Jim Hamilton thinks the Fed has to choose between lower inflation and higher employment.

He thinks we can't have both.

Perhaps this is why China began acquiring from various countries guaranteed rights to precious commodities many years ago. Perhaps this is why China combined foreign policy, development assistance, trade negotiations and contractual rights to such commodities. It is not the case that our government was unaware of the issue. After all, Alan Greenspan said the Iraq War is "largely" about oil, but the war has plainly failed, so far, to obtain assured access to cheap oil. What is the American government plan to abate the rising cost of necessary commodities?

The next Administration faces a serious macroeconomic problem, if Hamilton is right.

Is the economic "slowdown" (President Bush's term) in the United States related to the Iraq War?

Here's the thing about hate speech: you can't do it or usefully repeat it while attributing it to others. In both forms -- expression and comment about such expression -- racial and gender-based hate speech is becoming increasingly common in this election. All candidates, campaign staff, commentators, opinion writers, reporters, and media managers of all kinds should agree publicly and clearly to eschewing both hate speech and also speculations about the hatred that others will surely feel.

When one utters hate speech, as in "I hate so-and-so", you do wrong. You spark hatred in others and add to the misery of life.

But it is also true that when one repeats extensively the hate speech of others, as various writers have been doing just recently, one also does harm.

Hating and explaining in the major media that others are filled with hatred are both wrong, and both contribute to the misery of humanity.

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In 2000 and 2004 Democrats thought for quite a long time that it was wise to ignore Nader. Everyone knew he ran with clear intent to elect a Republican president. Everyone understood that according to his twisted logic it was better to have George Bush be president than to have a very different foreign and domestic policy, than to attend in a timely manner to climate change, to have wise and courageous people occupy the Oval Office -- for the reason that if the country were led in the wrong direction for a long time then somehow redemption could arrive in 2008.

But now in 2008 Nader is not the name of redemption. People can disagree about whether the corrective leader is Clinton, McCain or Obama, yet all but extreme, angry, illogical, and utterly estranged people will agree that Nader has no business again trying to tilt an election in a divided country to someone with whom he surely disagrees, namely, John McCain. So why is the press covering him?

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My guess is that Cuba will be a significant issue in the general election, because it is a telltale for the approach of the opposing candidates toward communism, a test of American capability and willingness to promote economic development in poor countries, and inevitably the major thumb on the scales of voting in Florida.

If the Republican candidate does not win Florida, he has little chance to win the election.

The Republicans are likely to

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