Absent due to absent-mindedness

No, I haven't abandoned the "Crisis of Abundance" series. I had just misplaced the book. You may wonder how I could do such a thing. Well, it's a little book, and I had put it where I put my bills and magazines until I sort through them, and then I sat down to pay my bills this weekend, and there it was. Vacation looms, so I will be finishing it up.

If you are looking for something to read meanwhile, I have two recommendations.

1. Kyle has an excellent post this morning, a cri de coeur about the lack of anything to vote for this fall in Iowa. While I quibble with some details of his post (some economic downturn, eh?), he lays out what I see as the real problem for his party - what do they want to actually do?

The money quote:

I'm infuriated by Democrats who spend more time on the stump talking about their opponent's failings than their own strengths. Maybe 8 years ago we could have made an argument that running as non-Republicans might win an election. By now, we should be pretty sure that's not going to work.

While Kyle is talking about his own party, the state Republican organization has a lot of the same problems. The Nussle program, as far as I can tell, is to make Iowa the Saudi Arabia of cornfuel. Yeah, that'll work, sure.

Meanwhile we have about 85 counties more than we need, a shriveling rural population, a government built for the 19th century, an insane income tax system - and nobody even mentions them. Yet it's hard to see how Iowa will achieve any kind of dynamism until somebody tackles these things.

2. The Wall Street Journal has a front page story today telling the story of Hao Wu, the imprisoned Chinese blogger-filmmaker whose face is featured on this home page to the left. I think the link only works for WSJ online subscribers, but it's worth paying 75 cents at the newsstand to read this.