Something that goes unmentioned

Many people have mentioned that Palin has benefited from being an attractive woman, and Obama has benefited from being black. One thing that has not been mentioned is that Obama is a good looking black guy. If he were eight inches shorter, 80 pounds heavier, and sweated a lot, would anyone even remember him at this point, or would he be hanging out with Richardson on the short list for Secretary of State?

Thoughts on the debate - VP Edition

In random order

• Regarding Palin - If you can cram enough into 6 weeks to pull off an acceptable job at a debate, either the interview process is flawed or the job simply isn't that hard. The fact that McCain and Obama can not show up for work for two year periods would suggest the latter.
• While I don't think Palin won the debate (it wasn't set up to have a winner really) she clearly took and held the initiative the entire evening
• Biden looked like the knowledgeable guy he probably is, which is really all the veep should be.
• Should McCain lose this election - which it seems he will - Palin probably will be competing with Huckabee for the face of the Republican party, and winning. It certainly seems to going in a populist direction
  
• The deep love of Israel was particularly noxious on both parties. Granted, Palin is a tribal candidate, not an ideological one, but there seemed to be more love and affection for Israel from her than there was for America as a whole (small town America is a subset). Biden was just foppish on that matter.
• It's insulting to only mention Israel when talking about our allies, particularly when the UK and Australia have always stood buy us. Neither mentioned those members of the Anglosphere.
• The constant mentions of energy independence destroyed any ability for me to take either seriously.
• While I've seen several mentions of Palin winking at the camera, I haven't seen any mention of her refering to him as "Senator O'Biden" nor of Biden's reference to "Bosniaks".
  

Friday link clearing

Since these have been piling up in Firefox, here's what I've been reading

• Obama and the Born-Alive issue - ghoulish stuff. The controversy of abortion is where one draws the line on person vs potential person. Even the most ardent pro-choicers seem to draw it at birth, but it seems not everyone does.
• Via Will Wilkerson

  Obama terrifies me: an intelligent, thoughtful, well-prepared, capably extemporaneous man ascribing a future holocaust to some sort of non-existent, fantastical, steroidal Iran; talking about unsanctioned cross-border incursions into Pakistan because we found bin Laden, or some such, and must “take him out”; warbling around about “main street” while, in a lawerly, circumlocutory way signaling that he’s ultimately going to get behind hundred-billion-dollar cash bailouts to institutions that ought to be dismantled, destroyed, scattered to the wind. He wants GM to make electric cars. He wants the American people to know that he will appear before them to make extravagant xenophobic declarations in order to assuage their insecurity about the rise of other competing economies. He does this all in a calm, perfectly reasonable manner, with a convincing boardroom demeanor, and judging by the reactions of my liberal friends, with whom I listened, this was basically pleasing to them.

  McCain is of course out of his mind: forgetful, vicious, reactionary. And his ideas are even crazier than BO’s, but there’s a certain comfort in the fact that their insanity is laid so plainly and mercilessly bare by the grinning psychopath’s delivery. He provides no quarter for those who want to convince themselves that by Killing People for Their Own Good we are not actually killing them, or that by suborning corporate malfeasance we are combating it, or that by desperately seeking to maintain the geography of radial sprawl and the automobile we are seeking “energy independence.”

  I've had the thought lately regarding McCain, Bush, and bailouts - if we're going to have corporate socialism shouldn't we have a Democrat do it? At least they don't have the supposed association with the free market that Republicans do.
• David Friedman on the bailout

  The failure of a firm doesn't wipe out wealth, except to the extent that the firm itself—its firm culture, web of relationships and such—has some value. When a firm fails, that is at least some evidence that that value was negative, which is why nobody chose to buy out the firm and keep it going. The ordinary assets of the firm—its buildings, land, stocks, bonds, mortgages, and whatever it owns—don't vanish when the firm fails, they get sold to someone else.
  
  The bailout is not a way of preventing the loss of value. The loss (or transfer) of value occurred when people made bad mortgage loans. What happened more recently was the recognition of that loss. All the bailout can do is to shift the loss from some people to others, from the stockholders and creditors of firms that are now effectively bankrupt to the taxpayers.
  

Thoughts on the debate

On the whole, I think they both came out well. Obama is clearly not at his best in this forum, and does not think on his feet that well. His response to the economics questioning was stunted and halting, but largely came around during the foreign policy portion. McCain was consistent throughout. The real shocker (to me anyway) was Obama supporting Ukrainian and Georgian membership in NATO, which is truly a horrible idea. Of course, McCain seemed to support it too.

There was little I actually agreed with in most of the debates; both of them seemed to like the status quo of America the GloboCop, and neither seemed to have any meaningful problem with the Wall Street bailout, but it could have been a lot worse (for America). On the whole, it seemed like McCain was the honest authentic guy, and Obama was an honest authentic guy's attourney which is the usual pattern.

More thought later most likely.

Profiles in lameness

As Congress seems to be willing to give the Treasury secretary a check for 700 billion with no strings attached, where are our two main nominees? As far as I can tell they're not in the Senate doing the job they were actually elected to do. And we're expected to respect their "experience" and "judgment"?!?!

Marginal Revolution gets it right

With this photo.

One would think that it's obvious that the government doesn't get Big Looming Threats pegged too accurately, but apparently not. The fact that people still push for national health care in light of all recent evidence of government capabilities is amazing.

A bad sign for the Democrats

From this AJC article

The Democrats’ desire to put the vice presidential candidates behind podiums grew out of the 2000 and 2004 vice presidential debates, when the candidates sat close to each other behind the same table. Cheney had the upper hand in both debates, said several Democrats involved in the debate process, in part because the setting made it difficult if not impossible for Lieberman and Edwards to go after Cheney aggressively. Whether that was because of the setting or because the two Democrats wanted to avoid confrontation is a matter still disputed by participants.

If they're already grinding their excuses to that fine level of detail then they're already expecting bad things.

Random Thoughts:
The real question is - will McCain have the nerve to run a commercial saying "isn't it awesome when we have divided government? Do you really want Nancy Pelosi to have total control over everything?

Will the 527 groups have the nerve to run an ad like that? Come to think of it, where are the 527 groups this year?

An anaology I intend to steal

From this post about abortion on the primary feminist site; it captures my feelings on the political matter more or less

Not to beat this horse to death, but let’s use the 1st Amendment as an analogy. Everyone would agree it’s none of the government’s business if I choose to practice Islam. So what would you say if the government, while keeping it legal to practice Islam, nevertheless decided there were too many Muslims in this country and therefore decided to spend taxpayers’ dollars educating people on religions other than Islam. I assume you would find that completely unacceptable. I don’t see the difference between this and abortion. If it’s none of the government’s business whether women have abortion, then the government shouldn’t be in the business of discouraging abortions. What am I missing?

Palin the tethered goat

It seems to me that the McCain campaign is using Sarah Palin to draw out the worst of the democratic leaning population, which will cause the not that interested voter to associate the Obama campaign with the Move-On/Cindy Sheehan crowd, and hence be turned to Obama. Pretty clever.

On another note, isn't Palin a wonderful blank canvas on which people can project their hopes and desires? She's the equal of Obama in that regard.

Palin!

Via the Agitator - I bring you VPILF.com!

And I now coin the term "McCain's other trophy wife" which the Dems will start using in approximately fifteen minutes.

Col. Lang on the VeepStakes

On Joe Biden

His argumentation is logical, passionate and usually (unlike the occasion mentioned,) delivered behind a screen of civility spread across a vast hostility.

On David Petraeus

Petraeus is youthful, well spoken, handsome, intelligent, successful in the war in Iraq, youthful, and youthful. Petraeus has reached the top in his profession. There is no "up" in the Army from full general and theater commander. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Yawn... The professional politicians would probably not like to have Petraeus on the ticket, but his presence there would make victory inevitable.

My money's still on Meg Whitman as the veep choice.

The agitator brings the Biden pain

From this post

Biden’s record on other criminal justice and civil liberties issues is just as bad. Opponents of the federalization of crime might note that the 1994 crime bill he sponsored created several new federal capital offenses. Biden also wants to expand federal penalties for hate crimes. He supports a federal smoking ban. His position on the federal drinking age is, and I quote, “absolutely do not” lower it to 18. He believes “most violent crime is related to drugs” (if he had said “drug prohibition,” he’d be closer to the truth). Biden also has an almost perfect anti-gun voting record. He said last year he favors “universal national service,” either in the Peace Corps or the military. Sounds like conscription to me. He says he’s opposed to the PATRIOT Act, but he voted for both the original bill and its re-authorization in 2005.

Foreign policy? Biden voted for the war on Iraq. Yes, he’s opposed to it now (and I like the partition plan he pushed in the primaries). But he didn’t vote correctly when it counted most. Biden also voted to send troops into Darfur. He wants to enlarge NATO. He voted in favor of the air strikes in Kosovo. He voted to strengthen the trade embargo against Cuba. His seems to be a meddling, interventionist, Clinton-esque foreign policy. His first instinct seems to be that the U.S. military’s objective include some vague notion of “doing good in the world.” Never mind the disastrous consequences that notion has reaped over the years.

I obviously disagree with Biden on a host of economic and regulatory issues, too (though he does seem to be fairly decent on free trade). But that’s to be expected. My problem with Biden is that he’s not even good on the issues the left is supposed to be good on. He’s an overly ambitious, elitist, tunnel-visioned, Potomac-fevered Beltway dinosaur, with all the trappings. He may well have been the worst possible pick among congressional Democrats when it comes to the drug war and criminal justice.

Meg Whitman seems like a more obvious choice now.

Random insight from the ride back: Modern politics

The Bush administration has been like a movie version of a Jimmy Carter book, starring Steven Seagal, and lasting eight years.

Here's a first

I actually donated money to a political candidate for the first time in my life. Go Barr!bob

McCain's first wife

Check out this story about McCain's first wife. Oddly, the hero of the tale is Ross Perot; a crazy nut, but a classy guy.

The Libertarian candidates

CNN.com has a nice round up here.

The amazing McCain

According the the wonderful site, Electoral-Vote.com, Clinton (who won't be the nominee) beats McCain 280-241 in the electoral college, whereas Obama loses to McCain 237-290. Granted, it's quite early, but it's amazing nonetheless.

Helpful profane campaign slogans

Contains some profanity, which makes it not safe for work if you work in uptight places.

Signs that democracy has run it's course

The candidates are appearing on wrestling shows.

Friday links

• Everybody kills Hitler - quite good
• Interesting bit by David Friedman on public education
• Bob Barr might be running for the LP nomination, that would be strange
• The best cartoon I've seen in quite some time, everybody check this out...
• The ocean is cooling... - Global warming enthusiasts are sounding more and more like defense lawyers.
  

Random insight not yet noticed by the media about Obama

Given his pastor's speeches coming to light, can anyone thing of a better way to convince people he's not a secret Muslim? I can't.

The internet says I agree with Ron Paul

Via Dan, check out Glassbooth, it's a decent political survey tool. I scored

Ron Paul - 81% - Huckabee - 68% - McCain 62%

Medical Marijuana and Drug Policy very similar
Trade and Economics very similar
Taxes and Budget very similar
Gun Control very similar
Civil Liberties and Domestic Security similar
Iraq and Foreign Policy very different

How about y'all?

This is no ordinary Tuesday

My predictions are Obama and Huckabee here in GA. On a related note, I met my first Ron Paul door to door guy on Saturday, he seemed very nice. He gave me a bumper sticker too.

Before I go vote, here are some links that caught my eye:

• Barstool Economics
• Leading denominations by location
• Your tax dollars by at work - Atlanta cop and Duluth cop in shoot out
  

Lost sleep and mixed blessings

So, my week continues to suffer, as I've been going on less than two hours a day of sleep for since Sunday. Work however goes very well. On the political front, both Guiliani and Edwards have dropped out of the race, and I got my first robocall from the Ron Paul campaign.

Quick New Hampshire predictions

They're not very earth shattering, but...

Democrats

1. Obama
2. Clinton (a close second)
3. Edwards (a distant third)
   

Republicans

1. McCain
2. Huckabee
3. Romney
4. Paul (somewhere over ten percent, but not much)
5. Thompson
6. Giuliani (happily low in the standings)
   

Who would have thought it?

Unmentioned by the commentariat thus far is that the primaries (so far anyway) concern only domestic politics. Who would have predicted that four years, or even four months ago? This is the best proof of the the surge being seen as working I suppose.

Wyoming

Here's a little known fact, Wyoming is holding it's caucus on Saturday.

Iowa picks based on gut feeling

Democrats -

1. Clinton
2. Obama
3. Edwards

Republican -

1. Huckabee (by a margin that will surprise everyone)
2. Romney
3. Paul - maybe wishful thinking, but all of this money and energy has to translate into something.

Clinton and Huckabee are hardly my preferred choices, but neither of them are Edwards or Giuliani, who (I think) would do America irreparable damage.

Tuesday links

• Iraq vets take lemons and make.... something.
• Delphine LaLurie - very creepy
• Time management
• I do believe I'll be building these bookshelves
• Ron Paul - comic book president
• Putting Bush on Mt Rushmore - be sure to read this one from Scott Adams
  

The next Reagan

Via Yglesias, comes this Mike Huckabee ad



I think I'm the first to point out that he's the first candidate to good natured and likable on the stump, which is quite a bit of a change from the rest of the crowd. Clever ad too.

A good example of why liberals scare me

Check out this diavlog with Paul Krugman and Mario Cuomo; it's a detailed explanation of how the government should run your life, from health care to your job, and most things in between.

Four changes if I were king of America

I've made them non-political, strictly symbolic. They are

1. The national anthem shall be changed to America the Beautiful; an accessible song with a solid melody and natural meter; and the Star Spangled Banner will be consigned to history, where it will be of much interest to our eventual tone-deaf robot overlords
2. Daylight Savings Time shall be abolished. Trying to fool the sun sets a bad example for children and weakens our moral fiber
3. Calvin Coolidge shall be worked into Presidents Day somehow. We're long overdue for rewarding people who do their job quietly, with no drama
4. We shall come up with a simple way to properly fold the US Flag that does not require two people

What would y'all do?

Three interesting things

• There are more World of Warcraft players than there are farmers (from Paul Krugman via MR)
• The reason the average car produces X many tons of CO2 (a figure I always found fishy) is due to the fact that the carbon bonds with oxygen already existing in the air, which never occurred to me until I read this article. The majority of the actual mass (the O2) comes mostly from the existing air.
• John Edwards, still not popular! It says good things about America, and the Democratic party that he's doing well. I suppose the Republican alternative to him is Tom Tancredo.
• From this BloggingHeads.tv - "John Kerry was a Democrat's idea of what the Republicans like". The Republicans seem to be making the same desperate mistake with Giuliani right now.
  

Obama gets interesting

Firstly he has stopped wearing American Flag pins. While to some degree the president serves a double role as chief executive and president of the fan club I think this is a good thing. There's nothing more hollow than a red Aids ribbon or the yellow "Live Strong" wristbands. It's good to have someone running that doesn't find meaning in 17 pieces of flair. That doesn't mean his ideas are any good, but there's more to loving America than wrapping oneself in internal marketing.

Secondly he apparently has a serious person as his chief economic adviser. All in all a good sign for him. Not that I'll be voting for him, but he's at least showing signs of being interesting, which he hasn't up to now.

Rep. Jack Kingston provides a stirring indictment

Of himself in this case. From the AJC

But Rep. Jack Kingston is making no apologies for being the House champion for Georgia when it comes to snagging federal dollars for his home state and his home district around Savannah.

In the current spending bills working their way through Congress for the new fiscal year, which begins next month, Kingston is sponsoring or co-sponsoring earmarks estimated at $83 million, more than any other Georgian in the House.

Despite being a conservative Republican, Kingston argues that snagging programs and projects is a time-honored tradition for Georgia lawmakers.

I suppose they're going to lose a few more rounds. It's always time for term limits.

Advice on seeming Reaganesque

Since all of the Republicans candidates for president are trying to be the next Ronald Reagan, why not run on his platform? Just cross out the parts about the Soviet Union, and presto! It's not like much of his domestic agenda got enacted. We still have the departments of Energy, Education and so on. Government is still the problem after all...

Scary quote of the day

From the AJC article Clayton may seek records on all renters

"This is not to say Big Brother is watching," he insisted. "It says Big Brother is helping."

It's not the most intrusive thing that could happen, but bear in mind that in the past 10 years we (the Atlanta Metro Area) have had

• 1 Mayor in jailed on corruption charges
  
• 1 political assassination of a sheriff
  
• 1 ex-sheriff convicted of said assassination, along with several deputies
• 1 police shooting of an 87 year old woman based on a perjured warrant
• The creation of a "Tupac Shakur Arts Center" funded by the taxpayers
• Cynthia McKinney's entire political career

And we should give the government more power?

Quick Friday roundup

• E-Snailer - Write a letter on the internet
• High Trust Societies
• Fair and Balanced Radio - by Radley Balco
• Better and better car batteries. From Wired. We probably need at least one generation more of advancement before plug-in hybrids are feasible.
  

Finding humor in the little things

From CNN.com

Al Gore's son was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of possessing marijuana and prescription drugs after deputies pulled him over for speeding, authorities say.

Al Gore III, 24, was driving a blue Toyota Prius about 100 mph on the San Diego Freeway when he was pulled over about 2:15 a.m., Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

This isn't too surprising, he's been arrested for marijuana before IIRC, but he was dumb (and probably arrogant enough) enough to be going 100 miles an hour while while carrying an illegal drug and four(!) prescription drugs not prescribed to him. In a Prius, which makes it all much funnier.

The Scooter Libby commutation inspires a detached nausea in me

One of the main selling points of the rule of law is that everyone has to abide by the same ones. Or not...

Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence
President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.

Sure, the investigation seemed to be centered around something that wasn't a crime. Fine. But Libby had every opportunity to plead the fifth and he didn't. Instead he lied under oath.

I've long maintained that one of the great social blunders of my lifetime was not convicting Clinton for perjury in the Lewinsky case. Not that the crime itself was terribly notable, but setting a high, enforced standard of the rule of law would have changed subsequent presidents for the better.

John Edwards sinks to the challenge

It reminds me of the adage "he came to do good and wound up doing very well indeed."

From this NYT article

John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.
...
The money paid Mr. Edwards’s expenses while he walked picket lines and met with Wall Street executives. He gave speeches, hired consultants, attacked the Bush administration and developed an online following. He led minimum-wage initiatives in five states, went frequently to Iowa, and appeared on television programs. He traveled to China, India, Brussels, Uganda and Russia, and met with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and his likely successor, Gordon Brown, at 10 Downing Street.

I suppose helping the poor isn't worth spending one's own money. Happily the Democrats seem to be preferring the more honest hacks of Clinton and Obama.

Videotaping police

Radley Balco, in a column on FoxNews.com has an interesting and scary article video taping police at work. Basically there have been a string of incidents recently where people videotaping police at work (in uniform, in public, performing their duties) have been charged with crimes.

It's ridiculous. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for a private citizen in public view, which is why traffic cameras and the legion of private security cameras are legal (recording audio is considered different by the law). Why on earth would public servants (who are supposed to work for us mind you) be immune from this?

All this would change if we made all government agencies were funded from the public treasury and weren't self-supporting, but that's a topic for another time I suppose.

Wednesday link roundup

• An interesting post on autism and vaccines
  
• This post from EconLog

  Back in 1980, State correctional facilities had 9 violent criminals for every drug offender. By 2003, that ratio was 2.6:1.

• DOD Braces for a fight with Pelosi

  Pentagon officials are bracing for a fight with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over her desire to allow lawmakers’ adult children to tag along on taxpayer-funded travel for free.
  
  Pelosi wants them to be able to fill the role of lawmakers’ spouses when the latter are unable to make a trip because of health issues or work commitments.

  The shameful part is that they can say all that with a straight face. "Fill the role of Lawmaker's spouses", ridiculous.

Ever more Ron Paul

A good performance by Dr Paul on the Colbert Report - Colbert did raise some of his less popular positions, which Paul endorsed with some gusto. Curiously no one has mentioned that he was the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988.

Thoughts on Ron Paul on the Daily Show

He came across better than usual for his usual presentation. They talked a little about domestic policy, nothing about drug legalization or gun control, mostly spending. Not bad though.

Ron Paul on the Daily Show tonight

Republican presidential candidate, former Libertarian Party nominee, current Texas representative, temporary darling of the trendy left and overall interesting guy will be on the Daily Show tonight. We'll see if they go into his foreign policy stance (popular to the Daily Show audience, so long as it's kept vague) and away from his views on abortion and national health care.

I bash John Edwards

Everyone should check out this Bob Schrum piece in Time Magazine (h.t. TDAXP).

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else.

It's always sad when people are actually worse than you think they are. Then again, the Edwards' (sp) have run for president twice while they have young children, which should disqualify them in the first place.

Guiliani

As my libertarian and libertarian leaning friends have been bringing him up lately, here is a negative portrait of Rudy Guiliani.

And to expand on my bar rant of last night, he would make a great mayor (New Orleans needs one right now), and would probably make a great president if it were the year 1880. However, in our modern age presidents have far too much discretionary power, and pro-choice, thrice married, adulterous Catholics are far too good at living with contradictions to be trusted to keep their promises.

Michael Moore the inverted prophet

He did Bowling for Columbine, and the Democratic party changed positions on gun control, he did Fahrenheit 911 and Bush got re-elected, and now he has a new movie coming out on health care. Does that mean health care is going to be deregulated?

Monday link roundup

• A useful post from CodingHorror.com on interface friction
• Al Gore, like Ann Coulter, seems to be a mac person
• A blog for women! And one of the editors might be someone I went to high school with.
• Kuler! The Adobe web color harmony tool - via this site
• Co-Mapping (mind mapping software) looks cool
• Properly bashing ethanol
• HiddenUnities and PurposeSlog have posts on the Wire and 24. I helpfully added the Shield in the comments. All excellent programs, though 24 is basically a commercial for the cell phone industry, not torture.
  

We live in scary times when Bill Maher is right about something

Check out this post from The Agitator. The whole "They hate us for our freedom" bit sounds nice, and is partly true, but it is the most useless adage ever created. If we're going to reduce the number of terrorists to zero (the goal) we're going to need to do more than just proclaim our greatness and ignore all specifics. Sigh.

Wars in the Middle East are officially a vested interest

I read this article on CNN.com

White House taps general for 'war czar' post
President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.

In the newly created position, Lute would serve as an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, and would also maintain his military status and rank as a three-star general, according to a Pentagon official.

and was reminded of this Albert Jay Nock quote:

Experience has made it clear beyond doubt or peradventure that prohibition in the United States is not a moral issue; it is not essentially, even, a political issue; it is a vested interest.

and this H.L. Mencken quote:

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

We have this horrible tendency in our culture to see the means (a big new bureaucracy) as an end in itself, nay, an achievement. What endeavor has failed because there are too few managers? The right managers, sure, lots of failures due to a lack of them. But too few?

Plus an additional bureaucracy just creates it's own principal-agent and knowledge problems.

Functionally Lute will probably serve as a dedicated adviser, but why the title Czar? All of the Russian Czars were an odd combination of stagnant, incompetent and murderous. Why is that some role model.

Sigh.

Today's quote of the day goes to...

Cokie Roberts who characterized Barack Obama as "the candidate from Whole Foods".

Manhattan project for energy independence

Some ideas never go away; to wit, in what way does the statement, said by many "we need a Manhattan project for energy independence differ from Soviet industrial policy? It's quite different from the original Manhattan project in that it's quite wide in scope and chases an ill defined goal, whereas the original Manhattan project was quite specific in both method and destination.

Benchmarks of seriousness

I was taking an advanced economic history class during the Republican "Revolution" of 94. Someone asked the professor if there was any historical precedent for radical change following a big party switch in Congress alone. He cited many near examples I don't remember but then said "We'll know if they're serious about cutting spending if they get rid of farm subsidies.". It's now more than twelve years later and farm subsidies are going strong.

I was reading this interview with George Schulz and he, talking about oil dependence, had the line

I won’t believe we’re serious about it until we’re willing to remove the tariff on import of ethanol. And take quotas off sugar and a few things like that.

which is a fine benchmark to tell if anyone really cares about oil dependence. Support for nuclear power is a good one too.

For some technical background; American ethanol production is one of the least efficient efforts in the world, largely because we make it from corn (which we have a lot of) which is a poor source material. Sugar (of which we grow very little) is a far better source material. The American climate is not well suited to grow sugar, but it is well suited to grow corn. Both the corn and sugar lobbies are well organized and powerful and benefit greatly from subsidies and tariffs.