While those tremors you've noticed are the Earth's axes temporarily shifting to spin around Denver, life IS going on elsewhere. Thanks to the AFA, I was pointed to a story about efforts at one Air Force Base to reduce its carbon footprint, save money by conservation, and invest in alternative energy.

Why is this worth mentioning?

Follow below the fold to find out.

4   Thanks to the wonders of email, the GOP has sent me messages about their reaction to the Obama-Biden ticket and Democratic Senate prospects which I thought I'd share here. The first is from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, via Orrin Hatch. First line:

Our nation stands on the brink of taking a disastrous turn to the left.

The McCain Campaign is right in there too; here's a flash from Rick Davis, McCain Campaign Manager about Obama, Biden and the usual GOP personality attacks:

Just hours ago Senator Barack Obama announced he has chosen Senator Joe Biden as his running-mate, adding his own harshest critic to the Democratic ticket. Senator Obama's choice in a running-mate once again brings up his questionable judgment when faced with making major decisions.

Follow me below the fold to see Fear and Smear put to work.

  The cost of energy has gotten America's attention again. Will we learn from the past, take steps in the present, and plot a course for the future? Three recent news stories caught my eye recently, and they fall on those axes. Read on for some links and musings about electric cars, the synergy of rails and roads, and changes at the top of the USAF don't mean backing away from alternative energy - or do they?

Follow me below the fold to find out.

    China and the Olympics are generating lots of news stories; but one on Marketplace at American Public Media caught my ear this morning. Commentator Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute was talking up  a recent working paper (warning - pdf file) by University of Chicago economists Christian Broda and John Romalis.

    With the headline Trade With China Gets The Gold, Wilkinson summarized their findings as showing that trade with China has been a net benefit for the poor and not so good for the rich.

  Follow me below the fold to find out why it sucks to be rich - and look at some signs that the GOP Class War on America is heating up.

  By now there's probably been far too much written about the Edwards revelations, but at the risk of scandal fatigue, I'm going to discuss another aspect that a few have touched on. Specifically, what about the policies and problems Edwards was trying to address? What about the bigger picture?

   It's very easy to cynically dismiss any politician when they prove to be merely human. Failings in one aspect of their lives tend to make everything else suspect in the eyes of onlookers. I expect there are any number of people who will now write of Edwards as one more ambitious fraud who had no business running for the White House and will dismiss everything else he brought to the table.

 This is nothing new of course, and it's not just limited to politics. History is full of people who had remarkable abilities, major accomplishments, and such while simultaneously and/or subsequently also manifesting unfortunate or even despicable behavior. If consistency is to be the standard for virtue in individuals, then society repeatedly fails that test. The line between tragedy and farce is neither straight nor of uniform width. How and where it is drawn is as much about culture as character.

 I'm seeing reports that Obama is now willing to allow some offshore drilling if it's carefully managed and so on. Supposedly, he's offering compromise to Republikans so they won't try to block all of his other energy proposals.

Right. We all know how well Republikans compromise.

McSame's also trying to make Obama's plans to give people a break with money taxed on record oil company profits into some crazy plan that will put companies out of business. Puh-lease! Digby got me started on this, so I thought I'd cross-post my comments here. (more)

      As you may have guessed from the title on this diary, Maureen Dowd is still at work lowering the collective IQ of the country. The title on her latest effort, covering Barack Obama's trip overseas should be fair warning: Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning.

      I defy anyone to wade through this drivel and find anything that contributes anything useful to the political dialog as the country staggers towards the most critical presidential election in decades. Here's a small sample of Dowd's 'insight' at work.

Passing acquaintances collide in a moment of transcendent passion. They look at each other shyly and touch tenderly during their Paris cinq à sept, exchange some existential thoughts under exquisite chandeliers, and — tant pis — go their separate ways.

Sarko, back to Carla Bruni. Obama, forward to Gordon Brown. A Man and a Man. All it needed was a lush score and Claude Lelouch.

GAHHHHHH! Sombody get me the brain bleach!

 Listening to John McCain clips from the campaign trail on NPR this morning, I realized it was just like listening to George W. Bush - if an older, creepier version. Not all that different from listening to Ronald Reagan, either.  That's when it hit me: that's ALL the Republicans have. They have no real ideas, no substance - just snark.

You can't debate them, because they're not operating at a level of substance, just social dominance games. They don't need real policies, just excuses to paper over their agenda which is basically nothing more than greed and power grabbing. Their whole attitude is so high school, as in "It doesn't matter what you say - we're just too cool to care what YOU think." And if you try to take a position that things matter, that it actually DOES make a difference... well you're just not cool and can be ignored. There's no problem so big they won't turn any real attempt to address it into a joke.

The traditional media buys into this big time, because they all want to believe they're the cool kids too. That's why Obama turning out huge crowds makes them uneasy. It's incomprehensible to them, and they don't know how to deal with that. But a man in his 70's making cutting remarks and tittering smugly away at his own wit - that's too cool. It's Presidential.

  Several days ago I posted a diary pointing up a story from the Albany Times Union with this catchy headline: Toxic gas-drilling technique - "Hydrofracking'' plan raises questions about water safety in state. It seems there's a new technique that can get natural gas out of shale that's now economically viable - but with significant risks of poisoning ground water in a watershed that supplies millions.

  Since the original TU article, there have been several followup stories. (more below the fold)

 The Albany Times Union had a front page article today that should be mandatory reading for anyone who thinks we can get all the oil and gas we need if we just go drilling for it. As it happens, there's known deposits of natural gas in New York state waiting to be tapped - but the costs could be rather heavy from the side effects.

Upstate New York's looming natural gas nightmare
Regulators asleep as lawmakers attempt to declare vast acreage open to the energy industry's iffy underground fracturing technique

By ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN, ProPublica / Special to the Times Union
First published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Read the article, then be very afraid of what the oil and gas companies are doing to us while the President runs interference for them.

  Tom Friedman, who gets paid far too much money for what he writes, and takes up far too much valuable editorial space in the NY Times has done it again. 9/11 and 4/11 is his complaint that Bush has wasted too much time while doing nothing that might actually  work with regards to the energy situation. Friedman is 'outraged'

I am reliably told by a Bush administration official that there is an old saying in Texas that goes like this: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

Could anyone possibly come up with a better description of President Bush’s energy policy? America is in the midst of its worst energy crisis in years and what is the big decision our Decider has decided? Drum roll, please: Our Decider decided to lift the executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shoreline — even though he knew this was a meaningless gesture because a Congressional moratorium on drilling passed in 1981 remains in force.

Well DUH!

 I'm referring to the new movie, of course, starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin, and Dwayne Johnson, based on the classic TV show from the 60's. If you liked the original series with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon, you'll enjoy this movie. If you never saw the TV show, you'll still enjoy it.

It works as a romantic comedy, an action-adventure film,  a spy movie, and a spy movie parody, with both great physical comedy and some pretty clever wit as well. The chemistry between Maxwell Smart (Carell) and Agent 99 (Hathaway) is a joy to watch develop - and so are the scenes between Smart and the Chief (Arkin)

BUT.... if you're going by the reviews, most of the ones I've seen miss something else that's going on. The movie manages to make some pointed comments about the real world we live in, in a subtle fashion that makes it more than just a fun time. It might also make you think about the so-called Global War On Terror and how we've been acting as a nation. It's quietly but effectively subversive, a dangerous thing for entertainment these days.

 I ran across an interesting article by Danny Schechter, who writes in Los Angeles CityBeat, via Metroland in Albany, NY. "Titled House of Cards", it was alarming enough that I thought I'd do a heads up on it here.  Schecter's 2nd paragraph lays out what he sees coming.

While many eyes are focusing on the housing meltdown and its hugely negative effect on an economy clearly moving into recession, few are paying attention to the next bubble expected to burst: credit cards. Combined with the subprime losses, such a credit card nightmare has the potential, experts say, of bringing down the entire financial system and global economy. You and your credit card have become key players in the highly unstable financial crunch. Mortgage lender cupidity and bank credit card greed wedded to financial institution deregulation supported by both political parties, have been made manifestly worse by Bush administration support-the-rich policies. It has brought us to a brink not seen since just before the Great Depression.

emphasis added

Waking up early this morning, turned on NPR morning edition in time to hear about a (weekly?) ritual at the Green Zone in Baghdad. General Petraeus takes time out of his busy schedule to go to the stage at the American Embassy and makes himself available for photos with anyone who wants them - and can get through the security screening.

The story isn't up at the NPR site  yet (they promise 8:30 for a summary, audio by 9:00 East Coast time), but you may want to check it out there if you don't catch it on the radio. The story is, so many people were always asking if they could have a picture taken with the general, his staff decided to streamline the process. Now they line up by the hundreds to run through a regular assembly line photo op on a regular schedule.

I'm not even going to try to comment on this. Feel free.

 Just a heads up about an article at the NY Times I haven't seen much about elsewhere yet, but one that paints a rather interesting picture about Fox News. THE MEDIA EQUATION When News Is the Story by David Carr lays out why the rest of the traditional press doesn't come down on Fox for the journalistic atrocities they perpetrate.

Fear. Intimidation. Obstruction.

Like most working journalists, whenever I type seven letters — Fox News — a series of alarms begins to whoop in my head: Danger. Warning. Much mayhem ahead.

Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to.

    All of the outrage over anyone daring to question John McCain's fitness to be president by saying being shot down and held as a POW isn't a real test of executive ability got me to thinking a couple of thoughts.

  Probably too many of you are too young to remember the Democratic Saint - John F. Kennedy. He was the president who was also a World War II hero,  one who got his PT boat cut in half by a Japanese destroyer while making  a night attack on Japanese shipping, was injured, and risked capture before being rescued with his surviving crew. They even made a movie about it, PT-109. That campaign seems like such a simpler time now, almost innocent - yet it was the one that really schooled Richard M. Nixon and set him on his dark path.

   Is John McCain a kind of anti-JFK? An aging war hero well past his prime, defending a failed regime?  Does he have a comparable cult of adulation? Instead of New Frontiers will he lead us into The Wasteland?

(more)

  There's been much concern about Obama 'moving' to the center now that the primary battle is over. It is inside the beltway common 'wisdom' that Democrats must never be too liberal and must always seek bipartisanship to win. Bullshit. Digby and dday have covered how well that works. The so-called center has been shoved so far right by the GOP, it's firmly in wingnut territory.

Two analogies here. #1. The U.S. is the Titanic. John McCain will steer to the right, away from the iceberg - but deeper into the icepack. If Obama moves to the center, we stay right on course for the berg. Only a hard left might get us to safety.

#2. If you're flying to a destination with a wind pushing you to the right, you'll never get where you're going if you keep the plane pointed straight ahead. You have to angle the plane to the left to compensate for the crosswind (it's called a crab angle) if you want to stay on the desired course. The more wind, the greater the crab angle needed.

Compare, contrast, discuss.

 This is going to be a quick and dirty late night diary. It'll probably disappear without a trace in the early hours. FWIW this is a bit of therapy and a chance to pass on a few things that might be useful.

  My wife called me at work on Friday from her job, really upset. She'd gotten a call from Little Rock AFB to let us know that a member of our family who's currently in Iraq flying C-130 Hercules transports was NOT involved in a C-130 that had to make a forced landing, and that everyone who had been on the plane was okay. They didn't want us to be worried if we saw/heard anything on the news. Except we hadn't and still haven't seen anything. I did some googling tonight and finally tracked down the details, such as they are.

Not enemy action, so no big deal. The traditional media blackout on Iraq wasn't worth breaking for the story of a plane going down since everyone survived - and didn't end up on a mysterious island. And if there's any story beyond that, well we all know they're not looking. I did find a couple of other things of interest though. (more)