Ryan Avent considers gas prices and their impact on the suburbs here and here.
Month: August 2008
Faces Of The Day
Residents flee from the town of Gori, on August 13, 2008, in Georgia. Russia has denied reports of Russian troops advancing on Tblisi, as a fragile ceasefire holds in the region. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.
A Filibuster-Proof Majority?
Chris Cillizza thinks not:
Senate Democrats will pick up a significant number of seats but still seem likely to come up short of the 60-seat barrier. A more likely best-case scenario is 57 seats or 58 seats; the latter total would give Democrats more states than at any time since 1978.
McCain In The Red Zone
He’s despatching Lindsey and Joe as emissaries to the country immediately. He’s on the phone with Sakashvilli daily. He’s giving press conferences. He’s warning of a new Tsarist empire. You can tell what sends him into high-energy zones: a clear enemy abroad. He knows black and white; and he knows war. It gives him clarity and strength. Up next: Iran and China. Oh, the conflicts we can have …
If this is the dynamic you want to see in the next president, McCain is your man.
People As Architecture
One of Willi Dorner’s and Lisa Rastl’s playful photographs of ‘bodies in urban spaces’:
The intent:
[The Artists] set out to explore the “relationship between body, space and architecture.” The urban based series was created as a set of human sculptures which were spread throughout the city of vienna. The artist has effectively transformed the human body into form, a complete reversal from the classical convention of creating the human form from a material.
More here.
Gay Campaign News
From Towleroad:
It appears John McCain has accepted the maximum individual campaign donation from the owner of America’s largest gay sex hook-up website.
My favorite comment:
Those curtains are hideous.
The ‘Burbs
Freakonomics hosts a discussion on the future of the suburbs. James Kunstler is the most dramatic:
The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins. In any case, the suburbs will lose value dramatically, both in terms of usefulness and financial investment.
Most of the fabric of suburbia will not be “fixed” or retrofitted, in particular the residential subdivisions. They were built badly in the wrong places. We will have to return to traditional modes of inhabiting the landscape — villages, towns, and cities, composed of walkable neighborhoods and business districts — and the successful ones will have to exist in relation to a productive agricultural hinterland, because petro-agriculture (as represented by the infamous 3000-mile Caesar salad) is also now coming to an end.
Matt blames policy choices:
…to make a long story short, we have the built environment we have because of policy. The past half century or so has been dominated by rules about maximum lot occupancy and minimum lot size, parking requirements, and floor area ratio caps that were designed to produce something like the suburbs as we know them. Insofar as we keep those rules, the future will resemble the present. Insofar as we change them, things will change.
No-Shows In St Paul
Among the eight Republican senators not attending the convention: Pat Roberts is the latest. Smith, Dole, Collins and Stevens are the others so far.
The Georgia-Russia Conflict
A really helpful primer on how other nations in the Caucasus have responded – from the German Marshall Fund.
Going After McCain
Obama’s new ad. I don’t follow how Iraq’s surplus is a bad thing. And I find the oil company bashing pretty depressing:
The Dish 
