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Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:56:07 GMT

I BUY, THEREFORE I AM – by Donald Kaul

Did you see that the price of oil got up over $100-a-barrel the other day, before falling back a few cents? If you didn’t, don’t worry about it; you’ll get another chance. Soon.

While experts are predicting a near-term retreat from $100 oil---because we seem to be teetering on the edge of a recession---they also predict a surge to $120 or so in the summer when the driving season kicks in.

That’s a lot, $120-a-barrel. It represents an all-time high and will translate into $3.75 at the pump.

There are those who will say, “Why doesn’t the President do something?”

And I will say back: “He did do something. He gave us $100-a-barrel oil.” As recently as 2003 the price of a barrel was as low as $25. That was before George Bush’s energy (ha-ha) program kicked in. The good old days.

If, in 2001, you had laid out a plan to make oil cost $100-a-barrel by 2008, it would have been pretty much the plan that George Bush and his oil-field cronies executed.

First you fight all efforts---international and domestic---at energy conservation as though they were terrorist plots conceived in the mind of Osama bin Laden.

Then you go to war in the Middle East not once but twice to destabilize the world’s top oil-producing region and send oil prices shooting up. It has been said that as much as 30 percent of the price we’re paying for oil is due to the risk of that instability.

You also make sure to propose a series of half-hearted, too-little-too-late measures to develop alternative fuels, just so you can say you’ve done something.

And, of course, you keep trying to go where Man has not gone before. And drill for oil. Wilderness preserves are especially good. It is a pathetic response to the kind of shortfall we have in oil production, but it would make a few billion bucks for your oil industry buddies (the ones writing the big checks for speeches when your time in office is done).

Anyway, it’s worked. Congratulations George. And congratulations too to the American people, nearly half of whom voted Mr. Bush into office---twice. (If this is democracy I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to spread it to the rest of the world.)

The sorry fact is that advocating real energy conservation is a form of political suicide. People embrace conservation in the abstract, but when you get down to details, where it becomes painful and expensive, they act as though you’re trying to take away their birthright. And, in a sense, you are.

To the average American, conservation of energy is un-American. Our economy is based on consumption. Less is not more, less is less and bigger is better.

Consider the television set. It arrived in the world with the promise of being the greatest educational tool since the book. And instead we made it the greatest sales tool in the history of the world.

Think on that. A machine that can bring the entire world into your living room and instead we turn it over to lying hucksters selling junk.

The American public has swallowed the absurd notion that they are defined by the things they buy and consume. Happiness consists of owning the right combination of cars, hair products, clothes and soap.

They’ve bought the lie that they are consumers before they are workers. That’s why the labor movement is dying. Unions make things cost more. They protect jobs too, but we don’t think about that until it’s too late.

So to ask a society like ours to conserve, to do with less, not to buy, is ridiculous. I buy, therefore I am.

That’s why ideas like the $2-a-gallon gas tax will never fly. People don’t want to use less gasoline. They want to use more.

Which means, whether they know it or not, they want $120-a-barrel oil.

And they’re going to get it; good and hard.

KANSAS POLITICS

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:08:09 GMT

I don't know that much about "Tanker" Todd, but IMHO, Pat needza go! BTW, did he ever get the 9-11 report to Congress wrapped up? He stonewalled so long that it's gone from the media. Also, what's happening in regards to the phony executive privelage and refusals to testify? Will this just dissapear also?

In any case, new category. KANSAS POLITICS

**************************************************
Dear Tracy Phillips,

The 2008 election year is already in full swing, and US Senate candidate Greg Orman and 4th Congressional district candidate Donald Betts have hit the ground running. These two Kansas Democrats recently launched their campaign websites.
Keep track of them online as they work to bring change and real leadership to Washington by unseating Pat Roberts and Todd Tiahrt.

Greg Orman is an Olathe businessman and entrepreneur. His commitment to fiscal responsibility, accountability, common sense, and problem-solving led him to helping businesses become more energy efficient. Greg has devoted his career to helping businesses grow and compete in the global marketplace, and now he's running for the United States Senate get our country on the right track again.

Click here to learn more about Greg!

Kansas State Senator Donald Betts has spent the last six years representing the citizens of Wichita. He is the youngest state senator in Kansas history, but that hasn't stopped Donald from fighting for issues that matter to Kansans like creating stronger schools, ending racial profiling and making socially responsible investments in KPERS. Donald's work in Wichita proven that he's ready to lead.

Click here to learn more about Donald!

**************************************************

Okay, anybody with the low-down on these two....pipe-up!

~Tracy

EXCELLENT....FRIDAY AT LAST !

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:01:51 GMT

I got a forwarded email from WS Clark. Wondered whatever happened to him, he just kinda' dissapeared. I haven't been by the WEBlog for a while. It brings out the worst in me.

Anyway, I'll just keep doing my little cutnpaste routine. I sure don't wanna go back to the talking points and swiftboating.

Since Uncle Joe pooped out, I'll back the next loser....John Edwards. Sorry John, I know you read my bloggie daily and realize this is a major kiss of death. Buck up little camper, even after losing you'll still have health insurance and plenty of cash.

MY FAVORITE POPULIST

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:49:18 GMT

WHY NOT HEALTHCARE FOR ALL? – by Jim Hightower

Sergio Olaya is a 21-year-old college student who has had to drop out of school because of our country's messed up health insurance system.

Actually, Olaya has health coverage, for he's a federal employee. But, his mother wasn't covered when she was suddenly hit with an aggressive cancer this year. She died, and her son is now grappling with $255,000 in medical bills for her treatment. The hospital has sicced its collection agency on him - so, to pay the bills, he had to quit college and is now selling the house where he and his mother lived.

Ironically, Mr. Olaya's job is in the U.S. Senate. He runs an elevator on which our honorable solons ride everyday. Senators share a ride with him, but they share none of the health-care anxieties and financial burdens that millions of Americans like Olaya carry. Members of Congress, you see, are fully covered by us taxpayers.

Well, gosh, if it's good enough for them, I'm sure it would be good enough for the rest of us. We don't want any special coverage - we'll be happy with what Congress gives itself.

Not all Senators are boneheads about this, and they're pushing bills to provide such universal coverage. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio deserves special praise, for he is refusing to accept the Congressional coverage for himself, saying he won't take it until every American is covered.

Then there's presidential contender John Edwards, who has put a strong, universal health care plan at the center of his campaign. If elected, he intends not only to push his plan in Congress, but to couple it with a bill that would strip lawmakers of their own coverage if they fail to cover everyone else.

Edwards' proposal for universal coverage also includes a single-payer alternative to compete with profiteering insurance corporations. See it all at www.johnedwards.com/issues/health-care/.

Music to watch basketball by....

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:51:37 GMT

My shirt, my hat, my booksA trip to the zooMy couch, remote, a large coke yeaI’d get on my knees, my godIf I could I would give anythingTo be you My job, my car, my cashMy house on the hillMy piano Id burn to ashes (yea)I’d get on my knees, my godIf I could I would give anythingTo be you My voice, my worm, my wifeA first born or twoI’d give the knife, my Mike if justCut me at the kneesMy God (my Jordan) I would give anythingI would give toBe

You

(Five For Fighting)

TURDSDAY OPEN

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:10:06 GMT

Today's turd hastabee the local union that bargains with my employer. After two months of talks, they accepted less than the company offered in the first place. Also lost another 20% of the membership in the process.

(cue the music from beer commercial: "Real Men of Genius")

Well, I'm non-union, so I'll be getting back to work now!

TODAY'S TIMES

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:08:56 GMT

Is Ethanol for Everybody?
By ROGER COHEN

CAMPOS, Brazil

Near what remains of the first sugar factory in Brazil, built in 1877 with a sign in Latin over the entrance that translates as “Sweet is the Reward of Work,” Danuza Gomes da Silva swings a glinting knife as she makes her way down the length of a field cutting cane.

She bends to slice the sticks of young cane dropped by other workers from the top of a truck. Again and again she straightens. A band of 12 laborers like hers plants about 10 acres a day. Sugar cane buds easily from the plowed furrows, and it grows fast. But the work associated with it is hard.

Danuza, round-faced and soft-eyed, makes between $8 and $13 a day depending on her productivity. At 35, she has four young children. Only 20 percent of the 7.5 million acres planted with sugar cane in Brazil is mechanized. The rest depends on manual labor like hers.

“I don’t want to lose my job,” she says, a smile on her face, the oversized cleaver in her hand.

Machines that plant and harvest are slowly spreading across the expanse of Brazilian cane fields. But Danuza’s harsh existence is a reminder that behind the global buzz over Brazil’s cane-based ethanol production — the 21st century’s environment-friendly biofuel par excellence — lurk enduring social problems.

Ethanol, renewable and relatively clean, is lovely. The life of the migrant Brazilian rural worker, finite and hot, is not.

Seldom has a country seen an image makeover quite as radical as Brazil’s in recent years. From the unserious land of samba, slums, soccer and smoking rain forests, it has become the realm of ahead-of-the-curve ethanol production, flex-fuel cars running on any combination of ethanol and gasoline, and a biofuel revolution that could deliver the world from $100-a-barrel oil.

Where the world once saw Pelé and poverty, it now sees prescience: a country where 80 percent of new cars run on ethanol or gasoline, all gasoline contains close to 25 percent ethanol, and ethanol accounts for more than 40 percent of fuel consumption.

These numbers reveal new U.S. targets that might replace about one-sixth of gasoline consumption with ethanol by 2020 for what they are: belated and meager.

Brazil, in other words, was busy seeing tomorrow while America viewed it as mired in the past, a place too frivolous to be futuristic.

In fact, both images hold some truth. Brazil has led the way in demonstrating the potential of ethanol, has the land to expand the industry, uses sugar-based ethanol whose yield per hectare is eight times that of U.S. corn ethanol being developed at the cost of higher food prices and has shown the feasibility of a flex-fuel auto fleet.

But a day spent visiting cane production facilities of CBAA, a sugar and ethanol manufacturer, revealed the hardship from which these achievements were wrested.

A cane field opposite an area overrun by landless peasants had been burnt in an act of arson. A man searched forlornly for a horse he’d illegally left to feed in the cane plantations and then lost. Outside a makeshift dormitory for migrant workers, men were slumped under clothes hung to dry.

“The social situation is complicated,” said Aristóteles Ramos Cardoso, the director of a local CBAA sugar and ethanol factory. “We’re near the city. We need labor. There’s no shortage of criminals.”

If the vast potential of sugar cane ethanol is to be realized, in Brazil as in poor African countries, its development must come in ordered ways that allow the likes of Danuza and her children to benefit. A new fuel should not carry oil’s frequent curse: the enrichment of a narrow elite.

This will depend on several things: the labor standards adopted by the growing hordes of international investors drawn to ethanol; the opening up of the global trading system to this biofuel that many poor tropical countries will be able to produce; and the development of a global traded commodity market in ethanol with established norms.

Without such standards, development will stall. So will social progress.

“The United States could really generate wealth for those who need it, while freeing itself from oil dependence,” said José Pessoa, the chief executive of CBAA. “It should be buying my ethanol rather than imposing tariffs on it. It should be helping to develop the sugar-cane industry in Africa. This would be the intelligent way and best for the environment.”

Pessoa is right. America must do its part, not least by freeing up its ethanol and sugar markets to imports. So must Brazil, by seeing a 35-year-old woman in the sun with children in need of education, and all the myriad people like them, through the billowing CO2-lite clouds of ethanol euphoria.

WWJB....What Would Jesus BLOG?

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:04:04 GMT

SPEAKING OF WIERD JESUS STUFF.........

MANLY STUFF FOR MANLY CHRISTIANS!

http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/

Within You Without You

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:54:51 GMT

We were talking-about the space between us all

And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion

Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away.

We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it

To try our best to hold it there-with our love

With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.

Try to realise it's all within yourself

No-one else can make you change

And to see you're really only very small,

And life flows within you and without you.

We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold and the people,

Who gain the world and lose their soul-

They don't know-they can't see-are you one of them?

When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,

Is waiting there-

And the time will come when you see

we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

THAT SINKING FEELING.....

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:13:22 GMT

Okay time for a quick rant. Does anybody else get the feeling that this election is NOT bringing changes? Look past all the hype and phony promises....whadya' see?

I see the status quo, waiting (stage left), with smiles and giggles about what is really going on. What is going on? Nothing of substance, that's what. The corporate interests are still going to own Washington. The emerging front runners represent the status quo at it's worst. I'm sure they are fine people, but they are not offering what people want. What do they want? REAL DEMOCRACY.

RANT / OFF

YOUR TURN!

TODAY'S TIMES

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:10:43 GMT

We Still Need the Big Guns

By CHARLES J. DUNLAP Jr.

THE relative calm that America’s armed forces have imposed on Iraq is certainly grounds for cautious optimism. But it also raises some obvious questions: how was it achieved and what does it mean for future defense planning?

Many analysts understandably attribute the success to our troops’ following the dictums of the Army’s lauded new counterinsurgency manual. While the manual is a vast improvement over its predecessors, it would be a huge mistake to take it as proof — as some in the press, academia and independent policy organizations have — that victory over insurgents is achievable by anything other than traditional military force.

Unfortunately, starry-eyed enthusiasts have misread the manual to say that defeating an insurgency is all about winning hearts and minds with teams of anthropologists, propagandists and civil-affairs officers armed with democracy-in-a-box kits and volleyball nets. They dismiss as passé killing or capturing insurgents.

Actually, the reality is quite different. The lesson of Iraq is that old-fashioned force works. Add 30,000 of the world’s finest infantry to the 135,000 battle-hardened troops already there, as we have done, and the outnumbered insurgency is in serious trouble. Detain thousands more Iraqis as security threats, and the potential for violence inevitably declines. Press reports indicate that the number of Iraqis in prison doubled over the last year, to 30,000 from 15,000; and while casualty figures are sketchy, military officials told USA Today last September that the number of insurgents killed was already 25 percent higher in 2007 than in all of 2006.

And while the new counterinsurgency doctrine has an anti-technology flavor that seems to discourage the use of air power especially, savvy ground-force commanders in Iraq got the right results last year by discounting those admonitions. Few Americans are likely to be aware that there was a fivefold increase in airstrikes during 2007 as compared with the previous year, which went hand in hand with the rest of the surge strategy. Going high-tech once again proved to be highly successful.

Regrettably, two other uncomfortable developments also helped suppress violence. First, the Iraqi population has largely segregated itself into sectarian fiefs. Second, supposedly “reformed” insurgents now dominate Anbar Province. While these Sunni partisans have for the moment sided with the United States, can we assume they’ve bought into the idea of a truly pluralistic and democratic Iraq?

Nonetheless, fans of the counterinsurgency manual are using it as a bludgeon against anyone who wants to plan to fight the next war rather than the last one. Their line of thinking holds that our next war will be a replay of Iraq, and thus most of our armed forces should be structured for counterinsurgency.

But this ignores other potential threats. Should we simply wish away China’s increasing muscle, or a resurgent Russia’s plans for a fifth-generation fighter that would surpass our top of the line jet, the F-22 stealth fighter? Moreover, does anyone really believe that creating corps of civil affairs officers will deter North Korea or Iran?

Yes, there is always the possibility that we may again find ourselves battling an insurgency, and the manual has many great ideas. Furthermore, the proposal for a 20,000-strong adviser corps to help Iraqi local forces fight insurgents ought to be green-lighted.

The problem emerges when we consider pouring excessive resources into preparing for only one kind of conflict. Doing so would put us at real risk of losing the technological superiority that has kept America’s vastly more dangerous threats at bay. Consider, for example, that our warplanes are on average more than 25 years old.

The enormous cost of the Iraq war, not to mention the loss of life on both sides, would seem to counsel against the idea of a similar operation elsewhere. Looking ahead, America needs a military centered not on occupying another country but on denying potential adversaries the ability to attack our interests. This is not a task for counterinsurgents, but rather for an unapologetically high-tech military that substitutes machines for the bodies of young Americans.

Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is an Air Force major general and the author of “Shortchanging the Joint Fight?,” an assessment of the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

WWJB....What Would Jesus Buy?

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:28:49 GMT

Evangelical Christians, among all people of faith, seem excited to purchase products that reinforce their religious values, according to a marketer cited in a December Denver Post report, with the result an explosion of Jesus-themed merchandise such as Jesus riding a bull, surfing and playing soccer, Jesus air-fresheners and Grapes of Galilee wine.

(Among the tackier products, according to a November report in London's Daily Telegraph, are "thongs of praise" underwear with an image of the Madonna and child, and a template to place on a bread slice in an oven to create toast with the Virgin Mary's likeness.)

[Denver Post, 12-22-07; Daily Telegraph (London), 11-25-07]

MORNING AGAIN

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:00:42 GMT

TODAY'S TIMES

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:06:40 GMT

Older Men (and Women) Trying Not to Be Angry
By ELEANOR RANDOLPH

Norman, Okla.

The bloggers, hardly the politest bunch, were calling the gathering of former and present officials on Monday at the University of Oklahoma the “Ben-Gay forum” — a nostalgia trip for oldies trying to creak their way back into electoral relevance.

Some of the more radical or wishful thinkers of the political crowd saw the session as something different: the possible beginning of a third party and another brick in the independent presidential bid by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York.

Actually, it was neither.

It was more what David Boren, former senator from Oklahoma and now president of the university, called it: a gathering of 17 “outstanding public servants” who wanted to talk about more than Mr. Bloomberg’s supposed White House aspirations or a third party.

Call it idealism or a yearning for the past, but the participants wanted to talk about more than their legacies. They wanted to warn that “America is in danger” and urge the politicians of today to fulfill their basic obligations to the country, not the party or some sliver of an interest group or the lobbyist who forks over the most lucre.

And if some participants wanted to use the threat of an independent candidacy to get the attention of Republican and Democratic regulars, at this point that seems more a tactic than a solution.

Former Senator John Danforth, Republican of Missouri, told the enthusiastic crowd on Monday, the day before the New Hampshire primary, that each party has appealed too much to its “true believers” instead of appealing to the center. Former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman said that it is up to voters to stop ceding ground to the fringes. Former Senator Chuck Robb, Democrat of Virginia, recalled, wistfully, meetings with Republican colleagues that aimed to find solutions to a big problem, not hunt for a “gotcha” to use against the other side.

For this group of political elders — two independents and the remainder split between the two parties — the fact that candidates in New Hampshire are chanting about change and Americans working together is just more evidence of the yearning out there to stop the narrow, divisive, expensive shenanigans in Washington.

This group wants the presidential hopefuls to offer specific ways to solve big problems like energy, health care and entitlements. They want candidates to promise “a truly bipartisan cabinet” and bipartisan working groups to talk about national defense, education and infrastructure.

Quixotic? Perhaps. It is easy to dismiss these lofty goals as impossible, even whimsical after eight years in which George W. Bush and Karl Rove devoted their political powers to dividing America on narrow emotional issues. But somebody should be saying what these veterans are saying. Congress does need to wear out carpet on the aisle between the two parties and thoughtful public leaders need to sit down in working groups to decide on the hard stuff instead of tearing each other apart on 24-hour television.

Before anyone, including these moderates, gives up on the two parties, it is worth thinking about what a third party could mean. A new independent party, with or without Mr. Bloomberg’s money, might siphon off moderate voters from the two main parties. If the independents did not succeed, which history suggests they would not, the main parties could wind up even more dominated by the screamers on both sides.

Right now, there is no third party and no candidate, just thoughtful people trying to get the political system to look at bigger ideas. In today’s political world, there is nothing wrong with that.

IT'S THE ECONOMY....stewpud !

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:39:24 GMT

From Hype to Fear

By Paul Krugman

The unemployment report on Friday was brutally bad. Unemployment rose in December, while job creation was minimal — and it’s highly likely, for technical reasons, that the job number will be revised down, showing an actual decline in employment.

It’s the latest piece of bad news about an economy in which the employment situation has actually been deteriorating for the past year. It’s no longer possible to hope that the effects of the housing slump will remain “contained,” as one of 2007’s buzzwords had it. The levees have been breached, and the repercussions of the housing crisis are spreading across the economy as a whole.

It’s not certain, even now, that we’ll have a formal recession, although given the news on Friday you have to say that the odds are that we will. But what is clear is that 2008 will be a troubled year for the U.S. economy — and that as a result, the overall economic record of the Bush years will have been dreary at best: two and a half years of slumping employment, three and a half years of good but not great growth, and two more years of renewed economic distress.

The November election will take place against that background of economic distress, which ought to be good news for candidates running on a platform of change.

But the opponents of change, those who want to keep the Bush legacy intact, are not without resources. In fact, they’ve already made their standard pivot when things turn bad — the pivot from hype to fear. And in case you haven’t noticed, they’re very, very good at the fear thing.

You see, for 30 years American politics has been dominated by a political movement practicing Robin-Hood-in-reverse, giving unto those that hath while taking from those who don’t. And one secret of that long domination has been a remarkable flexibility in economic debate. The policies never change — but the arguments for these policies turn on a dime.

When the economy is doing reasonably well, the debate is dominated by hype — by the claim that America’s prosperity is truly wondrous, and that conservative economic policies deserve all the credit.

But when things turn down, there is a seamless transition from “It’s morning in America! Hurray for tax cuts!” to “The economy is slumping! Raising taxes would be a disaster!”

Thus, until just the other day Bush administration officials were in denial about the economy’s problems. They were still insisting that the economy was strong, and touting the “Bush boom” — the improvement in the job situation that took place between the summer of 2003 and the end of 2006 — as proof of the efficacy of tax cuts.

But now, without ever acknowledging that maybe things weren’t that great after all, President Bush is warning that given the economy’s problems, “the worst thing the Congress could do is raise taxes on the American people and on American businesses.”

And even more dire warnings are coming from some of the Republican presidential candidates. For example, John McCain’s campaign Web site cautions darkly that “Entrepreneurs should not be taxed into submission. John McCain will make the Bush income and investment tax cuts permanent, keeping income tax rates at their current level and fighting the Democrats’ plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011.”

What “crippling” tax increase, which would tax entrepreneurs into submission, is Mr. McCain talking about? The answer is, proposals by Democrats to let the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year expire, returning upper-income tax rates to the levels that prevailed in the Clinton years.

And we all remember how little entrepreneurship there was, how weakly the economy performed, during the Clinton years, right? Oh, wait. (I’ve put some charts comparing job performance during the Clinton and Bush years on my Times blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com. It’s pretty startling how comparatively weak the Bush era looks.)

Never mind. The whole point of scare tactics is that they can work even in the face of inconvenient facts.

And what I’m not sure about is whether the Democrats are ready for the fight they’re about to face.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Barack Obama won his impressive victory in Iowa with a sunny, upbeat message of change.

But there’s a powerful political faction in this country that understands very well that any real change will create losers as well as winners. In particular, any serious progressive reform of health care, let alone a broader attempt to reduce middle-class insecurity and inequality, will have to mean higher taxes on the affluent. And members of that faction will do whatever it takes to scare people into believing that change means disaster for the economy.

I don’t think they’ll succeed. But it would be a big mistake to assume that they won’t.

NO CATEGORY

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:26:23 GMT

TODAY'S TIMES

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:59:20 GMT

Stirred, Not Shaken

By MICHAEL KINSLEY

IF it’s a question of “experience” versus “change,” change will win every time. Hillary Clinton, of all people, should have known that. Doesn’t she remember 1992? That was when her husband made “change” his mantra and chanted it all the way to the White House. This year, Mrs. Clinton tried to suggest that Barack Obama does not have enough experience to be president. He hung her experience around her neck and chanted the change mantra himself.

An Obama presidency would, in fact, be a huge change in all sorts of obvious ways. Yet on the Republican side as well, there is talk of change. Of course it is trickier with a sitting Republican president. But that hasn’t stopped one of the candidates from seizing on the word and using it as the centerpiece of his campaign.

It’s not the candidate you would have guessed if you haven’t been listening to them: it’s Mitt Romney. Nothing better illustrates the mystical power of “change” in American politics, and its malleability, than its selection by the expensively engineered Romney machine, even though the word doesn’t seem to apply in any way to the man or his campaign.

It’s hard to say what Mr. Romney’s campaign is really about. He would clearly do or say anything or its opposite to become president. But, in general, he seems to be trying to make himself as conventional a Republican as possible, calling for tax cuts blah blah blah, supporting President Bush 100 percent on Iraq, shedding any aberrant views on abortion or gay rights that he may have picked up by accident in Massachusetts.

He radiates conventionality, with his “Leave-It-to-Beaver”-and-then-some family and his good looks straight out of “Mad Men,” the TV series about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s. (I was a few years behind Mr. Romney at a small private high school in Michigan. He graduated in 1965 and looks exactly the same now as he did back then.) If anything, his message ought to be stability: things do not have to change.

Mr. Romney’s actual mantra is “change in Washington,” but that is no more helpful in the logic department. He is not campaigning for Congress. Bragging that he will bring “change in Washington” is either a purposeful insult to a sitting president of his own party, or it means nothing at all. Clearly, it means nothing at all.

Of the two leading Republicans, it is Mike Huckabee who is the more obvious agent of change, for his party and the country, with his ambitious plans for destroying the economy with a national sales tax and his Democratic-sounding attacks on wealth and privilege. But Mr. Huckabee has let Mr. Romney steal the word from him.

The appeal of “change” as a cri de coeur is that it sounds dynamic without committing you to anything in particular. Any slogan shared by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is going to be pretty meaningless. Not only can voters give it any meaning they wish, it can have different meanings for different voters.

Best of all, being the candidate of change in some vague and meaningless way gives you cover to come out for stasis in most of the particulars. Americans say they want change, and think they want it, but there is room for doubt. The candidates of real, serious change, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are going to be dropping like petals. And no wonder: they are scary. Change is scary.

What are the candidates actually promising? As often as not, it is protection from change. They will not muck around with your Social Security. They will make sure that you don’t lose your health insurance — and that you will always be able to keep your own doctor. The world is changing fast, but they will protect you from any dire effects. They won’t let the country get flooded with poisonous toys from China or workers from Mexico or (a Mike Huckabee offering) terrorists from Pakistan. A fence, that’s what we need. A fence to cower behind, to keep out change, or at least to slow it down.

There is nothing contemptible about a reluctance to change. Most of us have it pretty good in this country, and can’t be blamed for wanting things to stay that way. For that to happen, though, will require some wrenching changes. The list isn’t surprising, or really very long, compared with the list of our blessings. We need to use less energy and borrow less money. We need to fix our schools and reform our health care system. We need to end a stupid war.

Is this what people mean when they demand “change”? Are these things what the candidates have in mind when they promise to deliver it? If so, great. But all of these (except, maybe, ending the war) will require some changes that are unpleasant. We as a society have shown no tolerance for unpleasant changes, and politicians have shown no enthusiasm for trying to persuade us that they might be necessary.

If all you want is happy changes, you really don’t want change at all.

Donut Day Masonry?

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:55:57 GMT

Good morning donut fans. If I were closer, I'm sure I could lend a hand on the masonry. Or at least some tools!

A quick inventory reveals these tools in my collection: a 10" diamond blade masonry wet-saw, a cement mixer, a mortor mixing pan and hoe, numerous trowels, a brick hod, buckets, levels, and just about any hand tool you would need! Not to speak of the thousands of bricks that I need to sell off.

Since I no longer have the time, energy, and motivation to play with all these toys....I suppose I really should have an auction.

MinutemanMedia.org

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:01:47 GMT

IT’S NOT CALLED THE SILLY SEASON FOR NOTHING — by Donald Kaul

Once upon a time, not that long ago, I was an all-purpose political commentator, geysering opinions on world affairs, global warming, the price of oil. I was really something.

Now I just write about religion, mainly. Who’s Christian, who’s not. Who believes in God more; less.

God I’ll be glad when the Iowa Caucuses are over.

They used to be kind of fun, you know. They used to be about major issues of the day. I remember back in 1968 when Gene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon Johnson on the issue of the war in Vietnam. People almost came to blows in the caucus meetings that year.

Now you can’t even mention the war in candidate debates. Really. In the most recent debates the monitor, the editor of the newspaper formerly known as the Des Moines Register, actually forbade discussion of the war in Iraq. And the candidates, Democrats and Republicans alike, went along with the gag.

Instead of a boring old issue like the war she asked them, I’m told, what their New Year’s resolutions were. And they told her.

I haven’t checked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jefferson Memorial moved three inches off its foundation.

Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher, seems to be winning the God game for the Republicans. The most recent polls put him at 35 percent, compared to 27 for Mitt Romney, the previous front-runner. Asked to account for that, Huckabee said:

“There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000”

Poor Mitt. He’s forced to spend his time convincing Iowa’s conservatives he’s more religious than that and, like any good Christian, that he hates illegal immigrants more than Huckabee does. But always he makes sure to say things like: “Most of us believe in God.”

“Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

To which smart aleck Huckabeephiles might say “…and a woman and a woman and a woman.” (I myself, by the way, would never make a joke like that. It is racist. It is sexist. It is Mormonist. I’m just reporting the news.)

Romney tried to gain an advantage by saying that Huckabee, when governor of Arkansas, issued more than 1000 pardons to convicted criminals.

Huckabee’s forces shot back by planting a scurrilous story that Mrs. Romney had given $150 to Planned Parenthood in 1994.

I’ll tell you, politics can be a dirty business.

John McCain, who is disappearing from the radar screen in Iowa, is left with issues like the mortgage crisis or the war (when debate monitors are out of the room) or even campaign finance. How he ever expects to get nominated talking about things like that I’ll never know.

The religious issue isn’t that big a deal in the Democratic contest in Iowa. Once you lay to rest the rumor that Barak Obama is a secret Moslem there’s not much there.

Democrats tend to argue about which of them is more electable. Hillary Clinton thinks she is because she’s spent time in the White House. Obama says he’s the one who can mend the frayed seams in the fabric of the party and, later, the nation. John Edwards says he’s got the best policy positions and Joe Biden claims to have the most expertise, Bill Richardson the most experience.

There’s some truth in all of those claims but you have to wonder whether anyone cares.

Looking at the Republican candidates, you would think that any of the Democrats would be electable. This is the weakest Republican field---in terms of credentials and experience---in memory. The only one among them who seems as though he could do the job without adult supervision is McCain and his party doesn’t like him much.

Still, that’s why they have elections, isn’t it?

I’ll just be happy to see the back end of the Iowa caucuses. I’m religioned out.

OFF THE STUMP

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:26:29 GMT

Well, as predicted, the two most qualified candidates bit the dust. Now the pressure is off so I can spend the rest of the year bitchen' about about them instead of supporting anyone. (which is a damned American thing anyhow).

KANSAS UNIVERSITY GETS THE "W"!! HOO-RAY!