From the New York Times:

Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.

. . .

The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.

The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. "The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today," the report concluded, and as a result "has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades."

Continued...

And now for the lighter side of politics! Usual rules: pooties are optional, politics is encouraged, humor is mandatory.

As reported in the New York Times today, a certain, small segment of American global society would like to allow firms to offer foreign securities directly in U.S. markets, without actually having to follow U.S. accounting rules. It appears likely that they will succeed in leaving yet another mess for Pres. Obama to clean up, since that change would work to the detriment of the vast majority of Americans.

Federal officials say they are preparing to propose a series of regulatory changes to enhance American competitiveness overseas, attract foreign investment and give American investors a broader selection of foreign stocks.

But critics say the changes appear to be a last-ditch push by appointees of President Bush to dilute securities rules passed after the collapse of Enron and other large companies — measures that were meant to forestall accounting gimmicks and corrupt practices that led to those corporate failures.

Legal experts, some regulators and Democratic lawmakers are concerned that the changes would put American investors at the mercy of overseas regulators who enforce weaker rules and may treat investment losses as a low priority.

My take...

And now for the lighter side of politics! Usual rules: pooties are optional, politics is encouraged, humor is mandatory. I think politicians are teh funney. One minute they're at each other's throats...

Umm. Wow. I've seen Hollywood romances with less sexual tension. Hey, thanks Bush for making it so easy for them to reconcile! Thing is, we really don't need the constant reminders of the dangers of electing a president who thinks that government is always the problem, never the solution. We got the message. You can stop now. Please?

More over the jump...

And now for the lighter (or at least more visual) side of politics! The morbid side of my sense of humor is at the fore tonight, so someone else is going to have to bring teh funney.

In mocking Bush and McCain, I'm running into the "parody of a soap opera" problem: it's very hard to make fun of something that's already over-the-top. Has anyone else encountered this? For example, this lol that I came across at Pundit Kitchen is a little too "on the nose" to be funny:

Usual rules: pooties optional, politics encouraged, fun mandatory. The thread is open!

Now for the lighter side of politics! Frankly, after today, I really need it. Usual rules: pooties are optional, politics is encouraged, most important is bringing teh funney. So! Bush visited the Queen of England today and she showed him around the castle.

(more below the fold)

Taking the suggestion from last night that I make it a series, here's a forum for the lighter side of politics! It's like the opposite of a pootie thread, in that political content is encouraged. Fair warning, my sense of humor trends toward the meta (above the fold) and the morbid (below). Here we have the intersection of lolcats and the protest movement:

And now for something a little lighter. It's like a pooties thread, but where political content is not only allowed -- it's encouraged! For example, I've noticed that the younger generation seems pretty savvy.

What a loser!

McCain's 5% maverick content isn't enough to save him from the comparison.

More lols under the fold!

Filed under Things You Missed During Primary Madness (TYMDPM): our Congresspeople have begun the early work of reforming our financial regulations. That is, they've defined the problem and the goal, inviting conversation of how exactly to get from here to there. My personal hope is that they'll talk, and listen, and hold hearings, and write, and negotiate, and have a masterpiece ready by next year to vote through and present for Pres. Obama's signature.

Below the fold is my presentation of the issue, focusing especially on what Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA-04) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) have been saying about it.

I will be brief (for once) because this is a call to action. I just noticed that Frank Rich's  New York Times op-ed "One Historic Night, Two Americas" is near the top of the Digg front page. Digging it up will increase the number of eyeballs that see gems such as this:

Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. "No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically," he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking "to the 1960s and ’70s for answers."

More samples below the fold...

It's been a long journey for me to reach this point. My parents were hippies when they were younger -- even living a block away from Haight & Ashbury at one point -- but by the time I came along in the '70s, they were conservative Republican evangelicals. (I don't get it either. You'd have to ask them.) I grew up on the West Coast, a Euro-American guy inundated with confusing messages of agape and outcasting, spiritual equality and mortal authoritarianism, personal charity and a stingy government, beautiful songs about peace and endless rationalizations for brutal militarism -- you know, the usual.

Story continued below the jump...

Nothing against the people who are still enjoying that game of saying what "Obama should" or shouldn't do. I just can't take any more.

I'm tired. It's been a long, long primary season. Obama is winning by every reasonable measure. He is doing much better than his campaign's leaked spreadsheet predicted on Feb. 6, basically because he underestimated the positive Caucus Effect (from the Enthusiasm Gap) much more than he underestimated the negative Appalachia Effect. And we think we can improve on that?

It doesn't help any that trolling often takes the form of an "Obama should" diary, precisely because he's done so much so well and they'd like him to stop. I have to do a little extra work each time I read an "Obama should" to discern whether it's a troll or what. It adds up and I'm tired.

That's all. I'm just doing this as a diary for the poll, which is found beneath the jump.

Introducing the phrase "hagiographic handjob" (among others) into our public discourse, below the fold are several memes that I've absorbed, mutated, or invented about the Presidential candidates and the so-called "news" media. I haven't been motivated to write them up separately, so I'm throwing them together. I hope that you will find them useful.

Yesterday, Paul Krugman once again engaged in hyperbolic hand wringing over Barack Obama's rhetoric on health care. That's nothing new, of course. I'm taking this opportunity to explicitly lay out my disagreements with his perspective.

First, for context, I respect Prof. Krugman's economics. I've studied economics up through the college junior level (intermediate macro, micro and metrics), and Prof. Krugman usually makes a lot of sense to me. However, he's only human; and when his articles and blog posts stray from economics to politics, his judgment seems to be impaired by a pronounced anti-Obama bias.

Second, I trust Prof. Krugman's analysis of the economic virtues of the Veterans Health Administration. It's what I would expect of a single-payer system. I agree with him about the wrong-headedness of Sen. McCain's plan to privatize it. After that is where we part ways, continued below the fold.

I like the New York Times. In a classic case of serendipitous synchronicity, the last few days have brought us a virtual flood of excellent opinionating. I wanted to bring it to your attention, in case you don't read it yourself.

This delightful deluge ranges over (in no particular order) the mortgage crisis, derivatives markets, financial regulations, the Bush administration, Wall Street, the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, Barney Frank, the Federal Housing Administration, Larry Kudlow, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Iraq war, Sunnis and Shiites, foreign policy, Ronald Reagan, domestic policy, tax policy, budgets, earmarks, comedy writing, the press, public speaking, acting, Dwight Eisenhower, the Justice Department, Congressional hearings, waterboarding, the Central Intelligence Agency, partisanship, foreign relations, The Wizard of Oz, March Madness, YouTube, the Harvard Law Review, conspiracy theories, ignorance, anti-intellectualism, insults, education, Sinbad, Bosnia, propoganda stunts, viral politics, the Iraq occupation, Moktada al-Sadr, Nuri al-Maliki, Abdul al-Hakim, Basra, Baghdad, Iraqi elections, international trade, Iran, and much much more.

Continued below...

Tuesday night, Obama's website invited my mom to Friday's rally. When she confirmed, she was able to send out more invites (a viral ticket?), so she sent one to me and told me about it. I confirmed right away, so I had a ticket too. Unfortunately, with the weather so cold and my mom's health so poor, she wasn't actually able to go.

Story below the fold...

I believe that repetition of the phrase "the tyranny of fear" will create a frame that will box in the most dangerous conservative frames, past, present, and future. First I will explain the problem that this phrase solves, followed by some useful associations of the phrase.

More below...

With Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher finally accusing the Bush administration of a crime, the distancing has begun in earnest. From now to November, Republican elected officials who want to keep their jobs will be painting a thin veneer of anti-Bushism over themselves. Their goal will be to paint the unpopular parts of the Bush years as the result of individual cronyism and incompetence, to say that if only we elect good conservatives then everything will be better. Nothing could be further from the truth.

More below the jump...