So, as most of you know by now, President Barack Obama came straight out of the blue this week with a decision to start up some crazy new offshore drilling campaign. I thought the decision was pretty strange myself — but, hey, it’s an opportunity to ask some pretty substantive questions.

For example: What changes can we expect in terms of our oil imports from the Middle East? Has the technology of drilling gotten better–are we less likely to experience the devastation of another oil spill? How is this decision going to affect the bottom line of oil companies? Will they reinvest this money back into America’s devastated communities? Will they reinvest in energy solutions that are sustainable? In solutions that promote further independence from foreign oil? Is this going to increase jobs?

These are the sorts of things that your 24-hour news media could maybe take up in earnest. Unfortunately, they all had much better things to talk about. Who will win the political debate? Will this help or hurt Democrats? Will this earn them Republican support, on anything?

Here are the video excerpts that accompanies the post. I can’t stand to watch the whole thing, but if you watch just a couple of minutes, you’ll get the idea-

David Simon’s dystopian view of contemporary Baltimore starts from a microscopic study of drug pushers in the projects and gradually telescopes out to encompass all sorts of social and political corruption. The show sets out to convince naive middle-class viewers (such as myself) that the corrupt economy of the street is but a pale reflection of the corruption infecting more “respectable” social institutions. But for all its pessimism about the state of the nation, its characters are never one-dimensional; even the worst (and some are very, very bad) are never portrayed as merely bad. Business is business, and the game is the game, at all levels of society; the players did not make the rules. Not that this lets them off the hook, though: they still make their choices, however circumscribed their situations may be. And a few – mainly the better cops – manage to come across as moral exemplars, if only by finding ways to minimize their compromises.

Here’s a Bill Moyers interview with David Simon, but don’t let their explicitly political banter mislead you into thinking that the show has a dogmatically liberal point of view; like all truly insightful fiction, its characters transcend socioeconomic generalizations. And, most importantly, don’t think that the show is humorless; tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin, and the writers of this show know that quite well-

If you’d like to see the second half of this interview, click here.

Glenn Beck Beats from wreckandsalvage on Vimeo.

Thanks Charles.

From USA Today, 4/29/09

Excuse me, but since when did having a filibuster proof, duly elected majority imply the “stifling” of “dissent”? Since when was parliamentary obstruction of the democratically elected majority’s will a matter of “dissent” at all? Dissent is something every American has a right to do, and should continue as long as there is disagreement over policy (that is: forever). But the majority must rule in a democracy, as long as it rules constitutionally. Want checks and balances when a single party rules both Congress and the Presidency? I’ve got three words for you: the Supreme Court. Don’t trust the court? I’ve got three more words for you: the next election.

An interesting question here is: why on earth would an editor at USA Today want to add that sub-headline? Perhaps out of some misbegotten impulse for “fairness”? There is no further mention of dissent in the story, which you can read here.

Answer: if you focus on the background, you can make out what video of this event (which I saw on CNN) clearly reveals. This apparently spontaneous outburst of political anger is actually being carefully staged for the benefit of dozens of photographers who surround the protester in a complete semi-circle. Almost makes you nostalgic for the relative authenticity of the 1968 Chicago police riot at the Democratic National Convention (for those of you old enough to remember).

But, hey, what would a G-20 (or any other high-level multi-national economic) meeting be without a broken window or two? The media would be crestfallen…