Month: July 2008

Yes, Googlemaps now allows you to bike the route, from your arm-chair.

Thomas P.M. Barnett worries about the drift toward conflict after the Iran missile test:

On the Israeli side, better to get it done before Obama takes the oath. Ditto for Ahmadinejad, strangely enough. No point in having your best enemy denied to you when you need him for your own re-election.

On the other hand, how serious is the threat when you have to photoshop the record?

Auckland, New Zealand, 8.14 am.

"Obama Loves America Like O.J. Loved Nicole" – Pemberton Republican website, New Jersey.

The PEPFAR bill approaches and you can still help. Here’s an innovative way: by Facebook. There’s a group now dedicated to mobilizing online support in lobbying the Senate. You can easily email your Senator here, using a sample letter if that’s easier. Please help.

A few things have unsettled me these past couple of weeks about the Obama campaign. It is not the small adjustments to previously-held positions – FISA, the Second Amendment, Iraq. It’s a sense that Obama’s ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris. The signs of this are pretty trivial on the surface, but they are troubling nonetheless.

That simulated faux-presidential seal was both tacky, silly and presumptive – a small version of "Mission Accomplished" Obama could well do without. The decision to give his acceptance speech in a stadium, rather than the traditional convention hall is also an unnecessary over-reach. The night will be freighted enough with history; it needs no new drama to set it apart. And the drama of the first black man accepting the nomination – with Obama’s rhetorical brilliance – will be more than enough for impact. Lastly, I was gob-smacked by the Obamas’ decision to include their children in a soft-focus TV interview.

I can barely credit that Michelle Obama agreed to this and that Barack Obama went along with it – it’s not what they would have done a few months ago. One great aspect of the Obama marriage has been the way in which they appear to have brought up their daughters as very regular girls, down-to-earth, normal and sane. Displaying them in this way was bad judgment and poor parenting. Fame is a toxin. Children deserve to be protected from it as much as they would from lead paint.

Any one of these misjudgments would be a trivial lapse – and we all make mistakes. It’s the combination that concerns me – and the possibility that this campaign is becoming far too cocky for its own good.

Chait chides Obama bloggers for treating "Clinton and her fans with kid gloves":

I can see the attractiveness of the party line that Democrats are all united, and only Republicans and sexists want to suggest otherwise. I can also see the utility of trying to remember all that was good about Hillary Clinton, and paying homage to the sexism she endured, so that her supporters don’t feel do disrespected. The fact remains, however, that Clinton surrounded herself with some unattractive characters and, not coincidentally, ran a nasty, demagogic, anti-intellectual campaign, and did some non-trivial damage to the causes she claimed to be fighting for. Pointing this out now doesn’t help Obama, but I’m not working for his campaign.

Go Chait!

The blogosphere slowly unveils the complicated truth. A reader writes:

The issue isn’t how much gallium exists, it’s how much can be recovered economically. Gallium is a trace element, so it can’t be mined; it has to be extracted chemically from other minerals.

It exists in concentrations of only 50 parts per million in bauxite and zinc ores. So yes, there may be a global reserve of 1 million tons of gallium; but you might have to mine 20 billion tons (!) of other minerals to recover that. That’s why only 100 tons of gallium is produced annually. Even that much required the extraction of millions of tons of ores. We’re unlikely ever to run out of gallium, but as other minerals are depleted it will become increasingly expensive to extract and use. It’s the same basic problem that we have with oil: there is plenty of the stuff left in the ground, but we are rapidly using up the portion of it that we can recover economically.

A must-read from Gail Collins (yes, you read that right). I have yet to see any real change in the kind of politician Obama has always been in the last month or so. Collins is right that the only true U-turn is on public financing, but that is about winning. Obama has already, on many issues, defused polarization, despite frantic attempts by Fox News, the Clinton campaign and the lazy media to force him into a super-blue box. His very emergence has done wonders for the Iraq debate. I see no reason not to think that the hopes I placed on him in "Goodbye to All That" are being slowly, fitfully, imperfectly realized.

Reihan responds to Gordon and Kvaal:

I support John McCain, and I recognize that he’s facing a very tough political environment. That’s why he is often forced to embrace positions that are very much in tension with each other. My suspicion is that if McCain were running far ahead of the competition, if he faced a less polarized political environment, you’d see him embrace a different, more coherent set of policies.

Which means to say: he’s a politician, not a maverick crusader. But I’d say the climate is actually less polarized now than, say, four years ago. And Reihan’s point raises the obvious question: will McCain’s actual policies be incoherent in office – with a Democratic Congress and a restive, disloyal base?