One blanches to think of  the lacerations the conservative chatterers would be inflicting on Gov. Palin if she were a Democrat and been offered up by that party as its VP candidate. The high dudgeon with which they've have reacted to the less-than-enthusiastic reception Gov. Palin's selection has gotten, and their inexplicably vigorous and angry defense of that selection, is really laughable.  The fullness of the praise and admiration they've expressed for her would be a bit over the top for anyone, but for a person they'd never heard of until last week and whose resume is as thin as hers is, it's hard to explain. What all this says, I guess, is that you could nominate Daffy Duck, and the True Believers - of either party - would bow at his altar. If these people said anything a month ago about a pressing need for Sarah Palin's governmental expertise and services at the national level, it seems to have escaped everyone's notice.

To risk stating the obvious, Sen. McCain didn't pick Gov. Palin because he thought she would make a good vice president or a good president.  He picked her because he thought it would help him win the election, and he didn't hesitate to put her the proverbial heartbeataway.  Imagine this person, most recently the mayor of a town not quite as big as Grinders Switch, in debates about foreign policy - or anything else, for that matter -- with Sen. Biden; or, should she become president, in negotiations/confrontations with predatory lobbyists, special interest groups, members of congress, and various players on the world stage like, say, Vladimir Putin and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Two words: Road Kill. So this move is not about what's right for the country, but about what's right for John McCain. Conservative pundits are livid about what they see as character assassination of Gov. Palin by "the media," but when it comes to incredible cynicism in the service of naked ambition on the part of Sen. McCain in putting her on the ticket...well, not so much.

Ironically, the calculation, cold as it is, that this will drive votes to the Republican ticket is remarkably clueless, and demonstrates the rather bizarre conception McCain and his team seem to have regarding actual voters out here in flyover territory.  At the very least, the idea that this will bring women voters over to their side speaks loudly and clearly about their low opinion of women voters.  And puffery regarding Gov. Palin's qualifications - for example, that she's strong on national defense because as governor she's head of the Alaska National Guard, or that Alaska is pretty close to Russia, so, er, what? - has the potential for making the campaign not merely unsuccessful, but a laughing stock.  As for the idea that a straight-shootin' good ol' boy or girl who isn't steeped in Washington politics is just the ticket for handling the complexities of government, that seems to be the favorite fantasy of those for whom class resentment is a way of life.

In ten or twenty or thirty years – Los Angeles, New York, and Miami safely above sea level, hurricane and tornado activity having unfolded at about the level it normally does, and the polar bears safe on their ice floes – one would hope that the editorialists of 2008 would have the good grace to look back in wonder at their adolescent obsession with various apocalyptic scenarios associated with climate change.  But their attention span is short and they probably will have forgotten it all by then, having turned to admiring other professional finger waggers whose raison d'etre is scolding mankind for having the temerity to populate the planet and live off of its resources.  It is as if they have all been grabbed up by some religious cult, brainwashed, and then unleashed on the population to spread their gospel, smiling knowingly-but-sadly at anyone who, arguing with them, demonstrates their lamentable failure to see the true path.  (It could be the same cult that gathered them up in the seventies and sent them forth to warn of the calamities of a coming ice age.  “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”  That’s from a Newsweek article of that era.)

In keeping with the Talibanesque nature of their approach to this issue, the true believers have taken to rising up, like angry wasps defending the nest, to sting to death any threat to their orthodoxy, having concluded – so certain are they of its truth and overriding importance – that anything which challenges it must be snuffed without delay. Thus, they never challenge the message; they simply kill the messenger, either by declaring him or her to be some kind of wing nut operating from the far, far right, or in the employ of Big Oil.  Anyone who has any question or concern about any part of what this group characterizes as settled science is immediately marginalized and consigned to the lunatic fringe.  With perfect circular reasoning, they then say that any questions and/or doubts that come from this lunatic fringe are necessarily cracked, so there’s no reason to even listen to them, much less answer them; which means, in essence that they remain totally and blissfully unaware of any contrarian arguments.  They don’t know what’s being said – they just know they disagree with it.  

By some distance the most objectionable tactic in this marginalization process is one that defies all reason, logic, and decency:  comparing climate change questioners to holocaust deniers.  The most obvious objection to this tack is that the holocaust actually happened.  The climate change apocalypse they speak of has not.  The holocaust is not, unlike the predicted results of global warming, a product of “computer modeling.” No matter how convinced this group is of the horrific consequences they speak of, those consequences remain – unless these folks have a crystal ball -- in the realm of conjecture.  They are a prediction, not a historical fact.  Big difference.  And, of course, the toxic subtext of this view – inasmuch as holocaust denial is generally associated, and with good reason, with anti-semitism – is that skeptics are, like holocaust deniers, crazed anti-semites.  To question global warming is to hate Jews.  Good heavens.

Another method of avoiding the questions of the skeptics and attacking the skeptics themselves is to assail their motives, most notably by accusing them of doing the bidding of big energy interests.  But to believe that, you have to believe this:  Those interests, and the unrepentant evil-doers who head them, are fully aware of the consequences of global warming – including, but not limited to, the demise of major metropolitan areas on the eastern and western seaboards – but are intent upon keeping that news from the public, lest it cut into their revenues and profits.  To accept this, you must have – as many global warming enthusiasts apparently do – a remarkably childish and very generalized view of not just big energy companies but big business in toto as being populated by comic-book-like predators.  In fact, in the case of the energy companies, in accusing them of being willing to basically destroy the world to feed their greed for profit, you would have to assume they are populated by insane people.  Absolutely, these companies see it as being in their best interest to refute global warming hysteria.  But that’s some distance from accepting as true a set of truly awful consequences and trying to cover them up by paying off some scientists to spread “disinformation.”  The question is simple and direct:  What could oil companies hope to gain by doing that?

Turning now to a major cause celebre in this ongoing contretemps, the January, 2007 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): What are we to make of the fact that the group warns of catastrophic flooding, famine, and extreme weather, and, in the same breath, says there is nothing we can do about it? The IPCC says that between 1.1 billion and 3.2 billion people will suffer water scarcity as a result of climate change. Also, between 200 million and 600 million could suffer from food shortages and 7 million could be affected by coastal flooding. Leaving aside for the moment all these “woulds” and “coulds” in a report that is being characterized as proof positive of the scientific and therefore factual basis of climate change and its consequences, the group’s report also says even if concentrations of all the various greenhouse gases could be held at their current levels – that is, if all economic activity essentially ceased and we gave up automobiles and electricity the world over, thus basically reverting to the Stone Age -- the effects of global warming would continue for centuries.

Well, hell.  What now?  Famine and flood are coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.  At least, that’s what the IPCC reports says.  Does it not?  If it doesn’t say that, what the heck does it say?

There is no question that there is wide acceptance of the theory of global warming that the IPCC subscribes to.  But it’s also true that people who have the requisite credentials to question that theory and all of its component parts are doing so, and not because they're being "paid off."  But you will never find out what their questions are by reading the mainstream media, which, by and large, have taken sides in this in a puzzlingly angry and dismissive way, accusing anyone who questions the version to which they have apparently irretrievably hitched their wagon, of acting in bad faith. Questions having to do with climate change, its consequences, and the role of human activities in it – questions that seem not unreasonable -- ought to be answered, not guffawed at. But that never, ever happens.

As folks in editorial boardrooms and political strategy sessions persist in offering up characterizations of the U.S. economy that range from merely sluggish to something like moribund, it's easy to wonder if there is any historical perspective in play at all. Out here in flyover territory, where, economically speaking, life goes on more or less as it has for quite a while now, people are a bit less distraught about the economic picture and outlook.

1.  Unemployment, at 5.7% in July, is not at all high by historical standards. In the 2000s it has ranged from just under 4% to about 6%.  In the 1990s, it ranged from just over 4% (1999) to about 7.5% (1992).  As a general rule, then, in prosperous times about 95% of the U.S. working-age population is employed, and that's so today.

2. Inflation is pretty much in check, as it has been since the Carter administration, and gasoline, at $3.50 a gallon or so as of this writing and falling, is only a few cents higher than its previous peak of $1.86 in 1981, which would be $3.21 today adjusted for inflation. So despite all the arm-waving and editorializing, gas prices inflict only slightly more pain on household budgets than they did 27 years ago. 

3.  Housing prices have fallen considerably in some parts of the country, and as surely as the sun, will rise again. But so what?  The very same people who are characterizing these losses as a national tragedy were, a year or so ago, warning about the dangers of a housing bubble.  In other words, housing prices were too high then.  Now they're too low.  And, it seems fair to ask, too low for whom?  They're bad for sellers, good for buyers.  Welcome to a market economy. The idea that what's happening in the housing market constitutes a "meltdown," - a most favorite vogue word of the media these days - is an inappropriate metaphor and an unserious analysis.)

4.  Scare headlines indicating that home foreclosures are up multiple percentage points - i.e., doubled in the past year - make it easy to overlook the fact that over 95% of home mortgages in the country are performing perfectly well -- chugging along as usual -- and that a significant percentage of those that are being foreclosed involve properties that were intended to be flipped, or that were purchased with designer mortgages by people who saw as murky the simple proposition that when you borrow money, you have to pay it back, so it's a good idea to know, up front, if you're going to be able to. 

5.  If "recession" means two quarters of contraction, we are not in one. One may be coming.  Or one may not. Like so much that passes for dispassionate economic analysis, it's just conjecture.

A Cadillac that cost $30,000 in 2008 would have cost $12,716.45 back in 1981.  I learned this from a Web site called The Inflation Calculator (www.westegg.com/inflation), which I highly recommend to anyone obsessing over the cost of a gallon of gasoline, which seems to be just about everyone these days.

It's baffling.  A loaf of bread that goes for $1.29 now was only 55-cents in 1981, yet I haven't seen any headlines lamenting the record price of that commodity, nor have I heard any calls for the government to step in and do something about the rapacious tactics of Big Bread, or to saddle it with a "windfall profits" tax, as is now being proposed by Barack Obama - a tax which would, of course, have the effect of raiding the college or retirement savings of millions of ordinary Americans who have invested in oil stocks, without reducing the price of gas by a penny.

With some exceptions - electronic gizmos, for example - everything costs more than it did in 1981, and the rate of increase for gasoline hasn't been, generally speaking, any higher or faster than it has been for anything else. And I pick 1981 because that year, gasoline was the most expensive, until very recently, it had ever been: $1.36 a gallon, which would be $3.21 today. Even with the recent price spike that has media outlets in such a frenzy, the outlay for gas as a percentage of disposable income, the only measurement that really matters, is roughly the same, now vs. then. By contrast, the costs of health care and a college education, as just two examples, have long since left normal inflation rates in their rear-view mirror, and the percentage of disposal income they soak up is something approximating disastrous.

Yet, the outrage is directed at oil companies, spawning, among other things, congressional hearings that put oil execs in the dock so preening politicians can take potshots at them, television news stories in which we see angry consumers expressing shock and horror at the outrages being done to them, and silly Internet schemes involving one-day gasoline boycotts.  Go figure.  And the interesting thing about gasoline, as opposed to, say, bread, is that the price of gasoline may well be considerably lower by the end of the summer than it is today, because the price of gasoline does that - fluctuates.  And so, it will again be cheaper than it was more than a quarter of a century ago.

It's hard to say what makes Big Oil such a lightning rod.  Maybe it's the popular perception of the industry as being under the control of some Master Manipulator who moves the price of gas up and down according to whim, as distinguished from the reality, which is that gas prices are buffeted about by a complex set of market-driven circumstances mainly involving perceptions of current and future availability. Moreover, the oil industry operates on profit margins that are not particularly high - lower by quite a bit than, for example, the pharmaceutical and financials services industries.  But because Big Oil sells a heckuva lot of gasoline, those relatively small profit margin dollars add up to a big number.

Do higher gasoline prices weigh most heavily on the poor?  Well, yes, of course.  Everything weighs most heavily on the poor.  But Gasoline, as distinguished from any number of other necessary commodities, has remained pretty consistent for the past several decades in the amount of pain it inflicts on the budgets of poor people, and on everybody else, for that matter.  In other words, gasoline prices at their current level are not much harder on anybody than they were twenty-five years ago.

None of that stops ambitious politicians - is there any other kind? - from firing up the g-word - gouging -- whenever they think they can get some mileage out of it, and then demanding that all those greedy 401K owners be brought to heel by confiscating the "windfall profits" they're setting aside to educate their children.