Change Is Coming  

I was somewhat startled by one of the headlines in today's SMH - "Change Is Coming", it reported John McCain saying, which had me wondering he was conceding defeat to Obama before the election has even been held.

Turns out it was just more of the same blather we've been seeing in recent days, with the Republicans flailing frantically trying to muddy the memetic waters by redefining "change" to mean an ancient erratic crackpot bent on starting world war 3 combined with an erratic younger woman no one had heard about before with more than a few "unusual" views of her own (check out some of her YouTube footage).

Things got even worse when I opened The Australian, where Rupert has unleashed a neoconservative orgy of self-congratulation - half the news section was devoted to breathless articles declaring Ms Palin the next Winston Churchill, which seemed a little over the top - for starters, does an Australian newspaper really need most of its coverage devoted to the RNC - particularly if it isn't going to cover the interesting issues like the suppression of free speech going on outside the echo chamber ?

I did enjoy the way some reality based people infiltrated the event to note one inconvenient truth - occupiers always lose. The assembled brownshirts promptly launched into a round of "sieg heils" while trying to rid themselves of this bit of mental dissonance it seems.

John McCain billed himself as a battle-scarred reformer and vowed he and running mate Sarah Palin would change Washington as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination. But his primetime convention speech was briefly interrupted by several anti-war protesters, who had sneaked into the crowd.

One held up a black sign reading "You can't win an occupation," and started chanting, but was quickly drowned out by the crowd cheering "USA, USA," and then hustled away by security staff.

Apparently during Palin's speech, the inmates were howling "Drill, Baby, Drill".

I can't begin to imagine what a rude shock these folks are going to get if they do succeed in having all drilling restrictions lifted only to find that US production continues to decline (albeit at a slightly slower rate) and the oil price keeps rising (bar the odd bout of recession) forevermore. Apparently the concept of finite oil supply is still a foreign one in some places.

Over in Britain, Gordon Brown is surveying the economic wreckage and actually trying to deal with it by proclaiming the need for some "change" (with a little more truthiness than McCain's "lets have another 4 more years of Bushism" non-change). In Gordon's case, this means kicking the oil habit (as opposed to trying to occupy the rest of the middle east in a doomed attempt to keep the veins filled a little longer) - Brown vows freedom from oil dictatorship. Mind you - aiming at a "20 per cent reduction in the amount of oil used per unit of output by 2020" is a pretty feeble target - especially given that Britain will likely see a significant drop in oil consumption by 2020, regardless of government policy.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed to "free Britain from the dictatorship of oil" and promised his government would protect voters feeling the pinch as he stepped up his political fightback.

In a speech to business leaders in his native Scotland, Brown sought to reassure voters that the beleaguered Labour government would shield them from the effects of the global credit crunch and rising oil and food prices.

He unveiled a strategy to wean Britain off oil, and despite finance minister Alistair Darling's bleak assessment that current economic conditions were the worst for 60 years, insisted he was "cautiously optimistic" about the British economy. ...

Brown said in his speech that "undoubtedly we face a challenging period" but promised voters the government would "act responsibly to prepare people for the inescapable challenges ahead". As well as short-term help with the housing market, he pledged a "revolution in the way we think about and use resources".

"Today I set a new ambition to free Britain from the dictatorship of oil," he said, arguing that the policies implemented would lead to a 20 per cent reduction in the amount of oil used per unit of output by 2020.

He announced a new industry-government working group to look at North Sea oil reserves, a new pilot program for electric cars, and promised to match the car industry's investment in new fuel efficiency technology.