To Josh Marshall, who just lost his father. I know the feeling, though the pain is long dull now–I lost mine half a lifetime ago.
[Update in the afternoon]
While Josh has written a beautiful eulogy, am I the only one to wonder why he has a different last name than his father?
[Update]
Commenters, who read his piece more carefully than I, point out the numerous references as to why they don’t share the same last name, which makes his eulogy even more heart felt and sad. He was his father in deeds, if not biology, and the reverence, love and grief should be respected all the more.
Just a single fill of ethanol for a four-wheel drive SUV, says Brown, uses enough grain to feed one person for an entire year. This year the amount of US corn going to make the fuel will equal what it sells abroad; traditionally its exports have helped feed 100 – mostly poor – countries.
From next year, the amount used to run American cars will exceed exports, and soon it is likely to reduce what is available to help feed poor people overseas. The number of ethanol plants built or planned in the corn-belt state of Iowa will use virtually all the state’s crop.
This will not only cut food supplies, but drive up the process of grain, making hungry people compete with the owners of gas-guzzlers. Already spending 70 per cent of their meagre incomes on food, they simply cannot afford to do so.
Time to stop this latest nuttiness in farm subsidies.
Jon Goff has an interesting post on the potential use of the Kistler K-1 upper stage as a lunar transport vehicle, using aerobraking. He also wonders of the Ares 1 is already obsolete.
Are the Dems really going to be so foolish as to put out a report titled “The Neo Con”? I just saw a crawl on cable indicating that they will.
Way to play to your nutty fringe base, and turn off the sensible electorate. I hope they do it.
[Update in the early afternoon]
Robert Goldberg, on the increasing (and increasingly hard to hide) anti-semitism of the left. And I think that, at this point, most of us know what “neocon” is code for.
I’m sure that any minute, we’ll see editorials railing against radical Islamists about this:
FAR-RIGHT extremists have adopted the tactics of Islamic jihadis by posting videos on the internet in which they threaten to behead British Muslims.
The films show balaclava-clad white British men brandishing guns, knives and clubs, calling on all Muslims to leave Britain or be killed. One appears to be a soldier who has served in the Gulf.
In one film, a man tells Muslims to “go home” or risk being burned alive. He threatens, “I’ll cut your head off”, and claims to have “comrades” across Britain who have “had enough”.
And aren’t that thrilled with their government. Someone at the WaPo (in the travel section) got off script:
What took place over the next fortnight astonished me. Everywhere I went — from the traffic-choked streets of Tehran in the north to the dusty desert town of Yazd in central Iran, to the elegant cultural centers of Isfahan and Shiraz — I was overwhelmed by the warmth and, dare I say it, pro-Americanism of the people I met.
Ponder the irony of that last statement for a moment. While much of the rest of the world seems to be holding their collective noses at us Americans, in Iran people were literally crossing the road to shake an American’s hand and say hello. Who knew?
Initially, when Iranians asked me where I was from, I’d suggest they guess. But this game quickly proved too time-consuming — no one ever guessed correctly. So instead I would simply mumble “American.” And then their faces would light up. For better or worse, Iranians are avid fans of America: its culture, films, food, music, its open, free-wheeling society.
Which reraises the question. How to punish a rogue, tyrannical government without harming its people?