I think it's cool because at the time, it took insane engineering mojo to design cool spy tools. Now, it seems like it's all software engineering.

Take the win, recognize that Sanford is what he is, and move forward. 

This was a special election in a red seat, and we shouldn't draw too many lessons from it. (Though I tweeted a few earlier this evening.)

I don't love what he did any more than the next person, but his policy record is pretty strong, and I don't think you'll see him off the reservation in the House.  A Colbert-Busch win, on the other hand, would have been seen as a portent of doom for 2014, and a validation of celebrity-branded Dem candidates. I'll take Sanford to avoid a month-long end-zone dance by the MSNBC crowd.

P.S. And as for Commandante Markos, I await his comments on the family values of either the herpetic, intern-killing Ted Kennedy, or to use a more modern example, notorious hose-monster John Edwards.  I'd say I'll wait, but the sun would cool before Markos could face up to his hypocrisy.

Read what I said about signifiers.

You'll hear no defense from me of the decade-long spending binge.

Amazing how many "conservatives" want Papa Fed to set the rules of the game.

I would commend to your attention my actual quotes, not the ones in your head.

Something I think would be more productive for them as a social marketing effort than a straight political fight...

I'm not blaming them for his loss.  I am, however, incredibly testy when Huck and others promise to take their toys and go home en masse.

I am haunted by that era. Meek, compliant, scared of their own shadows.

I thought the front end was this tinker-toy construct of recycled bits.  It had a kind of shallow laundry-list character to it.  At the end, the theater and demagoguery was a big contrast to the junky pile of the rest of it.

Goes without saying.

Thanks!

Quite right. I don't see her as able to pursue the same kind of non-linear strategy.

It doesn't matter that climate change lost its political momentum several years ago, and that even the new IPCC report has a bunch of monster-sized caveats and walkbacks.  It doesn't matter that the stimulus-era experiment with throwing buckets of money into the green-energy bonfire has been an across-the-board debacle: it matters because he want's another chance to play his favorite games.

He's always drawn to policies to control behavior, tweak markets to his desired endstates, pick and choose winners and losers in his crony capitalist economy and to demonize the opposition ("Obviously, since they oppose climate change reforms just as they oppose gun control, they want your children to be shot and drowned.") is irresistible for him.

This is increasingly a cultural battle.

Ain't they all?

Peter, that was a wonderful post.