The British Telegraph has announced top 100 lists of most influential US conservatives and "liberals".  

Quite clearly, characterizations in the list clearly follow the media consensus imposed by the conservative side. Just to take a couple of examples, Rush Limbaugh is no wacko but a "national phenomenon" in the top 5 of the list, while Chris Matthews is an "epitome of a biassed liberal journalist" just for an increasingly strident critic of the Bush administration,

The point of this diary, however, is not analysis of the particular rankings or characterizations. What I found interesting is to divide the influential names into categories (politicians, strategists, activists...) in both lists, and compare the lists in each category. There are very instructive differences in list length and character in each category comparison - just follow me below the fold!

Enjoying vacation I read fully "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson. Some observations seem to be very relevant to ongoing discussions on "tribal" nature of politics (and progressives' problems with it), and science education.

Robert Anton Wilson (RAW, for short) was a prolific writer, a popular "guru" on psychology, futurology and conspiracy theories. He passed away at the beginning of this year. The book "Prometheus Rising" popularly presents Timothy Leary's eight-circuit neurological model of human brain.

For a starter, here in an anniversary excerpt from his book "Armed Madhouse":

I’m a bit nervous. It’s an "ORANGE ALERT" day. That’s a "low threat" notice. According to the press release from the Department of Homeland Security, low-threat Orange means that there will be no special inspections of passengers or cargo today. Isn’t it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn’t use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day’s terror color.

"I can’t say I ever have. I mean, who would?" He smiled. "The terrorists." America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won’t be monitored.

Recently, I wrote a diary with one of speculations that speculative markets (such as stock and real estate markets) tend to behave like pyramid schemes at certain stages (like now). The crucial feature is the point when the market valuation grows predominantly because of outsiders entering the market with expectations of profitting from the steadily growing market. When the market volume has nowhere to grow, the latest entrants (if only) suffer dearly.

I am content to find out that my suspicion is not a wack unseen to human mind. Please enter Prof. Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), and his Financial Instability Hypothesis.

I don't know how much often these t-shirts can be seen on American streets. But there are more than a few websites merchandising "patriotic", "military", admittedly "liberal bashing" or "evil conservative" t-shirts. If there is ever a talk about who is more hateful, "radical" liberals or "mainstream" conservatives, let them put those t-shitrs on!

This diary originated from a discussion of real estate markets, so we will eventually get to financial matters of today. The sweeping bottom question is: how can an apparently steady growth or progress possibly be halted, or even voided? Do civilisations collapse often, and how? Do they just meet bad luck or barbaric invaders sooner or later,  or do they always collapse once they fully employ a "no-brainer" affluence strategy, like greed or self-indulgence? Can gains of globalization and free markets increase forever, or will they abruptly end just "around a corner"?

Globalization must have the limits of the globe, or not? It works all fine while new markets open and expand, while masses of new individuals enter speculative markets, either directly or via inescapably more aggressive pension funds. Will the global economy continue to prosper when the stream of eager new buyers will dry out?

Deep down, it is not exceptionally remarkable that evaluation of the markets grows while their volume rapidly expands. You can run a pyramid scheme with the same effect!

For once, the pro-war LA Times commentator Max Boot put up a reasonable article in his column:

Is Iraq turning into Yugoslavia?

[...] In the former Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, ethnic groups have clashed over the years, but they also have had long periods of peaceful coexistence — and not only under the heavy hand of a Tito or Saddam Hussein. Croats, Bosnians, Slovenians, Kosovars, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbs lived together for centuries under the relatively benign Ottoman and Habsburg empires and later under their own monarchy. So did Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Mesopotamia.

Here I describe a proposition to develop non-routed bus service as a kind of public (or commercial) transport. The service would be targeting specifically frequent car users, by offering them a comfortable travel alternative, so to lure them out of their cars at least once a week. Reduction of individual car use by 20% daily would immediately have big impact on traffic intensity and CO2 emissions. Once started, the service might grow with ever greater effects.

The idea itself is simple:  travellers let the bus company know their intended trip route and time interval, and then they get their bus. It is a kind of mixture of taxi service and the usual bus service. Non-routed service was undoubtedly considered before in various forms. (Read, for example, around the mark "Col 1721" in this link). However, implementation may predictably look very messy at first tries.

I generally dislike early straw or cattle polls for the Presidential Election 2008. Early poll frenzy only pours water into the watermill of superficial media narratives of electability, character impressions, looks, momenta, etc. Needless to say, the modern media discourse easily turns out unfavourably to Democratic candidates. With powers of objective reasoning steadily diminished, character framing and similiar games are controlled by GOP spin-masters. Although there are signs that the media is not following GOP spins so obediently as before, or that conservative talk reached effectiveness boundaries, GOP is still determined to do what it does best: control the political perception throughout the Fox-idised media, find ways to encourage the Democratic opponents to fail.

To judge it from their latest ads and talks, the War on Terror is won by terror.

Are Republicans proud of hurting Democrat politicians more effectively than Al Qaeda terrorists?

Are Republicans proud of giving nice promises to their libertarian or Christian base, but never delivering to them?

Are Republicans proud of achieving new corruption standards? Are they proud of accusing the opponents of ethical failures, while doing things far worse?

Are Republicans proud of George W. Bush? Who is proud of George W. Bush? That guy did his worst in following security briefings prior to the 9/11. He did his absolutely worst with Katrina. He is continuing to do his worst in Iraq.

[Sorry, it's just a few scattered one-liners. I have no time or flow to connect them into a beefy diary.]

In the last days, it was revealed that Condoleezza Rice ignored  Tenets' briefing of July 2001 on Al Qaeda's threat. Bill Frist called for bringing back Taliban in Afghanistan's government. The talking head Rush Limbaugh called for pulling back out of Iraq. A Republican congressman Mark Foley  was forced to resign because of sexual approaches to teenager pages, while the Republican leadership was ignoring or covering up his indecent behaviour apparently for years. The Republicans should be fatally embarrased, according to the rules of "being strong on national security", "staying the course on the war on terror", "moral Christian values", "responsibility and leadership" they dilligently forced.

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. [But] it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. [It] will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States.

But this takes the top of the cake:

A defense of Ann Coulter
by Elspeth Reeve

Seriously?! Yeah!

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

by the economist prof. Deirdre N. McCloskey.

And that is only the first of the planned four books, where she is going to prove that all the "left and right intelligentsia" are wrong to criticize capitalism for corruption, social alienation and anti-cultural consumerism.

At best, we have another academic exercise in advocating a particular system to the highest philosophical, and even moral, grounds. How successful is Prof. McCloskey? How different is she from Karl Marx, for example? At worst, this book signals a neo-neo-calvinistic ideology for emerging David Brooksian class of "supermoral" lords, where all morality is decided lonely by the size of the bank account, regardless how the money is earned or spent.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.

But don't kid yourself -- [Bush and Cheney] accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

"Operation
Iraqi
Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute.

Tanker runs aground in Alaska, spills oil products

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 2 (Reuters) - An oil tanker carrying nearly 5 million gallons of oil and gasoline was struck by an ice floe and ran aground while loading oil products at an Alaska refinery on Thursday, causing a spill, a state official and the refining company said.

"At this time we do not have an estimate as to the amount of product released," refinery owner Tesoro Corp. said in a statement.

The Tesoro-chartered double-hulled tanker, the Seabulk Pride, was loading heavy vacuum gas oil and unleaded gasoline from the refinery in Nikiski, Alaska, on the Cook Inlet, the company said.

It said the ice floe parted the mooring line and sent the 600-foot (183-meter) tanker adrift before it went aground about half a mile (800 metres) north of the dock, and that the vessel's tanks were secure.

Is Alaska a good recipe for the American oil addiction?

But what drives us, liberals, to care not only about own well being, but about quality of life of others as well? Are we personally hurt by seeing injustice by abuse of political or economic power? Is it very satisfying to seek optimal social gains by collaboration? Are we concerned that uncurbed greed will have catastrophic consequences to everyone?

Do we think that America is the foremost developer of achievements of the Western Enlightenment? Are we certain that America's success had been assured by an effective balance of civil powers?

Now the "liberal" New Republic has the article where the Netherlands is praised as a model for a conservative country!

[Read below the fold. Crossposted at European and Booman Tribunes.]