Open Threads

Still off the grid.

Don’t forget- Mad Men tonight.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (41)

Go!

Open ThreadPost + Comments (89)

This has been on my mind for a while but it doesn’t really merit a full-fledged post, so I’m just going to write a few lines about it in this open thread intro…..

Why is Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History considered to be so great? I understand that there’s an important idea there, that the world may tend towards some stable capitalist-democratic system, but that also seems to me to be an obvious idea. I remember having conversations with friends about this possibility as a teen-ager and I’m certainly no student of world affairs. So what’s the big deal? Did he somehow use footnotes to prove that it would happen?

Give ’em enough threadPost + Comments (106)

Pittsburgh, famous for its year-long beautiful weather (heh), delivered up one hell of a weekend for Kos this year. Congrats to everyone who came from somewhere where it’s raining or a hundred degrees in the shade right now. Unfortunately, do not expect a ton of political blogging as I am thick in the weeds of buying a house. I do, however, have a couple bits of advice for Kos’ers in Pittsburgh.

* Best place to see a sunset or the city at night: the West End Overlook is one of Pittsburgh’s best-kept scenic secrets. It provides fantastic views of town from the west, it has a great dog run if you’re traveling with pets and it is never mobbed, unlike the promontory on Mount Washington. However, getting there is tricky for first-timers even when there is no construction on the West End Circle (which there is), so make a map. Close second: the top floor of the US Steel building, downtown.

* Great food: The best pizza in town is Mineo’s on Murray avenue in Squirrel Hill. Don’t let anyone, least of all my sister, tell you that Aiello’s (more or less next door) is better because that is wrong and it always has been wrong and I am tired of hearing about it. Caveat: some people, who are wrong, think that a thick layer of greasy cheese detracts from the experience. Second, the corner of Highland Ave. and Center in East Liberty might be the most underrated food spot in Pittsburgh. You can find two (!) very good Ethiopian restaurants as well as Paris 66, a French creperie and restaruant that somehow (I honestly do not know how) manages to sell first-rate surrender monkey cuisine for affodable prices. All of these are BYOB, but the city’s top wine store is right across Highland Ave (open Sundays until 5).

* Great beer: Also in East Liberty, the Sharp Edge tavern has something like 300 beers on hand and a tap longer than some seaworthy vessels. The food is good enough to pair with Piraat, Witterke or a Baltika Porter. My personal happy place is the bacon bleu burger with Southern Tier’s UnEarthly, a Delirium Nocturnum or a Rochefort #12 if I’m feeling wealthy.

Now for a pic from my E-P1. Macro again.

Kit zoom plus a FL-36 flash with a clip-on diffuser. The pic is a crop with resolution dropped by 25% to fit on the blog. F5.6 1/180 @ 42mm.

Beautiful Saturday ThreadPost + Comments (51)

The always interesting Ron Brownstein writes:

Rarely has the Democratic Party identified as unconditionally with an industry as it is doing today with the emerging clean-energy sector, the companies and investors leading America’s transition toward a lower-carbon economy that relies less on fossil fuels and more on efficiency and such renewable power sources as solar, wind, and biomass. If the industry grows as its supporters hope, this emerging alliance could profoundly shape not only the nation’s energy strategy in the 21st century, but also its politics.

Because they generate so much wealth, energy interests always influence politics. For decades, oil and gas companies have treated Washington like an especially lucrative well: They have pursued tax breaks (such as the oil depletion allowance) and diplomatic help in securing supplies abroad while resisting any other federal economic or environmental regulation, such as limits on the carbon emissions linked to climate change.

To support its agenda, oil wealth has long funded conservative politics. The industry, especially the fiercely anti-government independent producers who emerged in Texas in the 1930s, provided gushers of money–first to oil-patch Democrats like Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kerr, and later to Republican politicians and conservative campaigns considerably to the right of those men. Through the late 20th century, oil titans like H.L. Hunt, Hugh Roy Cullen, and the Koch family provided huge sums to causes that ranged from uncompromisingly conservative to crackpot paranoid. Even now, the oil and gas industry remains a bedrock source of funding for Republicans: From 1990 through early this year, the industry contributed $241 million to federal campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Three-fourths of that money went to Republicans.

People tend to underestimate the influence that special corporate interests like energy companies wield. It’s not just campaign donations, it’s the so-called think tanks that generate WaPo op-ed and CNN talking head propaganda.

I’m all for clean energy and all for replacing AEI, the Heritage Foundation, and the McArdle fiance charity fund with better institutions. But there’s also a level at which I fear that as we enter what is likely to be a long period of Democratic political domination, we’ll be merely exchanging one set of corporate masters for another.

Clean energy coalitionPost + Comments (21)

I’ll be off the grid until later tonight, so hopefully Tim, DougJ, or Anne Laurie will be around.

Saturday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (77)