Month: August 2008

A stimulating vent:

To a certain extent, Russia’s rebirth was inevitable (it’s got a ton of stuff and it’s a highly literate population), and as we’ve seen in past history, its depressive phases are always followed by some manic episodes. Again, we’ve had years and years to work this one and we did little to prepare for this moment. If I’m king of the West, Russia is already deep inside a revamped Northern Hemispheric Security Alliance (a term from an old CNA pub I did in the mid-90s that looked ahead to roughly now). Would that have prevented all such turbulence from Russia? No. But better to finesse it within that context than to face what we face now: Russia is simply marking its sphere of influence more overtly and proposing its own rule set for its management. We didn’t invite Russia properly into our 21st century, so, denied any acceptable ownership of its own 20th century history (better it be all buried, say I), it slipped back into its 19th (quelle surprise, mes ami!), and yeah, that makes our management of Russia’s membership in the Core a lot more complicated. We denied them proper attention for a long time and now they’re acting out to garner negative attention: "You don’t let us decide some of your rules, then we’ll simply decide on our own where we can!"

Noam Scheiber is antsy:

You can let the suspense build and build if you’ve got a Hillary or a Gore socked away somewhere. Possibly a Biden or a Webb (or some unorthodox pick like a general or a Republican). But you’d better not come with Jack Reed or Evan Bayh after toying with people for over a week.

The McCain campaign sets the bar high for Obama:

We believe Obama will see a significant bump, and believe it is reasonable to expect nearly a 15-point bounce out of a convention in this political environment.

Heh.

Celebrities feeling good about themselves does not a campaign ad make:

Obama and McCain continue to fight over the economy. Obama has another ad slamming McCain for his housing gaffe:

While McCain whacks Obama for being "ready to raise your taxes":

How to tackle the important issues of the day:

Milk prices are too high

“This is a guy who didn’t have the luxury of milk for five and a half years — in prison.”

We’re not doing enough to find alternative sources of energy

“This is a guy who lived in the dark for five and a half years — in prison, with no light bulbs.”

Healthcare is too expensive

John McCain had little to no healthcare for five and a half years.”

"…perhaps there’s no mystery at all, and Obama’s problems are the same problems Democrats always have at the presidential level: He’s an elitist. Oh, I know. Upon reading that, some liberal spluttered herbal chai tea from her nose at the injustice of this whole elitist canard, and the earnest Ivy League interns at some liberal magazine have burst into laughter, offering the appropriate bons mots from Balzac at the preposterousness of such a suggestion, saying: ‘Don’t you conservatives understand? Democrats care about the little guy. They’re on the side of the proletariat — I mean workers — and as Obama has so eloquently put it, if the workers would only stop clinging to their silly sky god and guns, they’d understand that,’" Jonah Goldberg, NRO.

Bon mots from Balzac?

Lighting technicians check levels and camera angles at the Pepsi Center in preparation for the Democratic National Convention August 22, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

No, not the 2008 campaign. Charles Mann is worried about the world’s soil. Adding charcoal to it might increase its fertility – and even have potential for arresting climate change:

Heavily plowed soil releases carbon dioxide as it exposes once buried organic matter. Sombroek argued that creating terra preta [rich, fertile soil] around the world would use so much carbon-rich charcoal that it could more than offset the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere. According to William I. Woods, a geographer and soil scientist at the University of Kansas, charcoal-rich terra preta has 10 or 20 times more carbon than typical tropical soils, and the carbon can be buried much deeper down. Rough calculations show that "the amount of carbon we can put into the soil is staggering," Woods says. Last year Cornell University soil scientist Johannes Lehmann estimated in Nature that simply converting residues from commercial forestry, fallow farm fields, and annual crops to charcoal could compensate for about a third of U.S. fossil-fuel emissions. Indeed, Lehmann and two colleagues have argued that humankind’s use of fossil fuels worldwide could be wholly offset by storing carbon in terra preta nova.

Understandably:

Hijacked by a relatively small few, the GOP of today bears no resemblance to Lincoln, Roosevelt or Eisenhower’s party, or many of the other Republican administrations that came after. In my grandparents’ time, the thrust of the party was rooted in: a respect for the constitution; the defense of civil liberties; a commitment to fiscal responsibility; the pursuit and stewardship of America’s interests abroad; the use of multilateral international engagement and “soft power”; the advancement of civil rights; investment in infrastructure; environmental stewardship; the promotion of science and its discoveries; and a philosophical approach focused squarely on the future.

As an independent I will now feel comfortable supporting people of any political party who reflect those core values.

I’ve never been a member of any political party, but I sure know I couldn’t be a Republican these days.