Juice
Tonight's debate is to be focused on foreign policy. But it's hard to compartmentalize all the issues that we have to deal with to one theme when many of the major issues facing our future is globally interconnected. For example, I would love to see a discussion about the economics of oil consumption tonight and our dependence on foreign oil. And not focused on what we can do to drill more oil close to home, but what we can do to start to wean ourselves from oil and gas consuming vehicles and machinery. If Kerry could somehow weave an introduction to this idea into tonight's debate, he could expand upon it in one of the following debate centered on the economy.

Speaking of the economy, the IMF released its outlook on the global economy yesterday, and it was pretty rosy, with 5% overall global economic growth this year. However, the U.S. lags behind at 4.3% for this year, and the IMF believes it will worsen next year to 3.5%. What's up with that? Political Juice has one thought:

This isn't altogether happy news. And the main reason for our inability to keep up with global growth seems to be our dependence on oil, and the continuing volatility and rise of oil prices (we're topping $50/barrel).

Solutions? I'm no economist. But it sure seems to me that a plan for keeping corporations and jobs here in the U.S., combined with a vigorous environmental policy designed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, combined with a foreign policy that is less invasive and more cooperative and thus less likely to contribute to the volatility of the oil market, ought to help things along a bit. Don't you think?

Now, if we only had a candidate who was proposing all of these things.... Oh wait, we do! Maybe that's why a group of Nobel-prize-winning economists signed a letter endorsing John Kerry.