More cheery news on the climate change front:

Climate change is widening viral disease among farm animals, expanding the spread of some microbes that are also a known risk to humans, the world’s top agency for animal health said on Monday.

The World Animal Health Organization—known as OIE, an acronym of its name in French—said a survey of 126 of its member-states found 71 percent were “extremely concerned” about the expected impact of climate change on animal disease.

Meanwhile, the idea of getting sixty votes in the United States Senate for something as ambitious as the Waxman-Markey bill—to say nothing of something that would be fully equal to the scale of the challenge—continues to seem fairly implausible. Vacation is fun, but reality is depressing.

The foreclosure crisis started with loans to people who didn’t make enough money to pay them back; loans that were issued on the premise that if the owner ever got into trouble he could always sell the house. That started unraveling when the housing bubble started unraveling. But now that unemployment is rising more and more “prime” loans are going bust:

The issue here is that even the best credit rating in the world is little protection against the fact that if you’re laid off during a recession your income may drop a huge amount. Foreclosures, in turn, help make the economic situation worse and drive up the unemployment rate.

A Washington Post article on former campaign staffers deciding to run for office mentions some folks I know:

But there’s also Mike Signer, 36, who was an adviser to former senator John Edwards and then Obama during the campaign and is aiming to become Virginia’s next lieutenant governor. [...]

Legum founded the ThinkProgress blog at the Center for American Progress before joining Clinton’s campaign. After Clinton lost the nomination, he said, he took a break from the hyperactive pace of Washington politics. But the wonk in him quickly took over, and he immersed himself in local issues. He started a Maryland politics blog, Legum’s New Line, and announced his candidacy more than a year out.

The long hours and intense pressure of campaigning nationally “made me want to at least try another kind of politics,” Legum said. “There is something valuable about being in the political process at this level. It’s not sexy, but it’s important. That’s part of what persuaded me to get involved.”

Both good guys, though of course there’ll be no electioneering or endorsements on this blog. I will, however, endorse the point Legum is making. The American political system assigns an enormous amount of power to state and local political officeholders. But politics at the state and local level doesn’t get much attention. Even pretty politically active people commonly can’t name their state senator or say anything about him or her.

Fareed Zakaria points out that much of what “everyone knows” about Iran may be wrong:

Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What’s the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that “developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.” Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini’s statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.

Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And if Tehran’s aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn’t need a bomb to do so. Simply having a clear “breakout” capacity—the ability to weaponize within a few months—would allow it to operate with much greater latitude and impunity in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Of course it would be silly to be naive and just base our policy on the assumption that the Iranians are telling the truth about all this. But by the same token, we should recognize that they might be telling the truth. Or, perhaps most realistically of all, that “they” may disagree about this.

Everyone seems to agree that a North Korean nuclear test is a bad thing, but I’m a bit at a loss for smart things to say about it. Joe Cirincione says “North Korean nuclear test shows the failure of both US and China’s strategy to roll back the program.”

I guess it strikes me that the DPRK’s nose for grabbing attention seems a bit off if they’re deciding to do this over what’s a holiday weekend in the United States.