In other words, maybe one way to let cooler heads prevail, and placate House liberals, is for the Senate to quickly put together and pass (via reconciliation) a “patch” bill in advance of a House vote. That way, there’s no “Lucy removing the football” fears on the part of House Democrats.

But I think bad weather clearly favors Coakley, myself. As a Massachusetts resident following this race very closely, my sense is there’s a huge spike in interest and enthusiasm from a lot of independent (we call them “unenrolled” here in Massachusetts) voters. I could be wrong, but the bulks of these voters strike me as being usually not particularly involved in politics. Brown needs a healthy turnout from these people to counter what I expect to be a larger than expected turnout of committed (and scared!) Democrats and liberal independents. I can imagine many a low information Brown supporter getting up tomorrow with the intention of hitting the polls on the way to work, and then realizing the roads are pretty crappy and thinking “Hmmm, maybe I should go to work first and vote on the way home.” Not all of them will make it — especially if they’re overconfident in the porn star’s chances. City lefties like me can walk to the polls even in a blizzard.

Martha could still pull this thing out. The wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the right wing would be enough to stave off my seasonal depression for the remainder of the winter.

I’ve been hearing lots of speculation and commentary that the healthcare bill is primarily what is to blame for tomorrow’s shocking GOP victory, and that Democrats would be well-advised to dump the legislative effort and focus on other things.

Needless to say I don’t agree.

If voters are really that pissed off about ObamaCare, aren’t they simply going to vote for the real McCoy, a Republican, no matter what? Why even consider voting for a member of the party that came pretty damned close to shoving Socialist medicine down our throats when we can have real, manly, rugged individualist proponents of freedom like Scott Brown?

Seems to me savvy Democratic law-makers will quite rightly recognize that some of the angst on display in Massachusetts flows from the perception that the Democrats are ineffective. What we see on display is a preview of what it will be like for Democrats to go before the national electorate without a substantive accomplishment under their belts, exactly like in 1994. Passing a bill will remedy this.

It’s also clear to me that the perception of what ObamaCare is now, before it is enacted, is likely to be significantly more negative than the perceptions of what the legislation actually is, once it’s passed, and people are protected by guaranteed issue and community rating, and death panels mysteriously fail to materialize. As a number of pundits have noted, there is very little support in Massachusetts for getting rid of that state’s existing universal health care bill. Turns out voters like health care security once they possess it.

*I’m thinking one possible scenario that would be less than the worst case would be a very narrow win for Brown. If he beats her with, say, 50.9% of the vote, a somewhat more leisurely certification process will look a lot more justified than if Brown wins pretty convincingly and Coakley calls to concede at 9pm. And that just might buy enough time to produce and score a melded bill and get the cloture vote out of the way. I half wonder if Brown himself — despite vows to the contrary — might not actually welcome the chance to avoid being blamed for killing the healthcare bill. If he’s smart, he’ll have already begun to think about 2012.

Anyway, this is all probably wishful thinking because, though my head tells me by rights it should be a close contest and Martha’s still got a shot, my heart (and my eyes — you simply don’t see any Coakley signage even here in Boston) tells me Martha’s numbers are collapsing and Brown could thump to a huge — approaching or surpassing 60% of the vote — victory.

I certainly hope I’m wrong.

We’re supposed to be known for our hardiness, for the way we embrace the elements with stoicism and even a touch of pride.

So what happened?

This season’s first snow – big, fluffy flakes totaling 10 inches or less – paralyzed an entire region. Workers fled their offices early, clogging highways and side streets. Drivers fishtailed trying to get to supermarkets, only to find parking lots jammed with customers buying last-minute items like bread and batteries. Yet the rush for supplies proved unnecessary. Much of the snow melted yesterday, a sunny, 40-degree day, exactly as the weather reporters said it would.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of “Mayflower” and “In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” said he sees signs that New Englanders’ storied moxie is on the wane.

In fact, he used the word crybabies to describe peoples’ reaction to Thursday’s storm, one that set no records, came as no surprise, and delivered the kind of snow, dry and light, that is a DPW commissioner’s dream.

“The fact is, once you get used to these modern conveniences and luxuries, even the mildest inconveniences become an epic tale of deprivation,” Philbrick said. “Perhaps our threshold will be so diminished [that] our version of the Essex disaster and the Mayflower will be the drive home from the mall in 2 inches of snow.”

To be sure, parents needed to get children from the many schools that were dismissed early. The snow, at its peak, was falling at an uncharacteristically rapid clip. City, state, and private industry offices were closing in virtual unison.

Still, Philbrick echoed the thoughts of many residents yesterday who were befuddled by the way the city reacted to the storm – more like, perhaps, the way Washington or Memphis shuts down over an inch of snow.

“People who live here should know how to handle this by now,” said Yvonne Thompson, a 49-year-old construction worker and lifelong Boston resident who pointed out that meteorologists had been predicting the storm for days.

Quite so, Yvonne. And I have to agree, we have in fact become weather wimps.  There are lots of reasons for this, but I suspect much of it is transportation: Many people have to drive longer distances on average, and fly more often for their jobs — than was the case thirty or forty years ago. Also, it seems to me many young kids participate in FAR more activities and clubs that require parental chauffeuring than once was the case. Also, the internet makes it easier for employers to “pull the trigger” on sending people home, so that’s one cause as well — there’s more pressure on employers to be “reasonable” and let people work from home.

Over the years we’ve simply became a much more mobile society that is more dependent on smooth-functioning transportation systems than ever before. It’s interesting to note, however, that when we do occasionally get a very snowy winter when blizzards roll in week after week through December, January and February, it seems like the metro Boston area deals with the weather much more efficiently and nonchalantly (and people are much more relaxed) toward the end of the season than is the case at the beginning. People simply get used to dealing with winter weather after many weeks of it. So I expect climate change also has at least something to do with the phenomenon: folks ’round these parts simply don’t have to deal with as many snow events and harsh weather conditions as they used to, so they forget how to deal with it. Also, greater population density means more traffic congestion, which in turn leads to bad driving manners, which makes people shittier drivers, and this makes driving in wintery conditions worse still.

Ahhh, the pleasures of winter in urban New England.

Apocalypto is not for the faint-of-heart, nor is it suitable for children (due to scenes of extreme — albeit non-gratuitous — violence). All in all, a very entertaining work. Very dark at times, but not wholly bleak in its vision. It even manages to impart a relevant message — an apocalypic warning, if you will — to our modern age.

When a country produces more HDTVs, more people have HDTVs and living standards go up. When a country produces more tanks and military explosives, none of the tanks or military explosives go into private hands (we hope!) so living standards are unchanged. But producing HDTVs doesn’t increase your ability to conquer France, whereas tanks and explosives are useful for conquering France. Hitler’s policy objective was to prepare for conquering France. And his policies worked quite well (though Ernest May reminds us not to neglect the importance of French intelligence failures), they just served Nazi objectives. But I don’t see why Hitler couldn’t have spent the money on something else. If we use fiscal policy to raise measured GDP primarily through building tanks, we’ll have higher GDP and more tanks. But if we use fiscal policy to raise measured GDP primarily through repairing existing roads and building new mass transit and high-speed rail lines, then we’ll have higher GDP, better roads, and more mass transit and HSR systems. It seems to me that living standards would therefore be higher.

Right. I doubt living standards increased for most Americans during the war years, but nonetheless GDP was rapidly expanding. The economic growth was sufficiently robust (explosive, really) to finally jolt the country out of depression. Once the war was over, living standards could resume their ascent, as money for guns was channeled into money for butter.

We don’t have the luxury at the present time to agonize over slumping living standards. The task is to save the economy, and avoid deflation. Once things have returned to normal — a non-deflationary economy characterized by growth — we can hopefully get back to increasing living standards. Personally I expect that, for a while at least, such increases will be modest, given the need to increase savings over the long term, pay back debt (ie higher taxes) and put the economy on a long-term, sustainable path. Still, “modest” need not mean “none.” Ideally, we can increase savings and (modestly) increase consumption over the long term by limiting growth in consumption to a number slightly lower than GDP growth.

Of course, we can (and should!) also try and extract some gains in this regard for the vast majority of the population by tackling the income inequality issue.

2) Byonce’s hit “If I were a Boy” sucks. Her people have badly misused her voice on this one. It sounds like she’s straining. IMO she doesn’t have the booming, bell-like voice of a Whitney Houston, Maria Carey, Leona Lewis or Rihanna. Which is fine. Byonce’s voice is perfectly decent, and even sweet — in a  Diana Ross kind of way. She just doesn’t have the cords for the aforementioned song.

A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement. “As a result, it will require tough scrutiny and oversight. Taxpayers, already stretched to the limit, deserve nothing less.

It goes without saying that among other deceptions McConnell is well-aware he’s using is misleading language with respect to the country’s debt. Yes, it is true that if you count money owed to future retirees national debt is quite high, but the more relevant public debt figure is about the same percentage of GDP as it was at the beginning of WWII (you know, the same war that, as Krugman puts it, finally provided a stimulus large enough to get the country out of Depression once and for all).

This is not an argument against getting our fiscal house in order to deal with entitlements, by the way — it’s something we need to do (most pressingly, healthcare reform, as Social Security’s problems are easily repairable) after we’ve restored the economy to health. It’s just an argument against letting ideologues like McConnell demagogue the country into a repeat of the 1930s

Okay, seriously, I’m not saying Ms. Kennedy is the best candidate for the job, mind you; but she’s obviously a plausible candidate in a narrow universe of plausible candidates. People continue to talk about her like she’s some kind of grossly underqualified airhead — but that’s seems like wild exaggeration colored by Kennedy bashing. She doesn’t have experience running in and winning elections*, but that’s the only thing she lacks from what I can see**. She’s got money, fame, looks, glamor,*** sterling education credentials (Harvard and Columbia Law), she’s a life long New Yorker, she’s prominent in Democratic party circles (vetted Obama’s VP choices and was a co-chair of his campaign, I think), she possesses a strong relationship with the president-elect, she has a pretty impressive rolodex, she’s a respected constitutional scholar, she writes well, and she’s done substantive, meaningful work in policy analysis, non-profit fundraising and governance, arts advocacy, and education. She’s seems to be a very straight arrow (nice family, etc.), and likely has fewer skeletons in her closet than the various elected public officials who would also be plausible candidates for the appointment. And, as Democrats who actually want to win elections (unlike libertarians who understandably would rather see us lose) realize, Caroline Kennedy is almost certainly likely to prove an unsurpassed fundraiser in 2010 — a year when coaxing money from contributors may not be an easy task. Again, she may not be the optimal candidate from the perspective of background and experience (Spitzer’s downfall makes the scene devoid of an obvious concensus choice), but politically — and this is ultimately how such things get decided — she’s very plausible indeed.

*I frankly think this is a weak argument with respect to this particular candidate. I mean, she freaking grew up in the White House, and her uncles were Bobby and Teddy. I have a feeling she knows how the government works, and how legislation gets enacted. Moreover, while personal legislative experience is obviously a plus, Hillary Clinton has shown lack of it isn’t a deal-breaker. And anyway, what’s wrong with having someone with a different perspective sitting in the great deliberative body? Heaven forbid someone other than, you know, a career briber of voters, be sent to Washington to join Schumer.

**Well, she may lack natural political instincts/communication skills based on her upstate tour. It definitely wasn’t an auspicious start. I personally think it’s too early to tell — and I very much doubt Patterson will write her off based on one or two initial missteps (Hillary wasn’t a natural from the getgo either) but Caroline certainly needs to improve in this area.

***I can almost hear the sneering now, but y’all have to take off your good citizens caps and put on your political consultants caps: you can certainly make the case that Kennedy possesses many of the practical attributes — especially in an era when fundraising is likely to get tougher — especially with a mid-term coming up where Democrats are likely to be facing stiff challenges — of someone who can beat King or Rudy (and help other Democrats — most importantly Patterson himself — in the bargain). Cynical or not, that, my dear friends, will surely be of paramount concern in Patterson’s mind.

Finally, one word about the hand-wringing over political dynasties: our constitution got rid of royalty. It doesn’t say people who grew up with backgrounds in politics and affairs of state can’t or shouldn’t be able to run themselves. It seems to me you’ll have to change human nature to insure that. Bottom line is voters have brains, and in a democracy they’re perfectly free to reject princelings, and often do. Neither Romney nor Hillary Clinton is about to enter the White House. George H.W. Bush couldn’t retain it in 1992. The Republic has always known families prominent in public affairs, and always will. John Quincy Adams’s foray into politics didn’t sink us, and neither will Caroline Kennedy’s.