Although 2007 lacked any 'great/classic' albums, there was a relative abundance of 'good' albums. The half-glass full perspective would view this abundance as a glimmer of hope for the future of hip-hop music but the half-glass empty perspective would look at the lackluster product from the big-name artists and see the past year as more of the same. Wu-Tang Clan's first album in six years was a major disappointment and due to the inner feuding it could be the last. After showing so much promise with his debut, Lupe Fiasco's second offering, despite a lot of critical acclaim, was disappointing as well. Kanye West's third album is the only 'mainstream' artist release to make my list this year. An interesting discussion is just how much the record companies influence artist's artistry. In simple terms, hip-hop is big business and is no longer just an urban genre of music. In an attempt to appeal to the masses, hip-hop has in morphed into hip-pop; hip-hop popular culture ridden with product marketing, clothing lines, tv commercials and soda drinks. It's no coincidence that the majority of the artists on my list aren't signed to a major record label. The irony is that Public Enemy's astutely titled "How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?" probably wouldn't have made my list today if they were released by the very same record label that helped them gain notoriety with their politically infused rhymes: Def Jam.

March - Devin the Dude - Waitin' to Inhale

There are an abundance of far more gifted rappers out there than Devin the Dude yet he still manages to make some very appealing songs. The way I see it is, Devin works with his strengths and doesn't try to venture into anything out of his league. His rhymes are simple and are about simple topics that guys can relate to like women and weed. Simple, yet effective. It makes you wonder why more artists don't catch on. When he does touch upon more serious topics like runaways ("Lil Girl Gone") or the rap music industry ("What a Job this Is") he calls upon other MCs for help and does not disappoint. But what makes "Waitin' to Inhale", in my opinion, Devin's best album is the production. His regurgitated topics of women and weed would simply sound played out if it wasn't for the beats. Laced with beautiful piano loops and different instrumentals, the beats are anything but yesterday's fad; they are a breathe of fresh air waiting for you to inhale.

May - KRS-One and Marley Marl - Hip Hop Lives

KRS-One is like a fine wine: he gets better with age. His 2007 release was his answer to Nas' 2006 statement that "Hip Hop is Dead." KRS-One IS hip hop, so who better to proclaim otherwise? And to spice to it all up, he teamed with his onetime bitter rival: producer Marley Marl. To be honest, before I heard this album I wasn't familiar with the rivalry. But listening to the album, their chemistry is more accustom to teammates than enemies.  Although not a perfect album, there are some great tracks on it.  My favourite tracks are the title track and "Rising to the Top."   For the latter, Marley borrowed the beat from Pete Rock's "The Game" off of his "Soul Survivor" album.  Because it's a fast beat it's hard to flow to but, like throughout the rest of the album,  KRS-One has the skills to pull it off.

July - Common - Finding Forever

Common is, in my opinion,  unequivocally one of the top 5 lyrically skiled rappers in the game.  On "The Game" he once again proves my point over a classic beat done by Kanye West and scratched by the legend DJ Premier.  Since he was known as Common Sense, Common has always been regarded as a lyrically gifted MC but lacked any solid production.  Now that he has "found the new Premo" in Kanye West and is signed to Kanye's label, we should be seeing more complete works from Common.  Finding Forever, the follow-up to the Grammy nominated best rap album of the year "Be", is just as good as its predecessor, if not better.

August - Public Enemy - How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?

First off, this has to be THE BEST album name of all time.  I LOVE it. Like KRS-One, I have never been a fan of Public Enemy's earlier works, but this album is nice.  PE and KRS even team up for a track called "Sex, Drugs, and Violence" which criminalizes the rap music industry's over-indulgence of each theme.  This album is till the same old PE: trying to wake up the listener and motivate them to do something.  The difference this time around is that they didn't just bring "noise", they brought music.  I find the production from almost ANY early rap track too simple and hard to listen to.  Almost like listening to a dude bang on an oil drum with a stick.  But PE has evolved and their new album's music has evolved as well.  It is quite funky and has a heavy jazz influence.  The album is not without its faults however, as there are a number of misses.  But their hits are refreshing.

September - Kanye West - Graduation

I think Kanye West, from the interviews I've seen of him in the news, is as much of a narcissist as, maybe even more so than, the rest of the rappers out there.  That says a lot.  But to give credit where it's due, he is one of the top producers in the game.  The prooduction he saves for Graduation is unique and pleasant to listen to which more than makes up for his weak lyrical skills.

November - CunninLynguists - Dirty Acres

From the first time I listened to Dirty Acres I was instantly reminded of Goodie MOB's album Soul Food.  Southern Christian choir rap without the blatant preaching.  Also, like Soul Food accomplished, this album is an album you can play from start to finish without having to skip too many tracks, which is a very rare thing these days.  There are no clearcut lead songs on here, which is another Soul Food trait, but except for one or two blemishes, this is a terrific album.

December - One Be Lo - The R.E.B.I.R.T.H.

For those that don't know, One Be Lo is one half of the duo formerly known as Binary Star.  Ever since their one and only album Masters of the Universe came out I've been hungry for more music from these guys.  But since they have both gone the solo route we shan't expect a Binary Star album out anytime soon.  And their solo albums are hard to come across off the internet.  When I did eventually find this album I was not disappointed.  Although the production is not as palatable as Masters of the Universe, The R.E.B.I.R.T.H. is still very solid mostly because it is such a pleasure to listen to One Be Lo.  His subject matter is presented emotionally and respectfully without any curse words so prominent in today's raps.  Unlike Will Smith, this doesn't come off as cheesy marketing for the kids but instead showcases his vast lyrical skills.

I heard he was light skinned, stocky with a Haitian accent
Jewelery, fast cars and he's known for flashing (What's his name???)
Listen while I take you back (NIGGA SAY HIS NAME!) and lace this rap
A real live tale about a snitch named Haitian Jack
Knew he was workin for the feds, same crime, different trials
Nigga, picture what he said, and did I mention
Promised a payback, Jimmy Henchman, in due time
I know you bitch niggas is listenin, The World Is Mine
Set me up, wet me up, niggas stuck me up
Heard the guns bust but you tricks never shut me up
Touch one of mine on everything I own
I'll destroy everything you touch, play the game nigga
All out warfare, eye for eye
Last words to a bitch nigga, "WHY YOU LIE?!?"
Now you gotta watch your back, now watch your front
Here we come, gunshots too tight, now you stuck
Fuck the rap game, nigga this M-O-B
So believe me we enemies, I go against all odds

- from Tupac Shakur's "Against All Odds" from the Makaveli album

An attack on Tupac Shakur launched a hip-hop war

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

___

On the Net:

Center For Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx

Fund For Independence in Journalism: http://www.tfij.org/

Thought this was a great summary of Canada's current state.

Canadians have always prided themselves on the “goodness” if not the “greatness” of their country.  Sitting north of the United States, Canadians struggle with an ideal that rejects many American ideas, yet accommodates in one way or another most of those ideas – more so currently than in the past.  From medical care to military purpose Canadians view themselves as essentially different from their southern neighbours, who remain for the most part steadfastly ignorant of us.  There is very much about Canada, however, that indicates that we are not quite as independent of thought and action as the average Canadian realizes.   This statement by itself would not bother many Canadians, but on specific issues there is opposition to current policies. 

Viewed externally, Canada does not rank so well as one interviewee said, “Canada is still considered and referred to as a subnation and only in relation with the U.S.  It has still to develop an identity of its own.[1]”   That comment caught and held my attention as the truth in it seemed quite apparent.  In reality, while dealing with foreign affairs, the environment, military matters (part of foreign affairs), and other aspects involving international treaties and agreements, Canada very decidedly falls under the category of a ‘subnation’ to the United States. 

What follows is a brief overview of some of the positions Canada has or has not taken that give definition to our country as a subnation.  We may believe otherwise, but we are highly integrated into American life styles and policies.  

Aboriginal Policy

One of the international agreements that Canada sides strongly with the U.S. is the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.[2]  The four countries that voted against the declaration - Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia - are the four main British colonial countries in which ethnic cleansing and genocide were most clearly successful.  Their success as British colonies turning into peaceful democratic ‘western’ nations under the British mould can be attributed in large part to that feature, especially if one compares it to the struggles engendered by the British in South Africa, and India/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Palestine - generally the whole Middle East.

Article 26 of the UN declaration states: "Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired."  Chuck Strahl, Canada’s representative “said the government is moving ahead on "making an actual difference" in improving the daily lives of aboriginal Canadians, instead of offering "empty promises and rhetoric."   His  arguments for that “cited Tory initiatives such as including First Nations peoples in the Human Rights Act, improving water quality on reserves and providing a compensation package for victims of residential schools.[3]” 

Nice.  Here’s some money for destroying your culture through the residential schools, and we’ll give you clean water, but we’re not letting you have any rights to your aboriginal land and its resources, although it is a legally determined right in part through the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the BNA Act, the Constitution, and various legal settlements. 

Afghanistan, NATO, et al

The rise in Canadian militarism may be insignificant as compared to the rest of the world, but it is becoming more and more worrisome to Canadians themselves.  Under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, Canada has adopted the rhetoric of their American leaders to the south.  Adding to the “we are not going to cut and run” mentality is the belligerent positioning of Canada’s claiming and strengthening its attitude within global affairs.  Translated, we have become the bully’s sidekick, the weakling runt that yells support from the side while feigning a few punches at the victim.  Our vision of ourselves as peacekeepers, starting from Lester B. Pearson’s plan to establish a UN peacekeeping force, originating from the Suez Crisis of 1956, has been altered to adopt the “war on terror” language used by the U.S.  We are now “peacemakers”, the folly of which is evident in Canada’s role in Afghanistan.

While there may have been minor ‘successes’ within Afghanistan – a road built here, a school built there – we are still tied and incorporated into the overall American strategic plan that looks to control the resources of the Middle East and block the emergence of any entity – Russia, China, a Caspian Basin alliance – that might contest that.  As a result we are fighting an American imperial war under the auspices of NATO and the UN.  I have dealt with the NATO position before[4]  and will shorten it here to say that NATO is now acting as an independent (of the UN and other international organizations) global military governance body under the command of the United States, a role the U.S. has unilaterally determined for itself. [5] 

Currently the majority of Canadians are against the effort in Afghanistan, not by a large number, but an increasing number.  Harper’s view is "Ultimately, where we need to make progress is not turning Afghanistan into (somewhere) as law abiding as (Ottawa). It's to really put in a situation where the Afghan government is capable of managing the security threats itself ... I think we're a couple of years away from being where we need to be."[6] 

In sum under the larger picture, Canada is supporting a puppet government of the U.S. consisting of war lords and drug lords (probably one and the same), a government that wishes to bring the Taliban into the discussions of the country’s future, and acting as a subsidiary military force to the American strategic plan for south Asia.   Security is the least of the American desires, other than strategic security, and the people be damned.

Kyoto and beyond

Canadians are one of the largest creators of greenhouse gases in the world, ranking 25^th out of 29 OECD countries for greenhouse gas emissions (and 27^th out of 29 on a per capita basis) with only the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, and Germany creating more.  Canada’s initiatives sound wonderful:

Canada signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, and pledged to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. In 1997, Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol, formally committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% below 1990 levels by 2010.

Intentions need to be followed by action:

However these international efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions have failed to bear fruit, as countries have been unable to agree on means to calculate reductions. Canada, along with the United States, Australia and Japan, has been criticized for blocking these international efforts.[7]

The most recent exercise in rhetoric has been the Bali conference.  Before Bali even started, Canada was being sidelined and criticized for its fawning role to the U.S. and its “lame duck” aspirations.   Canada has never lived up to its previous agreements and Harper has sidestepped all issues, looking towards Bali to provide “aspirational” goals.  In a fully contradictory statement, Environment Minister John Baird told a House of Commons hearing, “It is just foolish to try to exempt the big polluters from taking meaningful action. It is a guaranteed recipe for failure."[8]

Baird was referring to places like China and India and other ‘third’ world countries, but taken on a per capita basis and overall tonnage within the OECD, Canada has no grounds on which to criticize other governments.  In George Monbiot’s foreword to the Canadian edition of Heat – How to Stop the Planet From Burning,  he indicates that Canada emits 19 tonnes of carbon per capita, only one tonne less than the Americans, and well above his calculated “permissible” limit of 1.2 tonnes per person globally.[9]  Events within Canada speak enormously towards Canada’s evasion of climate change responsibility.

First and foremost, apart from the physical aspect, is the rhetoric coming from Ottawa that is half and half denial and obfuscation.  The line borrowed from the U.S. is that of “carbon intensity” a phrase that simply means that richer countries get to pollute more, as “A reduction in intensity under this act means, in reality, an increase in emission….As all economies tend to use less energy per unit as they mature, Mr. Harper’s proposal for tackling climate change amounts to doing nothing.”[10]  The previous touted “carbon credit” scheme has the same fault, that emissions will not stop, and the credits, like with the mortgage based derivatives, will become another means for money traders to make more money without helping the environment.[11]

Another feature of the government’s view is that of the “denial machine” or the “denial industry”.  In Monbiot’s work, he examines how the scientists and PR firms that played a major role in trying to deny that cigarettes and tobacco cause lung cancer are the same scientists who are now working with Exxon, the U.S. government, think tanks and others to deny global warming.  Taken further, the CBC reported that these same people, the same firms, the same rhetoric was now being used to provide the Canadian government with their own rhetoric of denial.[12]

Much more could be said about Canada and its own dereliction towards the environment:  the Alberta tar sands and the enormous amounts of energy required to extract the oil and the impact on the environment and indigenous cultures (hmm, see aboriginal rights above, it all circles together);   the NAFTA Chapter 11 clause giving the U.S. corporations rights to sue the Canadian government over financial losses (real or imagined) caused by our laws (environmental included);  and the  NAFTA requirement that the U.S. gets our resources first in event of a shortage (oil, gas, and probably later water).  

The amount of time devoted here to the environment reflects from my perspective what the American Empire is all about – the consumption of resources and energy, the drawing to the American heartland of all the wealth and power it can control from the hinterland, which today is truly the whole globe.  Canada’s economy, our environmental rhetoric, rests firmly in the hands of the U.S. government and its affiliated military-industrial network in being part of this extraction of wealth.

Consumption and debt

On a similar note, our consumer economy reflects that of the United States, and while our dollar is currently strengthening against the U.S. dollar, there are signs that Canada’s economic trends could well follow those of the Americans.

I often shake my head when reading American media reports about the “indoctrination” of whomever by whatever evil government they are railing against.  What is not generally recognized is that North Americans from birth are highly indoctrinated into our societies consumptive habits and debt purchasing from the very moment our children can focus their eyes on the television screen.  It is a kinder, gentler form of propaganda, and much, much more successful.

The American economy is undergoing a shakedown of its debt structures now, as the housing market bubble, based on ever increasing debt and financial trading structures that no one seems to really comprehend, is deflating rather rapidly.  American debt is huge, whether it is credit cards, mortgages, national or international, with, ironically, the Chinese and Japanese being able to control the markets as they own much of America’s foreign debt, essentially money lent to the U.S. to keep the economy consuming.

Canada, while still well behind this level of debt, shows some discouraging signs.    The average Canadian household debt is $69,450 with the overall household debt through personal loans, lines of credit and mortgage debt equalling $731 billion.  That is well short of the American debt of $8.4 trillion, but given the population factor of 10, it is about equal per capita. The debt to income ratio is currently 105 per cent, in simple terms saying we are spending more than we are earning (in 1983 it had been about 55 per cent.)[13]

In addition, the Canadian tax scheme is more and more becoming similar to the American with income taxes.  It is noted that countries with fewer social benefits tend to have higher disparities in income and greater tax advantages for the rich.  This pattern is becoming more evident in Canada.  The top 1 per cent paid a lower tax rate than the bottom 10 per cent in 2005.  Marc Lee, a senior economist with CCPA, says, “Canada’s tax system now fails a basic test of fairness.  Tax cuts have contributed to a slow and steady shift to a less progressive tax system in Canada.”  A combination of federal and provincial tax cuts have effected this shift, with “the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers, [paying] three to five percentage points more in taxes.”[14]

Accompanying this are the increases in “user fees”, a form of regressive taxation, the incremental incursions of a two tiered medical system with the encroachment of private medical groups along the American model, low corporate taxes with many subsidies (as per the Alberta tar sands project above), and an as yet low but increasing military budget, set to double in the next five years. 

Subnation status

In foreign affairs, in domestic spending, domestic taxation, in our environmental laws, in our increasing belligerence as an aggressor nation, Canada is very rightly to be considered as a “subnation” to the United States.  Our internal identity is hockey and beer with a bit of French thrown in to prove we are not American, but in all our consumer habits, our spending habits, our changing attitudes towards the environment and the military, our denial of international norms that accompany this – along with the norms for indigenous rights – it becomes a fair argument that Canada has not yet determined – and indeed is undermining – its own sovereignty.  If the rest of the world no longer sees Canada the way a majority of us would still wish to be seen, the reasons are becoming more evident and stronger with each new development by the provincial and federal governments.  The corporations are winning, the people are losing, a subnation we shall remain.

Who’s Afraid of Barack Obama?

JUST 24 hours after Hillary Clinton mowed down a skeptical Katie Couric with her certitude that she would win the Democratic nomination — “It will be me!” — her husband showed exactly how she could lose it.

By telling an Iowa audience on Tuesday night that he had opposed the Iraq war “from the beginning,” Bill Clinton committed a double pratfall. Not only did he refocus attention on his wife’s most hazardous issue, Iraq, just as it was receding as the nation’s Topic A, but he also revived unhappy memories of the truth-dodging nadirs of the Clinton White House.

Whatever his caveats, Mr. Clinton did not explicitly oppose the Iraq war from the beginning. But Al Gore did unequivocally and loudly in a public speech before the beginning, as did an obscure Illinois state senator named Barack Obama. What if Mrs. Clinton had led an insurrection against the war authorization in the Senate? Might she have helped impede America’s rush into one of the greatest fiascos in our history?

That history cannot be rewritten in any case, by Bill Clinton or anyone else. But future history is yet to be made. In the year to come, it will be written by the candidates and the voters, not by those journalists who, as the old saw has it, lay down history’s first draft.

Election year isn’t even here yet, and already most of the first drafts penned by the political press have proved instantly disposable, from Fred Thompson’s irresistible Reaganesque star power to the Family Research Council’s ability to abort the rise of Rudy Giuliani. The biggest Beltway myth so far — that the Clinton campaign is “textbook perfect” and “tightly disciplined” — was surely buried for good by the undisciplined former president’s seemingly panic-driven blunder last week.

The Washington wisdom about Mr. Obama has often been just as wrong as that about Mrs. Clinton. We kept being told he was making rookie mistakes and offering voters wispy idealistic sentiments rather than the real beef of policy. But what the Beltway mistook for gaffes often was the policy.

Mr. Obama’s much-derided readiness to talk promptly and directly to the leaders of Iran and Syria, for instance, was a clear alternative, agree with it or not, to Mrs. Clinton’s same-old Foggy Bottom platitudes on the subject. His supposedly reckless pledge to chase down Osama bin Laden and his gang in Pakistan, without Pakistani permission if necessary, was a pointed rebuke of both Mrs. Clinton’s and President Bush’s misplaced fealty to our terrorist-enabling “ally,” Pervez Musharraf. Like Mr. Obama’s prescient Iraq speech of 2002, his open acknowledgment of the Pakistan president’s slipperiness turned out to be ahead of the curve.

Now that the Beltway establishment, jolted by the Iowa polls, is frantically revising its premature blueprints for a Clinton coronation and declaring, as Time’s inevitable cliché would have it, that Mr. Obama has “found his voice,” it’s worth looking at some campaign story lines that have been ignored so far. They tell us more than the hyped scenarios that have fallen apart. Indeed, they flip the standard narrative of Campaign 2008 on its head: Were Mr. Obama to best Mrs. Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he may prove harder for the Republicans to rally against and defeat than the all-powerful, battle-tested Clinton machine.

The unspoken truth is that the Clinton machine is not being battle-tested at all by the Democratic primary process. When Mrs. Clinton accused John Edwards of “throwing mud” and “personally” attacking her in a sharp policy exchange in one debate, the press didn’t challenge the absurd hyperbole of her claim. In reality, neither Mr. Edwards nor any other Democratic competitor will ever hit her with the real, personal mud being stockpiled by the right. But if she’s getting a bye now, she will not from the Republican standard-bearer, whoever he may be. Clinton-bashing is the last shared article of faith (and last area of indisputable G.O.P. competence) that could yet unite the fractured and dispirited conservative electorate.

The Republicans know this and are so psychologically invested in refighting the Clinton wars that they’re giddy. Karl Rove’s first column for Newsweek last week, “How to Beat Hillary (Next) November,” proceeded from the premise that her nomination was a done deal. In the G.O.P. debates through last Thursday, the candidates mentioned the Clintons some 65 times. Barack Obama’s name has not been said once.

But much like the Clinton campaign itself, the Republicans have fallen into a trap by continuing to cling to the Hillary-is-inevitable trope. They have not allowed themselves to think the unthinkable — that they might need a Plan B to go up against a candidate who is not she. It’s far from clear that they would remotely know how to construct a Plan B to counter Mr. Obama. The repeated attempts to fan “rumors” that he is a madrassa-indoctrinated Muslim — whether on Fox News or in The Washington Post, where they resurfaced scurrilously on the front page on Thursday — are too demonstrably false to survive endless reruns even in the Swift-boating era.

Part of the Republicans’ difficulty in countering Mr. Obama, should they have to, is their own cynical racial politics. For the most part, race has been the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign despite the (largely) white press’s endless fretting about whether the Illinois senator is too white for black voters and too black for white voters. Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included. (Those who are won’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate even if it’s not Mr. Obama.) But the G.O.P., by its own doing, is nonetheless saddled with a history that most recently includes “macaca” and Katrina, Mr. Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University in 2000 and the nonexistent black population of its Congressional delegation.

As the Republican leadership knows, this record is an albatross, driving away not just black voters but crucial white swing voters, too. Ken Mehlman, the former G.O.P. chairman, and Mr. Rove, as recently as in that Newsweek column, have implored their party to reach out to minorities. So have Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp. But not even conservative leaders of this stature could persuade their party’s top 2008 presidential contenders to show up for a September debate moderated by Tavis Smiley for PBS at the historically black Morgan State University.

It’s not because those no-shows are racists; it’s because they are defensive and out of touch. With the notable exception of Mike Huckabee, most of the party’s candidates have barricaded themselves from African-Americans for so long that they don’t know how to speak to or about them. As sure-footed as these Republicans are in attacking the Clintons and Streisand — or in exchanging fire with Al Sharpton and hip-hop moguls — they are strangers to the mainstream multiracial and multicultural America exemplified by an Obama or an Oprah.

An Obama candidacy would force them to engage. Or try to. A matchup between Mr. Obama and Mr. Giuliani, who was forged in the racial crucible of New York’s police brutality nightmares of the 1990s, or between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, who was shaped by a religion that didn’t give blacks equal membership until 1978, would be less a clash of races than of centuries.

But there’s another, even more fascinating hidden story line in the 2008 campaign that speaks to the potential prowess of an Obama candidacy. Despite the thuggish name-calling of a few right-wing die-hards (e.g., Rush Limbaugh mocking “Barack Hussein Odumbo”), the dirty secret of a number of conservatives is that they are disarmed by Mr. Obama even though they know his record is more liberal than Mrs. Clinton’s.

The drumbeat of approval has been remarkably steady. Last year Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to both the 2000 and 2004 Bush campaigns, admiringly called Mr. Obama “a walking, talking hope machine” who “may reshape American politics.” Andrew Ferguson devoted pages in The Weekly Standard to raving about “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama’s memoir, before dismissing its political sequel, “The Audacity of Hope.” Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, keeps trying to write anti-Obama articles but they’re so mild that they never really contradict his judgment of a year ago that the senator from Illinois “is the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Even Tom Tancredo, the most virulent immigration demagogue of the G.O.P. presidential field, has spoken warmly of Mr. Obama.

Perhaps most striking is the case of Shelby Steele, the archconservative scholar who shares Mr. Obama’s mixed-race heritage. Though he has just written an entire book, “A Bound Man,” to argue (unpersuasively, in my view) that Mr. Obama “can’t win,” he can’t stop himself from admiring the guy throughout. Peggy Noonan wasn’t being tongue-in-cheek when she wondered in The Wall Street Journal last month whether Mr. Obama “understands the kind of quiet cheering he is beginning to garner from some Republicans.” In her view “they see him as a Democrat who could cure the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton sickness.”

Or at least they do in the abstract. Should Mr. Obama upend the Beltway story line by taking Iowa, the Republicans will have every reason to be as fearful as the Clinton camp is now.

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth report on climate change

  • The IPCC report found that warming temperatures could result in 75 million to 250 million people in Africa suffering water shortages by 2020 and residents of Asia's large cities facing a greater risk of river and coastal flooding.

  • Earlier in the year, the IPCC reported that 130 million people in Asia could suffer severe food and water shortages by 2050 unless international action is urgently taken.

• Over 3,000 are killed from Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh (for now anyway, almost double the death toll of Hurricane Katrina)
• The Working Group on Climate Change and Development, released a report, "Up In Smoke? Asia and the Pacific," warning that communities across the region are already feeling the effects of climate change and face a dire future unless the international community acts
• Fossil fuels will dominate the world's energy portfolio until at least 2030, and emissions look set to rise by 25-90% during that time.
• CO2 has a variable atmospheric lifetime, and cannot be specified precisely. Recent work indicates that recovery from a large input of atmospheric CO₂ from burning fossil fuels will result in an effective lifetime of tens of thousands of years.