Okay I live and work in high tech Silicon Valley and I'm still going to say it: the last 30 years have been, for the most part, a drought of innovation.  Computers and the internet have gotten faster and friendlier but the basic innovations go back thirty years.  The patent for cell phones - 1975.  Its sometimes a long time between an invention and its usage - Velcro was invented in 1948 but its only now that kids seriously are using it for shoes.  I'm still unable to buy a car that's not powered by gas and manual labor plays too big a role in so many of our industries - nation of Luddites.  The software used by the financial sector - crap.  You can't claim much medical innovation when America faces an epidemic of auto-immune disorders.  Here's what Obama says about technology.  Unfortunately, nothing short of comparing him to McCain's stance is going to make his literature on technology look enlightened.

Basic national building blocks like food and energy are not well designed for a global economy.  World trade should be more about intellectual property and manufactured goods.  Any kind of a shortage in food and oil is bound to blow the whole system up; I argue imbalances in trade caused the housing bubble.  America was too deep in global trade debt to be able to afford to raise interest rates.  And Japan and China would not so aggressively allow American debt without the lure of food and oil.

Each nation produces enough food and energy for itself sounds quaint but there are a number of advantages.  First you are guaranteed a surplus of food that can be used to help nations with legitimate crop failure famines.  Second there is much less risk that a nation's oil is burned without benefiting its people.  Third a nation like China is discouraged from over populating and selling near slave labor in exchange for food.  Fourth trade in oil and food for the most part discourages innovation.  No one is going to innovate their way out of a commodity shortage until the whole world runs out!

Follow me over for links.

I am very, very angry with The Rise of the Rest

This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

How can this article be published at the same time as this one

World cereal stocks are at an all-time low, food-aid programmes have run out of money and millions face starvation. Yet wealthy countries persist with plans to use grain for petrol.

or the coining of agflation?  Zakaria explains

There remains real poverty in the world—most worryingly in 50 basket-case countries that contain 1 billion people—but the overall trend has never been more encouraging. The global economy has more than doubled in size over the last 15 years and is now approaching $54 trillion!

Rant follows after the bump.

The Neocon equation:

reduce common sense government + resulting disaster = big government solution likely still lacking in common sense and now costing much more

don't maintain levees + Katrina = New Orleans reconstruction

no oil alternative incentives + peak oil = Iraq

poor planning + Iraq = nation building

no CEO regulation + Enron = Sarbanes-Oxley

still not enough CEO regulation + further outrage = gov seat on corporations boards (like in Asia)

poor regulation of fed backed securities + mortgage crisis = further nationalizing the banking system

reduced restrictions on media ownership + inevitable Murdoch over abuse of power = US BBC news

poorly organized (non-partisan - all sides agree on this) health care system + aging boomers = maybe nationalized health care for the elderly

under funded schools + lowered world rankings = No Child Left Behind

Please add more examples in the comments.

Back from Vegas strip (outside Las Vegas proper) and I want to report that things out in the desert are very, very clear (politically - a big wind blew in some ozone pollution so we could barely see the Grand Canyon).  However for unfettered capitalism Vegas is less simple than you would think.  

For starters Vegas is not an adult Disneyland.  When you walk on marble there it is real marble, the Eiffel tower is half size etc. but still attention to architectural is much more of a Dresden reconstruction level than a theme park.  The strip is not just for gamblers, our Gondola driver informed us that it is the wedding and honeymoon capital of the world and we, and the other family we traveled with, found it to be way more kid friendly then you would think (Circus Circus, pirate show, dolphin and tiger zoo, ice cream in Venice, ...).  Plus an occasional community touch like you don't have to walk through the slot machines or pay money to see the enormous dancing water cannon fountains; in fact the best view is from Eiffel.  And there's a monorail built by a local bank.  Nice place to visit but you definitely don't want to live there and neither does America - join me over the bump and we explore why Obama and this election are key to keeping what happened in Vegas in Vegas.

Hi Obama,

The stance you described on

• Corruption - no revolving door
• Health care - provide it
• Oil - independence (well you could have actually mentioned a technology instead of "we've got white papers" - this would have shown more thought on the issue)
• Cap and trade carbon - do it
• Education - more money and support for public school teachers
• Taxes - winners pay to help losers - we are one country

are very well explained.  But on the trade debt your position does not come through in this speech: Obama to Paulson: Defend American Workers and Businesses by Challenging China’s Currency Manipulation.  The destitute people in Pennsylvania simply do not owe near slave labor in China their jobs.  Nor do they owe new immigrants an open door policy - America's population has quadrupled since 1900 just like the world population has - we have no obligation to keep pace with a global over population crisis.

It's time you made these facts part of your standard presentation; our policies on trade debt and open borders are just as guided by corporate lobbying and against common American interests as the others you recommend fixing now.

Compare these two Google news searches
shortage
inflation

The first shows that there are shortages of iPhones and beer.  But the search on inflation shows that India is considering a crackdown on hoarding food and the price of oil is soaring.  It would seem the latest development in Orwellian political language is that "shortage" only applies to luxury commodities.  Please take the poll...

Please read this article and comment below.  I'm going to write my own opinion after the bump because otherwise I'll be accused of "too short" a diary - whatever that is.  You can also check out "Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Immigration Reform" because I think it supports the radical middle claim and also shows how the middle can be too muddled sometimes.

Hi Ted,

Very surprised to wake up to your cartoon about Obama health care is only for children and then find OBAMA/DUKAKIS 2008.

Obama's attempt to transform himself into the living embodiment of girly-man wimpiness led him to throw his own priest under the bus.

You say Wright's comments are obvious and

People who deny that U.S. foreign policy mishaps provoke long-term consequences are liars. People like them--people like Barack Obama--are laying the foundation for the next 9/11.

Huh!  Obama is the one doing this not McBush and Hillary?!!!!

When you say

First rule of presidential politics: fight for those near and dear to you.

you COMPLETELY miss the point!  Hillary and McBush don't have to fight for those near them because everyone near them is a corrupt near sociopath!  And its Wright that tried to throw Obama under the bus not the other way around!  Even though Wright couldn't contain his love of spotlight till November Obama still went to great lengths not to disown him.

I've been following your ralling against Bush for years so what the Hell is this?

"Free markets" are the 90's equivalent of the 60's "free love".  And now social irresponsibility has landed us back in the 70s with a war and stagflation.  I'm not saying the 60s were wrong to invent co-ed college housing.  I'm saying that rejecting social responsibility, whether by dropping out or by leaving it all to corporations, will always result in a war and stagflation and its important to understand why.

The financial crisis, which will only be getting worse as November approaches, provides a great opportunity for Obama to talk plainly about the government's duties.  We need that conversation to start now or risk more election of cowboys and captains as president by people who just don't realize what government is about.

In the Garden of Eden asexually reproducing animals and plants lived peacefully for many epochs.  One type of organism might compete with another but those within a species were all sisters (same genes) and deathless (immortality of having genetically identical children).  Then came original sin, the withholding of genes - sexual reproduction.  Organisms were cast out into a world were all (even within a species) compete with all and all must die.

And so original sin was written into our genes by the old god, natural order - initial conditions, the god of war, famine and pestilence.  For a long time it was thought this god would be easily appeased by trinkets of technology and modern culture.  With nearly 6.8 billion people on the Earth its clear now that the old god requires more sacrifice.  The key question is whether more technology and better culture will do or is it a human sacrifice, rewriting our DNA - humanity slain for original sin and reborn again?

Reposting this link explaining the need for Import Certificates - introduced earlier by Senators Dorgan and Feingold.  We need to push for presidential candidates to have detailed opinions on solving trade debt instead of detailed opinions on health care.  Trade is much more under the control of a president than health care programs.  Obama is not running for Senate.  

Calling all historians!  Even back in June of 2007 Obama already had the story he was emphasizing at last night's Texas debate

Change happens from the bottom up, not from top down. We need to partnership with the people. It's about millions of Americans coming together to determine what happens. I know where we need to go, but I can't do it alone.

So historically what was accomplished in America bottom up and what top down?  And if bottom up requires economic stress - how much is necessary?  Follow me over the bump for some examples.

There is a theme in our media, going back to biblical times, of pretending that Goliath has a chance.  Goliath has, across the ages, some common characteristics:

1. He's big.  Giant in fact.
2. He's well armored

   And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

3. He's unchallenged

   Twice a day for forty days Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, comes out between the lines and challenges the Israelites to send out a soldier to fight him and decide the outcome of the battle in a single combat, but Saul and all the Israelites are afraid.

4. He's come ready to play - but by his rules.

Let's work through some examples...

Following the Halloween theme here is a list of conservative walking dead ideas:

• Social security or its equivalent is America's or France's, Japan's etc. main problem
• The Doha round would have solved anything
• Unlimited immigration of skilled labor is fine
• Europe's other main problem is its unions

Otherwise smart and sophisticated Republican voters continue with the incredibly misguided notion that retiring workers packages represent the real economic threat, that globalism is fine - it just hasn't been taken far enough yet and that breaking the back of skilled labor with blue card like policies isn't simply just more open warfare on any semblance of a middle class.  Lack of middle way ideas rant below...

Here's the text of Robert Kuttner's great speech to the Committee on Financial Services.  Well done Robert!  Securitization  of dubious value 5 and 10 year ARM mortgages is nothing new - it was first made disastrously popular over 80 years ago.  Ditto for "new era" brought on by technology (then it was cars, radio, air travel and talking movies) and the ridiculous notion that any kind of financial regulation was proven not useful (just the opposite).  Robert also talks about the Fed's role of stalling but not preventing financial crisis.  He doesn't mention the parallels of a growing gap between have's and have nots but maybe that's in his book.  Using the "global economy", pronounced "American international debt", to forestall problems seems the topic for his next book.  Open immigration helping keep the Ponzi scheme going is also different from the 1920s strict controls.  But what Robert really skips is that a depression is in some ways a sign of an economy's healthy immune system...

The current US administration demonstrably does not much believe in voter's making decisions (end the war), constitutional rights, or following the ideas of scientists, environmentalists, or judges.  Yet this same administration talks about democracy as much or more than any previous.  I believe that their definition of democracy does not include any of these elements and that in fact these elements are actually anti-democratic in their sense of the word.

Since when do we tolerate outright communist messages from the United States government.

The Federal Reserve is set to act as needed to limit impacts of financial turmoil on the economy but will not bail out investors who made poor decisions, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday.

Did we lose a cold war while I was sleeping?  Bernanke's whole tone is so condescending, so communist leader moralistic

It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve -- nor would it be appropriate -- to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions

He's leader of a cartel of banks!  Just what does he think his role is?