So bloggingheads.tv has a special user-generated feature where they take 15-second clips from the program and show them out of context. Here's one on advertising to monkeys. I was always of the opinion that we had a giant untapped market, if only someone could figure out how to get them to buy.

So we all know that Hillary's gasoline excise-tax elimination promise was completely idiotic. It turns out to have also been political capital for Obama (thanks to Gerry for pointing me to this):



This late in the election, the candidates are grasping at straws.

So, for those of you that don't know, Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor and author of the book Supercapitalism, has decided to endorse Barack Obama for president (it's the April 18 entry). It's too bad this hasn't received as much attention as the Jeremiah Wright affair. Bloggingheads.tv, my new favorite website, has him discussing the endorsement with left-leaning economist Glenn Loury, author of Anatomy of Racial Inequality, among other books. I haven't watched it yet, but it looks promising, especially because one of the topics of discussion is "An economist and a labor secretary on how to fix the economy." Hopefully, they wrap it up quickly and let us get on to more pressing issues like who's going to win American Idol.

So I know that it's very dangerous to predict things that will happen many many years in the future, especially without the appropriate analysis. I also know that my predictions hold little water and, even if they are right, so what? But I still felt like predicting a couple of things that I think that I will (unfortunately) live to see:

1) Global energy shortage on a massive scale

2) The melting of the polar ice caps

3) WWIII (or IV, depending on how you number them)

Will any of these things mean the complete annihilation of the human race? I doubt it. But they are the kinds of things that one would rather sit out. ("No guys, I'm pooped. I'd rather not come in on this one.") The reasons for my believing the first two are obvious, the third not so obvious. I'm simply of the opinion that the global policing that has produced an ersatz military détente will not last another fifty years. There's my two cents, although they're probably worth a lot less than that.

Fukuyama was wrong (no kidding!)

BBC News discusses the new book, by neoconservative policy hawk, Robert Kagan, entitled The Return of History and the End of Dreams. Correctly, Kagan says that the "end of history" that Fukuyama saw in the fall of the Berlin Wall was pure delusion. Not surprisingly, Kagan's remedy for this striking return of history: more aggressive American foreign policy. Whether history has ended or not, it appears that the cure for all our ills is the same. Violence: the thinking man's penicillin.

Here's how you spell b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t

“At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”

Hillary Clinton wants to to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, in lock-step with John McCain, a clear attempt to attract the voters who eat that kind of thing up and believe that issues like gas prices are more important than the environment. Obama's response is apt:

At a meeting with voters in North Carolina on Monday, Mr. Obama said lifting the gas tax for three months would save the average consumer no more than $30, a figure confirmed by Congressional analysts. Mr. Obama has previously dismissed Mr. McCain’s proposal as a “scheme.”

“Half a tank of gas,” Mr. Obama told his audience. “That’s his big solution.”

These are the kind of things that make you really hate American exceptionalism. We seem to believe that we have some fundamental right to cheap gas and home ownership (I've been told I'm in lock-step with McCain on this latter issue; so be it). Voters care more about tax rebates and gas price cuts than CO2 and suburban sprawl. Here's the NYTimes story.

A friend of my parents, Fleet Maull, has started a blog to raise money for his son's medical funds. His son was assaulted in Cusco, Peru in February, and is now undergoing brain damage rehabilitation. You can find the blog here. There is information for those who wish to donate.