Next up in the Republican “blame the Dems for flawed energy policy” spin machine (drum roll, please) — H.R. 6566, the American Energy Act, which the House Republican Conference Web site says is all about “Reducing the Price at the Pump through an ‘All of the Above’ Energy Strategy.”

On Wednesday, 84 members of the Republican caucus gathered to support a packaged solution to the nation’s energy woes drafted by prime sponsor House minority leader Rep. John Boehner. And they demanded that Democrats allow an up-or-down vote on the bill before the August recess begins.

Howzat for Republican provision of careful, thoughtful deliberation on perhaps the most vexing issue the nation faces (a few wars notwithstanding)?
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by Connor O’Steen

Editor’s note: Our guest is currently in Afghanistan working for PARSA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in microeconomic development with an emphasis on women and children. He’s often in rural areas far from Kabul where most other journalists cannot, or will not, go. You’re unlikely to find his insights in the mainstream media. Often, he has no access to the Internet, so excerpts will be sporadic, at best. His correspondence to us is edited for context and to remove information that might put him or his coworkers in danger.

The hard-working orphans of Chaghcharan

Chaghcharan is the largest–essentially only–city in Ghowr province. I use the term “city” lightly, because the “city” part of Chaghcharan is the intersection of two roads around which a number of buildings are clustered. Full Story »

Did you catch this item in the morning news?

WASHINGTON - Washington mayor Adrian M. Fenty announced today that his city will soon issue interested motorists the US’s first pedestrian hunting license (PHL).  The new license will allow drivers to collide with pedestrians anywhere within the District of Columbia on a prepaid basis.

Unlike most hunting licenses, which charge a single fee, the PHL will allow motorists to deposit as much money as they like in a prepaid account.  They may then run down pedestrians for $50 each, up to the account limit.

“In no way do I want to give the impression that there is an absolute bag limit on the PHL,” said Fenty in a morning news conference at the Mayflower Hotel.  Full Story »

My friend, R.I., and I have an ongoing argument. She thinks the corporate rich in the US don’t care about our country and are perfectly content to lay waste to our economy. Many are already galloping off to China and India to rape and plunder those emerging markets.

It’s true that once the corporate rich started shipping jobs overseas and swamping American consumers with credit, it was only a matter of time until the American economy turned into a stone from which they could squeeze no water. But I don’t think they were carrying out a conscious strategy like she does. (No, she’s not a conspiracy theorist.) Full Story »

It’s a month old, but could it be that it’s maintained its relevance? Mmmm, smoooooth…… Full Story »

Until recently, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, we have been in the Holocene geologic epoch. The Holocene started about 10,000 years ago with the end of the last ice age and has persisted until recently. However, if some stratigraphers have their way, at the end of this year’s ICS meeting, we’ll be officially living in a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene - a period in geologic time dominated by humanity’s influence. Full Story »

James Bond is back in print, and the new novel, Devil May Care, reads just like the old ones.

That’s both good and bad.

British author Sebastian Faulks is the scribe behind this latest literary relaunch of the world’s most famous spy. Other authors who’ve penned Bond adventures, most notably John Gardner and Raymond Benson, have carried Bond into modern times while pretending that he really isn’t aging.

Faulks, “writing as Ian Fleming,†Bond’s creator, takes a different approach. He picks up 007’s adventures right where Fleming left off. Full Story »

by Patrick Vecchio

Some of us never laughed when Jerry Lee Lewis kicked his piano. We knew he wasn’t doing it for laughs; we knew that if Mozart himself had walked into the concert hall, Lewis probably would have kicked him, too, and the president and the pope or whoever else had the balls to step into the squall of Lewis’s rock-and-roll rage.

That’s what’s at the heart of a certain strain of rock: rage. Lewis got it. But the honor of perfecting it went to Graham Parker, in “Nobody Hurts You†from his snarling Squeezing Out Sparks LP (1979). “Nobody Hurts You†remains today a song that quickens the pulse, raises the blood pressure, makes the arm hairs dance. After you hear it, you’re bulletproof. Full Story »

Editor’s note:  Our guest, Connor O’Steen, is a special correspondent to Scholars & Rogues.  He’s currently in Afghanistan working for PARSA, a non-governmental organization (NGO) specializing in microeconomic development with an emphasis on women and children. He is often in rural areas far from Kabul where most other journalists cannot, or will not, go.  You are unlikely to find his insights in the mainstream media. Often, he has no access to the Internet, so excerpts will be sporadic, at best.  His correspondence to us is edited for context and to remove information that might put him or his coworkers in danger.

Dogs, generals, and orphans

by Connor O’Steen

One of the things we have no shortage of in Kabul is dogs. Marnie Gustavson, the executive director of PARSA and the person who’s been nice enough to put me up in Afghanistan, currently has seven dogs living under her roof.  It wasn’t exactly that she wanted this many; it was just how it turned out, really. Full Story »

I cancelled my last newspaper subscription just a few minutes ago.  I used to get two newspapers delivered every day.  I cancelled the first one when I got tired of calling circulation to get the paper that was supposed to be delivered in the morning delivered, eventually, whenever they got around to it.  I figured I would cancel just for a while to make a point, but a strange thing happened. 

I found I didn’t miss it. Full Story »

by Rick L. Lucke

The actions of the current Congress have given new meaning to Pete Townshend’s song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” I keep thinking, “Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss,†as that song says.

Does Congress normally write laws to “restore†old laws that have not been repealed? When a criminal violates existing law, does Congress pass a new law to immunize him from prosecution? Does new technology require surveillance without warrants? Does telecom guilt in past crimes require immunity to ensure their future cooperation in government surveillance operations? There is no logical, or legal, affirmative answer to any of those questions. Once that point is established, the question begs asking: Why is Congress debating this FISA bill? That question is not a small one; its significance is deceptively simple. Full Story »

In “Yes We Can,” his response to the skepticism he expected Al Gore’s speech to be met with, the New York Times’ Bob Herbert writes: “When exactly was it that the U.S. became a can’t-do society?”

Naomi Klein on the ease of accessing Iraq’s oil, as opposed to elsewhere: “. . . stick a straw in the ground and suck.”

Don Banks of Si.com on Brett Favre’s appearance on Greta Van Susteren’s show: “For a minute there I thought Favre might have some new information on the Natalee Holloway disappearance.” Full Story »

For better or worse, cultures tend to rank genres of fiction.  So-called serious works, written by the likes of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, rate well above mysteries, westerns, romances, science fiction, and (certainly) comic books on the literary org chart.  There’s justification for this.  We rank the stunning complexity of Mozart’s music ahead of chopsticks for a reason:  Mozart exhibits genius of the highest order, taking our most talented musicians years of study and practice to understand and master, and the first rendition of chopsticks was composed and taught to a wildebeest in under 19 seconds.

Or, to put it another way, Hamlet is clearly a more complex and wonderful work than Everyone Poops.

On rare occasions, though, a writer takes the unique features of a lowly literary genre and uses it to illuminate life in a manner that, perhaps, could be accomplished in no other way.  In 1895, HG Wells published The Time Machine, transforming science fiction from a mere, gee-whiz exploration of technical wonders to a spelunking crawl through the human psyche, illuminating the toothy growths of social terror clinging to the walls and ceilings along the way.  Only science fiction gave him the freedom to vastly alter the world and explore the unchanging human condition as it adapts to that world.  Only science fiction could give anthropologist Ursula Le Guin the platform she needed to explore humanity in the absence of fixed gender, as she did in The Left Hand of Darkness, or Isaac Asimov the frame of reference he needed to study the very meaning of what it means to be human in I, Robot.  Full Story »

“The political cartoon is not a news story and not an oil portrait. It’s essentially a means for poking fun, for puncturing pomposity. Cartooning is an irreverent form of expression, and one particularly suited to scoffing at the high and the mighty.”

Even an unrepentant smartass (ahem) can grasp the nuances of the controversy over David Remnick’s unfortunate choice of a certain political cartoon as cover art for the July 21^st issue of The New Yorker. However, amid the flurry of accusations and defenses – racist, anti-racist, inappropriate (a milquetoast catchall and a perpetual irritant), too easy to misinterpret, impossible to misunderstand, bad taste, protected speech, not funny – one criticism resonates with me as perhaps more of a fundamental issue than many realize.

It’s bad satire. It doesn’t work.

The reasons for its failure have very little to do with its potentially explosive subject and almost everything to do with some basic tenets of art in general and editorial cartooning in particular.

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It’s July of 2023, and, just 20 years after President Bush decided to spend $1.2 billion to develop hydrogen fuel-cell technologies for vehicles, you’ve just picked up your finally-ready-for-prime-time luxury BMW Hydrogen 7. Your neighbors, stuck with the crappy next-generation of GM’s electric but ill-fated EV-1, will be jealous.

You’re eager to get that water-emissions-only Beemer out on the open road and see what it’ll do. But the road won’t be that open any more, and the road’s lousy condition is likely to chew up your umpteen-thousand-dollar green-mobile’s undercarriage. The road just plain sucks because politicians haven’t been able to stop themselves from screwing around with the federal highway trust fund. That leaves the ride bumpy and, no doubt, unsafe.
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— President Bush at a press conference; July 16.

— Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., predicting the federal budget deficit would double this year; according to Manu Raju of The Hill newspaper, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, for the first nine months of fiscal 2008, the government ran up a $268 billion deficit, $148 billion more the same period last year; July 17.
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In case you’ve been off-planet, the dumpster fire that is Election Season 2008 is in full swing. While this can be entertaining if you’re cynical enough, it’s a process that can exert a warping effect on the perspectives of even the best among us.

In times like these, it’s often helpful to turn to the wisdom of the ages. Today, then, we offer a collection of insights on politics from some of history’s more astute observers of public life.

Enjoy. Full Story »

‘No Values Voters’ Looking To Support Most Evil Candidate