Akkam’s Razor

• Oiligarchy | Molleindustria - Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.
• A Tailored Suit - Select Pattern -

Popularity: 3% [?]

Congress was shook to the bone by the Bald Banker and Bearded Professor:

Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“When you listened to him describe it you gulped,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

Their reaction calls to mind the reaction to the Bush saber rattling over Iraq as well as this little bit of research:

…and if they did, they’d probably agree with it.

Many of us are making a big deal out of Sarah Palin’s inability to articulate the paramount legacy of this White House - The Bush Doctrine [wiki]. Here is a partial transcript and video of her interview with Charlie Gibson of ABCNEWS (more at HuffPo):

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine? PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

I’d like to make an effort to formally define the Bush Doctrine, to provide context for its existence, to examine its success, and to look at future challenges.

Regardless as to your political leanings, the Bush Doctrine exists for one reason and one reason only - to reinforce the Unitary Executive Theory, weakening what, to this point, had been the sole responsibility of Congress over the Executive Branch - the ability to declare war. Similarly, it seeks to remove any external, non-domestic restrictions by foreign bodies over US actions, including international agreements and treaties. In short, the US, as the sole remaining superpower (after the fall of the Soviet Union) would have the justification for acting unilaterally against any threat. This is further quantified by allowing the ability to wage preemptive war against perceived threats both in the near- and long-terms. In short, it means never having to say you are sorry.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Why did the interventions of the New Deal (and our victory in World War II) largely work while the attempts of Johnson’s Great Society fail?  What was different?

From a group dynamics perspective, the shared misery of the Great Depression, funneled into the collective efforts of the recovery allowed Americans to unite based on task specific actions.  The further sacrifices, both direct via the military service of eligible males as well as the indirect sacrifices in wages, resources, and comfort good by the populace briefly made us a cohesive, high performing society.  The monetary gains and ideological shifts of the 1950s forward then cleaved society into thinner demographic slices.  By the late 1960s, poverty, sickness, and racism were absent from a great majority of Americans.  The Americans affected by those issues would find no empathy nor sympathy from those unaffected.  We further declined into a society of us versus them, the have-and-have-nots.

Fast-forwarding to today, particularly through the lens of the environmental crisis, particularly peak oil, the spectre of outstripping, the water problem, and global warming, one can easily see how the conditions that pulled the country out of the Great Depression, contributed to the greatness of the country and her people through the New Deal, and Ultimately won World War II and the immediate post-war period appear to be re-manifesting themselves.  We will all be affected by the scarcity of those resources and the effects they will have on our lives.  Our collective cooperation, whether through innovation, conservation, or re-configuration will change us as a people.  Once the American people begin to view their lives in terms of kilowatt hours, gallons-per-day, and dollars-per-mile, and begin doing what they have to do to get those costs and consumptions in line, we will have primed the pump for the next great period in American history.  This is what the Republicans fear - a Democratically unified country around those principles undoes how the GOP has done business for all of the 20th century.

Popularity: 6% [?]

These are my links for August 12th through August 13th:

• Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos - Words - particularly from books - as bodyart.
• The Washington Monthly: The Burbs - Matt points us today to a discussion on the Freakonomics blog about the future of suburbia in the face of increasing gasoline prices. The consensus view is fairly grim, but it reminds me of a few random points about urban land use that have been on my mind for a while. There's no big overarching point here, and nothing especially original, just a few thoughts that don't seem to get much attention in blogospheric discussions of the burbs.

Krugman says:

[The] gas tax holiday is not, in my view, a good idea. But the furor over what is, when all is said and done, a small and temporary policy proposal is entirely disproportionate. What’s going on?

[...]

[E]conomists talk much more about trade than they do about health care policy, because they think they know something about it in a way the laity don’t.

The gas tax holiday is in this category. Economists really do know something about tax incidence that the laity don’t. So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

As we speak, somewhere in this country, an oil industry lobbyist is whispering in the ears of Gooper Congresscritters, telling them that all those elitist economists don’t understand how much normal Americans need that $0.184 per gallon cut in Federal taxes in gasoline, facts be damned.

Popularity: 7% [?]

• Paul Kedrosky: Map of Entrepreneurs Around the U.S.
  (tags: startup visualization entrepreneurship entrepreneur cartogram)
• Rearming the world - The Boston Globe
  [New weapon] spending is concentrated among the biggest consumers [and producers] of resources, which are trying to protect their [energy interests] at a rate that would have been unthinkable for a developing country until recently.
  (tags: war energy oil power military)
• Father Sez » Archive » Are YOU ready for a 1930’s strength recession?
  Whatever the final expert opinion may be, rather than being the frog in slowly heated up water, it should be mandatory for us to prepare and run through a checklist to see how well prepared we are.
  (tags: Recession money depression)