Rowdy's Roundup: Obama/Warren Bromance - et magis te amare!

After assuring readers that he really, really supports Teh Gays, Ruben Navarrette Jr. lamely attempts to defend Obama's decision to give Rev. Rick Warren a prime spot at the upcoming inaugural: "This is about a president-elect, who just came off a bruising 21-month campaign, exercising his prerogative to choose whoever he wants to deliver the blessing at his inauguration. It's about -- as President-elect Obama noted this week -- Americans learning to agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable. It's about those on the left knowing how to win and how to savor victory without giving into the impulse to attack each other."  (Navarrette, like many Obama apologists, keep harping on this "disagree without being disagreeable" thing.  Well, ya' know what?  Warren's comments about LGBT Americans fall well beneath the "disagreeable" mark.  These overwhelmingly straight apologists haven't had their loving relationships equated with child abuse.  Navarette's heterosexual union hasn't been likened to pedophilia.  Until that happens, don't presume to tell the millions of Americans who are regularly - and grotesquely - slandered by Rick Warren how to feel.)

Crooks and Liars offers its visitors a photo of a man's hand being chewed by an alligator, beneath which David Neiwert discusses Obama's bromance with Warren:  "It's understandable, given his background as a community organizer (not to mention someone who pitches The Audacity Of Hope), that Obama believes you can reach out a hand to movement conservatives and build such bridges...  I just hope that when he finally gets that hand back after reaching it out and discovers it has been chewed clean down to the bone by a thousand vicious cuts that he has a little awakening about the nature of the nasty little beast the American Right has become in the past couple of decades.  Such gestures for them are mere signs of weakness, nothing but opportunities to advance themselves and their agendas and to destroy liberals."  (Neiwart absolutely nails this.  The majority of right-wingers won't view Warren's inclusion in terms of bridge building.  They'll recognize it as a feeble attempt to placate them - and they'll be smirking all the way to the pulpit.)      

Over in the Wonk Room, Lisa Gilbert explains why Blago-gate is merely the symptom of a national illness:  "Blagojevich should resign effective immediately; however the activities that he so casually engaged in are a loud wake-up call to the undue influence of money on our political system. The need to constantly seek enough money for campaigns is the reality of our democracy. The candidate with the most money spent on his or her behalf typically wins 85%-95% of elections. The relentless pursuit of this funding, oftentimes from those who have a stake in what happens in legislative decisions and appropriations, creates an environment in which money - and who it came from - can mean more than representing your constituents."  (There really must be a more equitable way to fund elections - and if you think of one, keep it to yourself.  Politicians are quite happy with campaign business as usual.)  Continued after the jump... 

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration over its plans to lease immense tracks of wilderness to oil and gas companies, has just reached an agreement with the Bureau of Land Management that could save 100,000 acres of pristine land.  Acclaimed actor/director Robert Redford writes on Huffington Post:  "The deal temporarily prevents the Bureau from issuing leases on 80 contested parcels of Utah wilderness, including land adjacent to national parks, for 30 days.  Although the Bureau will go forward with the auction today, based on the agreement it will not issue the contested leases. The delay will give a federal court time to hear the case... Words alone cannot do justice to the beauty of these places, but they do capture the absurdity of the Bush plan.  Oil and gas drilling in Desolation Canyon?  Industrial development along the meandering Green River? ...It's our land, it's our legacy, but will it still be here for our children and grandchildren?  (To hear evangelicals tell it, our grandchildren won't even be here for our children.  That's why they're latecomers to The Environmental Dance.  Preparing for the Rapture is so damned time consuming!)

At FireDogLake, Stirling Newberry examines the Cost of Conservatism:  "Right wingers want to de-emphasize the costs, and pump up the virtues. They want to account for every penny of liberal projects but declare that conservative projects have no price... The costs of conservatism, in a bi-partisan form, are those things that can't be fixed by a Democratic President because they have become part of the political landscape: over-financialization of the American economy, the waste of privatized health care, over militarization of the American economy, and the externalization of global warming.  Each one of these things has a cost in GDP... These problems reinforce each other, insurance companies shift output from other activities, to financial ones.  Spending on wars means there is less productive manufacturing, and more war manufacturing, pushing effort into juggling money.  Tax breaks drain investment from private enterprise, making it harder, seemingly to shift the economy.  In other words, we are like the person who drinks too much because they smoke too much."  (Newberry's article is sobering, and should be read in its entirety.)