John Robb -- no flaming lefty, just a real smart guy -- has another post on the ongoing rioting in France. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you should be reading his blog, Global Guerrillas. Here's the nut:

As the state loses its ability to monopolize the provision of economic opportunity, it will soon lose its monopoly on violence.

This has deeply frightening implication for the rest of us. Essentially, if we don't open-source our existing economic and political structures to increase equality and opportunity, we will face a networked revolution (the ugly violent kind that I don't advocate) which we will be unable to defeat without going in the totalitarian direction.

How France resolves this crisis will have crucial implications for the future.

As unhappy populations and governments realize that the contemporary democratic state is totally fucking powerless to stop a network bent on propogating entropy, things could go downhill rather rapidly. This isn't new news, by the way. Thomas Jefferson got it, which is why he was all for running the natives off some land and giving it away to former peasants after the American Revolution. Without a moral stake, there's no reason to play by the rules, especially if those rules are screwing you and your family over. If people don't play by the rules, civilization breaks down. In the modern context, it's not as easy as giving away land. We'll need something more innovative to re-invest much of the worlds population.

The alternative is trying to force people to abide by the existing status-quo. This would be bad, because what we'll get is something like this:

I don't relish the thought of living in a country that deploys stormtroopers, but if you've ever seen a major metro police department gear up for a "public demonstration," it's impossible not to draw the paralells. The state won't give up its monopoly on violence without a fight, but if it comes to that, we've all already lost.

John Robb -- no flaming lefty, just a real smart guy -- has another post on the ongoing rioting in France. If you're interested in this sort of thing, you should be reading his blog, Global Guerrillas. Here's the nut:

As the state loses its ability to monopolize the provision of economic opportunity, it will soon lose its monopoly on violence.

This has deeply frightening implication for the rest of us. Essentially, if we don't open-source our existing economic and political structures to increase equality and opportunity, we will face a networked revolution (the ugly violent kind that I don't advocate) which we will be unable to defeat without going in the totalitarian direction.

How France resolves this crisis will have crucial implications for the future.

As unhappy populations and governments realize that the contemporary democratic state is totally fucking powerless to stop a network bent on propogating entropy, things could go downhill rather rapidly. This isn't new news, by the way. Thomas Jefferson got it, which is why he was all for running the natives off some land and giving it away to former peasants after the American Revolution. Without a moral stake, there's no reason to play by the rules, especially if those rules are screwing you and your family over. If people don't play by the rules, civilization breaks down. In the modern context, it's not as easy as giving away land. We'll need something more innovative to re-invest much of the worlds population.

The alternative is trying to force people to abide by the existing status-quo. This would be bad, because what we'll get is something like this:

I don't relish the thought of living in a country that deploys stormtroopers, but if you've ever seen a major metro police department gear up for a "public demonstration," it's impossible not to draw the paralells. The state won't give up its monopoly on violence without a fight, but if it comes to that, we've all already lost.

Election Day on Tuesday in New York. Fernando Ferrer will loose by a truly embarassing margin to Mike Bloomberg. Will this finally prompt change? Who knows. Local politics are complex. The rubber and the road are in near-constant contact, the fortunes at stake are personal.

If I'm still here in four years I'll do something. 4-to-1 matching funds means if you can get a little bit of an organization together, you can get the money to make it a professional operation. On the other hand, you can still spend $1.5M and get less than 20,000 votes.

Outside the Tea Lounge just now are three kids who are volunteering for Gloaria Mattera, the Green party candidate for Bklyn Boro Prez. They're using the Defend Brooklyn line, which is interesting. For all the fine work of the Williamsburg Warriors, it's a loosing battle. The third wave is upon us.

The "third wave" by the way, is not the real artists/bohos (1st wave) or their somewhat better-heeled, less productive, and plainer-looking wannabe imitators (2nd wave). It's the euro trash and single guys who work in finance. Just wait. It's going to get a lot worse.

Seems like things are still simmering. I don't think '06 is going to be a watershed year for politics, much as I would like it to be. I think the game we're playing is longer than that.

Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias, two professional wonks at the American Prospect, have written something good.
The Incompetence Dodge got some play in the tit-for-tat world of the blogosphere for the way it drops rhetorical bombs on the position du-jour of the so-called Liberal Hawks -- aka those Democrats who supported the war and their backers in the punditry. It's high quality flaming, and the LibHawk position (essentially that invading and occupying Iraq would have worked given better management) needs discrediting, but the thing that makes me want to write about what they wrote is that they go on to offer some substantive thinking about the nature of US military power and its appropriate uses.

This is much needed. The Left often shies away from really grappling with issues of power, and military power especially. Efforts to the contrary are productive.

The U.S. military is good at exactly what one would expect an exemplary military to be good at: destroying enemy forces while keeping collateral damage to historic lows. Consequently, we have the ability to eject hostile forces from areas where they lack a strong base of popular support. This power allowed us to create the conditions for negotiation between the parties to the Bosnian war, and to keep the local Serb, Croat, and Muslim communities from killing one another in large numbers once the peace was signed. They also allowed us to eject Serbian forces from Kosovo and bring autonomy to that province, plus provided a large measure of security and autonomy for Kurdistan for more than a decade. These are no mean achievements, and they were accomplished largely from the air, at little risk to American soldiers. But in none of those places have we yet been able to achieve what we are likewise failing to accomplish in Iraq: the sudden transformation of a society.

That's tight. I can unpack that seven different ways depending on who I'm talking to and make it all sound interesting. Well done there, boys. Keep it up.

On the opposite end of the salary spectrum, we have pro-am and still pseudonymous Billmon with his Imperial Candor:

Like Richard Clarke, [Colin Powell Right-Hand Man] Wilkerson strikes me as reasonably representative of the technicians who actually run the empire -- and his assumptions largely appear to reflect those of his class. American supremacy is a taken as a given, requiring no legal or moral justification. Not because America has any grand historical mission to spread the blessings of democracy to the heathen, but because American power maintains the world order and keeps the peace, or at least something approximating it. It also keeps the sea lanes open and the oil flowing and the wheels of industry turning, not just here but around the world.

It does appear to have dawned on Wilkerson that the U.S. hegemony isn't viewed as quite such an exercise in utilitarian benevolence by the rest of the world, but I'm not sure he understands exactly why this is. I think he puts far too much blame on the cabal's shenanigans -- although these admittedly have made things worse -- and not enough on the fact that empires, even the practical, no nonsense type favored by the realists, are anachronisms in the modern world.

We've got a couple of the pieces of the puzzle here. A national security policy based on returning the US to its republic-an (not Republican) roots would have wide popular appeal. At the same time, there's a recognition that force is real, and that it can do good if we're willing to attempt to shoulder the responsibility. This is essentially the ethos of Spiderman, and it's the only moral way for people in positions of power to behave.

Power of one over another tends (tends) to corrupt, and an institutionalized or persistent differential in power (Absolute Power) corrupts without fail, creating Oppression, which is Evil, and something to be actively confronted. Activists like to fight Oppression, and in doing so we often end up with a negative, rather than healthily skeptical, view of power. This leads to an almost instinctual, perhaps even irrational, fear of wielding it ourselves, which as we can see has led to a great and tragic backsliding.

We must realize that power is not going away, and like all things it will remain unequally distributed at any point in time. Total Equality is not something that can be attained. This is why pure pacifism just doesn't work out. It is also the fundamental failing of Anarchism as a political philosophy, and interestingly enough its source of triumph as a personal philosophy.

Personally the credo No Gods, No Masters is quite compelling, though my heart is really in the logical inverse: All Gods, All Masters. When you get down to brass tacks this leads to different techniques for implementation -- raising up rather than tearing down -- but philosophically they're kindred notions. Anyway, it's a very empowering way to look at the universe. That's good.

However, any analysis of the human condition on the global or historical scale reveals that many people strongly desire Gods and/or Masters. That's a choice people are allowed to make in my book. Heck, who doesn't get a craving for credible leadership from time to time? I mean, mouldn't that be nice?

It would, but we're not going to get it until we contemplate and concieve our own notions of power, and then implement them in a way that displaces the establishment. That's what I mean by "the revolution."

And it might just happen. I'm seeing a lot of really good heavy lifting starting to happen all over the place. It's become clear that the conservative movement has reached a high water mark. Having achieved Total Power, their coalition is breaking as its internal inconsistancies come to the fore. Yes, the wheel is in spin, another cycle starting. There's a lot of organizing that's ramping up now that needs help. There's also a lot of intellectual work to be done so that this shift -- which in many ways is inevitable -- can be translated into meaninful gains for the Public.

I know where my official place in the 2006 campaign is: providing tools. I build and maintain instruments for information warfare. But in the meantime I'm also working on the revolution, which is the Long Game. But it starts now. It always starts now.

One of the major drags on my soul is the energy situation. The thermodynamics of our economy are not sustainable, and we're getting to the point where the primary engines of our wealth are going to quite literally run out of gas. There's a terrible poverty of ideas within the establishment when it comes to addressing this or any other problem, and it's been really getting me down lately. But today I found a few things that brightened my mood considerably. First a little background.

Oil is not going to get cheaper. This will completely undermine our way of life and lead to a massive global depression unless we either learn to get by with less energy or find new sources. We're not getting by with less or even the same amount of energy. While we could do this if we had the will in America, the developing world (in particular India and China) are going to keep increasing their energy consumption rapidly until either they've brought 40 to 50% of their population out of serfdom or there's a massive catastrophy. So new sources of energy must be found.

We need to look seriously at our energy policies with an eye towards real solutions that can change things in the next few decades. The "hydrogen economy" is not a real answer, nor is any other proposal that doesn't work with the infrastructure we have.

Which is what? Cars are not going away. Too much has been invested in sprawling development. This is something that needs to change -- whether it's the New Urbanism or something else -- but we have to acknowledge the physical reality that exists. People need to drive in order to work and to acquire food, to get children to/from school, and so on. While I think revitalizing the notion of "urban planning" (as we're doing really well in some places) and pushing public transportation and alternatives like biking are important, we have to recognize that any solution which tries to remove the automobile from the center of American life in less than 50 years is unrealistic.

So we have all these vehicles and the repair infrastructure to support them, as well as a massive system for distributing liquid fuel. An increasingly popular answer given this is to migrate to hybrid electric engines -- which take advantage of more of our existing repair infrastructure than fuel cells, which require very different technical knowledge to maintain -- and use BioDiesel as a fuel source.

It sounds nice, but I've been very suspicious of the scalability. Most of the projects to create BioDiesel use an existing commercial food crop -- usually soybeans -- to extract the oils needed to make fuel. This is not a good option because those crops are already net-loosers of petroleum energy in current production, largely because of fertilizers. So unless you have a plan to get ADM to convert it's whole operation to organic and also shut down the existing business lines which use soya, we're not getting enough biodiesel to power America from there.

Here's a quick aside. When this topic comes up, do not, I repeat not, suggest hemp. I like that plant as much as the next guy, but for fairly obvious reasons it's not going to happen, ok? It's also not a great producer for BioDiesel. For paper and other fibers, yes, but it's not very rich in oils, which is what you need.

However, today I cought a link to a really encouraging article about using Algae as source biomass for BioDiesel. This is the first time I've seen someone make an effort to think about what it would take to produce enough fuel to meet our energy needs nationwide. It's much more of a thought-experiment than a research piece, but it seems rather conservative in its estimations. It gave me some new hope that solutions exist.

Essentially we can take advantage of sewage and agricultural runoff (aka shit) to grow species of algae which are oil-rich, then use the algae to make BioDiesel. It seems like the kind of system that could work. It doesn't require reconfiguring an existing industry and the major infrastructure needed is just shallow ponds which can capture nitrogen-rich waste. And refineries. There's that. But it seems like a plausible answer both scientifically, economically and politically.

Incidentally, I cought the link from the discussion in this Kos post from Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana, talking about his idea for converting coal directly into liquid fuel, which is another very interesting option. An important aspect of tis "SynFuel" idea is that it will work in non-diesel engines, which are what most regular people drive. While some of what he says sounds too good to be true, the thrust of things is that SynFuel will release less CO2 compared to gasoline because much of the carbon can be "sequestered" (e.g. diverted into solid or liquid form) in the process of refining. While you still have to deal with this sequestered carbon, better to bury it than release it into the atmosphere. Even at double the cost figure he quotes ($35 a barrel) this is a step forward from where we are.

As the Apollo Alliance has been saying for a while (and not getting any traction... switch gears guys! seize the day!) one of the major benefits of reconfiguring our energy policy is not just to secure the fuel to run our economy, but to make the production of that fuel something that working Americans benefit from again. As it stands, nearly $200B a year leaves the us to pay for crude oil, not to mention the cost of the military entanglements this brings. Personally I'd be happy to let Red China prop up the Saudis by buying their oil. Let's re-invest those $200B here at home. This would also provide us with the geopolitical mobility to pull our troops out of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East because we wouldn't need to enforce the kind of stagnant status quo to protect our energy lifeline.

This is a big idea. It's a call for progressive reform based not on some moral notion of social justice, but quite literally on our future survival. It's something I think people will respond well to (90% percent of people are worried about foreign oil and want the government to take action) if we really get serious and innovative. I'm really glad to see Schweitzer putting this on the radar. He's one of a new generation of political leaders who are actually concerned with good government and willing to think outside the box. He's also miles ahead of Establishment Democrats in how to connect to the American people; reminiscent of my man Howard Dean in those respects, really.

I find my mind returning again and again to energy as a touchstone issue. So I'm going to work on it. This is how I do. It's part of what I want to write about: how it can be. Unless we popularize these ideas and this scale of pragmatic thinking, the small-minded and risk-averse business-as-usual mindset will prevail.

One of the major drags on my soul is the energy situation. The thermodynamics of our economy are not sustainable, and we're getting to the point where the primary engines of our wealth are going to quite literally run out of gas. There's a terrible poverty of ideas within the establishment when it comes to addressing this or any other problem, and it's been really getting me down lately. But today I found a few things that brightened my mood considerably. First a little background.

Oil is not going to get cheaper. This will completely undermine our way of life and lead to a massive global depression unless we either learn to get by with less energy or find new sources. We're not getting by with less or even the same amount of energy. While we could do this if we had the will in America, the developing world (in particular India and China) are going to keep increasing their energy consumption rapidly until either they've brought 40 to 50% of their population out of serfdom or there's a massive catastrophy. So new sources of energy must be found.

We need to look seriously at our energy policies with an eye towards real solutions that can change things in the next few decades. The "hydrogen economy" is not a real answer, nor is any other proposal that doesn't work with the infrastructure we have.

Which is what? Cars are not going away. Too much has been invested in sprawling development. This is something that needs to change -- whether it's the New Urbanism or something else -- but we have to acknowledge the physical reality that exists. People need to drive in order to work and to acquire food, to get children to/from school, and so on. While I think revitalizing the notion of "urban planning" (as we're doing really well in some places) and pushing public transportation and alternatives like biking are important, we have to recognize that any solution which tries to remove the automobile from the center of American life in less than 50 years is unrealistic.

So we have all these vehicles and the repair infrastructure to support them, as well as a massive system for distributing liquid fuel. An increasingly popular answer given this is to migrate to hybrid electric engines -- which take advantage of more of our existing repair infrastructure than fuel cells, which require very different technical knowledge to maintain -- and use BioDiesel as a fuel source.

It sounds nice, but I've been very suspicious of the scalability. Most of the projects to create BioDiesel use an existing commercial food crop -- usually soybeans -- to extract the oils needed to make fuel. This is not a good option because those crops are already net-loosers of petroleum energy in current production, largely because of fertilizers. So unless you have a plan to get ADM to convert it's whole operation to organic and also shut down the existing business lines which use soya, we're not getting enough biodiesel to power America from there.

Here's a quick aside. When this topic comes up, do not, I repeat not, suggest hemp. I like that plant as much as the next guy, but for fairly obvious reasons it's not going to happen, ok? It's also not a great producer for BioDiesel. For paper and other fibers, yes, but it's not very rich in oils, which is what you need.

However, today I cought a link to a really encouraging article about using Algae as source biomass for BioDiesel. This is the first time I've seen someone make an effort to think about what it would take to produce enough fuel to meet our energy needs nationwide. It's much more of a thought-experiment than a research piece, but it seems rather conservative in its estimations. It gave me some new hope that solutions exist.

Essentially we can take advantage of sewage and agricultural runoff (aka shit) to grow species of algae which are oil-rich, then use the algae to make BioDiesel. It seems like the kind of system that could work. It doesn't require reconfiguring an existing industry and the major infrastructure needed is just shallow ponds which can capture nitrogen-rich waste. And refineries. There's that. But it seems like a plausible answer both scientifically, economically and politically.

Incidentally, I cought the link from the discussion in this Kos post from Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana, talking about his idea for converting coal directly into liquid fuel, which is another very interesting option. An important aspect of tis "SynFuel" idea is that it will work in non-diesel engines, which are what most regular people drive. While some of what he says sounds too good to be true, the thrust of things is that SynFuel will release less CO2 compared to gasoline because much of the carbon can be "sequestered" (e.g. diverted into solid or liquid form) in the process of refining. While you still have to deal with this sequestered carbon, better to bury it than release it into the atmosphere. Even at double the cost figure he quotes ($35 a barrel) this is a step forward from where we are.

As the Apollo Alliance has been saying for a while (and not getting any traction... switch gears guys! seize the day!) one of the major benefits of reconfiguring our energy policy is not just to secure the fuel to run our economy, but to make the production of that fuel something that working Americans benefit from again. As it stands, nearly $200B a year leaves the us to pay for crude oil, not to mention the cost of the military entanglements this brings. Personally I'd be happy to let Red China prop up the Saudis by buying their oil. Let's re-invest those $200B here at home. This would also provide us with the geopolitical mobility to pull our troops out of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East because we wouldn't need to enforce the kind of stagnant status quo to protect our energy lifeline.

This is a big idea. It's a call for progressive reform based not on some moral notion of social justice, but quite literally on our future survival. It's something I think people will respond well to (90% percent of people are worried about foreign oil and want the government to take action) if we really get serious and innovative. I'm really glad to see Schweitzer putting this on the radar. He's one of a new generation of political leaders who are actually concerned with good government and willing to think outside the box. He's also miles ahead of Establishment Democrats in how to connect to the American people; reminiscent of my man Howard Dean in those respects, really.

I find my mind returning again and again to energy as a touchstone issue. So I'm going to work on it. This is how I do. It's part of what I want to write about: how it can be. Unless we popularize these ideas and this scale of pragmatic thinking, the small-minded and risk-averse business-as-usual mindset will prevail.

One of the major drags on my soul is the energy situation. The thermodynamics of our economy are not sustainable, and we're getting to the point where the primary engines of our wealth are going to quite literally run out of gas. There's a terrible poverty of ideas within the establishment when it comes to addressing this or any other problem, and it's been really getting me down lately. But today I found a few things that brightened my mood considerably. First a little background.

Oil is not going to get cheaper. This will completely undermine our way of life and lead to a massive global depression unless we either learn to get by with less energy or find new sources. We're not getting by with less or even the same amount of energy. While we could do this if we had the will in America, the developing world (in particular India and China) are going to keep increasing their energy consumption rapidly until either they've brought 40 to 50% of their population out of serfdom or there's a massive catastrophy. So new sources of energy must be found.

We need to look seriously at our energy policies with an eye towards real solutions that can change things in the next few decades. The "hydrogen economy" is not a real answer, nor is any other proposal that doesn't work with the infrastructure we have.

Which is what? Cars are not going away. Too much has been invested in sprawling development. This is something that needs to change -- whether it's the New Urbanism or something else -- but we have to acknowledge the physical reality that exists. People need to drive in order to work and to acquire food, to get children to/from school, and so on. While I think revitalizing the notion of "urban planning" (as we're doing really well in some places) and pushing public transportation and alternatives like biking are important, we have to recognize that any solution which tries to remove the automobile from the center of American life in less than 50 years is unrealistic.

So we have all these vehicles and the repair infrastructure to support them, as well as a massive system for distributing liquid fuel. An increasingly popular answer given this is to migrate to hybrid electric engines -- which take advantage of more of our existing repair infrastructure than fuel cells, which require very different technical knowledge to maintain -- and use BioDiesel as a fuel source.

It sounds nice, but I've been very suspicious of the scalability. Most of the projects to create BioDiesel use an existing commercial food crop -- usually soybeans -- to extract the oils needed to make fuel. This is not a good option because those crops are already net-loosers of petroleum energy in current production, largely because of fertilizers. So unless you have a plan to get ADM to convert it's whole operation to organic and also shut down the existing business lines which use soya, we're not getting enough biodiesel to power America from there.

Here's a quick aside. When this topic comes up, do not, I repeat not, suggest hemp. I like that plant as much as the next guy, but for fairly obvious reasons it's not going to happen, ok? It's also not a great producer for BioDiesel. For paper and other fibers, yes, but it's not very rich in oils, which is what you need.

However, today I cought a link to a really encouraging article about using Algae as source biomass for BioDiesel. This is the first time I've seen someone make an effort to think about what it would take to produce enough fuel to meet our energy needs nationwide. It's much more of a thought-experiment than a research piece, but it seems rather conservative in its estimations. It gave me some new hope that solutions exist.

Essentially we can take advantage of sewage and agricultural runoff (aka shit) to grow species of algae which are oil-rich, then use the algae to make BioDiesel. It seems like the kind of system that could work. It doesn't require reconfiguring an existing industry and the major infrastructure needed is just shallow ponds which can capture nitrogen-rich waste. And refineries. There's that. But it seems like a plausible answer both scientifically, economically and politically.

Incidentally, I cought the link from the discussion in this Kos post from Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana, talking about his idea for converting coal directly into liquid fuel, which is another very interesting option. An important aspect of tis "SynFuel" idea is that it will work in non-diesel engines, which are what most regular people drive. While some of what he says sounds too good to be true, the thrust of things is that SynFuel will release less CO2 compared to gasoline because much of the carbon can be "sequestered" (e.g. diverted into solid or liquid form) in the process of refining. While you still have to deal with this sequestered carbon, better to bury it than release it into the atmosphere. Even at double the cost figure he quotes ($35 a barrel) this is a step forward from where we are.

As the Apollo Alliance has been saying for a while (and not getting any traction... switch gears guys! seize the day!) one of the major benefits of reconfiguring our energy policy is not just to secure the fuel to run our economy, but to make the production of that fuel something that working Americans benefit from again. As it stands, nearly $200B a year leaves the us to pay for crude oil, not to mention the cost of the military entanglements this brings. Personally I'd be happy to let Red China prop up the Saudis by buying their oil. Let's re-invest those $200B here at home. This would also provide us with the geopolitical mobility to pull our troops out of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East because we wouldn't need to enforce the kind of stagnant status quo to protect our energy lifeline.

This is a big idea. It's a call for progressive reform based not on some moral notion of social justice, but quite literally on our future survival. It's something I think people will respond well to (90% percent of people are worried about foreign oil and want the government to take action) if we really get serious and innovative. I'm really glad to see Schweitzer putting this on the radar. He's one of a new generation of political leaders who are actually concerned with good government and willing to think outside the box. He's also miles ahead of Establishment Democrats in how to connect to the American people; reminiscent of my man Howard Dean in those respects, really.

I find my mind returning again and again to energy as a touchstone issue. So I'm going to work on it. This is how I do. It's part of what I want to write about: how it can be. Unless we popularize these ideas and this scale of pragmatic thinking, the small-minded and risk-averse business-as-usual mindset will prevail.

I got involved with a thread back at good ol' music for america, and now I've written a blog there about the myths of "Moral Hazard" in thinking about health care.

If you want to know why people are wrong when they say, "we can't have free health care because people will abuse the system," go read it.

I got involved with a thread back at good ol' music for america, and now I've written a blog there about the myths of "Moral Hazard" in thinking about health care.

If you want to know why people are wrong when they say, "we can't have free health care because people will abuse the system," go read it.

From my dawg Sterling F**king Newberry -- Words To Live By.

Instead of _____ use ____:

1. "Intelligent Design" use "Ignorant Denial".
2. "Intellectual Property" use "Intellectual Capital"
3. "Digital Rights Management" use "Digital Rent Management"
4. "Tax Cuts", use "Revenue Reductions"
5. "Conservative" use "Reactionary"
6. "Borrow and Spend" use "Borrow and Squander"
7. "Mainstream Media" use "Top Down Media"
8. "Pro-Choice" use "Pro-privacy"
9. "Abortion rights" use "Privacy Rights"
10. "Wealthy" use "Privileged"
11. "Free Trade" use "Labor Arbitrage"
12. "Tax" use "Recapture"
13. "A Tax", use "a drag"
14. "Christian Right", use "Christianist Right"
15. "War in Iraq", unless you mean the entire cycle, "Occupation of Iraq"
16. "Social Security Crisis" use "Budget Crisis"
17. "Defense spending" use "military spending"
18. "Capitalism", use "Corporatism".
19. "Corporate", use "Pyramid"
20. "Social" use  "Public" or "National"
21. "Bush Administration" use "Bush Executive"
22. "Fiscal Liberal" use "Fiscal Libertine"
23. "Alternative Energy" use "Sustainable Energy"

That's a good compilation of language to use for anyone seeking to break out of the stale and cyclical political "debate" that's locked us up for the past four years. If you want to read some explanations of what Sterling says these things mean, read the whole diary.