The Republican circular firing squad was out in force on Capitol Hill yesterday. Rep. Tom Davis, former chairman of the RCCC sent out a memo after they lost a solid Republican seat in Mississippi.

“They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate,” Mr. Davis said in a memorandum. “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006.”

The result in Mississippi, and what Republicans said was a surge in African-American turnout, suggested that Mr. Obama might have the effect of putting into play Southern seats that were once solidly Republican, rather than dragging down Democratic candidates.

Much of the talk was about the “Republican brand” being damaged beyond the possibility of repair by November. It’s like a toy company with a defective product. What do you do? Tom Cole, the new RCCC chair doesn’t have a clue, “When you lose three of these in a row you have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a hard look and ask if there is something wrong with your product.”

What we are witnessing is a once in a generation sea change election. This Neoconservative gospel was proclaimed by Irving Kristol in The Public Interest in 1965. 

• In domestic affairs the national government should shrink (by cutting taxes on the wealthy and business regulations) 
• In foreign affairs the government should grow (by becoming the world’s sole military superpower).

The contradictory themes of cutting taxes and growing military spending led to only one solution, giant deficits financed by foreign governments. The Republican party is about the reap the whirlwind of what they started sowing in 1981.

Joseph Schumpeter had a brilliant economic theory a case study of which should be the Dodge car company. Here a biographer’s description of Creative Destruction.

 ”Schumpeter’s signature legacy is his insight that innovation in the form of creative destruction is the driving force not only of capitalism but of material progress in general. Almost all businesses, no matter how strong they seem to be at a given moment, ultimately fail and almost always because they failed to innovate.”

Chrysler and Dodge resisted making fuel efficient cars so long that the only incentive they have left is to sell you subsidized gas for three years. That’s pathetic.

My post on speculation elicited this from a friend with close contacts to the intelligence community.

You can clearly trace the rise in oil prices with the creation of oil
middlemen and oil speculation. I talked to an oil broker at length and the rise in price is not related to supply demand but the perceived shortfall based on the perceived risk that an event might suddenly create a spike, delivering a massive profit to those holding contracts.

I was in Equatorial Guinea discussing oil futures and now country oil agencies are now learning to game the system (and getting kickbacks from brokers). The profit is staggering if you can find a spot in front of the firehose. It is quite similar to what Enron did by diverting power away from high demand areas and then selling back in at higher prices. Its something that Mr. Bush (the oil industry is the one thing he does know about!) says nothing about.

I think the Edwards endorsement is very important. First it shows that once again the Obama political organization is world class. They just stomped all over Hillary’s W. VA moment and got the lead on the evening news.

Second, Edwards revived his “two America’s” theme and tied it in to Obama’s ability to end the regime where the American Oligarchs (Big Oil, Pharma, Media,Military Industrial, Finance) call the tune in Washington.

Finally, he represents the New South, unlike the portrayal of tobacco chewing crackers, who would never vote for a Black Man–or even a man from the same party as the Blackman. The whole Republican strategy is to use a tactic that TOTALLY FAILED, EVEN IN MISSISSIPPI, i.e. race-baiting to beat Obama. There are still bigots in America, but they are a small but vocal minority.

America is a very different place than John and Cindy McCain live in. America does not own private jets and $100 million beer distributorships. The Republican loss in Mississippi fortells a Democratic landslide–a throw the bums out election. If McCain wants to have an open argument about whether we should continue the direction of the country that George Bush, John McCain and the Republican Party have taken us, or have a real change–this is a debate we need to have.
 

I have maintained for a while that oil prices (and perhaps other commodities as well) are being driven higher not by the laws of supply and demand, but by the moves of speculators. This morning the Dow Jones news-wire reported the following.

OPEC member Iran is storing about 25 million barrels of heavy crude oil in tankers in the Persian Gulf. The country expects to move the stored crude by the end of the second quarter or early in the third quarter, an official from the National Iranian Oil Co. said Wednesday.

In other words, there is so little demand that they have completely used up their on shore storage capacity and don’t expect to clear this inventory until October. Clearly it is time for Senator Byron Dorgan’s Bill to raise commodity margin requirements. All of this talk from our President and others about third world growth being responsible for dramatically higher commodity prices is nonsense. It’s his old friends in the trading pits that are responsible for creating yet another bubble. Is it possible that our new reliance on finance (as opposed to production) as the engine of our economy requires us always to create speculative bubbles? First Internet stocks, then housing, now commodities.

I only met Bob Rauschenberg once at a party in New York in the late 60’s. By that time he was already a big deal, having won the Venice Biennale grand prize in 1964. What strikes me most about his work is that he provided a bridge from Jackson Pollack to Andy Warhol. The world of images “mashed-up” that we take so for granted today, could not have existed in the fine art world without Robert Rauschenberg giving artists “permission” to take stuff from the junkyard and re-see it as as having beauty. Yes, I know Picasso did collages in the 20’s, but Rauschenberg took it to another level.

We have been having a good discussion here on the role of the artist in society. I think this quote from Bob extends the boundaries of our dialogue.

A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore. Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.

In Saudi Arabia the latest craze is “numbering”. Cars full of young men chase cars in which young women are being driven and get close enough to bluetooth their mobile number and email address. This is from a fascinating piece in the New York Times this morning about the hormonally challenged young people of Saudi Arabia. 

Though it is as near to hand as the offices they pass each morning on the way to college, or the majlis, a traditional home reception room, where their fathers and brothers entertain friends, the men’s world is so remote from them that some Saudi girls resort to disguise in order to venture into it.

At Prince Sultan University, where Atheer Jassem al-Othman, 18, is a first-year law student, a pair of second-year students recently spent a mid-morning break between classes showing off photographs of themselves dressed as boys.

In the pictures, the girls wore thobes, the ankle-length white garments traditionally worn by Saudi men, and had covered their hair with the male headdresses called shmaghs. One of the girls had used an eyeliner pencil to give herself a grayish, stubble-like mist along her jaw line. Displayed on the screens of the two girls’ cellphones, the photographs evoked little exclamations of congratulation as they were passed around.

Could it be that sex is the chink in the armor of the fundamentalist faith of the Saudis? Although the girls in the article make lip service to the importance of the religious police, they are clearly spending a lot of time and psychic energy trying to be like normal hormonal teenagers.

In the academy, the study of “happiness” has been going on at least since Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” (below). One of the conclusions is that “a sense of meaning and purpose is the single attitude most strongly associated with life satisfaction.”

 But the academy is afraid of another research finding which is that people of “spirituality” ( what Tillich and his followers defined as “a search for meaning, for unity, for connectedness, for transcendance, for the highest of human potential”) have a higher degree of “life satisfaction” then pure materialists. Materialists believe the masters of the Universe can control events–can make self-filling prophecies. They believe we are all little libertarian, self-centered, welfare seeking biologies.

Then comes a week like this week, when we realize we are not really Masters of the Universe.

Turns out the Ron Paul Revolution is getting ready for a revival.

Under radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.

That should be fun to watch. A platform fight about the Iraq War would be a good place to start.

Because I admire the Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix, V For Vendetta) I went to see Speed Racer. In case you are curious, let me save you $10. It is one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t even get points for its video game, comic book style. Its just toweringly dumb.

Perhaps this is proof that the audience isn’t as childish as the Warner Bros. executives who greenlighted this turkey. It did only $20 million for the weekend and cost $130 million.

Update: Turns out Warners original estimates for the weekend were way high. From Variety.

On Sunday, Warners estimated a weekend take of $20.2 million, while Fox estimated an opening haul of $20 million. Fox, as well as other studios, said Warners was being too aggressive in its estimate.

Actual numbers released on Monday showed a gross of $18.6 for “Speed Racer,” while “Vegas” grossed $20.2 million, according to Rentrak.