Kennan on the Tragedy of War

In the emotional world of an aroused democracy evil had always to be singular, never plural. To admit the complex and contradictory nature of error would be to admit the complex and contradictory nature of truth, as error's complement; and this was intolerable, for if there were two ways of looking at a thing, then the whole structure of war spirit fell to the ground, then the struggle had to be regarded as a tragedy, with muddled beginnings and probably a muddled end, rather than as a simple heroic encounter between good and evil; and it had to be fought, then, not in blind, righteous anger but rather in a spirit of sadness and humility at the fact that western man could involve himself in a predicament so unhappy, so tragic, so infinitely self-destructive.
-- George Frost Kennan, The Decision to Intervene, p.9.

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/04/wow-just-wow.html

On price elasticity of Oil demand.

Not surprisingly, relatively inelastic. This, of course, implies that oil prices change as a result of supply rather than demand... and respond to the actions of large suppliers.

Moving goalposts of moderation

In response to http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-04-26-ezra-klein-obama-moderate-republican-early-1990s at the Grist.

In short, Ezra Klein is commenting on how Republicans have 'moved the goalposts' of 'moderate.'

Now, one thing this does is raise a crucial question: what happens when/if the Republicans find that their strategy has failed -- i.e. Obama wins reelection.

Of course the Left must continue to worry that it is being 'lucied,' but there's a credible alternate scenario, which is that the Republican party has driven itself to the margins to find stances on which to oppose Obama.

This is certainly a problem many of the mainstream Republicans -- e.g. Mitt 'healthcare' Romney will face in both the primaries and general election.

For the Left, 2012 is probably going to be an agonizing election -- I get the sense that for many on the Left the 'abridgment of hope' has been such a personal disappointment that they won't just hold their nose and vote. Yet the alternative to Obama is likely to be one of the worst refugees from the right wing's loony bin -- with Donald Trump about the best of the lot.