Iowa Today: More Flooding, More to Come

It's far from over, especially in areas bordering the Missisippi, but these are some scenes from the current flooding in the Midwest, specifically in Iowa.

Flooding isn't unknown there--I lived in the area for about five years, going to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and the University of Iowa, and I recall going out to sandbag and repair levees in three of those years. But nothing, nothing like this.

The third photo down is Burlington, right on the Mississippi, just across the nearest bridge from Illinois. At the bottom is Iowa City, the university campus. These are places that were part of my life.

The top photo is a cornfield in Oakville. This flood has come at a bad time for the corn crops, and we'll all be paying for that.

The second photo is Cedar Rapids, which seems to have been hit hardest and longest.

Right now, much of the Mississippi is closed to barge traffic, several of the bridges across it are closed. Of most concern, some 27 levees are threatened and may not hold. One broke earlier today, flooding farmland, which actually saved Burlington from worse flooding. But there may well be much more devastation to come.

Dazzle in Detroit

The Green Deal

In a few hours, Al Gore will appear on stage in Detroit with Barack Obama, and he will endorse Obama for President. I'm hoping that in his speech Obama will do what he did when John Edwards endorsed him at a big event: use the endorsement to talk about the issues identified with the person who endorsed him. His speech after the Edwards appearance was largely about poverty. I'm hoping his speech tonight will be about the Climate Crisis and green energy.

It's true that Obama has not been saying as much lately about the Climate Crisis as he did earlier in the campaign, and that clear leadership on this is going to be necessary. Other issues come and go in immediate prominence. But the Climate Crisis is all its manifestations is going to dominate the foreseeable future.

What Obama has been talking about is green energy, in the more accessible terms of economics and high fossil fuel energy costs. But it's time that Obama integrates the realities of the Climate Crisis into the rationale. Addressing the Climate Crisis can be the key to peace, to social justice and even to a kind of evolutionary leap in global civilization. Not addressing it could mean catastrophe for most of the life forms on the planet, and the end of civilization as we know it.

Addressing the Climate Crisis will mean more than ramping up green energy, but that's an important and indispensable part. One of these days--and I hope it is today--Obama should describe his vision for the effort that will rival if not exceed the New Deal in its necessity and its sweeping transformation. The 21st century equivalent might be called the Green Deal. It is a vision of change but it is also eminently practical as well as exciting. Sustainable clean energy technologies are either ready to go or nearly there, and need commitment and resources to make them real on the appropriate and needed scales. The Green Deal, which needs to include the equivalent of the 1930s Civil Conservation Corps--what Bill McKibben calls the Green Corps.

But the Green Deal also has to address the problems we're going to face as a consequence of the global heating induced climate change already underway, which can't be stopped by cutting emissions because they are the inevitable result of past emissions. That means preparing for disasters and working to prevent predictable ones. It also means addressing the grave threats to many animal and plant species, because our survival depends on the whole earth.

It's odd that this is happening today. I've been planning to write precisely this post for at least a week, anticipating the Gore endorsement. I actually thought it would be closer to the convention. So this becomes a hope, rather than a bee in the bonnet.

Goodbye to All That?

"Aphrodite in the Shopping Mall" by Andree Tracey.

Gas and Gases

The impact of fast-rising gasoline prices is making news everywhere. Here on the North Coast of CA it's about $4.80 a gallon. The North Coast Journal has several articles on the impact this week. On my local beat--theatre--I'm hearing the impact is already being felt in smaller audiences for some theatres.
I knew this was going to be an issue, political and otherwise, when I visited western Pennsylvania about a year ago. One item of evidence: the major supermarket chain when I lived in Pittsburgh was apparently falling on hard times--until it revived its fortunes by giving credits towards gasoline with purchases. High gas prices was a topic of conversation last summer there, with keen interested in alternative fuels like biodiesel by people you wouldn't expect. And that of course was when prices were much lower than today.

But now those prices are rising so fast and so high that the economic effects are just starting. (Airline travel is also incredibly expensive, as well as awful. That's a big reason I didn't make it back to my family in western PA this summer.)
Prices of everything else are going up and will continue to do so, and even with that, some businesses are likely to fail, and jobs are likely to be lost. In past spikes, the spiral eventually stopped and gas prices stabilized. But that's no guarantee it's going to happen anytime soon, and with a leadership vacuum, it's possible it will keep spiraling to catastrophic levels.

There seem to be any number of culprits for this latest spiral upwards, though one factor that seems to be driving it is the weakening of the dollar, thanks to all the international debt accumulated by the Bushites in pursuit of their criminally wasteful war and determination to enrich the already rich at the expense of everyone else. Of course, everyone claims not to be making money on this, which could be classified as criminally laughable.

There is also the sense that though we've had warnings before, this time it's the crunch everyone knew was coming: the end of Easy Oil, cheap oil, the depleting of the oil supply. In past price spikes or gas shortages, people responded by driving less, using more public transportation, maybe buying a smaller and more fuel-efficient car, generally conserving. But before there were any structural changes--ramping up of clean energy alternatives principally-- the oil gods turned the spigots on again, while people got used to the new price levels, and the idea of changing was forgotten.

Maybe not this time. Just as the price rises are extreme, the responses are starting to look larger. Though Americans drove fewer miles this March than last for a decline of just over 4%, this still represents the steepest one year drop since 1942, as World War II took hold. And it's likely to be declining even more now. Here on the North Coast, gasoline demand is down 12 to 14%.

Mass transit is seeing the most riders since 1957. The often controversial federal support for Amtrak passed last week by veto-proof majorities in both houses. Of course, public transit still has a long way to go. It had its peak ridership in 1946, when there were half as many people in the U.S. as now.

High gas prices are causing hardships for the people least able to bear them, and Barack Obama is calling for targeted relief, as well as tax cuts to provide the middle class with more money to cope with this, the housing crisis and so on. But he is steadfast in saying we have to change our ways--beginning with more fuel efficient vehicles.

Also new this time is that the sudden interest in alternative energy systems comes at a time they're finally ready to respond. One of the great things about a lot of alternative clean energy systems (as well as more energy-efficient technology and habits) is that people can adopt them as individuals, families and communities. That's what especially interested those folks in PA, and of course that's been of special interest around here, particularly on the Humboldt State campus and in local businesses that have spun off from there and other institutions. People can help themselves and each other.

But clean energy on an even larger scale is definitely on the horizon, especially solar. Reuters quotes industry scientists as saying: "The tipping point at which the world's cleanest, most renewable resource is cost-competitive with other sources of energy on electricity grids could happen within two to five years in some U.S. regions and countries if the price of fossil fuels continues to rise at its current pace, they add." Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that solar will be cost competitive with fossil fuels in five years, and all energy will come from clean sources in a generation.

Of course, reducing fossil fuel use and ramping up clean energy are good news for slowing down emissions of greenhouse gases. Rising gasoline prices may provide the conceptual and practical link to greenhouse gases and real demand for action on the Climate Crisis. This is going to be a real challenge to the Consumer Society, the waste-all, want-all ethic. We've gone through something like this before, and we wound up with Reagan. But maybe not this time. Maybe the incremental changes and the generation of ideas, and a new sophistication, not only about clean energy technology but the role of community, etc.--maybe this time will be the time we really change.

Storm

Satellite image today of storm system over the
upper Midwestern U.S.

Disaster and Change

The tornado that hit a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa is only the latest weather-related disaster this week. At this hour, four people are known dead from this event, some 40 injured. It was a big tornado, destroying buildings and trees over some 1800 acres.

Meanwhile, eastern Iowa is bracing for the worst flooding in 15 years later this week, along with Missouri and places in other states. Serious flooding has been going on for days in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, along with torrential rains. Tornadoes have touched down this week in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas.

These disasters do more than immediately kill and injure. They throw communities into chaos, destroy homes, cut off power, flood crops, cause damage it can take years and major resources to repair.

Then there are the slow-motion disasters, like the heat waves that are roiling the northeast, from Pittsburgh to Boston and Washington. Seventeen people have quietly died because of these heatwaves just this past weekend.

Disasters like these have strange proportions. They dominate the reality of the people and places where they happen, and may have impact on their lives for a long time. But they are the subject of a few minutes on some newscasts (and if it's a heat wave, no more than that even in affected areas.) Many newspapers and cable glibfests ignore them. Even when media tries to cover them, their slovenly habits, poor training and experience result in reports that are even more inane than usual. And they really can't cover patterns of disasters. With rare exceptions, they don't seem to be smart enough.

There is always argument over whether this disaster or that one is related to the Climate Crisis. But global heating of the atmosphere is such a pervasive change, that even when it can't be established that they cause particular patterns of violent and extreme weather, it's unlikely that these patterns aren't related.

Lately I've become more persuaded that it will take major disasters for real action to be taken on the Climate Crisis. I'm a very reluctant convert to that view, though I hope to be pleasantly surprised. But if so, then the question becomes: what is major? And that's a matter of perception.

Right now, cumulative awareness is growing because there are more and more people who have been directly affected by one disaster or another. There are the long-term trends: drought here in the West, heat and storms in the East, with the two tendencies meeting violently in the Midwest. Plus these specific, awful instances and events.

These disasters aren't being ignored by everyone. Governments must deal with these disasters, and many businesses must pay attention to the effects. Both have to be smart enough to see patterns, and anticipate needs. Local and state governments in particular must be ready to respond. If they aren't, people will vote them out. So if there are patterns, they have to take them seriously. They have to be prepared. And if that takes regional coordination and eventually national networks, they work to organize those, even if these activities rarely make the news. And businesses that need to anticipate the future also may work quietly.

When there is destruction there must be rebuilding, and Climate Crisis awareness is already leading in some instances to design choices with it in mind. This can go beyond both "green buildings" and more attention to flood control, for instance. As Matthew Waxman wrote: " The planning policy would focus on finding sustainable solutions to broken or destroyed systems. Disaster in this way is used to jump-start changes in infrastructure and thus alter daily habits, patterns, and preferences on everything from energy consumption to transportation, housing and health, economic development, community and civic facilities, open space, food, and lifestyle."

And even if these separate disasters don't have the kind of single, focused impact that could spur policymakers to get serious and act, their cumulative effect may be that when leadership proposes, they will be ready to begin what will need to be a major shift in policy, action and daily life. Because if there is no action until disaster is so huge that it can't be ignored, there's a huge risk that by that time it will be too late. And a risk that the wrong decisions will be made in a climate of fear, as we learned all too well in the past decade.

Maybe it will happen like the Civil Rights revolution: years of writings, then single actions, grassroots leaders, demonstrations growing larger, until one President recognizes that America is paying attention and proposes the Voting Rights Act, and after his assassination the next President takes the lead. But in Congress it came down to a few heroes, to Everett Dirksen, the Republican Senate leader who famously said of it that it was an idea whose time had come, and to California Senator Clair Engle, remembered by Keith recently for casting a vote to break the filibuster, even though near death from brain cancer. He voted by pointing to his eye to indicate "Aye," because he could no longer speak.

I don't think we can really wait beyond 2009 for the change to begin in a big way. A lot of preparations have been made, but crucial years have been lost. Maybe people are ready. The media may not know how to talk about disaster, but perhaps under their increasingly blind radar, the change is underway.

Fiddling While the Icecaps Melt

imaging of Vatnajokull Glacier Icecap

Undressed Rehearsal (with UPDATE)

Not even World Environment Day could deter the partisan and corporate interest politics that destroyed the climate crisis bill in the U.S. Senate. In some ways all the posturing was a charade within a charade: the bill, too weak to do much good, was never in danger of being passed.

It was at best a dress rehearsal for a real bill and a real debate next year, with a real chance at doing something. But while the debate began to introduce the issues in Congress, it also undressed John McCain's pretend support for doing something about the Climate Crisis. He was for this bill before he was against it. McCain is all talk on the issue.

But this bill that was charitably described as a first step but not the actual solution by the head of the UN climate panel was deemed inadequate by other environmentalists." We're thankful the bill was introduced," said Kierán Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity,"but more thankful that it did not pass." Clearly it's going to take President Obama to get a good bill introduced and an overwhemingly Democratic Congress to even get it sincerely debated.

This debacle is in the context of extraordinary weather events continuing (such as the flooding rains in Indiana and tornadoes outside Chicago and the worst-in-50-years rain in China just on Saturday) punctuating larger climate shifts--in the U.S. a moister East and a much dryer West: last week Governor Schwarzenegger officially declared that the entire state of California is in a drought, which it has been unofficially for a couple of years.

These changes are happening much faster and on a bigger scale than many scientists expected, and that's especially the case in the Arctic, where new evidence emerged of the break-up of the Arctic ice cap.

The Climate Crisis is obscured by rising oil prices and a weakening U.S. economy, which are not only related to each other but to the Climate Crisis--both in causes and in solutions. But oil companies are the richest corporations on the planet, and with their political minions they continue to obscure this connection, and charge that confronting the Climate Crisis will damage the economy and ordinary life. Nobody says it will be easy, but the solution common to all three areas is precisely to deal with the Climate Crisis through clean energy industries.

Update: Senator Obama has issued a statement on the bill. In part:

“As this week’s debate on climate change has unfolded, the American people and those watching us around the world had every reason to hope that we would act. Every credible scientist and expert believes action is necessary. This is critical and long overdue legislation that represents a good first step in addressing one of the most serious problems facing our generation.

Like many of my Senate colleagues, I believe the legislation could have been made even better. Had there been a substantive Senate debate about some of the concerns with this bill, I believe the outcome could have generated broad support. It certainly would have received my support.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in the Senate has chosen to block progress, rather than work in a good faith manner to address this challenge. This is a failure of our politics and a failure of leadership — a President who for years denied the problem, and a Republican nominee, John McCain, who claims leadership on the issue but opposes this bipartisan bill.

We can’t afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake."

The Future Begins

"America, this is our moment. This is our time.
Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past.
Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face.
Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love."

Barack Obama in St. Paul on the night he became the Democratic
nominee for President of the United States. Transcript . Here's a
nice description of the event, with 17,000 in the arena and another
twelve to fifteen thousand outside.

Obamas in St. Paul Tuesday

photos: NY Times, Reuters

Let the Future Begin

Great Falls, Montana today. Hat
tip to Ambbogie for noting this photo.

Donna Braizle's Message on the Democratic Nomination

Donna Braizle, former campaign manager for Al Gore, is a super-delegate, Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, and a CNN commentator. She is also a member of the Democratic Rules Committee that meets Saturday to determine the Michigan and Florida delegations (the states she refers to towards the end of this excerpt.) This is part of a statment that appears on her web site. (Hat tip to Jena's diary at Kos. ) I've added emphasis and paragraphing.

"It's time to rally around the nominee as soon as the fourth day of June breaks upon the horizon. Why not? What would Democrats gain by taking this debate any further, especially when the party is now engaged in the kind of polarizing politics that we once denounced the GOP for using for partisan gain. What can be won by tainting the process, arguing the rules are now unfair, or worse, the Republican rule of winner-takes-all should have guided the Democrats as well?

All this fuss is simply about saving face and waiting to see whether some awful thing tarnishes the presumptive nominee. It's shameful, short-sighted, mean-spirited and morally unacceptable. Now, I said it. To my longstanding friends in the feminist community who have called out the media as being culturally sexist and misogynistic, it is time to help educate the American public about the corrosive impact of sexism in politics and elsewhere. But we can have this dialogue without using divisive language and political tactics that further threaten to divide our country and party. If another woman comes up to me in an airport and suggests Obama should wait his turn, I might scream, "Stop it!" This is not about who should be first, it's about who has the most delegates and who might make the best president of the United States.

The most tragic thing I have heard is this need to link the Obama camp to pundits inside the media who have used the "math" historically used to call an election with attempts to push Hillary out of the race. After all, when the senator held a lead in every national poll in 2007, the media described her groundbreaking campaign as being inevitable. No one called that sexist.

Obama will have earned the right to become the declared Democratic nominee once he has reached the 2,026 delegates he needs. If the party decides to amend the just and known penalty it swore to impose on states and those officials that put its voters in jeopardy of not having a voice at the convention by violating the rules, the adjusted number should not alter the race. Instead, the amendment should allow the presumptive nominee to help bring the party together."

Is There Life on Mars?

The Phoenix Mars Lander began its exploration of the Martian polar cap area, searching for "evidence of the building blocks of life."Of today's launch, project manager Barry Goldstein said: "In my dreams it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it went."Said the AP story: "It performed a choreographed dance that included unfurling its parachute, shedding its heat shield and backshell, and firing thrusters to slow to a 5 mph touchdown. The radio signal confirming the landing came at 4:53 p.m. PDT."

This is the first probe on the Mars surface to look for signs of life since Viking. But its 90 day mission drilling into the permafrost has limits, according to the AP story:

"The lander also will study whether the ice ever melted at some point in Mars' history when the planet had a warmer environment than the current harsh, cold one it currently has.Scientists do not expect to find water in its liquid form at the Phoenix landing site because it's too frigid. But they say that if raw ingredients of life exist anywhere on the planet, they likely would be preserved in the ice.Phoenix, however, cannot detect signs of alien life that may exist now or once existed."

Obama at Wesleyan

Barack Obama gave the commencement address at Wesleyan University today.

He spoke about how Ted Kennedy (who was scheduled to give the address and asked Obama to fill in) and all the Kennedys have changed American lives for the better, and he renewed their call to service. Among the 25,000 people there were graduate Caroline Raclin Kennedy, Ted's step-daughter (photo.) Thanks for 3 of these photos to Al Rodgers--with more here. Here is the
YouTube of this inspiring address, which
uniquely tells of Obama's own youthful
experiences and call to service, as well as
explaining how important service will be in the Obama administration. Here's a transcript.

The Climate Crisis and A Call to Service

"Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.

There are so many ways to serve and so much need at this defining moment in our history... Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story

There are so many ways to serve and so much need at this defining moment in our history.

I ask you to seek these opportunities when you leave here, because the future of this country – your future – depends on it... At a time when our ice caps are melting and our oceans are rising, we need you to help lead a green revolution. We still have time to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change if we get serious about investing in renewable sources of energy, and if we get a generation of volunteers to work on renewable energy projects, and teach folks about conservation, and help clean up polluted areas; if we send talented engineers and scientists abroad to help developing countries promote clean energy."

Barack Obama at Wesleyan University today

The Obama Majority

With his 18 point victory in Oregon, Barack Obama achieved an absolute majority in elected delegates. He is less than 70 delegates short of the number needed to claim the nomination. Despite her victory in Kentucky and her recent statements, there is no way that Hillary Clinton can claim the nomination unless the will of the people expressed in all these contests is nullified.

The Rally the Size of a City

says the Washington Post about Obama's speech
in Portland, OR Sunday. If you were in the back
of this crowd, you were a half mile away from the
podium. 60,000 in the park, 15,000 outside the
gates, not counting folks in boats and elsewhere
there for the rally.

Obama before 75,000 in Portland OR

Protected--But How?

Stop It/Fix It Climate Crisis Updates

At the end of another record-high day on the CA North Coast, it seems appropriate to catch up on some Climate Crisis news.

In the Stop It division (addressing the long-term threat of global heating), scientists warned that world CO2 levels are at record high--a 650,000 year record high, and despite all the hot air about the problem, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is accelerating.

One group of scientists suggested that the planet may be entering a natural cooling period, independent of the Climate Crisis phenomenon, which could provide a decade of breathing space to deal with the long term crisis while temperatures remain steady, but other scientists don't think evidence of the cooling is valid.

After much debate, the U.S. government finally classified the polar bear as a protected species, "one likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future." The debate continues, however, on just what actual measures the U.S. government will take to protect this protected species, threatened by the melting effects of global heating. The only effective way of protecting the polar bear is to protect its habitat, and the only effective way of doing that is to stop global heating. But the current administration is resisting that implication.

On the national level, the debate in the U.S. has finally begun to move from whether the Climate Crisis is real to how best to address it, especially as John McCain and Barack Obama, the two likely major party nominees, recognize the urgency, though McCain's depends on Bush-like vague goals with no real plan, while Obama's are more comprehensive and realistic, linking Climate Crisis solutions to related energy, environmental and economic benefits.

Central to the hope of linking economic benefits to energy self-reliance through more reliance on renewable clean energy, to addressing the Climate Crisis ,is the possibility of new industries providing good "green jobs." Here's evidence that this revolution is already underway, at least in the American Northwest.

China, which may be replacing the U.S. as the largest single greenhouse gas polluter, is at least recognizing the problems, setting goals and reaching out for help. But this interesting essay suggests that China's problems are our problems, too, since much of their pollution comes from producing goods for America.

In the U.S., super-high gas prices are quickly becoming a factor in encouraging the kind of smarter and reduced energy use, and implementation of clean renewable energy technologies that are crucial to Stop It efforts. Some efforts are less obvious than others--for instance, organic farming may not only be healthy, energy-saving and environmentally sound in many ways, it may help deal with the Climate Crisis. The fairly insane way food in transported around the world to save money (cod caught off Norway is shipped to China where it is filleted and sent back to Norway) is reaching the point where transportation erases any cost benefits. Ending much of this also has environmental benefits.

But the links worth both ways: environmental damage can make the Climate Crisis worse. A current example: Timber companies cut down forests that had a naturally diverse ecosystem and a mix of trees, and replaced them with tree farms of the kind of single-species trees they find most profitable to grow and then cut down. But lack of species diversity has made some western forests more vulnerable to disease and destructive bugs like the pine beetle that is now devastating those forests. Living trees breathe in carbon, but dying trees release carbon into the atmosphere, making the Climate Crisis worse.


Fix It is my shorthand for fixing the effects related or attributable to today's Climate Crisis, such as managing heat emergencies, treatment and prevention of diseases resulting from climate induced changes, dealing with related other social crises, and responding to CC related emergencies such as drought and floods. It's important to understand that these are separate aspects of the crisis, so we don't adopt an either/or approach. But there are areas in which Fix It solutions can lead to longer term Stop It efforts.

For example, rebuilding after disaster, including natural disasters both directly related and either indirectly or unrelated to the Climate Crisis, can be accomplished using energy saving and renewable energy technologies that will help in the long-term effort to stop more global heating. The example in the news recently was Greensburg, Kansas, a year after the town was virtually destroyed by a tornado. But there are other examples, large and small.

Crucial to Fix It efforts that contribute to Stop It success, as well as to changes necessary to the long-term future independent of current emergencies, is "green building": environmental design that, a study suggests, can help cut greenhouse gas emissions faster and cheaper in North America than any other single measure. The progressive American Institute of Architects has been moving in this direction for years, and has set goals of cutting fossil fuel in buildings by half in two years, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.

Towards One America

"Democratic voters in America have made their
choice, and so have I...“There is one man who knows
in his heart that it is time to tear down that wall
and make one America: Barack Obama.”
John Edwards, endorsing Barack Obama in Michigan.

We Have A Dream

The Next President

The headline of the day (next to the BBC's GREAT TITS COPE WELL WITH WARMING--it's about the birds, of course, coping with global warming--what did you think it meant? ) is this one from Politico: CLINTON WON'T QUIT; OBAMA DOESN'T CARE.

While Clinton is off getting heckled in West Virginia and playing shock jock with her overtly racist analyses, Obama is mobbed by members of Congress of both parties on the House floor. With every day that passes, the Clinton candidacy recedes. She won Indiana by less than 1%, which means that Rush Limbaugh was her margin of victory.

She has no path to the nomination within the rules, let alone the rules of decency. Today there is still talk about her wanting and even demanding the v.p. spot, but that too will soon fade. The Clintons are yesterday. If they hadn't run such a mean-spirited campaign--and especially if they weren't still at it--there might be cause for some sadness in that. But not from me. By the time she wins West Virginia Tuesday, Hillary will be lucky if a cable network other than Fox carries her victory speech. Even the chair of the Democratic party in West Virginia suggested she might drop out before then.

Obama has turned his attention to the general election, while still showing respect for the voters in the remaining states with contests by campaigning there. His next victory is likely to be on May 20 in Oregon, when he almost certainly will have obtained the majority of total pledged delegates available from all the primaries and caucuses. If not by then, then soon after, party leaders in Michigan and Florida will have made deals to have delegations seated at the Convention, even if Hillary doesn't approve. Obama doesn't have to mollify the Clintons or figure out what he has to give them in order for Hillary to drop out. He needs only to show her voters and supporters respect by allowing her to continue until the contests are over--respect that in many cases they didn't show him. And if she doesn't concede by mid June, the super-delegates will move en masse to Obama.

The Democrats are in great position to win the presidency and gain greater majorities in Congress. They aren't going to let that be messed up. The longer the Clintons stay in, the more obvious it becomes to Democrats that they've picked the right candidate, not only to run for President, but to be President.

George McGovern, who switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama, says of him, "We may have a second Lincoln."

So on August 28, the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States.

Thank you, North Carolina!

Barack Obama is headed for a big win in North
Carolina. All the networks called it for him immediately
as the polls closed. Meanwhile, Indiana is still too
close to call. Update: Obama came closer than anyone
predicted in Indiana. In his victory speech in N.C. he said
repeatedly that he has faith in the American people.
That faith was confirmed in these elections, when the
distractions, phony issues, attacks and political pandering
were all rejected. Barack Obama is going to be the
Democratic Party nominee for President.

Change Has Already Begun

One of the 21,000 or so people who
attended the Obama speech in Indianapolis
Monday night took this photo in the nearby
park as she was on her way to get in line. Soon
we will be hearing about numbers, demographics,
delegates, spin, winners and losers in perceptions.
But I've been reading and hearing what many people
have said about what voting for Barack Obama in these
primaries means to them. Voting, seeing and hearing him
in itself has transformed lives. Children will remember this,
young people will remember how they felt. If Barack Obama
becomes President, there's every chance that someday he
will be favorably compared to our greatest Presidents. Lots
of people know that, and so for millions of people in Indiana
and North Carolina, this is going to be a special day. And
in them, and with them, change has already begun.

Here's part of what Barack Obama said in Indianapolis:

I was convinced that this was the moment that we had to break through from the old type of politics. And I believe that the American people want that.
If we keep on doing the same old things, in the same old ways -- having Washington just try to get by and get through the next election then we are betraying our children, our great grand children and that's not the kind of America I want to live in. I don't want to just win an election, I want to change the country and that's why you're here as well.

When all we're doing is arguing back and forth, who said what, then we are forgetting what this election is about. This campaign is about you. This about your voice, your dreams, your struggles and your aspirations. And when this country is focused on its hopes and its aspirations instead of its fears, then thats when we are going to be able to deliver on change for every American.

On the night before election day in Indiana and North Carolina, the number of individuals who have contributed to the Obama campaign passed one and a half million.

North Carolina, Indiana Vote Tuesday

As his support with Democratic Party leadership grows, including the former party chair who switched from Clinton to Obama and urged both super-delegates and his fellow citizens of Indiana to vote for Obama, Barack Obama goes before voters in two states tomorrow.

During weeks of attacks from the Clintons, McCain and their allies, and sustained media obsession with issues that voters say don't matter, Obama has made his case and honed his message in these states. He's rebounded in the national polls, but only the voters in North Carolina and Indiana can make the greatest statement: that they are tired of these distractions and divisions, they are ready to get behind their nominee, Barack Obama.

Here's his two minute closer ad. Here's his 30 minute closing argument in Indiana. Here's a more informal couple of minutes with Obama talking in practical terms about how he will continue to include the American people in making change in Washington.

And for Obama and Star Wars fans, here's a brief video summary of the adventure so far...

Guernica is not past

The painting by Picasso. The quote by Faulkner:
"The past is never dead. It's not even past."

J'Accuse!

This month (last Saturday to be exact) marks the 71st anniversary of the German bombing of Guernica, which essentially inaugurated the mass terror bombing of World War II. Five bombing raids with incendiary bombs dropped from primitive aircraft resulted in some 1650 deaths in this small market town in Spain. By the end of World War II, bombers and missiles killed thousands in London in the Blitz, and massive numbers of sophisticated aircraft and powerful bombs killed 100,000 mostly civilians in Dresden and 130,00 in Tokyo, before the atomic bombs killed at least 280,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Two generations later, much of the world has internalized the horror of that war, as well as the different but in some ways worse horrors of World War I. But America has not, argues Tony Judt in an indispensable article in the New York Review of Books. Some of our political thinkers even argue that such history--any history--is irrelevant as a guide to our present and future, because the bad old past is over, and things are different now.

So Judt asks the question in the title of his piece: "What Have We Learned, If Anything?" What's clear to him--and to me--is what we haven't learned: "In the US, at least, we have forgotten the meaning of war." One of the main reasons is that in the 20th century, we were lucky. War hardly touched us--not the World Wars, not even the waves of terrorism that Europe experienced, let alone other parts of the world. But even though the lessons of those wars are available to us in accounts, in eloquent writings and filmmaking, we haven't learned them. Instead, we are going through what we should have learned to avoid. For example:

"World War I led to an unprecedented militarization of society, the worship of violence, and a cult of death that long outlasted the war itself and prepared the ground for the political disasters that followed. States and societies seized during and after World War II by Hitler or Stalin (or by both, in sequence) experienced not just occupation and exploitation but degradation and corrosion of the laws and norms of civil society. The very structures of civilized life—regulations, laws, teachers, policemen, judges—disappeared or else took on sinister significance: far from guaranteeing security, the state itself became the leading source of insecurity. Reciprocity and trust, whether in neighbors, colleagues, community, or leaders, collapsed. Behavior that would be aberrant in conventional circumstances—theft, dishonesty, dissemblance, indifference to the misfortune of others, and the opportunistic exploitation of their suffering—became not just normal but sometimes the only way to save your family and yourself. Dissent or opposition was stifled by universal fear.

War, in short, prompted behavior that would have been unthinkable as well as dysfunctional in peacetime. It is war, not racism or ethnic antagonism or religious fervor, that leads to atrocity. War—total war—has been the crucial antecedent condition for mass criminality in the modern era. "

Americans fought and died in the two world wars--but Over There. Americans could observe what happened in those societies, but the lessons didn't take. We didn't experience what they experienced, starting with the extent of death and destruction.

"In World War II, when the US lost about 420,000 armed forces in combat, Japan lost 2.1 million, China 3.8 million, Germany 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 10.7 million. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., records the deaths of 58,195 Americans over the course of a war lasting fifteen years: but the French army lost double that number in six weeks of fighting in May–June 1940...

But it is civilian casualties that leave the most enduring mark on national memory and here the contrast is piquant indeed. In World War II alone the British suffered 67,000 civilian dead. In continental Europe, France lost 270,000 civilians. Yugoslavia recorded over half a million civilian deaths, Germany 1.8 million, Poland 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 11.4 million. These aggregate figures include some 5.8 million Jewish dead. Further afield, in China, the death count exceeded 16 million. American civilian losses (excluding the merchant navy) in both world wars amounted to less than 2,000 dead. "

So what does this mean?

"As a consequence, the United States today is the only advanced democracy where public figures glorify and exalt the military, a sentiment familiar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today. Politicians in the US surround themselves with the symbols and trappings of armed prowess; even in 2008 American commentators excoriate allies that hesitate to engage in armed conflict. I believe it is this contrasting recollection of war and its impact, rather than any structural difference between the US and otherwise comparable countries, which accounts for their dissimilar responses to international challenges today. Indeed, the complacent neoconservative claim that war and conflict are things Americans understand—in contrast to naive Europeans with their pacifistic fantasies—seems to me exactly wrong: it is Europeans (along with Asians and Africans) who understand war all too well. Most Americans have been fortunate enough to live in blissful ignorance of its true significance."

Judt writes in detail about how this also leads us to misjudge our enemies, particularly in the so-called war on terror. Another consequence is this administration's attitude to torture, which used to be the dividing line between democracies and dictatorships. " Torture really is no good, especially for republics. And as Aron noted many decades ago, "torture—and lies—[are] the accompaniment of war.... What needed to be done was end the war."
We are slipping down a slope. The sophistic distinctions we draw today in our war on terror—between the rule of law and "exceptional" circumstances, between citizens (who have rights and legal protections) and noncitizens to whom anything can be done, between normal people and "terrorists," between "us" and "them"—are not new. The twentieth century saw them all invoked. They are the selfsame distinctions that licensed the worst horrors of the recent past: internment camps, deportation, torture, and murder—those very crimes that prompt us to murmur "never again." So what exactly is it that we think we have learned from the past? Of what possible use is our self-righteous cult of memory and memorials if the United States can build its very own internment camp and torture people there? "

I would add something else to Judt's point: it's not only that Americans didn't experience war the way others did, it's also that America--with all these years of prosperity, access to education and information--is still so fond of being ignorant. We don't learn from history because we don't respect the ability to learn from history. We demand our leaders bowl well and be the kind of guy or gal you can have a shot and a beer with. Not that they know anything, or can bring any insight and intelligence to the problems that are killing us, and laying waste the world. Just so they talk tough. We'll keep at if it takes a hundred years! We'll totally obliterate them!

It's not like the lessons of war and the 20th century are unavailable. On TV the other night I happened to see some of Abel Gance's great 1919 film, J'Accuse. There are scenes of men killed in war rising up and returning to accuse those who profited by the war and their deaths (scenes that Gance used again in his 1937 remake.) Some of the men in those scenes were actual soldiers, who shortly afterwards were killed in battle. We are seeing the dead returning, literally. Asked the meaning of his film's title, Gance said: "I am accusing war. I am accusing man. I am accusing universal stupidity."

That was almost 90 years ago. And yet, this past week a story broke about retired military officers trotted out as experts by television news networks to explain the Iraq war and the war on terror, who were not only political instruments of the Cheney administration, but paid by companies profiting from the war. Said the New York Times: " The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." J'Accuse!

But these days the news media can't even be bothered to justify the war--they ignore it. They ignore that April has been the deadliest month in Iraq since last September. J'Accuse! Meanwhile, contractors who have made billions to reconstruct Iraq have cheated, lied, done shoddy work or didn't finish the job, and still got rich. J'Accuse! For all the good it will do.

Judt's article concludes:

" Far from escaping the twentieth century, we need, I think, to go back and look a bit more carefully. We need to learn again—or perhaps for the first time—how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. And perhaps, in this protracted electoral season, we could put a question to our aspirant leaders: Daddy (or, as it might be, Mommy), what did you do to prevent the war?"

That last sentiment in fact was a slogan in the 60s (though not a bumper sticker--no one would dare put it on the back of a car, if you wanted an intact windshield.) Our hope ultimately is today's young, like the black junior high age boy I saw the other day, wearing a t-shirt with the script familiar from the Star Wars movies, only the words said: "Stop Wars." But way before he is an adult, Americans have to come to grip with this failure to learn. Or it could be too late.