The Phantom Menace and the Shameless Few

Judging from the rising unemployment claims of the past few weeks, there's little likelihood that unemployment will show much if any decline when those figures are announced later today.  Perhaps in anticipation of that, Paul Krugman wrote a scathing column .  He notes the weak recovery and its negligible effects on employment: "Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.  It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared."

Krugman writes that Washington isn't exactly complacent--it is quaking with fear, but afraid of all the wrong things: debt crisis, dollar crisis, inflation crisis, none of which, he claims, are likely to happen, especially now or in the next few years.  What is happening is the jobs crisis.  "Unemployment isn’t just blighting the lives of millions, it’s undermining America’s future. The longer this goes on, the more workers will find it impossible ever to return to employment, the more young people will find their prospects destroyed because they can’t find a decent starting job. It may not create excited chatter on cable TV, but the unemployment crisis is real, and it’s eating away at our society... So we’re paying a heavy price for Washington’s obsession with phantom menaces."

Last week Think Progress worked out the figures and assembled a graph showing income inequality by nation.  Income inequality has been growing in the richest industrial nations the past few years--still, the United States is the most unequal among western nations, and is the least equal in the world except for one other country: Uganda. And that's pretty close to a tie.  There's a wider gap in America than in any Third World country that supposedly is defined by such gaps.  Pakistan is more equal.   Not since the Great Depression has there been this great a gap in the U.S.

Just as this is joblessness with cell phones, it may well be the Great Depression with color TV for many in America.  Income inequality has been growing since the 1980s, with the super rich amassing obscene wealth while everyone else slips back and now an increasing proportion are genuinely suffering, or are very near the edge of losing even the illusion of a middle class life.  How cynical would it be to suggest that the plutocracy in America will never experience shame for this?  But what about the country as a whole?  Is it possible to feel shame as a nation anymore?

That's in part a political question.  President Obama knows the costs of unemployment to people.  He sees those stories every night in the letters he reads from those who write to him.  With the GOPers threatening to hold the nation hostage in the debt ceiling debate, that takes immediate precedence.  It's not even clear what he can do, with this Rabid Right congressional fever, but the time is coming soon to try.

Update: The unemployment rate edged up to 9.0 from 8.8 but the economy added a "healthy" number of jobs--244,000-- beyond expectations. The New York Times business guy thinks it's because last month's unemployment number was off, and this is closer to the true number.

Koch is It

If you had the slightest doubt about the nature of the connection between billionaires--specifically the Koch brothers--and the tea party/Rabid Right, or you thought that even if the Kochs were financing these folks, they weren't directly responsible for their inflammatory talking points: check out these few sentences that a New York Magazine reporter got out of fossil fuel and chemicals billionaire David Koch at a charity fundraiser.

After saying President Obama deserves "zero credit" for getting Osama bin Laden,  David Koch said this:  Obama is "a hardcore socialist," Koch told us, "and he’s marvelous at pretending to be something other than that, but that is what I believe he truly is, a hardcore socialist. He’s scary to me."

That's the Rabid Right mantra on President Obama: socialist, devious, scary. It is Koch.  And  Koch is It.

Meanwhile on Planet Canada...

 
  Our cousin to the north suggested something was brewing up there in the Canadian elections.  So I paid attention to the TPM preview.  Even though it was titled Yes, America, There Is A Canada, it took a google news search to even find election results.

So here's is another U.S. take on the story, a business-oriented one from the LA Times (for that's what counts about Canada--our biggest oil supplier and chief trading partner, you see.)  It allows that the Canadian elections were "surprisingly interesting."  Could we get any more condescending?  I guess we're not afraid of their terrorists or nukes.




  Personally I found the results unsurprisingly confusing, since it's a parliamentary system, and the parties are different (the Liberals are middle of the road, the Conservatives are for single-payer national healthcare, and the New Democrats are to the left of any of our Democrats.) Even the colors are different: the conservatives are blue, and though there is a Green Party, the New Democrats are orange.  Gee, we don't even have orange.

The upshot seems to be that it was a tremendous victory for the New Democrats and also a tremendous victory for the Conservatives.  The NDP won a bunch of seats--three times as many as it had before-- and became the party with the second-largest representation in the legislature, but the Conservatives won a majority for the first time anyone has done so in ten years.  This analysis from the Globe & Mail says it was a result tied to some familiar-sounding economic divides.  But what does it all mean?  I await enlightenment.

[Top photo is Vancouver, BC.  On the left wing is Hamilton, Ontario.] 

Saturday Night and Sunday Night

According to news reports, President Obama made the decision on Friday to go ahead with plan he had previously selected from several options, to find and capture or kill Osama bin Laden.  Because it wasn't absolutely certain that bin Laden was there, some of his National Security team reportedly had not been in favor of this.  It seems clear that President Obama pretty much staked his presidency on being right about this, and on a successful mission. 

The mission was scheduled for Saturday, but was called off because of bad weather.  So as previously scheduled, President Obama attended the correspondents' dinner, where he laughed at a comedian's joke about bin Laden's whereabouts (he hosts an afternoon show on C-Span), and provided his own brilliant and exquisitely timed stand-up routine. 

Part of it seemed actually politically significant to me when I watched it later, and now--after the events of Sunday--both Josh Marshall and Howard Fineman commented on exactly that part of it, which assumed even more power because of Sunday.  It came after President Obama kidded himself and his attackers concerning the birther blather.  He then pretended to start similar rumors about GOPer contenders (Michelle Bachman was really born in Canada; Tim Palenty's middle name is Hosni.)   Then he took on Trump, describing the kind of executive decisionmaking that qualifies him to be President:

" But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. (Laughter.) For example -- no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice -- (laughter) -- at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf. (Laughter.) You fired Gary Busey. (Laughter.) And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. (Laughter and applause.) Well handled, sir. (Laughter.) Well handled. "

Even if the bin Laden mission hadn't happened Sunday, this one moment might have been enough to destroy Trump's candidacy in everyone's eyes except probably his own.  Now it almost certainly has.

A lot of correspondents from major print and electronic outlets were at the dinner, along with Hollywood celebrities and major political figures, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.  The correspondents saw Obama completely at ease, apparently having a good time.  They had no idea of the decision he had made, and the stakes of the operation that had been rescheduled for just a few hours later.  "One thing should be clear now," wrote New York Times reporter Michael Shear in that paper's political blog: "Don't play poker with President Obama." 

What transpired on Sunday confirmed President Obama as Commander-in-Chief.  But what makes him a great President was the context he created and the meaning he gave it in his address to the nation on Sunday night.  Michael Scherer  reports on the crafting of that speech on Sunday night.  President Obama, he reports, knew what he wanted to say when he began talking with aides:

Obama has discussed this thematic connection with his aides in the West Wing, explaining that the death of bin Laden signals something far greater than a national security accomplishment. “He views this as a demonstration of this country’s capacity to overcome skeptics and do things that people had decided were no longer doable,” explained Press Secretary Jay Carney, in an interview Monday afternoon. “There is sort of a grit and resolve. And not in a John Wayne way, but in a commitment and focus.”

It was a restatement, Scherer wrote, of his theme of "We do big things."  But it was even more a restatement of what Americans can achieve when they work together in good faith, and a call once again to serious approaches to serious problems.  It is a theme he will continue in the days ahead.  Obviously it is a re-election theme, but it is also the core of his message from his candidacy: we must work together to solve problems, and we have some really big problems.  It may not be easy, it may take time, but Americans have done it before.  We have done big things.  This is the mythos he urges us to adopt: we do big things.  But particular big things:

"That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place. Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The big things he came to office to do--and the big things that circumstances required that he do--are aimed at winning the future.  He identified addressing the healthcare problem as the most critical one--its costs to businesses of all sizes and government at all levels as well as to families and individuals, that were only going to grow exponentially in the future.  To truly solve this efficiently would require everyone's sincere efforts.  That was the point of attempting a bipartisan bill.  But because of infantile whatever-you're for-we're against GOPer partisanship, it was costly to pass an imperfect bill, and it will be a struggle to implement and perfect it. 

Because of that infantile partisanship, fueled by oil billions and fear, we are risking the future by not addressing the Climate Crisis as a civilization.  President Obama has gotten what he could by emphasizing the economic benefits of  green energy innovation, so there is still a chance, however slim, to win the future.  If it takes something as nebulously related as the end to a great symbol of evil to bring Americans together long enough for them to actually hear what President Obama has been saying, it is a possibility worth exploring.  "...our sacrifices to make the world a better place" doesn't just mean the sacrifices of soldiers and their families regarding military actions.  Ultimately it is an excellent description of why we must confront the Climate Crisis.  

Gleanings from the bin Laden News

A few thoughts and gleanings from today's dominant story: the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in a firefight at his Pakistan compound.

First, on the facts, as various bits of misinformation have floated around, and the disinformation has begun.  The body of bin Laden was confirmed both by DNA and eyewitness identification (by his wife, who sustained a minor injury and was left behind with other survivors.)  One report said that Pakistan government operatives took control of the compound shortly after the U.S. Navy Seals left (operating under the Joint Special Operations Command).  They were on the ground for about forty minutes.  Bin Laden was buried at sea, in accordance with Islamic law (as approved by clerics in America today.)  

As the timeline was further revealed Monday, the connection to bin Laden was made through the identity and later the location of a courier he used instead of electronic communications.  Some TV "experts" previously connected with the Bush administration touted that this intelligence came from "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. torture.)  This however was strongly denied by Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein.  A Time Magazine reporter quotes her: 

Feinstein was adamant that no information obtained by waterboarding led to Abbottabad. “We’re doing a report on detention and interrogation, which is the Democratic majority report, and we’ve gone through over three million cables, pages, documents going back and I do not believe that there is any evidence that this came from waterboarding,” she said.

Confirmation of Democrat Feinstein's assertion came from an unusual source: Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's Secretary of Defense at the time.  There are contemporaneous reports that I recall that said that intelligence was obtained from suspects, but through incentives and humane treatment, not threats and torture.

Reports are that bin Laden lived in that fortress compound for several years, in a highly populated area only a mile from the Pakistani version of West Point military academy and not far from the capital.  Lawrence O'Donnell points out that it was built in 2005, which was also the year that the Bush administration closed the office in the CIA that had been charged with locating bin Laden.

About the immediate response to the news on Sunday: The comment I was most struck by was to the effect that the spontaneous demonstrations were from primarily young people, which showed how important bin Laden was symbolically to them and their lives.  If true, that surprises me and seems significant to me. 

This is the cover of the upcoming special issue of Time Magazine.  Osama bin Laden's death was announced on May 1, 2011.

This is the cover of Time Magazine, following the announcement of the death of Hitler on May 1, 1945.











There are a lot of complexities about the meaning of what's happened in the past 24 hours, just as the actual facts of what happened are still being clarified.  But clearly in some way these two covers express the emotions of the moment, though as with everything, the equivalence of Hitler to anyone is usually a false one in degree at least.  But for our time it is for many Americans and perhaps others, that kind of moment.

From President Obama's statement to the nation on Sunday night:

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

 [After nearly ten years].....Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world. And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body....

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will -- remain vigilant at home and abroad.  As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

The American people did not choose this fight... Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America."

Tornado Update

From the AP: "At least one of the massive tornadoes that killed hundreds across the South this week was a devastating EF-5 storm, according to an analysis Friday by the National Weather Service, which suspects several others also were the worst of the worst."

Meanwhile, more climate scientists relate the tornado outbreak to Climate Crisis climate change.

Us

When tornadoes tore through the southeast a few weeks ago, one meteorologist interviewed by news media talked about how unusually big and strong the outbreak was.  There was even a case of three twisters circling each other in a cluster.  But the good news, he said, was that this was so unusual that we didn't have to worry about another outbreak this year.

Then came the tornadoes this week that hit Alabama and Georgia, went into Tennesseee and even Virginia, leaving unprecedented destruction and killing upwards of 300 people.  "Some of the killer tornadoes that ripped across the South may have been among the largest and most powerful ever recorded, experts suggested," said a Reuters report.

"We have never experienced such a major weather event in our history," said the Tennessee Valley Authority in an official statement. "Hundreds of thousands of consumers are without power because of damage to power lines and other equipment…."  Power was cut to a nuclear power plant in Alabama, but emergency systems reportedly worked well enough for a controlled shutdown.

President Obama visited the hardest hit city of Tuscaloosa.  He promised the federal government would do everything possible to help people there.  This is clearly a time when everyone wants the government's help--even Texas governor Rick Perry, who has more than once threatened to secede because of his hostility to the federal government, was whining that the President was helping Alabama but not Texas, which is hard-hit from massive fires.

But the congressional budget cut funds for FEMA and specifically for emergency capabilities.  Moreover, the hostility to infrastructure projects in the guise of budget-balancing in the states as well as in the GOPer House, means that municipalities are not prepared for disasters which will inevitably result from the growing changes that make up the Climate Crisis--and the power of these tornadoes could well be such a result.  Specifically the recent flooding in Missouri revealed the inadequate levies there.  As climate studies like this one (with data from 2010) indicate, the weather-related and climate-related disasters of this spring are historically unusual, but they may well prefigure the "new normal."  Even USA Today notes the likelihood of this due to the Climate Crisis.

Now in the next days and weeks, the country faces record flooding in the midwest, including from the Mississippi River.  This tumultuous spring follows a winter of such extreme weather that the U.S. economy was strongly affected--the drop in growth is attributed largely to winter weather, and to higher commodity prices, some of which result from bad weather elsewhere in the world as well.  This, too, is likely to become the new normal.

I don't think the current political wallowing in angry fantasy and denial is unrelated to both climate news and the obvious facts of the weather and climate-related catastrophes--storms, floods, droughts, fires.  That's probably a starting point for another installment in my Climate Inside series.  But for now these disasters--coupled with the furor over the GOPer attempt to destroy Medicare--may be sobering enough for people to be able to hear what President Obama has been saying about government as the way we take care of one another beyond our personal reach.  Then maybe they'll begin to hear his insistent application of this principle to the future.

An Offer (Yes) We Can Refuse

The cable news bobbleheads are trying to find a way to describe Donald Trump's speech in Las Vegas, in which his foreign policy is apparently to tell China to fuck off and to take Iraq and Libya's oil.  Bob Shrum likened it to Howard Beale in Network.  Exactly wrong.  Beale was the voice of the powerless.  Trump thinks he's powerful.  He's talking like a movie version of a Mob boss.  That he's talking that way in Vegas is exactly the point.

And why shouldn't the President be a Mob boss?  Don't we got the biggest guns?

Trump like all demagogic GOPers appeals to the truly fearful among the powerless, and the always resentful among the powerful who are never satisfied with what they've got until they've got it all.  What they have in common is an infantile heart.  They don't have the maturity to deal with complexity.  A lot of them don't care about anyone other than themselves, although this is more likely to be the infantile attitude of the powerful than the powerless pitiful tea party grunts.     

Birther of a Nation

Wednesday following President Obama's brief statement and the release of the long-form birth certificate was an extraordinary day for television news.  It seemed to unleash pent-up frustration and anger among television journalists who had been covering the birther story with the sort of veneer of objectivity that has proven both saving grace and, when exploited, a dangerous weakness (specifically in the outrageously scurrilous attacks on John Kerry's Vietnam experiences in the 2004 campaign that has since given us the term "swiftboating.")

I noted the anger first among black journalists, but it was widespread beyond any category.  Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd were among the first to respond after President Obama's statement, characterizing Donald Trump's innuendos and charges as racist.  That turned out to be just the beginning.

Before the end of the day, Chris Matthews grilled some birther politicians so relentlessly that one was struck utterly speechless.  Lawrence O'Donnell eviscerated the Orly lady and ended the interview abruptly when she refused to respond directly on the matter of the birth certificate.  O'Donnell had earlier directly called out the entertainment division of his own network, NBC, to immediately announce what Trump's commitments were to the network, because they already know whether he is going to be in position to actually run for President.  On CNN, historian Douglas Brinkley called on NBC to dump Trump or face a consumer boycott.  I've seen reference to Bob Shieffer on CBS grilling Trump and accusing him of racism.  Rachel Maddow called out members of the media for treating the birther charges as if they had some reasonable basis, specifically focusing on Ed Henry, the winger White House reporter for CNN.

But a mere recitation of some of these responses doesn't do justice to the disgust and anger they expressed, nor to their vocabulary.  Trump in particular was called out for race-baiting, called a racist enabler, a clown, a disgrace. (He continued this later Wednesday, when he raised more questions about President Obama's education, which I think was the bridge too far for a lot of black journalists in particular.)  Matthews referred to all the GOPers who joined the birthers or hinted that they might have a point as having checked into a roach motel, and that all were now sullied and indicted.

I don't know that I've heard such direct talk or seen such emotion before.  It's clear already that as President Obama predicted, there are still some who will not let even this additional evidence concerning his birthplace convince them.  But it's also clear that as least as long as Trump is a possible candidate or other candidates and officeholders continue to push the birther theme, there are a lot of voices in the media that are going to keep calling them out for what they are, and what this represents.

Focus

In releasing his long form birth certificate, President Obama ended his remarks with this:

"We live in a serious time right now and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud. And I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have. But we’re going to have to get serious to do it.

I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them -- not on this."

Earlier in his remarks, he referenced the House budget and his speech on his budget priorities, and the urgency of coming to agreements.  But the news coverage, he said, was primarily about the birther issue.  This is why he decided to confront it.

But the President deserves more credit for that speech (detailed beginning here) and for its influence.  The current problems GOPers are having defending the Ryan budget are on two issues that President Obama highlighted in his speech: more tax cuts for the rich and--as he was the first to say--"ending Medicare as we know it."

These are the issues GOPer congresspeople are hearing about in their town halls back in their districts.  In fact, the news kept playing a clip of a woman who was essentially reciting lines from this speech and from the President's own town hall meetings when she said it is easy to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the helpless and the young who have no lobbyists in Washington.

When Worlds Collide

The Republicans' furious activities of the past two years, accelerating since their November victories, have brought together the more extreme elements of the Big Money GOPers with the most extreme and ideological Tea Party Rabid Righters.  The Big Money GOPers carefully nurtured and fed the fire-breathing tpartiers, and got them elected.  The tea wild partiers repay that patronage, especially on the state level, with the kind of extreme privatization, more money to those with the most money already while busting the system so that Democrats are at deeper disadvantage in future elections. All of this serves the Big Money GOPers' long-term interests, as well as their always short-term bank accounts.

In Washington so far it's been more noise than substance, but this smoke and mirrors deficit hawking, and extreme stuff like the Ryan budget, moves the whole playing field to the right, so that works for the Big Money GOPers.  Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of their new fire-breathers actually believe this Rabid Right revolution stuff.

These two very different groups, the globeshattering billionaires and the local yokels, have managed a match made in hell pretty well so far.  But now these worlds seem to be on a collision course, and if these worlds collide in the next few weeks on one crucial issue, the economic future could suddenly be catastrophic.

Right now Wall Street is already getting a bit nervous about the congressional GOPers posturing on refusing to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.  According to reports, the billionaires and their multimillionaire minions are working these folks behind the scenes to basically convince them not to do this, to raise the ceiling as usual and as quickly as possible, and a few GOPer political consultants are saying it out loud.

Moreover they are warning that the tea wild partiers in the House can't even do the brinksmanship thing like they did on the budget.  The debt ceiling has to be raised by early July, but some are saying that Congress has to do it by early June or the international shit is going to hit the fan, big, big, big time.  That's apparently not good for Big Money GOPers and their really big...money.

The debt ceiling merely allows the U.S. to pay its past debts, like the billions Bush spent on invading and occupying Iraq, giving out millions in tax breaks to billionaires, and giving billions in federal money to health insurance companies for senior prescription coverage without adding revenue to offset it.   Without raising the debt ceiling, the U.S. becomes the biggest deadbeat in history and the global financial dominoes could come tumbling down.  Some warn that it's not like shutting down the government for a day or two to make a point either--once the world loses faith in America as a credit-worthy stable safe haven that no political nonsense can shake, it's pretty much over.  The tea wild partiers can do in a few weeks what no enemy could do in war, and what no terrorists could dream of accomplishing.

So can Obama and the Dems make a deal with Banal and the GOPers, and will the tea wild partiers let that happen?  The key question may be: can the Big Money GOPers control the tea wild partiers they got elected?  If they can't, it may be time to shop for another planet.  They may be able to afford one, but I don't think there's one ready to move into.

Is Dictatorship Unconstitutional?

Rachel Maddow has been doing a series of stories on the truly alarming authoritarian moves being made by GOPer governors and legislatures in a number of U.S. states.  They include laws to deny unions the right to organize, laws that create barriers to registering to vote, laws that substitute appointed dictators for local elected officials in municipalities deemed troubled,  as well as laws essentially voiding Roe v. Wade, imposing new and otherwise extra-legal conditions on whether a presidential candidate's name can appear on a state's ballot, etc.

While she has also emphasized the political response to these efforts, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop: the courts.  Surely many of these efforts violate law.  Surely some of them are unconstitutional.  Surely the third branch of government is our ultimate protection.

But mostly that shoe has not dropped.  There is a challenge to Wisconsin's union-killing law, based however on violation of the state constitution not in terms of its content but in the process the legislature used to pass it.  Yesterday, Maddow reported a court challenge in Michigan to that state's Emergency Financial Manager law, and its use in overriding elected officials in the predominantly black city of Benton Harbor, and in the intended closing of a Detroit school that is a one-of-a-kind educator for pregnant women and new mothers who are predominantly black (and who almost always go on to college.)  This law empowers one state government-appointed person with essentially dictatorial powers.

The suit is citing Michigan law and one aspect of the U.S. Constitution, though only a section of the first amendment that allows the federal government to stop any state from violating legal contracts, such as those negotiated in collective bargaining.  

Which leaves me still wondering--where are the court cases?  Maybe they are still being developed.  Maybe people are reluctant to bring them.  It's acknowledged that women's groups aren't challenging state laws that restrict the right to choose because they fear that when those cases get to the Supreme Court, the current Court will rule against them and void Roe v. Wade entirely.  Could that be a fear in these other issues?

Or is it that the Constitution doesn't offer protections against such laws.  That states can constitutionally make demands on registration so that the right to vote is restricted,  as long as it doesn't involve a poll tax?  That states can essentially change the qualifications for federal office by restricting the ability to get votes for that office in that state? That states can allow child labor? That dictatorships are not unconstitutional, as long as it isn't at the federal level?  

I really would like an answer to these questions...

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"It has taken four thousand years of struggle to 'lift' man 'above' nature. In the course of that struggle language and thought and behavior in the West have lapsed into a too-simple framework of discontinuity and opposition: spirit and body, mind and matter, earth and heaven, man and nature, good and evil. It is not an insoluble dilemma, but it is far more dangerous than we permit ourselves to know."

Paul Shepard

He's My President

Go back to those hopey-changy days and you'll hear Barack Obama warn us that he's not perfect and that he will make mistakes. His administration has been a specific and serious disappointment to me here and there, and expressions of disappointments--like that song that interrupted him at a San Francisco fundraising dinner--are valid.  But just as a president might be worn down by the day to day disappointments, so can those of us viewing that President.  Sometimes we need a reminder.

I got mine when I caught just a bit of a PBS program that I believe was basically about Air Force One.  It involved several Presidents, but it showed part of a speech President Obama was making.  For a moment it focused on a face in the crowd--a black boy of maybe 10 years old.  President Obama was coming to the end of his speech, repeating words he's said many times before--about how if people can change a room they can change a neighborhood (or however it goes) until he ends by saying they can change the world.  The boy was rapt, and by the time President Obama got to saying this, he was saying it right along with him.  He knew it, in every sense, by heart.

When I was young--though not quite that young--I had a President I believed in, whose words I could recite.  Now I have another.  I believe in President Obama as I believed in President Kennedy.  I could offer good reasons, but it was this fact I wanted to hold--that once again in my life, and possibly for the last time, I had a President again.

And now I want to savor it for as long as it lasts.  It's no longer fashionable to feel this about President Obama.  But this feeling is informed by reality.  By objective criteria, his presidency is historic and successful in historic proportion.  He is withstanding--and working within--a wave of barely acknowledged racism, that threatens us all.  The media hardly knows how to behave, and nobody quite knows how to respond.  But we are all affected by it.

The black man in the blue suit amidst a sea of white sofas--that says a lot.

So I am going back to celebrating this man as President, and his family in the White House, and how beyond the daily news and the Beltway drama he affects us.  There are going to be photos reflecting all of that on this blog I hope quite regularly.    

Climate Inside: Outside

With the university school year coming to a close, I am becoming free to think about longer term projects instead of just the day to day reactions to the news.  Eventually this summer I plan on trying three.  One is fairly simple: to more consciously savor the presidency of Barack Obama (which perhaps I am about to explain a little more in another post.)  Second is simple to describe but will take some long time to accomplish: I've recently finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson's climate crisis in Washington trilogy for the third time, and I am more convinced than ever of its importance.  So I am going to go through it again, chapter by chapter, on this blog.

Third is a project I've been thinking about for so long (and promising from time to time) that I worry it's gone stale, but I'm going to start it here anyway.  The overarching title is "Climate Inside" and it's about the influence of our psyches on the world outside--on how we perceive it and act on those perceptions.  It's nub concerns the Climate Crisis, and it's inspiration is the question of why we are so crazy to deny its reality, and let it threaten civilization and life on earth as we know it.

So I begin Climate Inside with a post or two about the Outside.  This one is a kind of disclaimer or caveat.  By concentrating on the climate inside, I certainly don't mean all our troubles are in our own heads.  We do have a given world that can be hostile, and we do have powerful enemies (though they also have troubles in their own heads which may be causing our troubles in the world.)  But every animal must know what in its world threatens its existence.

Of those sources of harm I want to name a few "outside" threats that do major harm by manipulating us "inside."  This is a chief weapon these days.  The enemies I focus on are huge beyond easy understanding.  The first is Big Oil, or more generally the fossil fuel megaindustries, and their related and mutally dependent huge industries.  They exercise inhuman and irrational control over our economy, government at every level, media and our lives, as well as directly on the air, water, soil and ecology we absolutely depend on for life, as civilizations and humanity as we know it. They're sucking us dry and making us pay for it.

What they can't control directly with money and influence peddling, they go after by financing disinformation and psychological warfare, from all the techniques of distortion refined from the not so long ago yet still forgotten efforts of Big Tobacco to convince people that smoking is a right, that science is divided on whether smoking is harmful, that banning smoking is tantamount to a government plot to end our freedom, etc.

  Big Oil's efforts are even bigger, and have adapted to the times (so they employ not only at least one U.S. Senator and probably a lot more, with powerful tentacles apparently still controlling the Dept. of Energy, and all the scientists they turn, but cadres of vicious saps who specialize in comments on blogs and letters to the editor that muddy the waters, derail constructive discussions and turn people off on reading about what Big Oil doesn't want you to read or care about.)

Big Insurance is another major enemy outside, that gets what it wants partly through influencing and manipulating inside.  Insurance is an amazing industry these days.  Not so long ago it at least seemed like a legitimate and even a noble business.  People paid into it, and people who needed the help their insurance promised, got that help.  But Big Insurance realized that if it could restrict its business to taking in money and sharply reduce the part of it that was giving out money, it could create the perfect business: all income.  Huge amounts of money to become even Bigger.

Big Insurance has been doing that with life insurance to some degree lately but it's big success is in health insurance.  Insuring only people when they don't need medical care is apparently their goal, and they were pretty much there until the Obama health insurance reform debate resulted in an attempt to redress the balance, if not exactly to guarantee health care.  But even this is too much for Big Insurance, and so they as well continue to use the Big Tobacco techniques, and have convinced thousands if not millions of people that putting health insurance in financial reach for almost everyone, and making sure that this insurance actually pays for medical care, is a government attack on their freedom.

Between these objective enemies and the public good is the media, and some would put it--the so-called MSM, the Beltway Media--on that enemies list.  There does seem to be some combination of unintelligent and reflexive reporting, toadying and weakness, and serving corporate self-interest that distorts, devalues and ignores what's most important about what's going on.  But among the reasons we know this is: other media reporting.

That makes the psychology of others as well as of ourselves important in understanding how we are manipulated, and otherwise how we get things wrong.  So for example our social selves--so powerful these days in these whirlwinds of information and the addicting attempt to stay in the group conversation through social media, through bits that "go viral" one day and disappear totally the next.  Or the more conventional--but no less visible--effects of being part of the group we want to be part of, of not doing anything to get tossed out or ignored.  It's not just agreeing with what everybody says, but agreeing with what they talk about and how they talk about it.

President Obama spoke on a video message circulated before his town meeting at Facebook hq, asking people to participate online.  He asked that they "take time out from friending and defriending each other" to participate.  It occurs to me that this is good advice for the Beltway media.  They might take time out from friending and defriending each other, as well as their cherished powerful sources and friends, to exercise some perspective on what might really be important to report.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote: Earth Day Edition



photo taken from the International Space Station by astronaut Ron Garan

"All around us, aspects of the modern world - diet, exercise, medicine, art, work, family, philosophy, economics, ecology, psychology - have begun a long circle back toward their former coherence. Whether they can arrive before the natural world is damaged beyond repair and madness destroys humanity, we cannot tell."

Paul Shepard, The Others (1996)


"If nature is not a prison and earth a shoddy way-station, we must find the faith and force to affirm its metabolism as our own---or rather, our own as part of it. To do so means nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and our attitude toward life itself, a wider perception of the landscape as a creative, harmonious being where relationships of things are as real as the things. Without losing our sense of a great human destiny and without intellectual surrender, we must affirm that the world is a being, a part of our own body."

Paul Shepard, "Ecology and Man-A Viewpoint" in The Subversive Science (1969)--a foundation document of the first Earth Day in 1970.

Trumped

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If in getting rid of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC thought it was eliminating the inconvenience of having someone who might look straight into the camera and state his "controversial" views with direct eloquence, they should not have given Olbermann's spot to Lawrence O'Donnell.  O'Donnell can be very witty, as the other night when he said, "If you were a collector of politically brave letters written by United States senators, you would not need much storage space.  A shoe box would do, and still leave room for at least one shoe."  But after accumulating and demonstrating the evidence, he can make that eloquence serve very direct and pointed and important statements.  I include this segment here as my evidence for this assertion, and because he is saying from the heart of the beast what I have observed from out here in the hinterlands.  And I add today (Thursday) the further evidence of another poll that nearly half of self-identified GOPers refuse to believe President Obama was born in the U.S., and two-thirds overall at least have doubts.  Here's O'Donnell's conclusion:

"The millions out there who seethe with the madness that Donald Trump stokes watch him and say hey, it‘s not just me who thinks this; Donald Trump thinks this. And he‘s a smarter guy than me, and I know he‘s a smarter guy than me, because he says he‘s smarter than me. He‘s made a lot more money than me. And that proves he‘s smarter than me.

Those people who agree with what Trump is saying about the president‘s birth aren‘t going to be bothered by his grammatical mistakes. There are just going to feel validated in every bit of the hatred they feel for Barack Obama.

There are viewers of this program that wish I would never mention the name Donald Trump. They‘ve had enough. So have I. I wish May 16th was coming tomorrow. But as long as Trump continues to try to influence our thinking about American politics and the presidency, I believe his lies must be fought.
 Because Trump‘s position in our culture now is sadly no longer simply a television entertainer who lies about nothing more important than how much money he has. When Donald Trump said, quote, “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I‘ve always had a great relationship with the blacks,” end quote, a black friend of mine e-mailed me saying, “one clue that you might not have a great relationship with the blacks is that you call them the blacks.”

No, Trump is not just an entertainer any more. He is now a very dangerous man who must be stopped from doing the damage to this country he may or may not know that he‘s doing. Donald Trump has become America‘s front man for the legitimizing of hatred and racism."

My Nobel Nominee

Right about now, the Nobel Prize folks are getting down to their dozen or so alternatives for this spring's Nobel Prize in Literature.  I have no idea who is actually on their list, but I know who should be.  I've suggested her before but this year I sense that her time is coming.  Margaret Atwood is my nominee for the next Nobel Prize in Literature given to a writer in the English language, and this year is not too early to give it.

Margaret Atwood qualifies for quality and influence, as a writer and as a writer-citizen of the world.  She has published more than forty books: novels, stories, poetry (15 volumes), children's stories, and non-fiction in a number of areas.  She's a distinguished literary editor of Canadian literature specifically and of literature more generally.  I especially admire her book on writers and writing, Negotiations with the Dead, and I'm currently reading her latest collection of essays and reviews, Writing with Intent, as well as her latest novel, The Year of the Flood.  But she's written on politics and economics as well (Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is particularly relevant at the moment.)  She's written for television and radio,  done recordings and even accompanied her latest book tour with a dramatization of The Year of the Flood that used local actors wherever she was, and which has ended up as a movie.  Her moral as well as literary concerns make her a particularly apt Nobel candidate.

  She's an innovator and an activist, especially for environmental causes, with a special interest in birds. With an impressive website, she is engaged with her time.  In March she attended a literary conference in Dubai and a Global Greenbelt conference in Toronto; she lectured at Cornell and in Chickasa, Oklahoma.  In a few days she's off to Mockton, New Brunswick for the Frye Festival---a big time festival in honor of a great (and Canadian) literary critic, one whose work I deeply value, Northrup Frye.  (I learned her itinerary from her website.  I don't know her personally.)

It's time for Margaret Atwood, and it's time for Canada.  Nobel judges, I hope you agree.  But right now it cheers me up just thinking of it.   

Something Missing?

Welcome, reader.  Say, what's wrong?  Oh, right.  You're ducking your head because any second now you expect some flying avatar to jump in front of the print, some survey or advertisement that follows you wherever your cursor goes.  Or a video ad with loud sound that starts up without warning, or a big ad that blocks the entire screen, all of them requiring you to figure out how to turn them off (it won't be easy) before you can get back to reading what you wanted to read.

Well, put that itchy trigger finger back in your holster.  None of that around here.  Not while I'm marshal of this site.  Oh, there's that slowly moving kiosk of books further down, but that's easy to ignore.  This may be one of the last remaining sites on the Internet where you can just read to your hearts content, without batting away sudden impositions or being battered by unignorable distractions.  Rest easy, friend.  Enjoy it while you can.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"We have to fight, finally, without any guarantee that we are going to win. We have waited late to get started and our adversaries are strong and we do not know how this is going to come out. If you were a betting person, you might bet we were going to lose because so far that’s what happened, but that’s not a bet you’re allowed to make. The only thing that a morally awake person to do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds....No guarantee that we will win, but we will fight side by side, as long as we’ve got."

Bill McKibben
from his address to the Power Shift 2011 conference--of some 10,000 mostly young people gathered to organize for action to confront the Climate Crisis-- in Washington this week.  Leaders met with President Obama, and thousands demonstrated at the White House and in front of the Chamber of Commerce.  On a day when Tea Party rallies across the nation fell flat with a tenth of the numbers they got last year, the media did not bother to cover the 10 to 15 thousand participants in these rallies. 

Privatizing Public Corruption

I've said before that the GOPer privatizing agenda now going gung ho in states that elected Rabid Right governors is happening hand in hand with corruption.  Here are but two recent examples.

Governor Rick Scott of Florida is unabashedly and unashamedly pushing for a state law requiring welfare applicants to undergo drug tests at their own expense. Scott has already mandated drug testing for state employees.  Governor Rick Scott is the co-founder of a company that's business is chiefly drug testing.

In Michigan, the law that allows the governor to appoint someone to manage any town in the state and ignore elected officials has been applied to the town represented by the GOPer legislator who sponsored this bill, and who "was" prominently involved in an effort to develop public and private land in this largely black and quite poor, former industrial town, for a high-end residential project surrounding a golf course.  He was unable to persuade the elected officials of this town to go along with it.  Now he won't have to. (Rachel Maddow reported this on Monday.)    

Government and Crisis

"Freakish" severe weather has become so common this year that little of it makes the news, unless it is the kind of weather news outlets are accustomed to associate with deaths and destruction.  So the three day spate of tornados in some 15 states resulting in over 40 deaths was noticed.  In North Carolina especially, the activity was unusual--a tornado (or more than one--that's still being sorted out) spent a lot of time close to the ground, destroying homes and killing people.  That usually doesn't happen in North Carolina.

According to Dr. Jeff Masters, this was one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.  And there may be more violent weather in the area today.

There are two messages in this: each violent or extreme event or set of events gets covered alone, and there are always variabilities that cause experts to caution that this in itself is not evidence of the Climate Crisis.  But add them together (drought and unprecedented wind and wildfires in Texas, deep April snows in the midwest, 100 degrees in Los Angeles...) and match them with the predictions of climate scientists, and it's at the very least a warning.

But even more important, people do add them together, consciously or not, and it makes them afraid.  No wonder they are receptive to the misinformation campaign that says the Climate Crisis is all an illusion, a fraud concocted by greedy scientists and ambitious politicians eager to bring Prius communism to America.

But here's the second point, made on Monday in a photo montage by Lawrence O'Donnell: while GOPers in Congress and in the states further their agenda of destroying government, it is the local and the federal government that is expected to respond and help people heal their lives and their communities when disasters like this hit.  Government needs the capacities, the expertise and the public trust to do this effectively. 

Guess what?  With the onrushing Climate Crisis that's going to happen more and more, and that aspect of government is going to be more needed than ever.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote



Runaway Star Zeta Ophiuchi at space.com

  "Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and technology make the transition through time from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure. The very benefit of wandering is that it is dangerous and needs skills to avert evils. We must expect, therefore, that the future will disclose dangers. It is the business of the future to be dangerous;and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”

Alfred North Whitehead, quoted in a 1975 speech
to the World Future Society by Senator Ted Kennedy

Day of Delusion

So today--not Friday the 15th for some reason nearly as complicated as a tax form--is the day federal taxes are due.  You'd think there's nothing more black and white and rational than numbers, but then those numbers are about money, and there's little that's rational about that.

Taxes are even crazier.  The Tea Party started as a tax revolt (Taxed Enough Already--tea, get it?) despite the FACT that taxes in America are at an historic LOW.  Even when rising state and local taxes are figured in.

 It's not clear why middle class demonstrators get so exercised about the sanctity of cutting taxes for the insanely wealthy, but President Obama had to temporarily swallow those tax cuts in order to get another cut for the middle class.  And of course, these people are rapturously grateful to him for that extra money in their pockets.

But even though the taxes paid by the rich and their corporations are scandalously low, in general the tax burden folks are suffering from is also low--in federal taxes, close to 9%.  And except for the anxiety about the forms, Tax Day is not exactly a universal day of pain, especially when more than half of taxpayers get a federal refund.

But it is ostensibly our crushing tax burden that is the reason that revenues can't be raised to pay for government, even from people so wealthy that their dinner parties could pay for college,  though even old Republicans know it's necessary.  That's why they want people to shop for the best private health insurance right at the time they're best suited to do so, when they're old and sick.  That's why the government is "broke."  Deficits matter, suddenly, with GW out of the White House.  It's suddenly vital to cut off government spending money to fix things, help people who've contributed their lives, take care of commitments and invest in the future--which all have the well-known bonus of stimulating the economy in a shaky recovery--even with the current example of the UK reeling from its budget-bludgeoning.

And while the Secretary of the Treasury is valiantly trying to assure those nervous nellies who control the fate of the financial universe that the GOPers aren't serious about holding world civilization hostage to their political delusions, they insist that they are too.   I think it's time to move Tax Day to April 1.

Is Nothing Sacred?

Every day my inbox is stuffed with outrage.  Somebody is trying to slaughter endangered wolves, dolphins and even frogs.  People continue to slaughter each other, in the Sudan for instance. As awful as it all is at least I'm used to the depressing but familiar villains like oil and coal companies and even McDonalds ( for generations of clearing rain forests for their cattle to graze in the brief time before they are slaughtered as well.)

But please.  The Girl Scouts?

Yes, the Girl Scouts, and even worse, Girl Scout Cookies.

It seems that the U.S. cookies are all made with palm oil, which change.org says "is commonly harvested through the clearing and burning of irreplaceable tropical rainforests."

So there goes another indulgence with a guiltfree excuse.  And that much more faith lost in Americana.

On the Other Hand...

It seems Rocky is safer

Aurora in Flight

A two minute video compiled from still shots taken every two minutes by a camera mounted in an empty seat on a commercial Air France flight from San Francisco to Paris, that includes flying through an Aurora.  It's mind-blowing to see it in the middle of an otherwise normally wondrous flight, so it's a neat video. (There's a music track, too.)  But it reminds me why I get a window seat at least one-way on long flights--there's nothing, not even this video, to compare with what you can see live: clouds, sun and moon, mountains and waters and landscapes that can't even be described yet alone identified.  You don't get much of a sense of flying on those big planes, but you do get a much different experience of the planet.

Screeching, the Deatheaters Take Off Their Masks

I'm not sure that I'd call it a Harry Potter budget plan (as this congressperson did) but it clearly is a sincere expression of the party of Voldemort.  As every Democrat in soundbite sight pointed out (echoing President Obama in the speech generously excerpted below), the Ryan budget the GOP now owns "ends Medicare as we know it."

 Some believe this vote will nail the coffin shut on the GOPer attempt to keep a House majority in 2012.  It does appear to be unpopular already--and the more people learn about it, the more they dislike it.  Without a creditable opponent so far, President Obama now has an issue to use as central to his campaign.  This analysis is interesting: that it allows him to return to meta-themes of 2008, this time centered on "compassion."

Before GOPers overwhelmingly passed their budget in the House on Friday (which will have no effect except politically), they were busy bleating about President Obama's speech.  Was Obama's Speech Too Fiery? the CS Monitor asked, responding to copious GOPer leaders' expressions of hurt feelings.  But Joe Klein at the Time blog called it Wounded Elephants Screeching."    "Republican World has become a very self-referential place, only vaguely in touch with reality," Klein writes:

Here is the reality: the Republicans have spent the past 30 years creating deficits and the Democrats have spent the past 30 years closing them. The unimportance of deficits became an article of faith during the second Bush Administration: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," Dick Cheney famously said. It has been rather hilarious for those of us with even a minimal grasp of recent history to watch these folks pull fierce 180-degree turns on the issue--and it is even more hilarious to watch them accuse Obama of hyper-partisanship after the dump-truck full of garbage they visited upon his head these past few years.

"Indeed, the sheer hatred that Republicans have for Obama has led them to overreach, to latch onto Paul Ryan's well-outside-the-mainstream budget plan," Klein continues, but it's a particular kind of hatred. In her blog piece about "Pouty Republicans" responding to President Obama's speech, Joan Walsh at Salon noted the remarks of Senate GOPer leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,  "he sounds like a headmaster correcting an errant schoolboy about "not only his tone but his direction." He's actually the president, Senator, not a schoolboy...

Other GOPers were dismissive in a particular way.  My favorite such response to the President's speech was from a House leader from Texas: "I missed lunch for this?"  These remarks owe something to payback for the disrespect many expressed for President GW Bush, although no Dem leader was ever as utterly dismissive of Bush as these GOPers are of President Obama.  In this regard, they owe a lot to racism. There's really no getting past that. They can't help themselves.  It must be hard for them not to call him boy in public.

So even if President Obama wins re-election and Congress returns to Democratic control in 2012, there's no reset button in life, history or politics.  We're losing precious years.  There may be benefits--perhaps some purgation of mean spiritedness and racism, though that's a lot to hope for.  There may well be changes that won't be reversed, so that the corporate bosses running this party will have gotten what they really want, perhaps at the level of law, particularly state law.  But in any case we're losing precious time and wasting resources for the fight of the future as the Climate Crisis takes hold, and all the current projections for the next 20 years of budgets or anything else become vain fantasy.