industry's unionized workers for punishment.

Robert Reich:

The current deep recession is a nightmare for people who have lost their jobs, homes, and savings; and it's part of a continuing nightmare for the very poor. That's why we have to do all we can to get the economy back on track. But many other Americans are discovering they can exist surprisingly well buying fewer of the things they never really needed to begin with. What we most lack, or are in danger of losing, are the things we use in common — clean air, clean water, public parks, good schools, and public transportation, as well as social safety nets to catch those of us who fall.

Given the implausibility of middle-class consumers being able to return to the rate of spending they maintained before the bubble, along with the undesirability of our doing so even if we could, and the growing scarcity of common goods, one could conceive an argument for maintaining aggregate demand through continuing government expenditure on the commons. Rather than a temporary stimulus, government would permanently fill the gap left by consumers who cannot and should not be expected to resume their old spendthrift ways.

In other words, maybe we'd all be better off if we put our money into roads, schools, and parks instead of plasma TVs.

Paul Waldman:

It may not be too pleasant to accept, but while progressive activists may be able to influence the Obama administration on specific decisions, his basic approach to governing is already set. As his campaign made clear, Obama will be pursing an agenda that is as progressive as any particular moment will allow (and the current moment is allowing for some extremely progressive moves, like massive infrastructure spending). But he will be arguing for that agenda in language that may not please his most ardent supporters on the left. He'll be calling it things like "neither conservative nor liberal" and "just common sense." He won't be ridiculing conservatism by name. That is his strategy, and it will not change. [...]

But what is the cost to progressivism of a Democratic president who speaks in nonideological terms? These costs are real. Even if the perception of "the center" shifts to encompass progressive goals, progressives will still have a rhetorical mountain to climb. Republicans continue to benefit from the fact that "conservatism" carries a brand identity superior to "liberalism," despite the far greater popularity of liberal policies. [...]

And the positive associations with the conservative brand mean that progressives can't use "conservative" as a bludgeon the way conservatives use "liberal." This affects every election and policy debate, where Democrats are constantly laboring to convince the public that they and the things they're trying to do aren't too liberal. Republicans have no such problems. An Obama presidency with policy successes will go part way to solving this problem but not as far as a presidency in which those successes become associated in the public's mind with what it means to be a progressive (or a liberal, if you prefer).

Eugene Robinson in the WaPo:

The thing to do is give the automakers the money to buy some time. This is obvious to the current administration, the incoming administration, a majority in the House of Representatives and the Democrats in the Senate — but not to the Senate Republicans. They killed the bailout measure by demanding that the United Auto Workers agree to sharp, almost immediate cuts in wages and benefits.

Funny, I don't recall a cry from Senate Republicans for salary caps on the stockbrokers whose jobs were saved in the Wall Street bailout. Nor, to my knowledge, have they demanded that white-collar workers in the auto companies take pay cuts. I do recall lectures from some Republicans in the Senate about how inadvisable it is for government to meddle in the workings of the free market. In my book, renegotiating labor contracts qualifies as meddling. [...]

They have managed to position their party as being against unions, against America's domestic industrial patrimony, against the blue-collar working class — and also, incredibly, against the Rust Belt states, such as Michigan and Ohio, that are home to UAW-represented auto plants and that also regularly tip the balance of presidential elections.

• Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof says we should rename the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Food (NYTimes):

  A Department of Agriculture made sense 100 years ago when 35 percent of Americans engaged in farming. But today, fewer than 2 percent are farmers. In contrast, 100 percent of Americans eat.

• Tim LaSalle of the Rodale Institute says that organic farming can help reverse climate change (Des Moines Register):
  

  When the soil is nurtured through organic methods, it allows plants to naturally pull so much carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the soil that global warming can actually be reversed. Farms using conventional, chemical fertilizer release soil carbon into the atmosphere. Switching to organic methods turns a major global-warming contributor into the single largest remedy of the climate crisis, while eliminating toxic farm chemical drainage into our streams, rivers and aquifers.

• Food Democracy Now! urges President-elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of Agriculture who's committed to sustainable farming. You can sign on to their petition at the above link.
  

  As our nation’s future president, we hope that you will take our concerns under advisement when nominating our next Secretary of Agriculture because of the crucial role this Secretary will play in revitalizing our rural economies, protecting our nation’s food supply and our environment, improving human health and well-being, rescuing the independent family farmer, and creating a sustainable renewable energy future.

Logo Design Love reveals some of the logos that weren't chosen by Obama's campaign:

Some clever ideas, but the "rising sun" logo was clearly the best of the bunch.