The GOP has just released the theme of their upcoming convention.

Country First: 2008 Republican National Convention to Highlight Service, Reform, Prosperity and Peace

In other words, they intend to focus like a pack of frickin' laser-beam equipped sharks on everything they don't provide.  

Maybe I'm misreading this.  It could be an example of the kind of literary inversion John Kennedy used in his "Ask not," speech.  Maybe what they meant to say was "For the first time in our country, Republicans will give a damn about service, reform, prosperity, and peace."

Otherwise, there's the problem of a party that's left us with two open-ended wars bragging about "peace." The party that's left us with an unprecedented level of corruption and cronyism talking about "service" and "reform." And the party that's generated the worst economy in thirty years while running up a tab that our great-great grandkids will still be paying talking about "prosperity."

Speakers for Monday night, which will focus on "Service," will include Joe Lieberman demonstrating his ability to serve any forum that will feed his petty ego. Lieberman will be scheduled on the same evening as his war buddy Dick Cheney and official Lil' Abner Mattress Testing Award Winner, George W. Bush.

Tuesdays "Reform" brings Rudy Giuliani to talk about how you can reform law, order, and heroism to mean anything you want.  And 9/11. Lots and lots of 9/11.

Speaking on "Prosperity" will be Cindy McCain, who will explain the traditional Republican means of getting by in hard times: inherit millions from your daddy. Cindy will demonstrate her pity for the middle class workers struggling to get by on three million a year, and for the poor who  must survive with no more than two vacation homes.

And finally, John McCain will be there on Thursday night to focus on (I'm not kidding) "Peace."

Having once been the happy owner of a 13.75% mortgage -- obtained through a state program for first time home buyers at a time when the bank was advertising 18% -- the inflation rate of the early 1980s is not something for which I'm nostalgic. But for those longing to bring back the days of Ronald Reagan, this should warm those cockles.

U.S. wholesale prices took another unexpectedly steep jump in July and shot up at the fastest year-on-year rate in 27 years, according to a government report on Tuesday that was certain to fan fears about a potential surge in inflation. ... The Labor Department's Producer Price Index, which measures prices at the factory door, climbed 1.2 percent after a 1.8 percent gain in June.

"Core" inflation, for those people who don't use energy or eat food, was also up sharply, while home building took another plunge. The decline in gas prices next month will probably cool things down a bit, which is good, because if we continued at an average of the last two months we'd be looking at an 18% annual rate.

But be of good cheer! So far wages aren't coming close to keeping up with this new round of inflation, so that traditional "price-wage-price" spiral is only "price-price-price." That's better, right?

Remember the Cold War? First Tail-Gunner Joe ran all the dirty commies out of the United States, then Ronald Reagan built the Death Star and used it to blow up the Berlin Wall and we raised Old Glory above the Kremlin. And that's how America won the Cold War. I might have a few of the details wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's being taught in all the schools these days.

The early decades of the Twentieth Century were to economic and political systems what the Burned-over District was for religion movements a century earlier -- an incredible period of fecundity and experimentation. The remaining decades of that century were spent in vigorous testing of these systems against each other. Which is a nice way of saying that millions upon millions of people died horribly.

In looking at the clash between states organized around communism and those based on capitalism the answer seems obvious. Capitalism won. Trounced them. Kicked their red asses, took their names, and sent them home with a hearty Nelsonian (Muntz, not Admiral) "Ha ha!"

It wasn't a sure thing. Capitalism is an ancient system, with roots that go back into deep prehistory and a reach that touches every pocket on the planet. But communism could also draw on all the varied places and times in which people had chosen to share their property in common. Their side of the struggle was definitely a minority position, but then it had only been a bit over a century since an upstart called Democracy made a comeback on the world stage, and that kid had done okay.

Communism was based around the idea of freedom. Shocking, I know, but then every form of government not centered on a genealogical chart puts freedom somewhere high on the menu. In the communist view, the biggest obstacle to freedom was the slavery imposed by economic and social inequality. Break that grip by giving everyone a fair share of the pie, and we'd all be free. Guys like Marx envisioned their system as clearing the deadwood of ineffective management from the pipeline, creating such abundance that workers would be able to chose how they wanted to contribute to the system. Spend the morning building cars, the afternoon writing novels, and take some law classes at night? Sure, comrade! And a different schedule tomorrow if you want.

Marx' position sounds Nice as that might sound on paper, it didn't work that way in the real world. Marx pictured his workers' paradise coming about in a series of stages, the first of which required a strong central state. What he never realized was that stage one would be, almost by definition, so royally screwed up and the people living under it so royally screwed over, that even Estragon and Vladimir would not have the patience to wait out the arrival of stage two.

With the hindsight of a century of authoritarian state excesses this looks obvious, but when Marx was writing the grinding, relentless capitalism that engulfed Europe and America was so ugly that anything seemed preferable. He was writing against a world that had not even a hint of a social safety net – quite the opposite. It was full of social razor blades, where one slip could cut to the bone. Child labor, employers who tricked their workers into accepted inflated company scrip, unregulated products filled with poison, and military force used to keep workers toiling in horrid conditions. In competition with communism, capitalism in Europe and America had to clean up its act. What we live with today in most of the western world is capitalism with many of its sharpest edges blunted. Thousands of workers died to wear down those edges.

People respond to incentives.  With the worst aspects of capitalism softened, the vague (and ever receding) promises of communism turned out to be a miserable way to organize and motivate people when compared to the personal, immediate gain possible in capitalism.

And so communism tumbled and capitalism soared.  The End.

Except... somewhere along the line, we had made a mental connection between capitalism and freedom. Anything good for one was seen as good for the other. We viewed liberty and greed as soul mates. Often enough, we couldn't tell one from the other, and in that confusion we ignored the other half of the struggle -- the one being waged by that still wet behind the ears idea, democracy. In short, we bought our own press.

There's absolutely no doubt that when it comes to economic systems, we signed on with the winner, and if you look at the sheer number of countries in the world that are at least nominally democracies, the victory of "one man one vote" also seems to be marching on. With communism licking it's wounds, democracies rushed in to fill the void. By 2005, 64% of all nations were democracies, up from 40% before Lech Walesa and the boys at Solidarity pointed out that the Soviet emperor's robes were looking awfully thin.  

That sounds impressive, but something else was going on behind those raw numbers. When the Economist took a more detailed look, they found that only about 28 of the 165 countries they surveyed were functional democracies. Most of the world's countries fell into intermediate categories (both Russia and Georgia are listed as "hybrid" regimes -- with Russia getting a slightly higher democracy score). At the far end of the scale, there were twice as many authoritarian regimes in the list as there were full democracies.  

If you looked at those authoritarian regimes and the other governments providing less than full democracy, all but a handful are capitalist. But they are authoritarian capitalist states. The "end of the Cold War" didn't represent a new birth of freedom, it represented the a new, more economically efficient form of dictatorship.

In some ways, we should be grateful that this combination didn't come along sooner. A Soviet empire fueled by a more competitive economy might well have had the resources to continue its invasion of Afghanistan and hold onto its fractious European territories. For the most part, the four decade standoff of enormous mechanized armies has vanished. What happened in Poland was real. What happened in Berlin was real. But we shouldn't pretend that we've seen anything resembling victory.

In 1984 the Doomsday Clock, a measure of the danger of catastrophic destruction maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, stood at only three minutes from midnight. By 1991, the clock had been rolled back to 17 minutes short of the witching hour, the largest margin since the symbolic clock was created. Unfortunately, the optimism of that moment didn't last. The clock is back to just five minutes shy of destruction, representing a danger greater than at any time in the 1970s or 1960s.

In 1984, East Germany controlled 30% of the territory that now makes up Germany. In the face of this occupation, Germany was a staunch opponent of Soviet policies. In 2008, Russia supplies 40% of the natural gas that powers German factories and homes. That's great, but as a result, Germany tends to keep its mouth shut on Russian activities.

Through the 1970s, soldiers from communist countries worked to overthrow democratic nations in Africa. In 2008, wealthy authoritarian capitalist states are purchasing resources, access, and control in Africa. The new arrangement between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which the former is providing enormous sums of money for exclusive access to copper from the later, is only one of many such deals. States that a dozen years ago were America's closest allies now favor Chinese firms and agencies who offer ready cash without the strings of requiring any silly human rights or ecological concerns. Child workers still die in African mines, but now those mines have Chinese owners.

Capitalism has never been more comfortable in its perch as the way that human beings exchange goods. Freedom has rarely been more threatened. This is a war the United States is losing, mostly because we're not bothering to fight. We've become slaves to a pernicious ideology that pretends, in the face of all evidence, that trade inevitably leads to freedom. Buy what they're selling, and democracy will follow. Any day now. Just you wait.

Even that pretense is little more than a coat of thin paint. The truth is, we've taken the freedom part of the equation completely off the table.

John McCain has declared that the conflict is in Georgia is the first international conflict of the post-Cold War. It's a laughably ignorant statement, but even when listing all the international conflicts that have taken place since then, the most telling is universally left from the list. The most important international event of the last twenty years happened while the Soviet Union still existed -- in name, at least -- and Russian troops were still trailing home from the disaster in Afghanistan.  It happened right in the midst of where the Olympics are now being contested. It happened at Tiananmen Square.

The 1989 protests at Tianamen Square weren't an international incident in the sense of armies clashing on a field. It was much more important than that. In 1989, China was then still experimenting with how the "free market" and an authoritarian government could co-exist. They made their moves with one eye on the dancing students, and one eye on the western world. What they learned that spring was the truth about the west. They learned the capitalism has not just defeated communism, it had also defeated all the ideals of democracy. They learned that we would put up with anything, even the brutal killing of thousands of innocents, if it meant $50 VCRs and cheap socks at Walmart.

After World War II, American troops went to Japan to help put the wounded economy on its feet. The Japanese learned those lessons so well, that within two decades Americans were traveling to Japan to study their success.

After the Cold War, China, Russia, and other authoritarian states learned a different lesson. They learned that the west's vaunted concern for human rights would always play second fiddle to making a dollar. And within two decades, those nations were far more powerful than they had ever been during the days of green uniforms and shoes on the UN podium.

For the first eleven millennia of human civilization, capitalism and democracy were only rarely and loosely coupled. There's no reason it should be otherwise. In an unregulated market child labor, environmental destruction, government corruption, and ideological rigidity often provide an advantage. Capitalism can serve an authoritarian state as well as a democratic one -- perhaps better.

Capitalism is as indifferent to freedom as a whale is to the lives of plankton on which it feeds. If we continue in the pretense that the market in and of itself favors democracy, we'll be witness to the end of the experiment that began a bit over two centuries ago in Philadelphia. The market won't mind -- it's seen democracies rise before. If we don't unbuckle our concern for human rights from our concern from corporate profits, it will surely see this one fall.

---

Table of Government Democracy Ratings

Economist article on the slowing spread of democracy

Chaotic capitalism in African Mines

And... now.

Reversing course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning energy legislation that may allow oil and gas drilling in new areas off the U. S. coast, according to a House Democratic leadership aide.

Granted, Pelosi has said that she would only allow drilling if it was "not just a hoax" on the public. The trouble is any program of drilling is a hoax when it comes to improving our energy situation.

That said, it seems that for reasons that have everything to do with taking the easy path rather than the right one, we're going to hold our collective noses and jump off the more drilling bridge. The question that remains is how good a deal Democrats will manage to strike while once again giving the GOP and their allies exactly what they want.

Though front man President Medvedev has indicated that Russian forces have stopped their advance, witnesses on the ground say otherwise.

Villages in Georgia were being burned and looted as Russian tanks and soldiers followed by "irregulars" advanced from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, eyewitnesses said today. ... It appeared that Russian tanks had entered Gori, targeting military installations, some built with Nato money.

If Russia really isn't abiding by its agreement? What are we going to do about it? With US credibility eroded to a laughable stump and US military capability entangled in two physically and financially exhausting wars, is there any move that we can make which would garner more than a shrug from Moscow?

There's no doubt that Georgian President Saakashvili showed very bad judgment in deciding to challenge his neighbor, especially if he was counting on the reassurances of Bush and McCain to be more than bluster. Russia has a list of good reasons to use Georgia as a demonstration of their resurgent power and a willingness to use it.

A column of Russian armor and troops moved deeper into Georgian territory on Wednesday in apparent violation of a new cease-fire agreement, according to Georgian officials and eyewitnesses who said the Russian equipment was moving toward the Georgian capital then turned north. ... A Western news photographer counted approximately 100 tanks, personnel carriers and other vehicles traveling east from the central Georgian city of Gori toward Tbilisi.

Bush may have looked into Putin's eyes and thought he saw a good soul, but Putin looked back and clearly saw a feckless idiot. And he's acting on what he saw.

Russia made clear on Wednesday that despite a ceasefire agreement with Georgia it will do whatever it pleases in the defeated country. ... Vyacheslav Nikonov, a Kremlin-linked political analyst, said Russia would allow in peacekeepers from neutral countries such as Finland, but any troops connected to Nato would be seen as a "military incursion".

While the McCain campaign is arguing that corporate taxes are too high by looking only at income tax rates and ignoring the VAT taxes paid at multiple points in the stream by corporations in many countries. Deceptive as that is, it's even more misguided when you look at the real numbers.

About two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay taxes annually from 1998 to 2005, according to a new report scheduled to be made public today from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

It looks as if we really do need a revision to our corporate tax structure, just not the revision that the GOP wants.

As we know from watching McCain's ads, the biggest problem facing America is an alarming increase in enthusiasm. Impassioned support is a signal that a candidate is not serious. Spirited followers are a sign of inexperience. In fact, just keeping an audience awake is suspect.

Real Americans know that apathy and indifference are the only solutions to our problems. They know that leaders who show any hint of energy or intelligence are to be shunned.

John McCain -- the pro-apathy candidate. Go back to sleep, America.

The Missouri State Fair is underway in Sedalia, Missouri. So come listen to the music, watch some events, and indulge in some deep-fried item you'd never eat on a normal weekend.

But more importantly, my son has landed a spot working for the Obama campaign in the deep red zone, and he could use some help this weekend.

Pettis County, where Sedalia is located, went for Bush by more than 2-1 over both Kerry and Gore, but the Obama campaign is convinced there is support to be had in the area.  My son is the lucky organizer who is out there shaking hands and looking for help. This weekend he's canvassing around the town of Sedalia and with a lot of folks busy at the fair, he could really use some extra hands.

So what do you say? For once, it's not going to be insanely hot, and you can always satisfy that cotton candy craving with a quick stop at the fairgrounds.

His office -- which isn't blessed with high tech items like the Internet, or a phone -- is located right in the middle of Sedalia. Will I see you there?

If you squint, you can see it. An imperial presidency that ends with disgrace and a president whose approval ratings are in the 20s. An oil crisis in which US dependence on imported oil has crippled our economy and exposed weaknesses in our national security. Rising unemployment. Uncertainty in the banking system. Housing starts at record lows. A dollar that's declined to the point where it's trading 1:1 with the Canadian dollar. White House staffers named Cheney and Rumsfeld. And an experienced Washington insider with war hero credentials facing an outsider running on hope and a smile.

Can you see it?

Of course, there were major differences between 1976 and 2008. Even as Richard Nixon was winning reelection in 1972, his coattails had already become nonexistent, with Democrats making gains in Congress. In 1974, with the new word "Watergate" front and center in American politics, Democrats surged to a 291-144 edge in the House and a 61-38 lead in the Senate. It might have seemed that the presidential election of 1976 would be a walkover. It wasn't.

Gerald Ford might have been placed in office by the ousted Nixon, but Ford was still regarded as someone who wasn't part of Tricky Dick's inner circle and as being among those who helped to end Nixon's presidency. His twenty-four years in the House had given Ford a network of connections and supporters, and he was viewed by the public as experienced and moderate. In a country that suddenly felt very unsure of itself, Ford was a familiar quantity.

On the other hand, Jimmy Carter was anything but familiar. Those who now know Carter for the work he's done in his post-presidency, and for the mythology that sprouted in decades that followed, might find it hard to believe how different Carter was from candidates that came before, and how large an effect he had in defining the elections that came later.

It's hard to believe today when "white southern governor" defines the last sixteen years of the presidency, but when Carter ran from his base as governor of Georgia, no one had gone from a governorship to the White House since FDR. No southerner had been president since Andrew Johnson. It wasn't just geography he redefined. When Carter started laying the groundwork for his campaign in 1972, the accepted wisdom was that such farsighted planning was pointless. When Carter carefully built his name recognition door to door in Iowa and and through the town halls of New Hampshire, most candidates still looked at both contests as a side show, with little effect on states further down the line. Politics was about talking to other politicians and gaining the support of regional leaders, not talking directly to bozos behind the counter in some coffee shop. Jimmy Carter changed that.

It's also hard to appreciate that Jimmy Carter, born-again Baptist and Sunday School teacher, was a strongly progressive candidate who wanted to turn the tax structure on its ear.

"When a business executive can charge off a $50 luncheon on a tax return and a truck driver can't deduct his $1.50 sandwich -- when oil companies often pay less than 5% tax on their earnings while employees of the company pay at least three times this rate -- when many pay no taxes on income of more than $100,000 -- basic tax reform is necessary."

Carter also warned of the dangers shown by our lack of a long term plan, not just a long term plan for energy or the environment or the growing budget deficit, but for everything.

"Our nation now has no understandable national purpose, no clearly-defined goals, and no organizational mechanism to develop or achieve such purposes or goals. We move from one crisis to the next as if they were fads, even though the previous one hasn't been solved."

Carter meant that purpose to be in demonstrating that a nation could be based on upholding human rights and basic justice. It may be hard to see in retrospect, but for those campaigning in 1976, Carter wasn't just another politician, he was a visionary character who seemed capable of reforming the whole of American government as clearly as he had the nature of the primary season. He was a revolutionary. Which of course, made him scary.

If all things in 1976 had been the same as the situation in 2008, it's doubtful that someone as forthrightly progressive, as open, as willing to demand sacrifice from the people would have stood a chance. But there were differences in 1976.

First off, that big Democratic majority that had been put in place in 1972 and 1974 was an effective force that was unwilling to surrender their role to the Nixon administration. They didn't settle for sternly worded letters, or wait months for members of the administration to police themselves. They hauled in the members of the administration one by one, learned from them the story of at least a few of the administration's many transgressions, and took action. Though it's easy to argue that the crimes of Richard Nixon have been dwarfed by those of the Bush administration, in 1974 impeachment was not off the table.

For Gerald Ford, the nervousness of American public about replacing him with this progressive unknown was more than offset by one word: pardon. An effective Congress and a press unwilling to lie down and repeat what it was told sealed the end of the Nixon presidency and gave Jimmy Carter the chance to remodel the American presidency.

Carter hit the ground running. To replace the closed, secretive Nixon White House, he held biweekly press conferences. To shrug off the imperial airs the presidency had taken on, he didn't just walk to his inauguration, but set out immediately afterward to continue the town hall meetings that had marked his campaign. He carried with him the message he'd carried during the campaign: human rights, an open and honest foreign policy, placing long term planning ahead of short term gains, eliminating tax loopholes for the rich and corporations, and placing all our industry on a path to sustainability. He also revived that old dream of Harry Trumans's, national health insurance.

Unfortunately for Carter, he had an enemy. Not an enemy overseas, but the same enemy that had faced down Nixon.

By the time Carter took his place in the White House, the Congress wasn't just secure in its role as the object of the first section of the Constitution, it was ready to take on a bit of the second. Democratic congressmen looked on Carter with some of the same disdain that Ford had shown during the debates. Carter was an outsider. He had big plans that got in the way of a lot of old relationships. He just didn't understand how things were done in D.C.

Congress thwarted Carter's attempts to create national health insurance. They failed to take up tax reform. They blocked attempts to create a unified structure for energy and environmental regulation that was (and is) split among many agencies with contradictory goals and rules. Congressional leaders made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, and couldn't wait to laugh up their sleeves at the peanut farmer president.

As a reward, the party which controlled both houses of Congress and the White House was seen as painfully ineffective, leading to the loss of not only the White House, but an enormous swing in Congress. In 1980, a twelve seat swap gave Republicans control of the Senate only four years after Democrats had been awarded what appeared to be an unstoppable majority. Democrats had not hung together, and the result was that they hung separately.

There are a number of similarities between the election of 1976 and that of 2008, many of which stem from the close resemblance to the Nixon and Ford administrations which served as the proving grounds for so many who would later rise with Bush. There are also differences.

Let's hope that one of the differences going forward is a difference in the level of cooperation between White House and Congress should Barack Obama follow Jimmy Carter up Pennsylvania Avenue.

At first, the fact that Exxon Mobil scored the biggest quarterly profit for any company in history may seem like the central (and maddening) point of Thursday's press release, but looking past the top number shows several more interesting items.

First off, that record $11.68 billion is less than expected, sending Exxon Mobil's shares down on Wall Street. Why did they underperform the analyst's expectations?  Well, with rising oil prices come rising amounts of overseas strife.

Production tumbled 7.8 percent after assets were seized in Venezuela, Nigerian workers went on strike and record prices triggered contract clauses that give oil-rich governments a bigger share of output.

Countries that are selling oil -- from Russia to Iran -- are getting richer as the prices climb, and they see less and less reason to give any of their wealth to the big international companies. Exxon Mobil, like other companies, finds that their leverage is slipping.

But there's an even more interesting calculation at work. While Exxon Mobil was cranking out record profits on oil production, its refineries were actually bringing in less money than last year.  Why?

Profits from its refining business totaled $1.6 billion in the quarter, less than half of what they were last year. ... Oil prices in the quarter were nearly twice as high as the same time last year, while gasoline prices were an average of nearly 30% higher.

Oil prices doubled, but the price of the biggest product produced from oil didn't follow suit. Exxon was unable to maintain the same margins on their refining business that they have in the past. And there's a good reason for that.

Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008 than in May 2007, according to federal data released Monday. The 3.7 percent decline was the third-largest monthly drop in the 66 years the Department of Transportation has been collecting the data.

For decades, gasoline has been considered a commodity that lives by its own special rules. In a country that was designed around highways, gas was required to get Americans to work, school, and stores.  It wasn't fungible, and demand wasn't tightly coupled to price. Whatever they asked for it, Americans would be forced to pay.

As it turns out, that's not entirely true. The sharp decline in miles driven and even sharper turn away from low mileage vehicles shows that gas is not a product untouched by pricing. $4 gas turned out to be enough to make Americans simply park it.  Which, paired with increasingly bad signs in the economy, was enough to spur a retreat in the price of oil. If the increased price of oil had been directly reflected at the pump this year, we'd be looking at $6 gas -- and likely taking actions that would put Exxon's future in serious doubt. They took lower profits at the refineries because they had to.

Even more interesting is where Exxon spent its money.

On an earnings-per-share basis, Exxon made $2.22. That was still lower than analysts had expected, but 24% higher than last year, a gain Exxon attributed to its aggressive stock buyback plan.

And where it didn't.

"While oil companies are earning record profits and gas prices are soaring, the largest oil companies have invested more resources in stock buybacks than U.S. production," said Congressional Democrats in a press release shortly after Exxon announced its earnings.

Other critics charge the oil companies with deliberately restricting production in an attempt to keep prices high.

The industry says it's investing as much as it can in finding new oil, but is having a hard time given the shortage of workers and equipment in the sector.

Notice that Exxon's complaint is a lack of workers and equipment, not a shortage of places to drill as the GOP would have you believe. The fact is, they're producing all that they can, and aiming their platforms at the most likely locations. Neither tax breaks nor scads of new leases would have any significant effect.

But hey, let's declare GOP Magical Fairy Drilling Day and say that suddenly there's a drilling platform for every potential reserve out there.  What could we get?

It's hard to say just how much oil is there, but estimates compiled by CNNMoney.com from various government agencies indicate crude oil production could be increased between 1 and 3 million barrels per day.

Since it's GOP Magical Fairy Drilling Day, let's be generous and go with the top number.  And lets assume, since those GOP magical fairies have plenty of magical powder on hand, that a mere ten years from now all that production comes on line all at once.  Happy days, right?

Wrong.  The US currently produces about 5 million barrels a day, which makes another 3 look like a big increase.  But US production is in a sharp decline.  Even if we held the 5 million/day level, adding in another 3 million would put us well below US production back in 1970, and far short of anything that would make a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. Imports increased 3.5 million barrels a day between 1990 and 2000 alone. If there were unlimited drill rigs, if there were unlimited resources for oil infrastructure, if every potential reserves performs at the high end of prediction, a strategy of "drill more" means we would still be importing more oil at the end of the decade, not less.

And that's all GOP magic fairy land. In reality, opening up every single area for drilling, and doing it today, won't even be enough to stop the steady decrease in US production. This production would come on line over a period of decades, during which other fields would fall off the radar. It won't even make a blip in the decline. You might as well try to save a sinking boat by drilling holes in the hull to let the water out.

Here's reality: between 1970 and 1980, oil prices increased far more sharply than they did between 2000 and today. During that period, the US got a vivid demonstration of how vulnerable we were to the availability of imported oil. In that decade, the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline was completed and the largest US oil field in history came on line. The executive order banning offshore exploration was still more than a decade in the future. So what happened to US production?  It fell over a million barrels a day. Of course, some of the exploration in that decade didn't really make it to the pumps until the 1980s... when production fell another million barrels a day. Or maybe the 1990s, when it was down another million. Over all that time, US dependence on foreign oil increased.

We can repeat that pattern. If we make "drill more" the centerpiece of our strategy, we mimic the 1970s, handing over more control of our economy and national security to foreign powers.  "Drill more" and "import more" are two sides of the same coin.

Or we can focus our efforts on getting away from oil, and turn the money that would go digging our current hole even deeper toward climbing out of the hole entirely.  We can do that... if we don't get stupid. For 2008, it's the energy, stupid.

And thinking that opening up more areas for drilling will help really is stupid.

Let's be smart instead, by helping implement plans like Energize America and through supporting EnergySmart candidates, and through not making "compromises" that amount to buying into a lie.

Because I do not believe in torture, I will only hope that this is not the end.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration has fined the operator of a Utah mine more than $1.3 million for violations that it says directly contributed to the death of six miners in August, 2007.

Because I do not believe in torture, I will hope instead for justice.

It didn't have to happen. The mountain served fair warning. Prior pillar bursts - two in March, another three days before that fateful night - were prescient.
   The mine operator failed to report those bursts to MSHA, and neglected to revise the roof control plan to address deteriorating conditions in the mine, as required by law.

Because I do not believe in torture, I will hope instead for justice.

Now, Tiller said, "people need to be held accountable for their actions and decisions."
   That includes MSHA officials, said Nancy Allred, Frank's wife. "There was nothing indicating any fault by MSHA, and I just can't believe it," she said, hours before an independent Labor Department review of MSHA harshly criticized the agency's handling of Crandall Canyon's mining plan.

Because I do not believe in torture, I will hope instead for justice.

A deadly 2007 coal mine collapse in Utah was triggered by a faulty mine design that left support pillars badly overburdened, federal investigators said on Thursday after a year-long investigation into the disaster. ... The mine's owner said at the time that the collapse was due to an earthquake in the area but federal investigators said on Thursday that no such quake was responsible.

Because I do not believe in torture, I will not wish on Bob Murray -- who sacrificed his men in pursuit of a few more dollars -- that he will know the crushing death that fell on them.  I'll not wish that the families of those officials at MSHA -- who placed ideology over the lives of those they were sworn to protect -- know the loss suffered by the families of those miners.

But I will hope that this ends in a cell, not a fine.  And if it's a small cell, and if it's dark, I think I'd be ok with that.

People have talked about many different ideas for selecting a Vice-Presidential running mate: providing regional balance, filling in a candidate's policy weaknesses, bolstering the ticket's executive credentials.  But for John McCain, selecting a VP may come back to the one quality that the GOP values above all others.

The Republican hunt for a Vice-President has focused on one word: money. Panicked conservative commentators and senators have urged McCain to find a super-rich man to bolt on to the ticket, fast. Why? Because he could "invest" tens of millions of his own cash in the campaign – and persuade his friends to do the same.

They could just put the VP position up on EBay and be done with it. That would show those who say McCain isn't savvy about the tubes google Internet.  Of course, he'd be wise to set a minimum bid if he doesn't want the slot to go for less than a cheese sandwich miraculously imprinted with an image of Andy Kaufman.

This is adapted from my portion of the Energize America presentation at Netroots Nation, and I'd hoped to provide some expanded notes to go along with the video of that talk.  Unfortunately, it appears that only a few minutes of the overall presentation was recorded (darn it).  We'll soldier on sans streaming video.

The Believers
Before we can have any serious discussion of energy, it's important that we cut through the some of the myths that surround the subject -- myths that often find their way into the media and into political debates.  I want to start off by discussion three men: Thomas Jefferson, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dr. Thomas Gold.  What can these three men possibly have in common?  They are The Believers

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, third president of these United States, statesman, inventor, author, philosopher and all around smart guy.  In 1803, Jefferson purchased a slice of land from Napoleon.  How much land?  Honestly, neither the French nor Jefferson really knew. And neither knew what that land contained.

To begin the long task of finding out, Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their long expedition across the west.  And while Jefferson was unsure of how far they'd be going, or what wonders they might find, there was one thing he had hopes they would see.  Mastodons.  A large mammal, covered in shaggy fur, ten feet tall at the shoulder, and a rather close relative of the modern elephant.  

Why would a man as smart as Thomas Jefferson expect to find a fur-coated elephant still hiding in the parts of America that were not then well know?  Because he'd seen the bones of mastodons and other large ice age creatures, and in his day, most people, no matter how bright, did not believe that it was possible for an Animal to go extinct. If mastodons were not to be found in the parts of the country settled by Europeans, then they must be somewhere else.  Even several decades later many people did not accept the idea of extinction.

Extinction threatened the "great chain of being," which could not tolerate missing links.  Like the inhabitants of Easter Island who cut down the the last tree in confidence that there had to be more trees, you know, somewhere, the people of Jefferson's America knew that mastodons were still our there.  They were merely hiding.

Donald Rumsfeld.  By any measure, not as smart as Thomas Jefferson, but nonetheless until recently the Secretary of Defense and one of those who organized our rather large expedition into a place called Iraq.  As he sent US forces in from the south, Rumsfeld told us exactly what he expected to find: weapons of mass destruction.  And he told us where he expected to find them: west, north, and east of Baghdad and Tikrit.

Why should Rumsfeld expect to find something that diligent searches by UN inspectors had not uncovered, and about which our own best intelligence sources were, to say the least, dubious? Because by the time US forces spilled over the Iraqi border, the neocons had bet everything that the WMDs were there, and would provide justification for our invasion.  It was a matter of faith.

Dr. Cornell Gold, research professor at Cornell University, respected astronomer, and the man who ferreted out the nature of pulsars. However, what draws Gold into this conversation is something he postulated much closer to home. In 1992, Gold published a paper in which he postulated that both oil and coal were not fossil fuels at all, but where generated by abiogenic processes that occur deep underground.  

Gold's theory appeared ludicrous on the face of it, but after careful examination proved totally absurd. Just looking at the coal side of the equation, we have peat bogs, lignite fields, sub-bituminous fields, bituminous, and anthracite coal. We understand every step of how plant material becomes coal, and that plant material is so well preserved within the coal that grains of pollen remain to identify the sources of coal back to the species. Oil's nature is just as easily demonstrated.

Despite this, Gold's theory gained currency far out of proportion to its credibility. His ideas offered a way out of the limits placed on oil by nasty old reality, and Gold became the patron saint of those who believe that peak oil will never come.  It is an article of faith.

The Truth About US Oil Production
Right now, we're having debates on drilling for oil on the outer continental shelves and in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.  This debate seems curiously detached from the real situation of oil production in the United States.

Significant US oil production began around the turn of the 20th Century, and by 1950 production was approaching 5 million barrels a day.  By 1960 production had jumped to more than 7 million barrels a day, and by 1970 production topped 9 million barrels a day.

Between 1970 and 1980, the OAPEC embargo hit.  For the first time, the nation woke to our dangerous dependence on imported oil.  Following the embargo, the price of oil traded sharply higher.  Oil that went for just over a dollar a barrel in 1970, fetched twenty-six dollars a decade later.  During that decade, the Trans-Alaskan pipeline was completed, bringing into production the enormous Prudhoe Bay field.  

We had a vital natural interest in increasing US oil production.  Oil companies had an enormous monetary interest in increasing US oil production.  Exploration was at a peak. New fields were coming on line. There was no federal restriction on offshore drilling.

So what happened?  Production went down.  It was down again between 1980 and 1990, down again in 2000.  And despite all the price increases of the last seven years, despite the 18 billion dollars a year provided in tax breaks aimed at exploration, by 2010 US oil production will be approximately where it was in 1950.

Anyone telling you that we can find relief for the problem of imported oil by simply looking beneath a few overlooked rocks is searching for modern mastodons.  Are there new oil fields out there?  Certainly.  Will they reverse the trend of our declining production.  Certainly not.

But then, perhaps all our mastodons are merely congregating elsewhere. Our imports of oil from outside the US have grown steadily.  The oil shock that occurred in 1973 happened at a time when imports were a fraction of what they were today, and yet by the end of that decade imports were higher.  Today, we're importing about twice as much oil as we're producing.

There are 98 oil producing countries in the world, which makes it seem as if we should have a lot of choices in our sources.  However, 68 of those countries have, like the United States, passed peak production.  60 of them are in terminal decline.  That means that the remaining 30 will have more, and more, and more control every single day that we continue to use oil.  If we want to reduce our demand for foreign oil, there is exactly one way in which it can be done: use less oil.  

Any other step -- including deluding ourselves in discussions of drilling our way out of this crisis -- is a step toward more control of our economy, our national security, and our future by the countries still capable of producing significant oil for export.  That means that every day King Abdullah, Hugo Chavez, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have more control over your lives every single time you take your car to the pump.

War by Bumpersticker
These are two bumperstickers spotted on the backs of cars: "Hungry? Eat an Environmentalist!" and "Ban Mining / Let The Bastards Freeze in the Dark." These may sound like they were created in response to the fight against global warming or mountaintop removal, but they actually date back to 1970.  

They were created in response to the push for the Clean Air Act, which among other things set limits on Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) emissions from coal-fired power plants. They didn't spontaneously appear, but were created by the PR departments of industries fighting against the legislation. They were the "Obama is a Muslim" chain emails of their day.

Industry predicted that the changes would destroy the economy, would puts tens of thousands out of work, and would drive the cost of electricity so high that average families would be back to studying by firelight. Obviously, they were wrong. Their cost estimates were off not just by a factor of two, or ten, or even a hundred. They also predicted that the SO2 reductions could not be met. They were wrong about that, too.

In 1990, the Clean Air Act was revised to add more limitations and introduce a cap and trade system in SO2 certificates. Again industry stood ready with dire warnings.

They predicted that the 1990 Act would cost fifty thousand jobs in mining alone. The EPA under George H. W. Bush took a look and predicted something like eleven to fifteen thousand jobs.  But when they checked in years after the Act had been fully implemented, actually job losses were less than 5,000.  Not only that, 95% of the losses in mining were due to "higher productivity techniques," such as mountaintop removal mining, not to changes caused by the legislation.

On costs, industry's numbers indicated tens of billions a year to be invested in cleanup. The EPA estimate was much more modest at around four billion dollars a year. Actual costs? Around one billion -- which is reflected in the price of the SO2 certificates, which after full implementation are still selling for about a quarter to a third of what the EPA predicted they would cost after just the first phase.

Industry was also ready with more warnings about electrical cost, predicting a significant rise in home electric rates. Again, the EPA was more modest, and again reality showed even that estimate was way over. In fact, electrical costs to the consumer fell during the time in which the legislation was being implemented.

So What's the Point?
The point is that our energy debate is too often driven by predictions and numbers that have no relation to reality.

• We are forty years past peak oil in the United States
• Drilling will not reverse the trend of increasing dependence on imported oil
• That oil is increasingly in the hands of nations who are not our friends
• Those nations will have more and more to say about every facet of our lives and security
• When it comes to making changes, you can't trust the huge cost estimates
• Even supposedly neutral organizations overestimate the cost of change

What do we do from here?  We use less oil. Equally important, we have to entangle our oil-based transportation system with our electrical grid through introducing plug-in hybrid and pure electrical vehicles.  

If we don't, then we may soon be joining the mastodons.

Daily Kos has been deeply involved in energy issues from the beginning, and produced Energize America as a result of the many discussions and proposals put forth in diaries and comments.  Energize America has never been more important than it is today.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be revisiting Energize America to update our proposals in the face of changing issues, and to support Energy Smart candidates.

Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of... ok, it might not be piling up in the corners, but the number of emails that show up in the in ye olde email box can be daunting.  While many of the letters are thoughtful and insightful, others are simply chock full of nutty goodness.  This is especially true of the attack waves sent by the fighting keyboardists at the urging of their favorite talking head.

A decade ago, UC Riverside physicist John Baez developed the crackpot index to help when sorting letters sent to universities that promised to revolutionize science.  His index (which was referenced in the Netroots Nation science panel by Ed Brayton) includes such items as 5 points for each mention of "Einstein," and 20 points for comparing yourself to Newton.

To bring the same sort of order to the missives that arrive at this site each day, here's the Daily Kos equivalent.  

The Wingnut Index

5 points
Each use of "Democrat Party."
Each use of "liberal elite."
Each declaration that kos readers should "leave America."

10 points
Each use of the phrase "hate site."
Each mention of Nazis, Commies, Reds, brownshirts or stormtroopers.
Each blind repetition of phrases provided by your close pal Bill, Rush, or Sean.
For contending that liberals are aiding terrorists.
Each time the writer insists that the recipient is "going to burn in hell."
Each physical threat to the recipient.

15 points
Including "San Francisco" in letters that have nothing to do with San Francisco.
Discussion of water / food additives and their feminizing effect on the men of America.
Insisting that liberals "want America to lose."
Each alternate theory for the death of Vincent Foster.
Each alternate theory for the death of Ron Brown.
Each alternate theory posed to replace evolution.
Each explanation for why global warming is a hoax.

20 points
Each use of "DemocRAT Party."
Each time the writer wishes the recipient would burn in hell.
Asserting the recipient belongs in Gitmo.
Each physical threat to the recipient's family & pets.
Each use of the term "Darwinism."
Each use of the term "algore."

25 points
Wishing on the recipient death, cancer, a stray bullet, or a visit from Bill O'Reilly.
Each use of "clearly" or "obviously" appended to any of the above. (i.e. "Since you liberals clearly want America to be defeated by the terrorists, obviously you belong in Gitmo" makes for a 70 point sentence.)

30 points
Each loving description of the torture the author would love to inflict.
Letters written IN ALL CAPS.

50 point
Each serious, affirmative use of the term PUMA.
Sending a letter complaining about how kos is censoring you because you can't post thirty seconds after registering.
Sending a letter complaining about how kos is censoring you, when you've been booted by the community for 101 crappy comments.
Sending a letter complaining about how kos is censoring you, when you haven't bothered to register at the site.

100 points
Each use of the word "Bush" in association with "unrecognized genius."

Special awards are given for creative use of grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.  (i.e. "u LIBURrrLLS, R D SuXeS!?!" hits none of the categories above, and yet, still has the toasty zing of nuttery.)

For those people still wondering how they might most curry favor with Bill O'Reilly by telling him about the mean, mean words they sent this way, don't think of these scores as restrictions on your speech -- think of them as a challenge.

When members of Energize America panel went on stage with Gov. Bill Richardson at Las Vegas two years ago, we brought with us an ambitious twenty point plan to revise America's energy policy. Swinging for the fences, we called for policies that would create two million new "green collar" jobs and increase conservation. We also called for moves as radical as:

• 25% of Electrical Production from Renewables
• Reduce Greenhouse Gases by 50%
• Increase average fuel economy to 33mpg

And all of this was supposed to happen by the astonishing date of 2020.  

It seemed like a solid, even aggressive, plan at the time. It certainly asked for more to be done than most other proposals on the table. In particular, that 25% of electrical production from renewables within fourteen years seemed like a lofty goal.

That was then.  With the recent challenge set out by Vice President Gore, many things about that 2006 plan suddenly seem timid.  Gore's proposal would have us power 100% of electrical grid from carbon neutral sources by 2018.  Many voices have already been raised in support of Gore's plan, but predictably the defenders of the status quo are legion. It's funny how some of the same voices who are quick to point to the transition from whale oil to petroleum as a sign that technology will always be there to save us, are now screaming "not yet!"

Let's get this straight from the start.  There's no question that Gore's plan is possible.

But the biggest advance of Gore's plan might be more psychological than physical.  By setting such a lofty and laudable target, Gore draws both the screams of the naysayers and the minds of the general public in a way that a more timid plan would never achieve.  The result is exactly what the first paragraphs of this post already show -- to make plans that previously seemed at the cutting edge, look like the dull side of the knife.  In one speech, Al Gore has pushed the Overton Window of energy policy to the wall.  Everything that's proposed now will be measured not against half-measures, but against that 100% goalpost at the end of the field.

That change is important, and it's made even more important because the GOP, after decades of giving tax breaks to oil companies "for exploration" are determined to blame Democrats for high gas prices. You know, because oil companies somehow couldn't do any exploration.

For Energize America, the combination means that we can (gleefully, joyfully) throw away some of those goals set in 2006. In their place we need steps that recognize both the new space that Gore's plan provides, and the constraints that still need to be shifted. Some new proposals were already presented at Netroots Nation for the rest we're going to need the kind of passion and involvement from our fellow Kossacks that created Energize America in the first place.  

For candidates this fall, there is no way they can be less than fully engaged in this fight. 2008 is going to be a campaign that focuses on the economy, but in 2008 the economy is all about energy.

Having created their "drill more" catchphrase, dictating that the only solution is to continue beating our heads against the same wall that's already given us an economic and national security concussion, Republicans used a technical maneuver to defeat the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  Democrats had a plan to release 10% of the reserve's light sweet crude over a six month period, helping moderate prices on the market.  Republicans moved quickly to protect their talking point, and got what they wanted -- higher prices.

Oil prices reversed course and moved higher Thursday in U.S. trading after a move in Congress to tap into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve was defeated. ... At a press conference before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, pointed out that previous releases from the oil reserve had knocked down prices, sometimes significantly: 33 percent in 1991, 19 percent in 2000 and nine percent in 2005.

Is releasing oil from the strategic reserve a long term solution?  No, but unlike anything the Republicans have suggested, it actually would help relieve prices at the pump today and give the market a chance to moderate.  And there's a record amount of oil in the SPR, so a minor adjustment in the reserve's composition (the plan required that this oil be replaced by heavier crude) would represent no problem for US security.

Of course, selling that 10% would both reduce ExxonMobil's bottom line and damage the GOP talking point.  And their leverage was already being eroded by the damage they've done to the economy, which was putting demand in doubt.  That had to be stopped!

Republican plan from now until November?  Continue talking about drilling that won't help prices so they can avoid talking about anything that will.  Oil prices were edging down on more economic worries on Friday.  That has to have them worried.

Back in February, the Republicans knew they had a losing issue on their hands.

Even some Republicans admit that it may be hard to sell voters on the idea of continuing to provide tax incentives to oil companies earning record profits.

"It's not as sexy and easy a sound bite," said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who opposes the measure

What to do?  What to do?  After years of pushing multi-billion dollars tax breaks into the overflowing coffers of oil companies -- all in the name of encouraging exploration -- the Republicans had only managed to fatten company bottom lines while emptying American pockets.  

But wait!  They could just turn it around.  Blame Democrats for blocking the very thing the GOP had been funding year, after year, after year and pretend it never happened.  "Find more, use Less" became the new GOP talking point.  And boy, this idea's a three'fer.  You get to blame Democrats for a problem you caused, keep the tax breaks you've been feeding your oil buddies, and tear down the restrictions around the last protected places.  If that's not making barrels of light sweet Texas lemonade out of sour lemons, I don't know what it.

Best of all, the American people are behind it.  The GOP drank the shake and stuck Democrats with the tab.

Only... maybe not.  A poll conducted by the Wilderness Society delivers very different results from the Faster, Democrats! Drill! Drill! line that's being pushed on the 24 hour talking head-a-thons.

The American public is not buying the arguments of President Bush and the oil industry that new drilling will lower gas prices, a new poll finds. Despite a well-funded campaign to convince lawmakers to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the offshore waters of the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling, and to allow new oil shale projects in the Rocky Mountain West, a majority (54%) of Americans do not see more drilling as a solution to high gas prices.

George Bush, John McCain, and the Republican Chorus think that the way to turn attention from their disastrous oil policy is repeat the same thing, only more so.  But somehow, people aren't buying.

A significant majority of Americans (63%) said that the President's proposal to open up public lands to oil and gas drilling is "more likely to enrich oil companies than to lower gas prices for American consumers." A substantial majority (66%) said that "the small percentage of public lands still protected from oil drilling should remain off limits because they are valuable natural resources that cannot be replaced."

Republicans think they have a winner here.  But then, when's the last time the Republicans were right about anything?

Oh, and someone might want to talk to George Voinovich about the "use less" part of "find more, use less" motto.

Voinovich: Let's go after every single drop of oil that's available to us.

Uh, yeah.  That seems to sum up the Republican plan for our future.  No doubt after we've burned that last drop, we will use less.

McCain apparently isn't as tech ignorant as we think.  Like most Republicans, he appears to be getting all his news from chain emails, because he's parroting the latest talking point that's been propagating down the pipe that brought previous bits of GOP misdirection.  

Earlier, campaigning in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., McCain credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.

See, we didn't even have to drill to lower the price of oil, we only had to talk about it.  Which has to make you wonder why Bush didn't bother to remove the executive ban until after Republicans had decided to make oil the focus of their campaign.  (Oh yeah, and how is it that Democrats kept oil companies from saving us when Bush left the executive ban in effect until now?)

What's the real reason oil prices are falling?

"The worries about demand erosion in the U.S. and an economic slowdown are really pulling prices down," said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with consulting firm Purvin & Gertz Inc. in Singapore.

The Energy Department's report also showed that U.S. gasoline stockpiles jumped 2.9 million barrels last week, far more than analysts surveyed by energy research firm Platts predicted. The decline in crude inventories was less than forecast.

So congratulations to McCain, Bush, and the Republicans!  They've reduced oil prices by wrecking the economy to the point where demand is falling.  I guess that's one way to satisfy the supply/demand equation.

Don't worry, none of this will make the email.