The Progressive Democrat, as well as Culture Kitchen and Daily Gotham, the other blogs I write for, were featured in the left-wing Finnish magazine Kulttuurivihkot. For any Finnish readers out there, hyvä päivä.

This week I discuss the Georgia Senate race, alternative energy (particularly biodiesel), Mormon desecration of the victims of the Holocaust, marriage equality, and my usual state-by-state coverage (which is pared down to about 16 states rather than the 20 states I used to cover...I'd pare it down more but I know I have readers in those 16 states!) More below.

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Biodiesel has been getting a bad name because of the potential for competition with food production. It has always struck me that some of the loudest voices criticizing biodiesel has come from the oil, coal and nuke lobbies. But it did seem like competition with food production may be a critical problem with biodiesel.

When I had the opportunity to review a new book (really a substantially updated edition of a previously published book) called Biodiesel by Greg Pahl, published by Chelsea Green Press, I was quite interested in learning about this technology. Is it a viable alternative? What is it's potential? And what is the danger of competition with food production.

Greg Pahl's book is extremely well researched and fair. It brings up all the pros and cons about biodiesel.

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Taking on the System is a book that I have been waiting on for a long time -- and not just because I have been hearing about it from it from its more nascent stages here in Berkeley from kos, who gets full billing as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga on the book's cover.

Ever since I began devoting several hours a day to blogging about politics more than four years ago, and especially since I started writing professionally for MyDD nearly three years ago, I have been looking for a clear and concise way to explain to my family and friends just what I have been devoting so much of my time and effort to. Whenever I have been asked by a reporter or a Democrat of another generation or even a professor interested in politics about my ideology, or if I am some kind of crazy blogger insistent on a far left political orthodoxy, I have kindly explained that, no, my focus is more on electoral outcomes and bringing effective change than allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, all the while hoping that someone would write the tome laying out this pragmatic vision of direct action within the age of the Internet.

This is just that book.

In the 288 highly readable and very engaging pages of Taking on the System, which is released tomorrow, Markos lays out his eight rules for achieving progressive change within today's digital world. Far from just being a book for a bloggers, about bloggers, by a blogger, this is a book that is relevant far beyond the Netroots, or even the expressly political realm. It is a book that folks who don't spend hours a day on sites like MyDD or Talking Points Memo or Daily Kos can read, understand and thoroughly enjoy. Markos goes to great lengths to relate developments within society -- for instance the new open source ways in which new albums are reaching consumers, overturning some of the notions of unchecked and uncheckable powers of the gatekeepers in the music industry -- to changes within the political system that likewise have the capacity to make the country more democratic.

I know that I will be ordering a few copies of the book to give away to assorted friends and family, and I will also personally recommend it to a handful of professors to incorporate into their coursework this fall. But even if you're not at the place where you're looking to purchase multiple copies of a book you have not yet read to give to friends, I would nevertheless highly recommend you get a copy for yourself to see what it's all about. Whether you're someone relatively new to the Netroots, becoming more involved during this year's primaries or even more recently than that, or you're someone who remembers the flame wars on Daily Kos during the last Democratic primaries (or even points further ago in the past than that) -- or even if you just stumbled on this site because you were looking for the latest poll or political news but are not an out and out political junkie -- Taking on the System is a book you should buy and delight in reading.

I was able to get an advance copy of Peter Dale Scott's new book The Road to 9/11 from its publisher (University of California Press) so I thought I would share my review of it here. It will be available in your local bookstores this month, perhaps on the 11th itself.

This book, though it has 9/11 in the title, is about much, much more than 9/11. The title, I think, is a bit misleading. It might be more accurate to call it The Road THROUGH 9/11 since it's really about how 9/11 was used by certain neocon gentlemen - including a Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld - to get to where we are today. There are plenty of books one can read about the right-wing cabals that we are fighting against, such as David Brock's recent Blinded by the Right which describes his journey through the networks of the right-wing cultural wars, and Bill Moyer's 1988 Book The Secret Government (adapted from his PBS Special). But this book goes deeper, back through several decades and administrations, to examine this "deep" history of our government's leaders and their tendency to operate behind the scenes.

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Glenn Greenwald's new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, is doing quite well, especially considering the virtual press blackout on it.  Here's an opportunity to help lift that blackout: A book review that's now available for alternative weeklies to pick up, direct from the website they use for syndication purposes.

The review was just published by the paper I work for, Random Lengths News.  The review (reprinted below the fold) is available on the Altweeklies.com website at this link.  You can find a listing of weeklies here.  It only has phone number, not email addresses. But usually you can get emails from the papers' websites.

A brief email to the editor with the link to the review on the Altweeklies.com website is recommended.  (You should only phone if you already have a relationship with an editor or other staffer.) I've never tried this sort of promotion before. But if folks are sensible, polite and respectful, it should be fine.

So jump over the fold, and see if you'd like your friends and neighbors to read what I've written about the book.

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