Write Software, Change Washington

Obama for America is looking for exceptionally talented web developers who want to play a key role in a historic political campaign and help elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. (Interested in a security expert position?)
This six-month opportunity will allow you to:

* Create software tools which will enable an unprecedented nationwide voter contact and mobilization effort
* Help build and run the largest online, grassroots fundraising operation in the history of American politics
* Introduce cutting-edge social networking and online organizing to the democratic process by empowering everyday people to participate on My.BarackObama

You must have:

* At least 5 years of professional web development experience
* A deep understanding of LAMP development processes and best practices
* Experience building complex applications using PHP and MySQL
* Advanced or expert CSS, Javascript, and AJAX skills
* An abiding desire to put your technical wizardry to work for democracy and for our country

Unfortunately, you have to move to Boston, or I'd be all over this.

Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Technology Opportunities

US Policies with an impact on Energy:

1. Limited areas available for offshore drilling;

2. Stopped the rise of CAFE standards for automobiles;

3. Restricted nuclear power generation of Electrical;

4. Federal Reserve policies since 2001 led to a very weak US dollar (raising Oil prices);

5. Energy conservation policies? None

6. Iraq and Afghanistan wars contributing to Middle East tensions

7. No major United States funding for R&D on energy;

8. Kept CAFE standards for light trucks/SUVs much lower than autos;

9. Failed to raise efficiency standards for appliances for decades;

10. Provided no tax incentives for consumer purchases of hybrid automobiles;

11. Suburban Sprawl: Americans, on average, live further from where they work than Europeans do;

12. Mass transit system not a high priority;

13. Allowed tax credits for residential solar power to expire;

14. No special capital gains treatment for VC alt.energy investment

15. Ridiculous corn ethanol policy helped drive food prices higher also;

16. Amongst the lowest gasoline taxes in the developed world;

17. No special capital gains tax treatment for clean energy technology development;

18. Created a tax incentive (ADCS) that encouraged purchases of large inefficient vehicles;

19. Game changing breakthroughs over the past decades in solar, battery, or energy generation technologies? None

20. Exempted light trucks, SUVs, and pickups from gas-guzzler tax;

21. Discouraged clean coal, including gas liquification from coal;

22. Limited (or non-existent) state tax incentives for building energy efficient homes;

23. Failed to aggressively promote compact fluorescent light bulb;

24. Limited hydro-electric power generation;

25. Aggressive tax incentives for battery technology development? None

26. Failed to aggressively promote efficiency improvements for residential energy use, transmission of power, or consumption;

27. No new oil refineries built in the USA over the past 25 years.

The Big Picture | The Costanza Energy Policy: 25 Ways to Drive Oil to $150

Ah, birth rate -- funny how it’s become such a taboo subject for both Left and Right. The Lefties wouldn’t dream of telling third-world people to limit their baby-making, and most right wingers can’t bring themselves to endorse birth control even if it could slow the destruction of their own countries.

So birth rate is a weapon without a counter-weapon right now. So it tends to win. The Moroccans made it clear that the Green March was all about birth rate. The number of “volunteers” they sent to the border was 350,000, exactly the number of births per year in Morocco. So this was basically a ”Lebensraum” argument like the one the Germans tried earlier in the century. You might have heard about that one, a little dust-up called the Eastern Front. And you might be saying right now that if any policy ever failed decisively, it was the Nazis’ attempt to elbow themselves a little living space from Stalin. Which is totally true. But the Nazis tried it the old-fashioned way, with armed conquest.

...

That’s what’s funny about the debate right now: the diehards in the U.S. and Europe wish we had the old ruthless will to seal the borders, but the “weakness” of the advanced countries generally works pretty well to turn the immigrants into immigrant-hating locals in a generation or two. The old model, bayonets on the border, isn’t even in the running. Time to face that fact. So the faces will change.

If you can handle these new faces, you’re likely to be surprised to see your “weak” American or European culture win out, slowly, un-gloriously but surely, and you may live long enough to see a whole new crop of pols who look like they just came from Karachi or Kinshasa until you turn the sound on and hear them ranting about how we need to get rid of all these damn immigrants.

THE EXILE - War Nerd: War of the Babies in Taki's Magazine

I nodded, glancing at his hand, which was still on my shoulder. He waved me into the bus.

I had been attending the Cornerstone Church for weeks, but this was really my first day of school. I had joined Cornerstone — a megachurch in the Texas Hill Country — to get a look inside the evangelical mind-set that gave the country eight years of George W. Bush. The church's pastor, John Hagee, is one of the most influential evangelical preachers in the country — not because his ministry is so very large (although he claims up to 4.5 million viewers a week for his Sunday sermons) but because of his near-absolute conquest of a very trendy niche in the market: Christian Zionism.

The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon. As Hagee tells it, only after Israel is involved in a final showdown involving a satanic army (in most interpretations, a force of Arabs led by Russians) will Christ reappear. On that happy day, Hagee and his True Believers will be whisked up to Heaven by God, while the rest of us nonbelievers are left behind on Earth to suck eggs and generally suffer various tortures.

Jesus Made Me Puke : Rolling Stone

Of the 564 members of the assembly present for the vote, only four voted to keep the monarchy.

The group met all day in a convention center to reach the agreement and even continued to work after the facility was bombed.

Two apparent bombs damaged the building about 8:20 p.m. local time, said a CNN journalist covering the meetings.

There were no reports of injuries, and the group was back working within 10 minutes of the blasts.

Even though the meeting went late into the evening, a small procession of people could be seen celebrating outside the convention center when the news of political transition was announced.

There was no immediate reaction from the palace, which has rarely commented on political developments in Nepal since King Gyanendra was forced to end his royal dictatorship and restore democracy after widespread protests two years ago.

The country's former rebels, the Maoists, then ended their 10-year communist insurgency and in April won the most seats in the assembly, setting the stage for the end of Nepal's monarchy.

Wow. Three years ago I thought of crossing over into Nepal from India, and the Maoists and the King were killing people. Now the Maoists are elected to run the government. Democracy in action.

Nepal abolishes monarchy - CNN.com

But if you really consider the Mosul operation on another level, that’s where it gets a little more interesting. It’s part of a pattern of what Cheney, that strategic genius ("Shit, Iran is RIGHT NEXT to Iraq? Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder we’re having all these problems!") expected to happen: he figured that the Shiite’s military energy would wear itself out in a civil war against Al Qaeda Sunnis, both in Lebanon and in Iraq, rather than making problems for their pro-American governments and us. That was the Cheney Plan, except it didn’t happen. Al Qaeda just doesn’t have the support in the ‘hood to take on these neighborhood militias, either in Iraq or in Lebanon. But there was a funny little footnote: Al Q has officially declared war on Hezbollah in Lebanon and "ordered its operatives to defend the Sunni community in Lebanon" according to this story:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=54916&sectionid=351020203

The trouble with being a James-Bond-y international conspiracy like Al Q is that there’s no way on earth you can compete militarily with local, broad-based militias like Hezbollah. Commuting from the Shia slums to West Beirut is one thing, but the notion that Al Q’s International Brigade can all fly into Lebanon undetected and assemble to march on the Hezzies is too far-fetched and idiotic even for a Bond flick. The notion they’d beat Hezbollah if they could manage to mobilize a force against it is even more ridiculous. The Hezzies even scare the IDF, and the IDF has wet dreams about facing Al Q. The rankings are pretty clear, and getting clearer, and they add up to something simple: in Iraq and in Lebanon, two countries the Western powers have operated on like they were diabetics with Medicaid, the net result of all the slicing and cutting is victory, hands down, for Shiite militias that didn’t even figure in the big plans. They just weren’t supposed to be part of the equation, and now they’re on top.

And that’s assuming it’s all being decided by Washington. Suppose we entertain, as they say, another idea: suppose it’s true that the Lebanese Hezzies are just "puppets" of Iran the way Cheney keeps saying they are. Well, if that’s true, then…lessee here: Cheney woofs on and on about attacking Iran and just coincidentally these Iranian puppets just casually take over Lebanon, one of the few supposedly pro-Western Arab states. And they do it without even breaking a sweat. Like saying, "Hello Meester Cheney, joost a leetle reminder, we know zee game about a t’ousand times better dan yoooo, sir!"

There are two possibilities: Cheney is an Iranian mole, and he’s laughing his head off chewing pistachios, kicking back on his prayer mat in front of the flatscreen, something I’ve been arguing for awhile now—or he’s the stupidest human being ever to step out of his league—which would be Wyoming, Little League. Girls’ Softball to be exact.

THE EXILE - From Lebanon To Iraq: We’re In Deep Shia Now - By Gary Brecher - The War Nerd

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known."

GO OIL GO! GO OIL GO! KILLLLLll SUBURBIA! MURDER IT!

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

Rufus O'Terril for Lieutenant Governor.

Rufus O'Terrill and the Bum Bot - Difference Makers - The Colbert Report | Comedy Central

In the paper's Wednesday edition, the editorial board which endorsed Clinton's White House bid earlier this year says the New York senator's "negativity" is doing "harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

"The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it," the board writes.

The paper finds fault in Clinton's latest campaign ad, which includes an image of Osama bin Laden, and asks, "Who do you think has what it takes?"

"Mrs Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11," they write, adding that it is a tactic that is "torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook."

"Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning," the editorial also states. "She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama."

The paper also says Barack Obama deserves some of the blame for the negative tone. "He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics."

But the editorial makes clear the paper thinks most of the blames lies with Clinton. "If she is ever to have a hope of persuading [superdelegates] to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs."

NY Times slams Clinton’s ‘negativity’ - Blogs from CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive

The economy appears to be in recession, and while most industries are shedding jobs, consumer debt councilors, conservation consultants and green energy suppliers have ramped up hiring, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

The Monitor also points out that the leading edge of the recession overlaps with the start of the baby boomer retirement wave. This has sparked a government hiring binge as Uncle Sam scrambles to replace outgoing workers.

Who else hires during a recession?

Private security firms. They’re seeing a spike in demand these days, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Who Hires During a Recession? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog