(Larger version here.)

I'm back from Aspen. Sunday was another spectacular day. I took these photos of the Roaring Fork River during a morning walk that began in Jaffe Park, about a mile from Woody Creek. The trail runs along the east side of the Roaring Fork River, just south of the Smith Road bridge and joins up with the Rio Grande trail, that takes you into Aspen. (The Rio Grande trail extends 41 miles, from Aspen to Glenwood Springs.)

More photos here and here . [More...]

(Check out the larger version here. I took the picture on my neighborhood walk yesterday. The llamas belong to musician John Oates, who also raises emus, alpacas and peacocks.) For perspective, here's The Barns of Woody Creek from 2005.

Woody Creek is about altered sensibilities, music, art, science, guns, bombs, community involvement and craziness; pure, wonderful, Rocky Mountain craziness. It is also about nature, perfect barns, fresh foals, hunting hounds, elk herds, vistas and views that alter the brain without chemicals, and a state of mind that becomes addictive towards this special place along the banks of the mighty Roaring Fork.

On to some news and political musings: [More...]

Dateline Aspen: Dinner Saturday night at Matsuhisa (Nobu): Anita and I were seated next to Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, their former son-in-law Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes (headlining Jazz Aspen Snowmass tomorrow night), Chris' new wife Allison and their new baby. The baby was adorable. They were having a great time. At first I wondered if I was witnessing a commercial for the modern, enlightened, extended family unit, but they were having such a good time and they seemed so natural and genuine, I ended up wishing there were more families like them.

The soft-shell crab was excellent.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The town is filling up. Volleyball tournaments are well underway around town.

....nearly every blade of grass in most of Aspen’s major parks — including Wagner, Rio Grande and Iselin, and, of course, the sand courts at Koch Lumber and Willoughby — have been taken over by the event, which has been the largest doubles tournament in the nation for more than a decade.....more than 5,000 players and spectators [are expected to] converge on Aspen for the weekend, where about 600 teams compete for prize money.

We had an excellent dinner at Gisella last night, Anita has this photo up at Owl Farm Blog, taken by our friend and dining companion, Pamela Hart.

It's another picture perfect day, and time to get outdoors. This is an open thread, all topics welcome, and let us know what's on your agenda this weekend.

The first Saturday of the college football season. Here are my picks -- Missouri(-12.5) over Illinois; Colorado St. (+12) over Colorado; Notre Dame(-10) over Purdue; Michigan (-3) over UConn; Kentucky (-3) over Louisville; Northwestern (-4) over Vanderbilt; Oregon St. (+13) over TCU.

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

The weather in Aspen could not be better. It's sunny, the air is crisp, the scenery picture-perfect. There was zero traffic driving up yesterday afternoon. Today the crowds will begin arriving.

Jazz Aspen Snowmass kicks off tonight with Wilco. The remaing nights:

Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh of the Eagles will headline Saturday at 7:15 p.m., and Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks have formed their own side group — the Court Yard Hounds — which will open for the Eagles duo at 5 p.m.

Sunday: Leonard Skynyrd and the Black Crowes.

The peacocks are still sleeping here at Owl Farm, and so far, the only thing on the agenda is a hike.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday weekend, my posting will be light. Let us know your plans. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie wrote a negative review of Markos' Moulitsas' "American Taliban. Joining in the condemnation, even though they have not read the book, were Beltway bloggers Matt Yglesias and Ta-Neheisi Coates (whose critique was particularly noteworthy, given his spirited defenses of Atlantic colleagues Jeffrey Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan.) These writers were very upset that Markos had compared the Extreme Right in the United States to the Taliban. It was a strange complaint in my view, as regular readers know.

But an interesting fact has come to light -- it turns out that Robert Kuttner, the head honcho at The American Prospect, penned an article titled American Taliban in February 2010. The article was a review of Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah, which reported on the Religious Right in the United States. Curiously, in defiance of The Kevin Drum Rule (which requires that all "intemperate" attacks on Republicans by the Left must be met by condemnation by the Beltway Left), I found no condemnations of Kuttner's article from the Beltway Left. Accordingly, in keeping with The Drum Rule, Kuttner must be excoriated for his "intemperate" article comparing the Extreme Right to the Taliban. I will do so here, using the template conveniently provided to me by The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie. On the flip, my review.

David Brooks builds a fantasy world where his favored polices, tax cuts, would have been rational policy in response to the Great Recession:

The Democrats could be heading toward a defeat of historic proportions in November, but it is possible to imagine a scenario in which things might have turned out differently:

On Dec. 16, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama and his senior aides gathered for a briefing on the state of the U.S. economy. It was horrifying. The economy was on the verge of collapse. There was little prospect that robust growth would be returning anytime soon. Many of the president-elect’s advisers had been reading histories of the New Deal. They had ambitious plans to address the crisis: federal jobs programs, new building projects, new spending initiatives. This was no time to worry about deficits, they said. This was an opportunity to address needs that had been neglected for decades.

Obama, in this fanciful version, held up his hand. He told his aides to put away the history books and reject the New Deal comparisons. Unlike in 1932, Americans today have a raging distrust of Washington, he observed. Living through a crisis caused by excessive debt, they will viscerally recoil at the prospect of federal debt without end. “Somehow,” Obama concluded, “we have to address the crisis without further terrifying the American people.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Brooks' fantasy and the reality of policies that would work are unconnected. Consider the words he puts in Obama's mouth. "Unlike in 1932, Americans of today have a raging distrust of Washington." Put aside the new revelation that Herbert Hoover had inspired deep trust in Washington, Brook's imaginary Obama does not ask what the right policy is for the crisis, rather what policy would play best politically. Brooks is not imagining a Profile in Courage here. More . . .

Since actual fiscal stimulus (government spending)is out according to Robert Gibbs, let's hope the next best thing, tax cuts targetted to job creation and the incomes of the working class and the middle class will be the Obama proposal. WaPo reports:

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars[. . . .] Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States.

Coupled with new middle class income tax cuts (and the expiration of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy), this could be good policy. The issue here though is, Atrios explains, this could be creating raionales for Obama's Catfood Commission to cut Social Security.In any event, the BEST policy options have been taken off the table, real fiscal stimulus. A Lost Decade awaits us.

Speaking for me only

The Atlantic's Josh Green:

The faltering recovery and the credibility this has cost the the White House will probably lose the Democrats one or both houses of Congress, making the insufficiency of the stimulus easily the most consequential error for an administration that has done a lot right.

[. . .] The White House insists that it could not have gotten a larger stimulus through Congress, a debatable claim. But by twice neglecting to try, it has staked its fortunes on a policy that has visibly fallen short on the issue of greatest concern, the economy. Because of the divide between the experts and the strategists, nothing is happening. Given the weak state of the economy, the White House cannot claim that the stimulus it settled for has sufficed. Unwilling to call for another one, it is left to look on silently and helplessly.

No, this is not original insight, but it is important as evidence of creating the (truthful) narrative that it was Obama's failure to be progressively bold on the stimulus that has doomed the Dems. For the record, the inadequacy of the stimulus was an issue in real time, as this January 7, 2009 John Harwood interview with then President-elect Obama makes clear:

I got off to a rocky start with my college football picks, going 1-3-1. But the weekend is just starting. I'll have more picks on Saturday.

With regard to the "robust" discussions that sometimes break out in the threads, I am going to ask that they be confined to the Open Threads. They are getting in the way of discussions of the topics of the posts.

This is an Open Thread.

NYTimes:

The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama. Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.

“Is the recession, which is hitting young people very hard, doing lasting or permanent damage to what looked like a good Democratic advantage with this age group?” asked Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan group. “The jury is still out.”

It's still the economy, stupid.

Speaking for me only

Joe Sestak:

The Pennsylvania Senate race is now former President Clinton's top political priority this fall, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) asserted Thursday. [. . .]"Actually, I was talking with them the other day, and they just want to know what days," Sestak said of Clinton during an appearance on MSNBC. "They told me I'm their top priority, and I'm going to keep working on that."[. . .] Sestak suggested Clinton was likely to campaign again for him this fall in the Keystone State, where the Clinton brand remains popular.

Sestak wants to be associated with the Clinton brand because the Clinton brand means good economic times. The current Dem brand does not. It's still the economy, stupid.

Speaking for me only

. . . about the weenie Beltway Left:

Ta-Nehesi Coates and Matt Yglesias (both of whom I have great respect and even affection for) are being bizarrely literal about [Markos' book American Taliban. . . .] Since only one person in this exchange has actually read the book I'm guessing writing is not the real source of this argument. It feels remarkably like the many old arguments we've had over the years about whether or not "the left" is embarrassing everyone by acting out and breaking the rules of polite political discourse. And that argument's been going on as long as I can remember.

(Emphasis supplied.) Indeed. This is merely the continuing battle about Fighting Dems and Conciliatory Dems. When I was at Daily Kos (from 2003 through 2006) this was the never ending daily battle. This is more of the same, with the added bit of uninformed personal smears against Markos as good as the vintage smears by The New Republic against Markos. Digby writes:

I have to say that it's remarkably uncharitable for so many people to make the unsupported assertion that Markos wrote this book to gain attention, traffic or whatever.

Digby is remarkably charitable to call it "uncharitable." It is typical Beltway Left behavior from folks who have spent a lot of time defending the likes of Jeff Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan.

Speaking for me only

Earlier today, I wrote about Matt Yglesias' critique of a book he has not read. Yglesias urged that the truth matters. Earlier, Yglesias wrote "the truth is that whatever the failings of the White House’s approach to fiscal policy, they have been out there consistently pushing for somewhat more to be done." Well, it turns out that's not true - from The Hill:

"Some big, new stimulus plan is not in the offing," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.


How about a little truth telling about that?

Speaking for me only