The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"He had to choose. But it was not a choice

Between excluding things. It was not a choice

Between, but of. He chose to include the things

That in each other are included, the whole,

The complicate, the amassing harmony."

--Wallace Stevens

Notes Towards A Supreme Fiction

What Obama's Nobel Really Means

President Obama speaking in Prague. How everyone seems to be missing the point of President Obama's Nobel Prize, suggested in the post below.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to President Barack Obama on Friday shocked some, and inspired the usual if still ugly and disappointing vituperation of the Rabid Right. It also surprised many, including the President, and so in the first blush some called it "ridiculous" and emphasized how early it was in his presidency. Many voices have since justified it, partly on the basis of the tradition of the Peace Prize (as Rachel Maddow so ably did in the clip embedded below) and on the change that President Obama brought in such a short time to the international dialogue and especially, America's role in the world. But I think everyone is still slightly missing the point.

Yes, it was a surprise--which the Nobel Committee obviously knew it would be. So why? Why did the Nobel Committee take this surprising step? Why did they choose to single out the American President after only nine months in office? Why did that recent survey suggest that America has become more admired internationally because of Barack Obama?

The answer that everyone is missing is urgency. The Nobel Committee didn't just hand out an award---it stood up and screamed, pay attention to this man! Many European leaders in politics, sciences, professions, etc. and many leaders around the world, all understand that the future survival of the planet hangs by a thin thread. That progress must be made quickly on controlling and ending nuclear weapons, negotiating agreements that are just to all sides in areas of the world where conflict could be imminent and would be catastrophic, and especially that the world's great nations must band together to lead a rapid response to the Climate Crisis before it is too late for the future of human civilization.

This award is the diplomatic, international community equivalent of standing on the table, jumping up and down and shouting: this is our last best hope! This is the fierce urgency of now!

They know what American leadership still can mean. They know what President Obama is up against in this country. Political leaders told him at the G20 in Pittsburgh that they couldn't understand the attacks on him as one kind of radical or another, when he would be comfortably centrist in any other western democracy. They don't understand that the wealthiest nation on earth is undermining its own economy while failing to meet its responsibilities, when it remains alone in not supporting universal health care. They are afraid of a nation with such a powerful military machine and yet so careless about violence that citizens wear guns to a political rally, and that children gun down other children in the streets, while apparent adults oppose the most rudimentary controls on deadly firearms. They saw the same gunslinger attitude rend the world for eight dangerous years.

The Prize is an official anguished cry on the Climate Crisis. They awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore, and America still didn't get the point. In the UK, our closest cultural and political ally in Europe, conservatives compete with liberals and Labourites on devising and implementing the most effective and most urgent measures to address the Climate Crisis. Now China is beginning to move its massive state machinery to address it--and to corner the market on the renewable energy technology of the near future. Now India seems to see the light.

But they need and want America to be part of this, and they see President Obama as the key to American leadership and American cooperation, and the return to American responsibility in the world. They know these problems are urgent, most of them made far worse by American actions in the past eight years, and they are telling us how important it is that President Obama be successful.

They look at this country and our media-fueled self-renewing cyclones of distraction, our 24/7 locust plagues of pettiness, our twittering fits of trivial obsessions, our instant acting out and the dead slogans nailed to our identities and shouting matches, and they're crying out: we value this man, the world desperately needs him as your leader, we hear him, why can't you listen to what he's saying? Can't we please focus?

The Nobel Peace Prize was exactly as President Obama said: a call to action. And what we're missing is that it was a decorously desperate, very loud, very urgent call. Maybe we should listen.

Rachel Maddow's summary of why it was appropriate for President Obama to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, versus the Obama Derangement Syndrome of the Rabid Right. I found this embed along with other approving quotes in this blackwaterdog diary at Kos, including one from the director general of the International Atomic Agency Commission, who said "I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honor."

2009 Nobel Peace Prize

You could say it's a surprise. The news is just now burning through the Net: President Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples..." As surprising as this recognition is, you need only scroll down a little on this blog to discern some of the evidence: the international attention and approval , his strong efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons begun at the UN , his leadership to rally the world to address the Climate Crisis and global economic problems at the G20 in Pittsburgh, and earlier efforts in respecting the Muslim world.

Congratulations, Mr. President. You make us proud. You give us hope.

Update: link to text and video of President Obama's statement on receiving the Nobel Prize.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches."

--a character in a novel by Chinua Achebe

One Big Ringy-Dingy

Using infrared technology, the NASA space telescope Spitzer has discovered a huge ring around Saturn that hadn't been detected before. The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it, JPL said. Writes BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos: The scale of the new ring feature is astonishing. Nothing like it has been seen elsewhere in the Solar System. It also may solve a longstanding puzzle involving several of Saturn's moons.

Healthy Directions Continuing

What looked like a debacle to some a few weeks ago is shaping up as a political triumph. As support for a public option increases, opposition to health care reform in general is apparently fading. A number of prominent (though currently out of office) Republicans have suddenly gone on record in favor of a health care reform bill, in addition to prominent officeholders Gov. Terminator of CA and Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, current and former sort of GOPers respectively.

Now comes word than Congressional GOPer opposition may be collapsing. This on a day when the CBO report on the Senate Finance version has generally good news--saving the government billions--and even this modest reform looks beneficial, though mandates without a public option remain politically dangerous.

But again, there's still a long way to go, and reversals of fortune are still possible. But if this momentum can be orchestrated and intensified, it will indeed be a political triumph of major magnitude, on an issue that never should have been a partisan issue in the first place.

President Hope

In an annual survey, the U.S. is the most admired nation in the world, rising from 7th place last year, all because of President Obama. "What's really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009," said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year. He says the difference is Obama. "There is no other explanation," Anholt said in an interview, referring to the impact of Obama.

In our hate-strewn political noisemaking, it's too easy to forget that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency gave both symbolic and real hope to billions around the world. His policies--on the economy, energy, the Climate Crisis, etc.--are closer to where much of the world is. His leadership on international issues and willingness to engage and hold America to the same standards as other nations reverses the suspicion and fear that accompanied Bush. America reclaims its image as a global repository of hope.

The photo above from Italy is from a Kos diary by blackwaterdog with many more photos.

Update: AP reports that President Obama's approval has gone up six points--his first move upward since starting at such a high point with his Inauguration--and his disapproval rate has gone down ten points.

A Healthy Direction

It may actually be coming together. Opposition arguments on health care reform have played themselves out, polls show public support for reform including the public option, and new voices and energy are being added to the push for reform. When Organizing for America (born of the Obama campaign) sought $300,000 in online contributions to air ads featuring doctors and health care professionals supporting reform, they received $600,000, which suggests that the grass roots is back in the game.

Things seem to be coming together in Congress, however slowly. Support for a bill with the public option seems solid in the House, and Senate leadership is predicting a public option in its version, which Majority Leader Reid seems to want to create from the existing bills reported out of the Health and (soon) the Finance committees.

Salon has a good summary of recent developments. Mcjoan at Kos declares the public option battle won, and looks forward to the main event.

Meet Great-Great etc.Grandma

Meet "Ardi," an artist's conception of a 4.4 million year old proto-human, derived from fossils unearthed, reconstructed (using computers, often from very small fragments) and studied, as announced last week. This ancestor is a million years older than those studied before, and quite different--suggesting a very different evolutionary history for humans and other primates than previously believed. It suggests to at least one anthropologist that human evolution "went social." Of the the articles I read, this one at the Wall St. Journal seems most cogent, but the NY Times has a different emphasis, and the Guardian offers video and audio as well.

Emerson for the Day

"This floor holds us up by a fight with agencies that go to pull us down. The whole world is a series of balanced antagonisms."
Emerson
Journal entry May 1851

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"And now I am one more soul walking free in a white skin, wearing some thread of stolen goods: cotton or diamonds, freedom at the very least, prosperity. Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?"
Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible

It's Not Dark Yet

Others have voiced their concerns, including me. But Tom Friedman is the first with sufficient clout to be heard, loud and clear. And his column of yesterday is still #1 on the Most Popular list at the NY Times.

Friedman writes of the time in Israel just before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. "I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did."

Friedman is reminded of this because of what's happening in America now. Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination."

One implication is clear, and it's the one that got bantered about on TV yesterday: that the Rabid Right and White Supremacist Party virulence is dangerously inciting an assassination attempt on President Obama. But Friedman is making two further points:

Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.

That is, the virulence is so extreme that it makes dealing with our common problems impossible, as well as fracturing any national identity as presented to the rest of the world, which is not a position of strength. The second further point is of even greater concern around here:

I would argue that together these changes add up to a difference of degree that is a difference in kind — a different kind of American political scene that makes me wonder whether we can seriously discuss serious issues any longer and make decisions on the basis of the national interest."

I would add to "national interest," the interest of humanity and the planet. If we can't seriously address the obvious problems with health care in America, how can we seriously address the even more complex issues and factors involved in the even higher stakes Climate Crisis?

When we as a species should be rising to the occasion, fulfilling our potential at last, we are falling, and failing---at least here in the U.S., and given our power and position in the world, that could be more widely fatal. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Healthcare: From the Front

A significant new player enters the healthcare reform fight: the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumers Report, known among other things for being above influence by commercial interests. In an ad: " We are in the business of providing information and advice that helps consumers. We don't make campaign contributions. We don't endorse candidates. And we don't care who gets the credit for fixing the problems with health care -- we just need them fixed. Doing nothing about health care is not a solution."

But being beyond influence is hard to find in the health care fight--with eight insurance lobbyists for every member of Congress and millions in campaign contributions, the Guardian says.

The new hero for health care reform is Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, who said that the Republican healthcare plan is: don't get sick, and if you do, die quickly. When Republicans, unused to hearing such indelicate talk, called for an apology, Grayson apologized instead to the people who have died because they were uninsured or shafted by insurance company greed.

Columnist E.J. Dionne makes the case for the public option. After the Finance Committee voting down the public option in their bill, support for the option appears to be growing. The House seems solid, and with new polls showing overwhelming support--up to 2/3 of the public--support may be growing in the Senate as well. Still a long way to go.

Take A Breath

and take a break from all the haters, fulminators, pocket-liners, hypocrites, numbskulls and Internet mobs...

...and lift yourselves up. President Obama with his niece Savita. Official White House photos.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The only thing required of artists is that they not be weak."

--Jacques Maritain, as recalled by his friend Gino Severini.

Collage by Gino Severini 1913.

Documenting the Conspiracy

Why are right wingers such avid conspiracy theorists? Well, maybe because they're part of ongoing conspiracies. Rolling Stone has documented what earlier stories partially revealed and what many observers suspected: the mob violence unleashed at town hall meetings etc. was organized from the top by Rovian political operatives, and financed by the huge health insurance companies out to either kill reform or, more likely, get the dream deal for themselves:

Far from representing a spontaneous upwelling of populist rage, the protests were tightly orchestrated from the top down by corporate-funded front groups as well as top lobbyists for the health care industry. Call it the return of the Karl Rove playbook: The effort to mobilize the angriest fringe of the Republican base was guided by a conservative dream team that included the same GOP henchmen who Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, smeared John McCain in 2000, wrote the script for Republican obstructionism on global warming, and harpooned the health care reform effort led by Hillary Clinton in 1993.

"The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests."

Green China

Tom Friedman's column follows up on China's dramatic announcement of efforts to combat the Climate Crisis, with more details about China's commitments for green energy.

China is still a command economy. They are so big that change may come slowly, but the government sets the direction, and things happen.

Absent the real American commitment President Obama wants, this is the 21st century American economic nightmare. Friedman, with his talent for phrasemaking, likens Red China becoming Green China to the impact of Sputnik.

Here's the money quote: “If they invest in 21st-century technologies and we invest in 20th-century technologies, they’ll win,” says David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of energy for policy. “If we both invest in 21st-century technologies, challenging each other, we all win.”

Options, Mandates

I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with the right wing madman Senator Jim Bunning, but the idea of forcing people to buy the product of a profit-making corporation does strike me as UnAmerican and possibly unconstitutional.

That's another reason why the option to buy health insurance from a public plan--the public option--is essential in health care reform.

This was the subject of one of my increasingly rare diaries on Kos, which made the Rec list a few weeks ago. It followed a Paul Krugman column on the issue, linked from the diary. Here's another more recent diary on the subject.

Some point out what a potent issue this could be for the right if people are forced to buy insurance, especially if it all goes south. Sure enough, Republicans on the state level are agitating to ban the individual mandate in "more than a dozen" states. Their "point" is much different from mine, though. They couch this as a government takeover vs. private enterprise, when in fact it is a huge gift to private enterprise: it's the government holding a gun to your head, forcing you to buy insurance company products. A lot of other kinds of companies would be very jealous of this: the ultimate in effective marketing

Apart from the politics, I'm just as concerned about the idea of it, and the precedent. The car insurance precedent is imperfect: people aren't forced to own a car or drive one. But as long as we have bodies, we're subject to the "individual mandate" (except presumably those eligible for Medicare.)

The government forcing people to buy a product is bad precedent, and the only way it makes sense is if people have the choice of a plan from the government itself. Then it's like paying taxes, a legitimate mandate.

So in the healthcare reform argot, I am really opposed to the individual mandate without a public option.

Update: Here's another shock: American public opinion agrees with me:"voters oppose a mandate to purchase private insurance by 64% to 34% but support a mandate with a choice of private or public insurance by 60% to 37%...

Red Peril

One of two dust storms that turned the air red in Sydney, Australia last week--this is the famous Opera House. Australia has had a decade of drought, and Sydney the worst air pollution in 70 years. Writes the Guardian: "It followed major dust storms this year in northern China, Iraq and Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, east Africa, Arizona and other arid areas. Most of the storms are also linked to droughts, but are believed to have been exacerbated by deforestation, overgrazing of pastures and climate change."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

The oppressors' specific methods and identities continue to mystify Doc to some degree...but he divines their overarching goal: to close the frontiers of consciousness forever by rendering life in the shadows impossible and opening the soul itself to view, or at least criminalizing its excursions into deeply subjective, hidden realms. The age of the private eyes is over, that is, and with it the age of privacy itself. And what's left? The sleepless, all-seeing, unblinking public eye."

Walter Kirn, reviewing Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
New York Times Book Review 8/23/2009

Cooperation We've Never Seen Before

From the NYTimes: “We have achieved a level of tangible, global economic cooperation that we’ve never seen before,” President Obama said shortly after the summit meeting of 20 leading economies concluded here. “Our financial system will be far different and more secure than the one that failed so dramatically last year.”

Just as he did to make progress on ending nuclear weapons, President Obama got this to work by holding the U.S. to the same standards as other nations. "The ideas are not new, and there is no enforcement mechanism to penalize countries if they stick to their old habits. But for the first time ever, each country agreed to submit its policies to a “peer review” from the other governments as well as to monitoring by the International Monetary Fund.
That in itself would be a big change, given how prickly national leaders have often been toward outside criticism of their policies. American officials, who pushed for the plan during weeks of negotiations before the summit meeting, argued that governments were so shocked by the economic crisis that they were willing to rethink what was in their self-interest.
“I’m quite impressed,” said Eswar S. Prasad, an economist at Cornell University who had initially been skeptical about the proposed “framework” for stable growth. “A commitment by the U.S. to take the process seriously is a potential game-changer that would give the framework some credibility.”

“The announcement today is more than symbolic,” said Robert M. Kimmitt, who served as deputy Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush. “The fact that leaders are turning to the strategic challenge and doing it in a coordinated way at the level of the Group of 20 is significant.” See the Times story for more details.

The Times also has a good story on why Pittsburgh was selected for the G 20, by a fellow exile, Kate Phillips.

Gee, 20?

No, it's not the Enterprise D--it's the convention center room where the G 20 leaders will beam in and meet in Pittsburgh today. The preliminary events in Pittsburgh yesterday in the post below. Photo from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Perils in Pittsburgh

On the positive side, as the G 20 meetings were about to start, p.r. savvy local officials could continue telling the world the good news about Pittsburgh, that it had changed from the Smoky City, or "hell with the roof off." Of course that basically happened more than six Super Bowls, 3 Stanley Cups and several World Series championships ago. But apparently the world is a slow learner. Even Mr. Daily Kos thought Pittsburgh was a "hellhole" before the recent Netroots convention there. I assume he knows that Chicago is no longer in the grip of Al Capone.

To be fair, it may be surprising that Pittsburgh has successfully diversified from steel, while still being solidly grounded enough not to go crazy in the real estate bubble, so the city weathered the Great Recession better than, say, Detroit. But that process has been going on since the 1970s, when I was watching it from a lot closer.

On the less positive side, the news coming out of Pittsburgh on Thursday was about police using tear gas and rubber bullets on demonstrators. (It now seems they used a kind of tear gas, but not rubber bullets.) The police in Pittsburgh have been known to be thugish, so it's possible they played into the scenario of the provocateurs who show up at every international meeting with a G in front of it. But the Post-Gazette account suggests that the combined forces that included state troopers from Ohio may have screwed up at times, but didn't go wild.

The peculiar form of corporate capitalism enabled by government force called globalism should face indictment--check out The Shock Doctrine. But these demonstrations are a mixed bag at best. That's especially clear when it happens close to home. I read the wire service and especially the Pittsburgh Post Gazette accounts (a newspaper I wrote for) and noted that the first trouble, during the day on Thursday, happened very close to where Margaret's son and grand daughter live.

There was more trouble in the evening, in the area around the University of Pittsburgh and up towards Carnegie Mellon. The traveling anarchist contingent managed to break some windows of corporate businesses, one of which was the Subway sandwich shop on Craig Street. By a kind of amazing coincidence, I happened to eat there on my visit to Pittsburgh in June, after doing an interview at CMU. There were three employees in the shop and though I don't remember precisely their nationalities, I was struck by how "multicultural" it was behind the counter--I seem to recall the young woman was Middle Eastern, and each of the two guys were from completely different cultures--except they were all part of the Ipod, cell phone culture. Things are complicated in this dizzy world of ours.

And hey kids, welcome to tear gas. We could tell you some stories...

The Work We Must Do Together

If this news escaped you, I wouldn't be surprised, since the daily blather passed it by quickly. But on Wednesday, President Obama addressed the UN General Assembly for the first time. He told the assembly "it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 -- more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared.... In this hall, we come from many places, but we share a common future. No longer do we have the luxury of indulging our differences to the exclusion of the work that we must do together." After noting the steps he's taken to return the U.S. to the community of nations, he outlined the "Four Pillars" he believes are "fundamental to the future that we want for our children": "non-proliferation and disarmament; the promotion of peace and security; the preservation of our planet; and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people."

On Thursday, President Obama became the first U.S. President to chair a session of the Security Council, and it passed a resolution to strengthen commitment to stop nuclear proliferation and to reduce existing nuclear weapons until there are no more. The resolution passed with broad support, in large part because President Obama agreed that the U.S. was no exception--it had to accept limitations on nukes, a common sense stand that the previous Bush administration refused to take.

After the vote, President Obama pointed out that "this very institution was founded at the dawn of the atomic age, in part because man's capacity to kill had to be contained. And although we averted a nuclear nightmare during the Cold War, we now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches...Once more, the United Nations has a pivotal role to play in preventing this crisis. The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal. "

Perhaps to those for whom nuclear weapons are just words, the latest outrageous statements by the arrogantly clueless were better candy. But for those of us who grew up with the threat of nuclear death at any moment, and especially those of us who watched the courageous attempt of President Kennedy to bring sanity back into the equation, this was an important day.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Lacking a cooperative social intelligence and good-will, our most refined technics [technology] promises no more for society's improvement than an electric bulb would promise to a monkey in the midst of a jungle."

Lewis Mumford

Technics and Civilization

photo: latest Saturn photo from Cassini spacecraft--it shows some surprising features, like ripples in the rings "as tall as the Rocky Mountains."

The Truth Is Out There

So: a one day Climate Summit at the UN on Tuesday. New hope or more of the same?

In the UK, where the Climate Crisis is covered more consistently and prominently, the BBC led its story: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says a one-day climate change summit in New York has given fresh impetus to efforts to tackle global warming. He says the momentum has shifted in favour of reaching a deal at December's crucial climate meeting in Copenhagen."

Also in the UK, the Guardian led on a positive note with China: The world inched closer to an elusive deal to combat climate change yesterday, when China, the world's biggest polluter, made its most substantial commitment yet to curb its carbon emissions and invest in clean energy."

But in the US, the New York Times (which also published a CC denial piece filled with bad science, according to Climate Progress) had a much more dour approach: World leaders gathered here for a global summit meeting on climate change made modest proposals on Tuesday for combating the problem, underscoring the way domestic political battles still trump what United Nations officials had hoped would be a sense of global urgency."

When you get right down to the nitty gritty, the reports in the Guardian and the NY Times aren't that far apart, but the difference in tone says volumes. Even though what China has actually proposed falls short of what climate experts say is needed at minimum, there is good news in that China (and India) are officially recognizing the problem and the urgency. That alone makes it a bit easier for the US and Europe to move forward, since one common objection has been that their efforts would be useless without China and India. But the US in particular should be squirming as well, because if China actually commits to greenhouse gas reduction and especially clean energy, then the economic as well as environmental leadership of the 21st century goes to them.

President Obama is trying to keep the US in the game. "The threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it - boldly, swiftly, and together - we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe," he said. After acknowledging that the US has been lax until now, he added: "But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history."

That's certainly true, but we're far from critical mass--it's still an uphill climb to get the US to really commit to clean energy and addressing the Climate Crisis. The first critical test are Copenhagen and the climate bill now in Congress.

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare, writes Jonathan Freedland in Worldchanging. The reason is political: this insane health care debate, that (as President Obama said on Letterman Monday night) other advanced nations can barely comprehend since they all have universal healthcare, is taking all the time, energy and attention, while the climate legislation languishes. Moreover, if Obama can't win on healthcare, he is unlikely to prevail on climate. And that's the key to Copenhagen. Freeland continues:

The science is now clear that if we do not manage to keep the increase in the earth's temperature below 2C, we risk facing the effects of catastrophic climate change – with all the flooding, drought, mass migration and human suffering that it would entail. The experts tell us that the only way to stay below that 2C limit is for global emissions to peak in 2015 – and then start falling. In other words, we have set ourselves up at a nice corner table in the last chance saloon. Copenhagen is that last chance. "

While no one really can foretell when the "last chance" will be--or if it has already gone by--it's certainly close to that. And here's another possible last chance: Not for the first time, the fate of the world rests in the hands of US domestic politics, Freedland writes. But if the US doesn't take leadership and China is prepared to do so, it could be the last time. It will be a long time before the US is irrelevant, but it is in danger of moving in that direction.

Failing to truly solve the multiple problems of health care more than signals a steep decline, which probably has already begin. The incredible ignorance demonstrated by the visible opposition (as opposed to the insurance companies who are orchestrating both the public and behind the scenes machinations) is just one clear manifestation. Here's another, according to former President Bill Clinton: "In the last eight years, we went from first to tenth in terms of the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds holding a bachelor's degree. That's the most important unknown statistic out there... We are headed into long-term economic decline if we don't do something about it."

Though once again big money from vested interests is fueling and inciting opposition to not only measures to address the Climate Crisis, but to acknowledging that the crisis exists, that opposition is characterized not by clever and deceptive arguments, but once again by lies and loudly proclaimed ignorance.

And while we roil in this poisonous nonsense, the facts and scientific studies delineate a Climate Crisis that is worse than previously believed. New research indicates that the world will warm 150% faster in just the next five years than the UN climate panel last predicted. Yet another Pentagon report warns that the Climate Crisis will pose significant strategic challenges, including the possibility of resource wars.

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago. But a lot of attention is being drawn to the Arctic. New research there strongly suggests that greenhouse gas pollution from the start of the Industrial Age reversed a cooling trend and started the Arctic warming. Arctic ice continues to thin, melting both from above and below. The effects of global heating, felt most strongly so far in the Arctic Circle, are already being widely felt, disrupting animal and plant life for thousands of miles. This isn't speculation. It's observation.

Once again the fires in California and the obvious drought conditions in Texas and the Southwest are not only accumulating problems, but supporting predictions of what the Climate Crisis would look like. New CC models see drought impact eventually hitting the American Midwest the hardest.

The truth is out there, and so are the blind and the ignorant. The willfully ignorant, blinded by ideology, prejudice and fear.

President Obama did announce some concrete steps on Tuesday, as reported in American Progress: a first ever program to track the amount of greenhouse gas pollution emitted throughout the country and the United States will propose a phase out of fossil fuel subsidies at the G-20 meeting later this week in Pittsburgh, PA. But these, along with green energy initiatives, will probably stall unless the Congress passes some minimal Climate Crisis bill that at least doesn't do the wrong things and does do some things right, and unless the US can help forge a global agreement in Copenhagen.

Emerson for the Day

"Whatever else I may repent of, therefore let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world's destiny."

--Nathaniel Hawthorne