When I did stand-up a hundred years ago, I used to do a joke about how aviation security was always a few steps behind the terrorists. First someone tried to light a bomb in his shoes, and now we all have to take our shoes off before getting on the plane. Then someone tried to use liquids to make a bomb, so we can’t bring large quantities of liquids on the plane. I can’t wait for the day terrorists try to put a bomb in a baby. Because then we won’t be allowed to bring a baby on the plane. And who could argue with that?

As you probably know, I recently moved from an idyllic left wing small city to an idyllic right wing small city. Both are great places to raise a family, both have charming downtowns, and both support diverse local businesses. One big difference, I’ve come to learn, is that the left wing city provides high quality public services–including single stream curbside recycling, best-in-state public schools, and well-developed social services, whereas the right wing city has privatized those same functions, with “choice” in trash collection, a significant reliance on religious schools (this is one of the hotbeds of voucher activism), and church groups providing many of the social services.

The common approach is to look to House “leaders” as how they will play broadly in the country, whether they have the ability to excite the mass middle of the public. Yet we know that the identity of the number 2 Democrat in the leadership will have no bearing whatsoever on the fate of the House in 2012 and beyond. The leadership position is a legislative one, particularly the position of the Minority Whip, whose job mainly entails keeping the caucus unified on important votes.

Senator Lindsey Graham — a reasonable guy! — possesses such magical thinking about what a war with Iran would accomplish.

Today’s news will be dominated with Bush’s admission that Cheney was mad at him for not pardoning Libby. As the press is distracted with a rehashing of the successful cover-up of one of Bush’s crimes, we ought to remember that today marks the successful cover-up of a more horrible crime.

I don’t know if the Olbermann suspension had anything to do with Comcast’s imminent takeover or just a reflexive tendency within MSNBC to follow the political winds. But there’s no question that media concentration has led to a narrowing of the subjects up for discussion and the voices allowed to brooch those subjects.

I have no idea what the President is thinking when he says stuff like this.

It doesn’t matter what prominent Democrats were telling the base when they were trying to sell the vote. Just because a basically Republican health care law was passed by Democrats doesn’t make it some great progressive policy victory.

Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) is possibly getting tapped as the first Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head. The fact that her name would be floated at all as the head of an agency to oversee the banks is an indication that there’s some sort of death wish on the part of Democrats for the 2012 election, and that Elizabeth Warren’s appointment was indeed a “cynical” bait-and-switch move meant to gin up enthusiasm among liberals before the election.

It’s worth noting that there are enough “emergency” pieces of legislation to tide over a session that could be as small as three weeks (one week before Thanksgiving, and perhaps only two weeks after). Congress needs to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running. There are several pieces of legislation that expire on November 30, like extended unemployment benefits and the “doctor’s fix” for Medicare reimbursement rates. And then there are the Bush tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. Clearly that doesn’t leave much room for energy, child nutrition, DADT, the DREAM Act, labor bills, a Chinese currency measure, the new START treaty or even the deficit commission recommendations, parts or all of which had been promised a vote in the lame duck.