The Bush Administration sees meaningful action on global warming (including efforts to reduce our national oil consumption) as a sort of economic zero sum game, which is to say, if we make driving more expensive we will lose money, because people and businesses will find it harder and harder to compete in the global marketplace. At least, that's what I think they think.

But, as car sales drop, bicycle sales rise. As people drive less, they walk more. Maybe they even ride a bicycle. They become healthier, get sick less. Their health costs shrink. Businesses are forced to find efficiencies, they didn't previously have to consider.

Yes. It's true that growth in some sectors is stifled, but the dollars hemorhaging from some businesses (e.g. I can't imagine UPS is loving high gas prices) are simply migrating to others. It's probably a good time to be selling solar power.

The bottom line is: We still need to eat. We still need to get to work. We still need to buy things. We might just have to find other ways to do those things. In that sense, the dollars are fungible, and it becomes hard to see the economic fall out of this oil "crisis" as anything other than a redistribution of wealth.

Perhaps then, the administration simply dislikes the way the redistribution is going. Maybe I just misunderstand.

But I don't think so.

Isn't this exactly what we expect from a free labor market? A normalization of wages across the previously separate economies that takes workers from one place to another until their home economy reaches balance with the others, thus making working at home more attractive.

The US seems to believe in free markets for lots of things, but certainly not for labor. Opening the labor market would mean a dive in wages, followed by an increase and steadying. The question is whether that final balance point would be higher (I doubt it) or lower than current wages.

Don't free markets essentially undo the falsifying effects of subsidies and tariffs and other market controls?

I don't know what's "good" or "bad" from an economic management point of view, but it seems as though globalization is, at root, a planet-wide push toward market normalization that will raise the living standards of the poor and lower the living standards of the rich, if left unchecked.

But will wealthy countries be willing to undergo that process? Or not?

At one point while watching last night's game, my wife asked, "What is a foul?" And after stammering for a few seconds, I had to concede that there really isn't a good way to tell. Sure, there are the obvious hacks, instances where one player clearly impedes another from playing. But for the most part, NBA fouls are random and weird. They come unbidden and unexpectedly, like dinner table farts.

I've watched a lot of basketball, and I still don't get half the calls that get made.

I actually think basketball would be better off with a basic rule change, eliminating free throws. If you're fouled while shooting, then you get two points automatically. Otherwise, fouling becomes a strategy, and fouling should never be a strategy. You should have to focus on playing basketball, not stopping the other team from playing. This small but fundamental change would eliminate the grueling and painful final two minutes in which one team hacks and calls time outs and generally grinds every tenth out of every second through the end of a futile effort.

Oh, and Kobe clearly fouled Pierce. But whatever.

Well, at least the Supreme Court protected the 2nd Amendment so that when the Feds come to get me for ungracious comments about the President on a phone call to my aunt in Florida, I can wing 'em out with my legally obtained and self-defensive .22!!

I mean, we've got so many amendments! Surely there are some more we can dispense with!

Do women really need to vote? I've always wondered.

What troubles me about Obama's movement toward center (actually right) is that it's emblematic of what the Democrats are doing generally. The FISA cave-in, along with the torture cave-in and all the other cave-ins suggests to me that there is no Democratic, i.e. liberal, party left. Obama seemed a cipher for all my hopes, that a pragmatic progressive could win the White House and put the Democrats back in the game.

This appears not to be the case, and it's not simply a matter of losing an idealized candidate, but rather the confirmation that we've lost our party entirely.

I feel as though I belong to a party that actually only consists of Russ Feingold, Teddy Kennedy and Chris Dodd. I'm not sure there are enough of us to even call it a party. It's more like a drop-in social event, or perhaps a book club gathering.

Good God! Americans need to lighten up. As alleged purveyors of free speech and guardians of freedom, we're SOOOOO quick to condemn people for exercising those things. We're so quick to take offense.

Maybe the problem isn't other people's offensive beliefs, but rather the low self-esteem that leads us to invest power in other's false opinions of us.