It has been said that we went in space to explore but what we really discovered was ourselves.  This is perhaps one of the most famous images taken during our lunar exploration period.  The picture is just a few months shy of 40 years old.  It has been attributed with starting the modern ecological movement.

It's a picture of Earth rising above the lunar surface.

However, as important as that picture is, I wish you show you another one.

Here it is.

This is a picture taken by the orbiting Hubble Telescope at a black spot in the sky, covering an area of a grain of sand held arm's length away.  Yes, that tiny an area.  Yes, at what was "black sky".

The image contains 3000 galaxies.   Galaxies. 

For those that don't remember basic astronomy, a galaxy contains somewhere between 10 million to 1 trillion stars.

And there are 3000 of these galaxies in this picture.

I often think of this picture as a Rorschach test.  Does it make you feel insignificant?  Does it make you feel special?

It makes me feel special. It makes me realize the uniqueness of the beauty of the world around me.  The Earth.  Human evolution.  Human empathy.  

We are not even large enough to be insignificant in the context of this picture.

And that's the reason we are special.

I have this picture next to my computer.  I contemplate it every day.  I hope you find it as I do:  making you feel the specialness of your existence.

Be forewarned:   this blog is about some very uncomfortable topics (not the least of which are mathematically based), but if they can’t be introduced at TPM, how are we going to introduce them to the American public?

It is not coincidental that the rise of the so-called progressive or liberal ideas date back to the 17th century, a time just as Great Britain was developing the First Industrial Revolution using coal.  The age of machines and harnessed energy liberated humans from being no different than beasts of burdens.  Today we live in a world where machines provide so much in the ways of convenience that even the poorest among us have more cheap energy harvest around them than the slave owners from Ancient Rome or the kings who used peasant labor to make their kingdom run.

However, we are fast approaching, the Malthusian scenario where the exponential growth of the Earth’s population of humans is outstripping our means of supporting them.  There is not a single example of exponential growth that doesn’t end somewhere – even Moore’s law associated with the explosion of the semiconductor industry has a projected end.  To understand the arithmetic behind exponential growth, look at Albert Bartlett’s video (all 8 parts) on YouTube.  (A very short article - without the arithmetic - is found here .)

So, we must expect that the exponential growth of humans, too, will come to an end.

The reason is simple:  the Earth is finite – therefore it can only hold a maximum number of people on it.

As William Catton discusses in his book OVERSHOOT, it is leaps in technology that allowed humans to increase their overall numbers for a given amount of resources.  Unfortunately, our last technology leap, cheap energy brought about by fossil fuels and the industrial revolution it spurred (starting with coal in Britain and moving to oil in the US), is now over.

Peak oil is upon us.  This means that the easiest amount of oil has already been pumped from the ground and we are now moving to the hard parts:  deeper in the ground, in more inhospitable regions, more refining necessary, etc.  Up until now, alternatives aren’t economically feasible.  Only now are they beginning to look (maybe) competitive with oil.  What does this mean?

It means that the price of energy is never going to get lower than it is today, because if it did with any magical alternative fuel, the alternative fuel would already have replaced oil.  As a simple example:  oil replaced coal because it was cheaper, burns more efficiently and is generally more useful.  It is an easy logical step to recognize that any fuel coming out today will be the equivalent of $5/gal or more - because thats what we are paying for gasoline.

The notion of the world being able to rise to the present lifestyle of the US today, when we, as 5% of the world’s population, use about 25% of the world’s energy, makes no mathematical sense.  To get all countries to our standard of living would require five times the world’s current energy usage – and already we are running out.

Nuclear energy is also finite – most people don’t recognize this but it is.  It is highly improbably that wind and solar or biofuels can be scaled up to the size needed.  Here is a brief summary article on various fuels.

In other words, we are using up the planet ferociously, both in terms of the amount of stuff that we need from it and in terms of the rate we are using it up, preventing the planet from healing from the effects.  At Bartlett points out in his video, if the bacteria in a Petri dish doubles every minute, then when the Petri dish is still just half empty, you are a minute from disaster.

Our Petri dish is about half empty.  And the clock is ticking.

In the second and final part of this blog, I will discuss implications from this no-win scenario.

One of the problems of the upcoming economic crisis we will face (regardless of who wins the White House) is that we are woefully unprepared for it.

The duel demons of the end of cheap energy (peak oil) and the devaluation of the dollar (private debt) are converging to give us one hell of a shock.

It should be pointed out that we could have conserved fuel (we didn't) and we could have not gone into reams of private debt (despite government telling us to spend, spend, spend).  It is hypocritical to blame the government, when the future was in our hands all along.  After all, Republicans and Democrats and Independents alike have bought larger cars and taken out ridiculous amounts of credit.

Like the obese diabetic in the hospital, it's too late to think about what we should have done when we were busy shoveling in the fast food into our bodies -- it only makes sense to look ahead.

We aren't prepared.  Not by a long shot.  In fact, the best prepared people may be those living in Appalachia and similarly very rural areas who are so poor, they already know how to live off the land.

No one is going to need to know how to work the Windows OS registry in the future, or how to design a website.

They will need to know how to survive.  And most of us count on an infrastructure, backed by a strong central government, that may not be there.

A recent book shows how the people of the USSR were better prepared for the collapse of their government than the US might be.

However, you don't need to read the book:  an excellent summary of it is given by the author, Dmitry Orlov, here.

Happy scrounging.

So, there you are.  You have a special rant about the US Government you need to get off your chest.  Rather than bug your co-workers in a needless political discussion -- besides, you already know you are correct, don't you? -- why not spread your love to the people who might actually be able to do something about it?

Yes, this is a blog designed to help send your special missive to your elected officials in a way to generate the maximum amount of attention as possible (short of a death threat, which isn't advisable, of course).   These tips are gleaned from personal experience with members of Congress (both sides of the aisle) and their staffers.

For starters, phone calls as a way of influencing the opinion of your elected official are pointless unless they (or the staffer who picks up) know you personally or you represent a powerful lobby.  Or work in Hollywood.  Actually working in Hollywood isn't enough, you actually have to be a celebrity.  Reality shows don't count.  So save the phone calls for when you know the staff personally and you are working on a specific issue with them.

I wouldn't even know how to send a telegram to Congress, although if you figure it out, the sheer novelty may actually get it passed around the staff -- for the wrong reasons.  Look!  A cool letter WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS STOP.

What does that leave us?  Snail mail, email, and faxes.  There are some common elements, several are addressed in this generic primer.  Pay particular attention to the form of addressing your elected official.  Sometimes it hurts to address them as "The Honorable"... but do it!  Also recognize that the term "Congressman/woman" is not preferred.  In writing, use the gender neutral "Representative", save the Congressman/woman for when you are talking to them in person.  (It can happen!)

Writing to Congress via snail mail is not only so 20th century, since 9/11 it is debilitating.   Mail can take 3-4 weeks to get Congress because of anthrax monitoring. Longer if it is a package.  Much longer.  Even Congress moves faster than the USPS + screening.   Your issue may be resolved or dead by the time the staffer even sees the letter.  If it makes you feel better, by all means, write your heart out in this manner. But use a quill to remind yourself how effective this technique will be in the 21st century.

Which brings us to that most ubiquitous form of 21st century communication.  No, not text messages. Unless you happen to know your elected official's personal cell phone.  In which case, you probably have better access anyway.  Assuming that the elected official even knows how to text.

I speak, instead, of email.

Here's the fact:  Congress doesn't take emails from the public.  Their staffers do and, if you are very lucky, you might find out the staffers' email addresses because they write to you. (If this happens consider yourself lucky that you got someone's attention.)

No, electronic communication for Congress consists of text box fill-in forms on elected official's website.   In other words, you are limited to a certain number of characters, you don't end up with a record of what was sent (how convenient), and you don't get an editor (or, often, even a preview panel).

In other words, it's like submitting something to TPM.

Only worse.

Because in addition to the letter, you are given a Chinese menus of "topics" that the letter falls under (e.g. Homeland Security, Iraq War, Energy, etc.)  In other words, it's sort of like the "Muckraker" or "Election Central" boxes on TPM.

So maybe it is like submitting something to TPM.

How unfortunate!

Why the Chinese menu?  Because you are sending the letter to the specific staffer on that particular topic.  And that staffer will handle the letter.  But, what happens if your letter doesn't fit into one of the pre-defined bins?

I think you know this one.  You hit the "other" box.  Which means your special rant ends up who-knows-where.  Which probably means it will be read after all the other web emails where people were kind enough to limit their issue to ones the elected official thought were important.

Is that any way to treat your special rant?

In addition, Congress tends to look at web emails like phone calls.  Perhaps because it comes over the phone lines.  Who knows?  But email, despite the fact you actually had to type it, doesn't have the same weight of written correspondence.  After all, email is sent via the ether which has no weight at all.

So, how to combine written correspondence with modern communication?  Go back to the 80s with that new fangled fax technology.  This is the communication form you want to use.  Trees had to die for you to get that note to Congress -- and so the elected official takes notice.

Please understand that this rule applies to all members of Congress -- even the environmentally conscience ones.  They love paper.  That's what they push in Washington.  Even the environmentally conscience ones.  Give'em what they want.  They might just return the favor.

So, a fax is the best way of getting the staff's attention, and it's therefore the best way of getting the elected official's attention. Of course, the staffer will dutifully log the fax and they will figure out what staffer to route it to.  But because all faxes have to be given thought in the routing, you know your letter won't end up in the dreaded "other" pile.

Okay.  So, you will go fax Congress.  Now, who to fax?

Strictly speaking, you have only 3 choices:  your two Senators and your Representative.  Go for all of them.  A dead tree will certainly produce 3 sheets of paper.  Why write a letter to your Representative after the House has voted?  Well, at least you can register which way they should think about something in the future.

Besides, you already wrote a nice little rant.  Wouldn't you like to share it with a 50% bigger audience.

Note to self:  make sure to stay ahead of the issues, however.   Try to write before the votes rather than after. 

Note, however, if you are not a constituent, the elected official won't care about you.  Nothing personal, but let's be honest:  They don't care about you anyway -- accept to get your vote on the next go around.  And for that, you need to be in their district.  So they will make exceptions for their constituents, pesky individuals though they be.

If you send a letter to a member of Congress who doesn't represent you, it will be tossed.  Well, except if it has a death threat, but we already ruled out that as a possible topic of the letter.  So don't waste your time.  Don't make trees die for no reason at all.

Now there is an exception to this rule:  you can write to any member of Congress who is playing a certain role in what you are bringing to their attention.  For example, suppose you have an issue with -- oh, I don't know -- a privacy bill being looked at in the Senate.   So in addition to writing to your elected officials, you might also write the leaders and ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee (in this case John D. Rockefeller, IV who is the Democrat and Christopher Bond who is the Republican).

If the Bill were in the House, not only would you write the ranking members of the appropriate House Committee but also any Representatives of the Committee from your state.  I have known this trick to work -- you might think they toss it out, but occasionally, they assume you are dumb and didn't know who your Representative was and will pass it onto your Representative ("Hey, your dumb constituent sent me this letter, but I think it's meant for you") and now you have your Representative's Office looking at a piece of paper given to them by another Representative.  How much more attention do  you think that will give that piece of paper?

Almost worth a tree's life at that point.

Hey, did you notice something?  I told you to send your special rant to both parties.  That's right.  You may hate your elected official, but guess what?  You are stuck with him until the next election.  At least make him work for you.  You can even pretend you will vote for him.  Why not?  Not only will you get a good feeling that you got this person -- whom you detest -- to do your bidding, you will secretly try to take their job away at the first chance you get!  That's two good feelings for the price of one!

Of course, if you like your elected official, you can still make it look like you will vote for them.

In other words, make promises that you may or may not keep.  People in Congress are used to this type of behavior.  They invented it.

Okay, so now you know what to send (a fax) and who to send it to.

What about content?

This is even more important.

Never, ever send more than about 1 page of written material.

That's an important point.  Let me repeat so it looks important:

Never, ever send more than about 1 page of written material.

Nice.  It looks really important now.

What do I mean by written material?  I mean the actual guts of the letter, after you get done with all the 'Honorable' stuff  that made you lose your lunch when you wrote it.

The very first sentence should state

a) why you are writing to them ("... because you are my Senator..." or "... I am writing to you as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee..."

and

b) what you are writing about

That's all in the first sentence.   Do you know why?  Unless you are a brilliant writer (and you aren't), no one will read the whole letter to figure out what you are writing about.

In Washington, the trick is to get the piece of paper away from  you as quickly as possible.  So tell them which staffer to give the piece of paper to.  In the first sentence.  Because if you don't tell them, the waste basket may get too close to the fax machine and ... whoops!

Okay, sentence number 1 down.  What next?  Why sentence number 2! And here is the subject of Sentence 2:  write the summary point.  How do you stand on the issue?

This letter to Congress isn't great literature.  Don't make it a mystery novel where they have to get to the end to understand the beginning.  It's a thumbs up or thumbs down issue.  Make it easy for them to figure out what side you are on.  Because they may get confused with all your justification -- and decide you feel differently about the issue than you do!

Now for the middle bit.  Through in some clever arguments.  Maybe even a precedent.  How about something historical?  Hey, the more educated you look, the more you look like you can give large dollars to their next campaign.  They like that!  But don't get cute and sarcastic. Elected officials are many things, but they do have good memories about people who take the time to write in (remember the log book?)... and if you build an impression that you are always mouthing off, the protest has less teeth.  Besides, you aren't that funny anyway.  If you were, you'd be a paid comedian and then you'd be a celebrity and be able to call the elected official directly.  (See above.)

Also, remember to include your name, phone number, and email address on the letter.  Make it easy for them to get in contact with you.  If you get a call from a staffer or a field officer, congratulations!  You are now talking to the most important person in the elected official's office.   Because the dirty secret is that the staffers do nearly all the work, the elected official is more like the front man.  Think of it this way:  if you had a problem with your computer, would you rather a call back from the Chief Engineer of the manufacturer, or the CEO?

Each letter that Congress gets is assumed to represent some number of like-minded constituents.  Because when you actually have to take this kind of effort, you are feeling pretty strongly about something.   And Congress does take these letters seriously.  (Did I say letters?  I meant faxes... always send faxes!)

Lastly, do not expect a response from your fax, you almost never get one.  But if you have done your job correctly, the correspondence will at least be in the right place with an appropriate weight.  It may just influence your elected official.  And doesn't it feel good to know that you are exercising your political voice?  At least until the next election, when that same official may just need you to help keep their job!

Please recommend this post to give it the maximum amount of exposure and bookmark it the next time you have a special rant that you would like to share with those public servants who go to Washington to represent you.

I recently blogged talking about how we will need a real rail system to cover the country to allow the country stay as a county.

The blog got a mere 18 recommends, which actually isn't too bad for these larger issue posts.  (It pales to the 101 recommends I received for a blog discussing how there was, in my view, a set of misplace priorities of what the editors thought was important news.  As always, articleman's rules seem to apply, but that's a different topic.)

Events are running quite rapid now -- perhaps more rapid that typical political junkies are used to.  The collapse of the airline system, as we know it, is probably neigh.  I give it about 18 months tops.  In other words, when the numbers of calendar year 2008 and 2009 are on, it will be clear that airplane travel won't be for everyone.

As further evidence of that, I offer the following news item, wherein United Airlines is going to make you stay in your destination longer.  I suspect people will in the near term go back to buying split tickets -- and perhaps a spontaneous marketplace will form where some clever company will match up two people between two cities and they can share their split tickets somehow, allowing each to avoid the minimum stay.

The only problem with that scheme is the TSA and their strict rules about who holds a ticket and who gets on the plane.  This isn't the airports we knew from the 1980s...

If you want to see an era when airline travel was cool, I suggest looking at CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.  

I suggest our children will think about any travel via airline in a similar manner.  Even the lack of comfort in those cylindrical cattle cars will seem luxurious for people who can't get from city to city.

It's time to make a rapid commitment to a true national rail system.  It's time to let the candidates know this year that this project needs to be undertaken now.

And don't let the GOP tell you it has to be privatized (which they are already gearing up to do).

Anyone notice in Josh's new vid, he takes a cab to the book signing event?  I mean, this is point to point transport in NYC, probably one of the best cities in the country for rail connections.  And he took a cab.

I'm pointing this out not to pick on Josh, but to show how even those people who want to push a progressive agenda, still stick to an older lifestyle -- even when an alternative is readily available.

This is a point that few at TPM are truly willing to absorb.

The signs are all around us, however.  For example, the airline industry is collapsing... big time.  None of the so-called alternate fuels will be able to keep those planes flying.

So how to do business?  How to travel in a country the size of the US?

Good question.  Without a real railway system, you won't be able to.

It wasn't always like this. 

A 1941 fact book from
the Association of American Railroads noted: “It is estimated
that cities and towns served by railroads and the territory adjacent
to railway lines embrace more than 98 percent of the total population
of the country.”

With the exception of the Amtrak-owned-and-maintained Northeast Corridor (between Boston Massachusetts, New York, Philadelphia Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.) and some service around Chicago,
Amtrak services are substantially slower, less reliable, and less
frequent than those of virtually every other developed nation in the
world.

So when you hear talk of alternate fuel research and payoff in the future, let's start bringing up a true mass transit system that will link cities across the US.   We can do this today.  It requires no research.  And it is essential.  Not only will we be creating jobs domestically, but more importantly, we will prevent the country from breaking down into regionalism.

The time for this is now...or never.   And if we don't get Obama and McCain talking about this issue, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

How nice!  On the TPM homepage, the lead article concerns itself whether the media was "fair" to Hillary or not.

And buried on the front page, and not even an ElectionCentral post as I write this, is the fact that Al Gore is endorsing Obama.

I have, for a long time, pointed out that TPM didn't really show much bias either for or against a candidate.  However, now that Hillary is gone, apparently TPM didn't get the memo.  Story after story about her -- and now we finally have come to a meta-story about her.

Which makes this a meta-meta-post, I suppose.

Oh, I know it must be fun to opine on a subject where anyone can sound like an expert with little real worry about being exposed since there is no "definitive" answer.

Unfortunately, there has been a study by Pew/Harvard which, at very least, is more respectable than chatting over Starbucks lattes or Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Bummer that TPM doesn't seem to mention this study, isn't it?

Or to pull an old Hillary metaphor:  the TPM story on the NY Times story looks almost like a Xerox of a Xerox.

It's time for TPM to move with the times:  the present election is about Obama and McCain. 

Unless you want to run a movie review of the Bush v. Gore court case <em>Recount</em> currently on HBO.  It's a pretty good movie and you can even tie it into Hillary's "every vote must count" mantra.

Hillary Clintons' endorsement speech today was well delivered and it certainly left no chance for the record to misinterpret her stated commitment for Obama.

While others are talking about how it was "all about me", I had a different impression:

She has never talked so much about running as a woman in such a concentrated form.  I have been on record here as saying that Obama was running as an American while Hillary was running as a woman.

But that was from a more large perspective.  Today, we saw her wrap up her candidacy as if the very reason for running at all was to prove that a woman could be president.

From this sense, her campaign may well be viewed as a gender-breaking campaign in the way that Jesse Jacksons 1988 run was a racial-breaking campaign.

There was a little lip service paid to those who are down-and-out, of course, but for the most part, Hillary surprisingly reduced the scope of her campaign to that of a woman running.  Of course, this speech was not meant for 18 million people, but her core demographic:  women.  In that sense, maybe it's not so surprising.

I can't help but wonder, however, if these were thoughts she has wanted to get out for years, but couldn't in terms of the campaign (for fear of making gender the central issue of her run).

A skillful, political speech, no doubt.  It was absolutely required of her to do this type of speech to maintain any relevance in the larger Democratic inner circles going forward.  Her core advisers and party elders probably have indicated to her that the need for rehabilitation of her image must commence immediately if she is to have any political career at all.

Given Hillary's overwhelming advantages in 2007, had she been able to keep this tone after IA and through 5 more months, she probably wouldn't have had to give this particular speech at all.  This thought, along with these remarks from a former president, form a valuable lesson for those aspiring politicians out there. 

You can already feel it starting here at TPM:

McCain is doddering.  He's old.  Senile.  Can't make a speech.

However, we can turn this all around:

Obama is green.  Empty suit.  And... yes... black.

You see?  To go after the GOP nominee with meaningless emotional pokes only invites things to be turned around on the Dem candidate.

And what's the point?  Unlike the Dem Primary, there are very easy, very obvious differences between the two parties this year:

-  War on Iraq  (Obama can state he was against it without caveat)

-  Energy and the Economy (Obama was against the "gas tax holiday", not McCain)

-  Tax issues (Obama will make taxes more equitable)

And on and on....

So if you want to convince others how to vote, why not start with these fundamental policy differences?  They are easy to grasp and don't require much background reading.

And then if someone says:   "But, but, Obama is green and an empty suit", you can reply

"Yes, and McCain is old and not a dynamic speaker... you see what a silly argument you are making is?  It really gets us nowhere.  Can we go back to discussing policy now?"

There is no way the Dems can lose on a policy argument this year -- and it appeals to the better angels of our nature.

Let's hit the road!

Could there be any more difference between Hillary and Obama?  Tonight underscored, once again, major differences.

Hillary, of course, didn't even acknowledge that Obama won.  She insinuated she was the leader of 18 million people (really?  polling indicates a serious buyers' remorse for her).  She plugged, like a radio show host, once again her website.  She, once again, ran as a woman.  She didn't quell the chants of "Denver, Denver, Denver".

And she wanted a write-in to "help her decide what do do next".

Obama, on the other hand, evoked history.  Didn't make mention of the color of his skin.  Said that he honored McCain's accomplishments even if McCain would deny his.  Could speak without caveats about his opposition to the War in Iraq.   And he spent a great deal of time lauding Hillary's accomplishments and her career.

And he stirred a stadium full of people with an awesome power that should scare the GOP party and any GOP candidate running.

Obama already looked the president tonight compared to the other two. 

Any other thoughts?

Once again we hear rumors about Hillary wanting help from Obama with her campaign debts.  This is not surprising.

What is surprising are many of the posts that have appeared on TPM.

In a scene straight out of our present housing crisis, Hillary bets the farm and now wants someone else to bail her out.  This is similar to both the people who took out mortgages that were beyond their means and for the banks who made the bad loans.

No bailouts!

This campaign could have been over weeks ago.  Every other politician has to drop out when they have no money left.  John McCain cut back to the point of near oblivion.

The Clintons did neither.

Meanwhile, they continued to bilk the “working man” by buying donuts and renting halls when the only reason anyone took their credit was their last name.  Now, once it became clear that Hillary was a credit risk, I have little sympathy for vendors and merchants that lent her money.

But her hypocrisy knows no bounds.  While courting these people for votes, she was stiffing them!  And the Clintons could cut a check and pay them all off within 30 days.

How many people here gave money to Obama to help beat Hillary while she was running up a debt?  Wouldn’t you rather have had Hillary drop out and use that money for something else (GE, charity, college fund)?

And it is Hillary that cries for donations?  The Clintons remind me of people that drive drunk, plow into your lawn, hit a tree, and then sue you for damage to their car.

Save your empathy and warm feelings for people that truly need it.

Dan K recently posted an interesting challenge to think about what the left might want to accomplish by 2058.  Because I didn't see his blog until near the end of it's life-expectancy on the recommended list, I had a chance to look over all the comments.

There was a decided amount of groupthink that was apparent.  I mean, who isn't for a kindlier, gentler, future?

The problem is that you have to graft any meaningful discussion on the realities present.  For those of you who view this as a needlessly negative exercise, I remind you of DF who once said it's not pessimistic to point out that the rip cord needed to be pulled earlier if you don't want to go SPLAT!

I posted a comment to Dan's blog, but thought it was so late in the game, that it might make a reasonable airing as a stand-alone blog.

Before we talk about what the left can be doing, we need to put it into a context.  Going forward, there are at least several overarching, critical issues that will shape society:

1)  Fear of Individual Safety
The next terrorist attack on US soil will be more devastating than 9/11 -- regardless of actual physical damage. Now that we have the DHS, people presently assume they are safer than pre-9/11.

They are not.

The DHS isn't doing it's job -- not because of any particular corruption, but rather because it's such an unwieldy bureaucratic organization. Therefore, when the terrorist attack occurs, people will assume that it's because the DHS didn't have enough power. As a result, people allow for even more of their civil liberties be given up for their safety.

2)  Willing Loss of Privacy
Part of this trend to decaying liberties will be advanced by the huge databases being generated on people even as we speak. Myspace and Facebook are in the process of negotiating sharing databases. Google has vast servers that save your gmail from forever.

Interestingly, this fear of loss of privacy was usually directed at Microsoft  -- an entity that is frequently portrayed as an evil corporation. However, the hip, arty, young crowd allowed the confluence of other entities (deemed cute and friendly) to assemble such a structure. And they did (and do) so willingly.  It is not accidental that Google, for example, has done a lot to avoid the missteps of Microsoft in terms of their public image.  Google learned from that example!

From these bits of info, it's possible to deduce more than just buying habits, but personal preferences, friends and associates, and prejudices. When combined with blogs, family photos etc. and you have a pretty complete dossier on any individual who spends anytime on the Internet.

The government can then access this information.

Note that the government couldn't have assembled this as efficiently as a host of corporations and that the corporations have had the willing compliance from their users.

Thus, again, there is no "conspiracy" or nefarious force to enable all of this.

But it is enabled.

3)  The End of Cheap Energy
The end of cheap energy will cause cataclysmic changes in society. Despite comments about "renewable energy sources" it amounts to little more pie-in-the-sky hope. If this view seems unnecessarily pessimistic, remember that in 1939, everyone was "sure" we would have flying cars by 1983. I've gone over the various issues associated with a post-peak oil world in several other blogs and so will not do so here.

The good news is that the large-scale monitoring of citizens will be more difficult with the loss of cheap energy.  (Say good-bye to large-scale organization and access to large-scale information.)  The bad news is that modern society as we know it will slowly dissolve.

Suffice it to say that human labor will become far more important for important things like farming. It's probable that we will see a rise of a peasant class in the US (much like existed in Europe before the Renaissance) with people (again) trading liberty and "rights" for security.

In its most extreme case, we may well find a class of indentured servants, possibly even slaves (a la the class of people that existed as slaves in Roman times). Gender roles will eventually ratchet back as well with 18th century views being more common than 21st century views.

While this radical societal change won't happen orderly, and won't be complete in 50 years, the general trend is clear:  without the slavery of machines to do our bidding, manual labor will make a huge comeback and society will reorganize around the same forms that it did spontaneously before the rise of the industrial age.

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

So: what to make of all of this?

While I don't think that all of these trends will playing out to completion in 50 years, this will be the direction. As a result, the left can do it's thing best by helping to merely hold on to where we currently are.

In 2008 that thought seems defeatist and gives a goal to easy to accomplish.  But it will become increasingly difficult in the years ahead.

Much verbiage has been spent here looking at ways for the US government to control the price of oil.   It behooves us to look at another net-oil-importer with a huge (and growing) appetite for the stuff:  China.

There is an interesting article in Forbes that looks at the current situation there.  Because economic models require all kinds of assumptions, actual case studies can often be illuminating -- even if the societies being compared aren't an exact match.  Basically, the Chinese government is trying a centralized plan to regulate the cost of oil.

I was particularly entertained by the following quote, which is so obvious, it needs to be stated as many people tend to forget that the government gets its money from us:

This hold-down of retail
prices is a subsidy to energy consumers that is hidden in the
government's budget. The taxpayers are paying for these lower oil
prices. They just don't see it at the pump with the current inflation
statistics.

One thing is certain:  the Chinese are worried about oil prices and inflation (which is currently at 8%).  This should sound similar to the US in the 1970s.  The big difference is that we have about 30 more year of pre-peak oil back then, and today we are post-peak.  Plan on human emotions of greed and fear to be added to the mix as a result.

This piece is an attempt to answer to all the calls for something more meaningful than Hillary/Obama emotional editorials.  I suspect it will be treated similar to those nutritious salads everyone claims to want to see at MacDonalds -- but no one buys.  Recommend if you like the idea of having a broader set of blogs to read.

I've never wanted Hillary to be the Dem nominee - for dynasty reasons.  And later for how she ran her campaign.

However, having listened to her original comment about the RFK assassination yesterday, I actually think it was a muddled comment.  Hillary was trying to invoke a June primary that everyone could remember into without consulting a history book.  Now, whenever Obama missteps ("bitter"), Hillary is all over it and aggressively so.  And I viewed her in less esteem each time she did it as a result.

There are a couple of implications in the statement that are wrong, of course, which is typical of Hillary's spin:

a)  CA used to be one of the last primaries.  Normally the CA primaries haven't been that important (despite the number of delegates) because the nomination was already decided.  But she is hoping you would forget that part.

b)  In 1968, only 13 states had primary contests -- so not everyone was heard from.

c)  RFK was not beloved by everyone at the time -- even on the left side of the party.  Eugene McCarthy supporters were angered that RFK tried to hone in on the anti-war vote once McCarthy showed the way.  (And, in fact, RFK was very much part of the administration that really opened up the Vietnam war and this was not lost on people back then either.)  And, Humphrey supporters, of course, had a plurality of the delegates on their side.  So while RFK grew substantially as a politician from 1965-68, he was still seen (correctly) as part of a dynastic hold on the White House.  He was willing to split the party for his own political ambitions.  Sound familiar?

So I wasn't particularly bent out of shape with her comment, it was just a muddle of talking about a late primary in a dumb way.

However, her "apology" is inexcusable.  Mostly because it is of the old Clinton "deny, deny, deny" mode that we grew accustomed to in the 1990s.  It's of the same timber as "as far as I know" and a variety of other linguistic twistings by the Clintons that would give Noam Chomsky a headache.

It is clear from this "apology" that Hillary Clinton is the elitist one -- she simply cannot humble herself on any score, be it a bad decision to vote for AUMF or a poorly worded comment. 

Remember those old reruns of the HAPPY DAYS where the Fonz can't quite say "I was wrong"?

That is Hillary. 

It was funny when the Fonz did it for television.  Not so much when it's a person aspiring to be the POTUS.

Are their other Senators who are willing to sit in denial over things and stonewall forever?

Yes there are.

But they aren't asking to be elected to the President of the United States.

Every time I've wanted to sit down and write a blog this week on oil, another sign of crisis has popped up.  I've decided that energy issues are now moving to a central stage (just as I predicted, no one talks about universal health care anymore as a main election topic), and I just need to jump in with some points to think about as the semi-official start of summer begins:

We are seeing signs of peak oil all around us.

Prices show no signs of abating.  It is speculators that are causing the prices now because there are no swing producers.

No less than 3 gas stations in my neighborhood have closed for a day this week to upgrade their pumps.  This is to allow them to handle gas prices higher than $5/gal.   So the oil companies know what is coming.

Ford is cutting back production of their SUVs -- market forces are finally at work!   But probably too late.

American Airlines (the nation's largest), will be charging $15 for a checked bag and cut 10% of their flights because of the price of oil.   Jet fuel is the highest refined, and most costly, of all the petroleum energy products.  In short order, we will need what we don't have -- a rail system that can move people distances that airplanes used to take us.   It may already be too late to get a rail system functioning on that scale.

Meanwhile both houses of Congress continue to pander to the vast majority of uneducated Americans:

<em>The House passed a bill to sue OPEC under anti-trust measures.  George Bush will correctly veto such a bill.</em>

First, it is downright stupid to sue a foreign entity like this and sends a weak signal geo-politically.  Secondly, OPEC can seriously retaliate by (a) not selling oil in dollars -- a trend already started, but will be exacerbated and (b) reduce the dollars in their foreign currency reserve.  The Saudis did this already when the US invaded Iraq. 

In other words, the world is realigning and the trust in the dollar as a "universal" currency is dropping -- and it is that trust that provided our stable economy despite our debt culture.

<em>The Senate, meanwhile, made a nice show of chastising the US oil company executives.</em>

Talk about your election year theatrics.

The US oil companies produce less than 20% of the world's oil.  And they don't set the prices (see above regarding OPEC and speculators).

So, what does this all mean?  The signs of the end of cheap energy being over are all there.  The US is running out of time to prepare for what James Kunstler calls THE LONG EMERGENCY.  And Congress is spending precious time playing pointless blame games.

Something to think about this long weekend.