Ezra Klein

• The world has an oil problem, but the best solution may be the doomsday scenario of a sharp and irrevocable rise in oil prices. At least, so long as it happens before India and China accelerate into huge dependency on cheap oil. • The president has a problem with his speeches, mainly, that they […]

In an otherwise impressive synthesis/review of the current glut of books promising a European Revolution, Tony Judt hobbles his piece with a near-fatal opening: Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap—and refills are free. Being largely without flavor it can be diluted to […]

Bayh really nailed the framing on Social Security privatization on This Week (the Stephanopoulos show). [L]ook, the president is probably going to talk a lot about ownership and individual choice. I think those are great concepts, and I can support those — but in addition to the current Social Security system, not as a replacement […]

I had no idea that one man fixing his faucet could so perfectly parallel the evolution/creationism debate!

Congratulations to the LA Times’ on their new and ballsy op-ed feature, “Outside the Tent”, wherein an unaffilated writer trains his guns on the LA Times and blasts them for their deficiencies. While the feature sounds like the ombudsman/public editor dispatches that other papers carry, Kinsley’s page isn’t pretending at dissent by allowing a neutered […]

We’re not gonna get those goddamn polygamy queens off welfare until we get a good, God-fearin’ Christian heading the HHS. Too bad Bush’s nominee ain’t the guy.

I’m with Matt on the Iraqi elections, a day that will go down in history but be forgotten the morning after. Like the June 30th handover, this is a largely symbolic event whose success — given the constraints of Sunni non-participation — will be forgotten by nightfall. At the moment, the streets seems blissfully clear […]

Digby’s got a predictably terrific post on the need for more telegenic, effective, and conscientious media representation among the Dems. Like me, Digby has latched onto the heuristics of elections as the crucial component. Terrorism, the economy, social values — these things matter substantively, but they generally manifest in predictably symbolic, superficial, ways. As Matt […]

Continuing his historical habit of accumulating surprise endorsements, Dean got the nod from Harold Ickes this morning. Ickes, of course, is cleaved to the Clintons, and his emergence at Dean’s side effectively ends all speculation that Hillary is standing athwart his candidacy yelling “Stop!”. Here’s the money quote or, more to the point, the money […]

Jack Shafer’s decided to take on the dicks who tout the blogs and I, as a blogger, could not agree more: When the Times’ Abramson asked rhetorically if the conference bloggers had any idea how much it cost to maintain a news bureau in Baghdad, the supreme confidence of a couple of bloggers fractured into […]