Money Doesn't Talk, Part 1

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." --Justice Louis Brandeis

"Money doesn't talk, it swears."--Bob Dylan

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz probably made history when he went down to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration to speak in support.  In addition to documented police brutality, New York is making it as hard as possible for demonstrators to exercise their First Amendment rights, for example by banning any electric amplification, including bullhorns.  The demonstrators' solution is a chorus of people who repeat the words of the speaker.  They try to do it in unison, but at times it gets harmonic, and is all the more effective for being beautiful.

Stiglitz published this article in Vanity Fair a few months ago about an economy and a politics that is " Of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%"-- the richest 1/100th part of the American population.  He describes what is happening, how and why it is happening, in a succinct if all too familiar recitation of suffering and middle class collapse.  But here's an intriguing bit of historical context in human terms:

"None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes."

This suggests that the destruction of the American middle class, explainable in terms of American-based corporations and uber-rich Americans who exploit near-slave labor in other countries rather than pay American workers or taxes, is by now feeding on itself.  The question is whether a tipping point has been reached.  History suggests it often is, Stiglitz concludes:

"The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

The question is whether the United States is going to let this happen.  That history is being written right now.

Incidentally (maybe), I was struck by Wall Street demonstrators like those pictured above. With money stuffed in their mouths, they seemed to be intending to portray the rich as zombies or vampires of greed. The rich as blood-sucking vampires makes particular sense.  But it reminded me of a theory proposed for why zombies are so popular with the young at the moment: recall Michael Moore quoted in a previous post about these demonstrations, saying that the young are reclaiming their futures, because their futures have been stolen.  People without a future are symbolically the living dead.  

Marching Shoes, Part 2

The Occupy Wall Street protests over the weekend are opening some media eyes.  Michael Sherer at TIME evaluates the potential for a "Tea Party for the Left."  E.J. Dionne does the same in the Washington Post, although he broadens it out to the Washington conference: "This week, progressives will highlight a new effort to pursue the road not taken at a conference convened by the Campaign for America’s Future that opens Monday. It is a cooperative venture with a large number of other organizations, notably the American Dream Movement led by Van Jones..."
Dionne notes this: "A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the Tea Party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesn’t stand a chance unless there is a fair fight between the right and the left."

I've pretty much said all of this on my previous post, but two more things: first, I just heard someone on TV from the Occupy Wall Street demos who used the word "revolutionaries" which I haven't heard in more than 30 years in this kind of context.  These are not single-issue protests, but a coalition of outrage. Michael Moore said, "They're here to reclaim their future.  Their future has been stolen." 

 Also, candidate Obama's hope clearly was that his election campaign was building a mass movement that would hold together after his election, and help propel change.  You can argue why that mostly didn't happen---that the Obama White House had more than enough to fill its day with governing, that nobody knows how this could work since it has never happened, etc.  Now even though the President himself called for the marching shoes, he's going to have to deal with the excesses--including the excessive expectations--of a movement outside his or anyone's control.     

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of duty...to live through it as bravely and as generously as possible."

Peter Matthiessen
THE SNOW LEOPARD

Marching Shoes

Update: More than 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge during Wall Street demonstrations. Here's a report from Saturday's demonstrations before this happened.  And a report from after.

"Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes!" as President Obama exhorted several audiences--and not just the Congressional Black Caucus.  It seems that a lot of people are doing just that, and not just in support of the American Jobs Act or the Obama 2012 campaign.

There were relatively small demonstrations around Wall Street that encountered police brutality and have since grown and spread to other cities.  These protests against Wall Street greed and tax policies that favor the superrich at the expense of the middle class (among other issues) are about to get bigger when several big labor unions join them in the coming week.  Michael Moore was part of the protests this week, and together with Lawrence O'Donnell, articulated a lot of what it's about.

Along the same lines, there's a new Rebuild the Dream organization/movement, involving Van Jones, the editor of The Nation magazine and others.  Their goal is to build the progressive analog to the Tea Party, and they're centered around a Contract for the American Dream, which calls for investing in American infrastructure and education, returning to fairer tax rates, end the wars and invest at home, etc.  They will be organizing--and presumably marching--in Washington next week as well.

The 1963 March on Washington where Dr. King spoke was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Jobs and freedom will again be the goals with another March on October 15, involving Rev. Al Sharpton and others, as the dedication of the King memorial postponed by hurricane Irene is scheduled to happen.

Direct action is returning to the environmental movement as well, this time focused on influencing President Obama's decision on whether to permit the tar sands pipeline from Canada to be built on U.S. soil.  Apart from environmental damage and dangers from the pipeline itself, the main objection is to the massive industry about to be created to extract oil from tar sands, which James Hansen, the foremost Climate Crisis expert says will add so much fossil fuel pollution to the atmosphere that the entire future is endangered.

 Exxon has the megabucks to saturate the airwaves (including MSNBC, and all their online clips) with genial lies (like the lie that Climate Crisis pollution is the same with this process as other fossil fuels, while the EPA estimates  "that GHG emissions from Canadian oil sands crude would be approximately 82% greater than the average crude refining the US, on a well-to-time basis.")  Protests are beginning to make the other side visible, though not so far in a big media way --despite the fact that they included civil disobedience leading to the arrest of enviro author Bill McKibben and others from outside the White House.  The next round (at the State Department) resumes this week, with organizing for a larger protest at the White House on November 6.

To all of which I say, it's about time.  A Democratic President needs such visible activity and evidence, even if it advocates beyond what that President is prepared to do.  The March on Washington worked for JFK--he invited its leaders to the White House--and it showed visible support for the Civil Rights legislation he was able then to introduce soon afterwards, which after his assassination became the law of the land.

They're Taking Away My Freedom

They're taking away my freedom.  I'm no longer free to enter a bar in Ohio without fear of being shot by someone carrying a now legally concealed weapon, perhaps because this person doesn't like my political opinions, or my posture, or because his or her animus is aimed at somebody else in the bar but the bullets miss or pass through others (or walls) before hitting me.  This is thanks to the Republican governor and legislature of Ohio.

I am not free to even eat in a restaurant, with or without my grand-niece, in certain states and municipalities without the same fear.

I'm no longer free to enjoy nature in a national park without the possibility of being shot by a legally carried weapon.  This is thanks to the U.S. Congress and President Obama.

In various states and municipalities, I am no longer free to participate in a political event, or a sporting event, or any public event at all, without fear of being shot by someone with a legally carried and/or concealed weapon.

In some states--and if a number of current bills become law in many others-- I would no longer be free to register and vote without undergoing a variety of unrelated and even onerous complications.  And possibly I would not be able to vote at all.  In Florida, I would not be free to participate in registering new voters.

There are laws on the books or bills in legislatures that would take away my freedom--and even more so, a woman's freedom-- to obtain medical care, counselling and reproductive health information.  Or to legally use the most frequently used methods of birth control.  A woman would be forced to bear the child of her rapist, which entails so many other legal and moral quandaries that she (or her spouse) wouldn't have the freedom to do much else but work to pay lawyers.  These are all laws or proposals by GOPer Rabid Right zealots who fill state legislatures and state houses across the country.

Now they're talking about taking away my freedom to believe anything but their brand of Christianity.  They're adamant about taking away rights to people whose sexual orientation they don't like.

My freedoms are being taken away most obviously by those who claim to be against having freedoms taken away.  This country is becoming less free every day, not to mention cynically manipulated and manifestly insane.

Dreaming Up the Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Quotations are odd things these days.  They are everywhere on the Internet, hardly ever sourced, and often wrong.  The most famous quotation from the novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis ("When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross”) is not in It Can't Happen Here.  (Although it might be in one of the stage play versions.  I'm involved in a 75th anniversary reading of it next month--more on that anon--so I'll check it out.) 

But I love quotations--the ones that are like poems, or very good jokes, or that sum something up with terse eloquence.  Especially a new insight, or expressed so eloquently that it becomes new.  They nourish.

For some years now I've been seeing a quotation floating around--it's from a letter that Martha Graham wrote to Agnes De Mille, the two legendary American dance pioneers of the 20th century.  But I didn't see it first as a quotation, not exactly.  I was reading Agnes De Mille's autobiography one night in bed in my first Pittsburgh apartment (on the South Side).  It was a used paperback I found on a bookstore crawl.  I remember I felt cold and the print was fading as I started falling asleep, but I was coming to the end of a chapter, and indeed to the end of the first volume in this two-volume paperback.  And that's where I saw it.  It exploded me wide awake with a rush I still remember.

I soon copied it out and quoted it, eventually in my newspaper column in the In Pittsburgh weekly.  I even had it up on the wall, at home at first and then in my office at the editorial firm where I worked for a couple of years.  I didn't start seeing it quoted until long after that, though I doubt that I was the source of it.  But you never know--quotes went viral long before the Internet. Anyway, here it is:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.  There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

The Choice

President Obama quoted from a fundraiser on Sunday:

"Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what's happened to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You've got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. It's true. You've got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don't have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they're gay.

"That's not reflective of who we are. This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election."

One place this was quoted was in the War Room column in Salon, which has an interesting--and not unfamiliar--take on current politics and their effect on 2012 electoral politics.

The Fox thing is a bit interesting, though.  Roger Ailes joined the chorus begging Christ Christie to run against the anti-Christ,  but a panel of Foxists pooh poohed the possibility.  This may be a case when money goes begging for something to buy--i.e. big money GOPers who don't dig Newt Romney and see a great chance for an electable GOPer, but can't buy one because Christ Christie isn't into being crucified first.

 The thing is, Romney is only moderate by comparison.  He's still a Rabid Right thug--he just doesn't seem very sincere about it.  But even though Cowboy Rick is fading, and Foxists seem to have abandoned him, the South may rise again.  I don't know if Melissa is right about white progressives (and I'm not saying she's wrong), but there's no doubt that it's true of white Rabid Right GOPers.  They don't want to just win an election against the black President.  They want to conquer him with one of their own.  Even the Floridians who turned against Cowboy Rick make that point--they evidently did so because he's too liberal on brown immigrants. They are Christians who just ain't into forgiveness, at any level.  That they expressed their racism by picking a black GOPer to support--the anti-Obama?--just makes it all the weirder.

Several of the white progressive shows did run soundbites of President Obama at the Congressional Black Caucus Dinner, especially one sentence very near the end  in which he exhorted them to "take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes."  Lawrence O'Donnell in particular made fun of this.  As often happens with these things, it built on itself, and to their credit, a few reporters said it was unfair to extract this one sentence as evidence of weird or diminished rhetoric (though they did have the quixotic participation of Maxine Waters, who sounded like she wasn't there or wasn't listening), and indeed, having listened to the whole speech and especially the last five minutes, it's clear how unfair it was. He had acknowledged the continuing problems, but talked of substantial accomplishments in addressing them over the past two years.  His repeated refrain of "press on" was a riff on something he had just quoted. (I wouldn't be surprised if the "take off your bedroom slippers" turns out to be a quote, or a riff on one.)  And before he counselled the audience to stop complaining and get to work, he said " I don't have time to feel sorry for myself" or complain.  He said again what neither black nor white fans want to hear, that change is often slow, is often one step forward and two back, and two steps forward and one back. He reminded the audience that though he talked of hope and change, he never said change would be fast.  "I never promised easy."    

By the way, if you missed Lawrence O'Donnell's Last Word about the police riot against protestors on Wall Street--and his assertion that police violence occurs against citizens every day, and is never punished--then here's your second chance. (Although you may have to listen to some nice liar for Exxon first.)  It's pretty amazing, unless I was just having a 60s flashback... And here we are again, back at race.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.”

Henry Miller

Briefly

Cowboy Rick's poor showing in the Florida straw poll may be the first signal that he's going back to Texas.  But like everything else GOPer, that little event is bogus.  It shows the control of the Rabid Right big mouths, on line and on air.  But what could cost Cowboy Rick with the so-called what's-left-of- GOPer establishment (meaning big money not necessarily from the Kochheads) is the Justice Department stepping up and accusing Texas of deliberately designing their redistricting to disenfranchise minorities.  As Josh Marshall was right to emphasize, the key charge is "with the intention of."  Very serious legally, and toxic for the electioneers among the GOPer elite, who insist that their racism be all effect and dog whistle, with the occasional out there racist remark that gets an immediate "apology" (wink wink).  Overt and illegal racism doesn't sit well with independents apparently.  

And now for something completely different: if smart phones are so smart, why don't they come when you call them? 

War for the Future

Solyndra: it sounds like the name of a new supermodel, or perhaps a new drug you see commercials for on TV that spend half their time telling you about the strokes, liver failure and suicidal depressions you might get if you take it.  But Solyndra is a company that makes solar panels, that has gone bankrupt despite a half million from the federal government, support that began in the Bush administration but was touted by the Obama White House in their green jobs initiatives.  And so it's the toast of Fox News, and has led to congressional hearings and apparent perp walks for executives who invoked the fifth amendment.

Joe Nocera in the New York Times calls it a phony scandal.  He asserts that despite the bad images, neither of the executives has done "anything remotely illegal."  Nor had the company.  Their business failure, he asserts, has everything to do with the drop in prices of solar panels (which they built), largely because China is in this business in a big way.  With not enough big customers and no new investors, the business failed:

"Harrison and Stover are on the hot seat. Anything they say in their defense — even an off-hand remark — can and will be used against them. Their lawyers would be fools if they didn’t insist that their clients take the Fifth Amendment.
Do the Republicans know this? Of course. Do they care? Of course not. For an hour and a half on Friday morning, they peppered the two men with questions about this “taxpayer ripoff,” as Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, described it, knowing full well that Harrison and Stover would invoke their constitutional right to remain silent. Joe McCarthy would have been proud. The purpose of the hearing — indeed, the point of manufacturing a Solyndra investigation in the first place — is to embarrass the president."

It's all about anti-Obama politics, and it's all economically self-destructive:  "Over all, the American solar industry is a big success story; it now employs more people than either steel or coal, and it’s a net exporter.  But solar panel manufacturing — a potential source of middle-class jobs, and an important reason the White House was so high on Solyndra, which made its panels in Fremont, Calif. — is another story. Not so long ago, China made 6 percent of the world’s solar panels. Now it makes 54 percent, and leads the world in solar panel manufacturing. Needless to say, the U.S. share of the market has shrunk. The only way America can manufacture competitive solar panels is to come up with innovative technologies that the Chinese can’t replicate. Like, for instance, Solyndra’s."

So did the Obama administration do something wrong in backing this company?  Nocera says no:
" But if we could just stop playing gotcha for a second, we might realize that federal loan programs — especially loans for innovative energy technologies — virtually require the government to take risks the private sector won’t take. Indeed, risk-taking is what these programs are all about. Sometimes, the risks pay off. Other times, they don’t. It’s not a taxpayer ripoff if you don’t bat 1.000; on the contrary, a zero failure rate likely means that the program is too risk-averse." 

He asks whether the risk was worth taking in the case of Solyndra, and he concludes that it was, because of the industry's potential, economically for America, and ecologically for the planet's future.

GOPer zealots don't seem to care about America winning its future, if there's a chance Obama might get some of the credit.  They want to cut green jobs support.  But as Nocera points out:  the real winner isn’t the American taxpayer or even the House Republicans. It’s the Chinese solar industry."

Meanwhile, besides providing a complete timeline and description of the Solyandra situation,  Climate Progress highlights conclusions of a Brookings Report that the rest of the media is busy getting wrong, concerning the larger impact of green jobs.  For example: there are currently 2.7 million green jobs in the U.S. and the number is growing.  It is a growing sector of the American economy that cuts across all industries and occupations, and encompasses jobs requiring different skills--they aren't all college degree jobs.  And while particular segments that have green jobs have been hurt by the Great Recession,  the overall Green Economy grew during it. 

Which I guess is another reason GOPers hate it so much.  They're only for the "Job Creators" in fossil fuel industries, like the Koch Brothers---whose net worth went up by 40% in the past year to a combined $50 billion (more than the GNP of a number of entire countries, as Rachel Maddow pointed out),  while their companies have shed tens of thousands of American jobs.  With "job creators" like them, this country's economy is doomed.  Unless you count the highly paid p.r. firms and lobbyists they finance, and all their political influence peddling to make sure they make more billions for the rest of their brief lives, regardless of the consequences for the American middle class of now, and the future--no, let's say it right--The Future, because their financing of Climate Crisis disinformation is potentially that consequential.  The Future, by the way, that those solar panels may help save.

It's all part of the GOP class war.  And it's also a war for the future.

Last Week: A Warrior for the Middle Class

Standing next to a bridge badly in need of repair that spans the states represented by the House and Senate GOPer leaders, President Obama on Thursday said this: "I`m a warrior for the middle class. I`m happy to fight for the middle class. I`m happy to fight for working people."

It's a change in tone, of strategy, of tactics.  It is at last a bold rejoinder to the charge that apparently has baffled Dems for years, that they (and not the GOPers who actually are fighting and--so far-- winning it) are engaged in class warfare.  But I've been arguing that, if you were paying attention, it's not that big a change, and that there's understandable reason for tactical changes that have do to with governing, not electoral politics.

You've read this reasoning here before, but it was stated earlier this week in this way:

Today`s "New York Times" quotes White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer saying, "It is fair to say we`ve entered a new phase. The popular narrative is that we sought compromise in a quixotic quest for independent votes. We sought out compromise because a failure to get funding of the government last spring and then an extension of the debt ceiling would have been very bad for the economy and for the country. We were in a position of legislative compromise by necessity. That phase is over.

This of course doesn't stop commentators of any persuasion, some of whom may legitimately feel that there's another story, but all of whom make their considerable livings promoting themselves and their views.  It's amazing how many progressive commentators are taking credit for President Obama's recent policies and speeches.  In substance however, there's nothing new--everything he is advocating now he has advocated before.  His strategies and tactical objectives have been questioned all along, and are questioned by some even now.  But there were good reasons for those choices, even if they turned out to not always yield optimal results. Of course, it is always possible to argue that if he had pursued a different strategy using different tactics, he would have been more successful.  There's no way to prove that but there's also no way to prove it isn't true--and there in a nutshell you have the secret of successful punditry.

Time will tell more about the relative success of Obama's strategies and his accomplishments.  Much of the health care law hasn't kicked in yet.  It's very difficult to make an obvious case that had it not been for his stimulus package, things would be much worse--but those who know those numbers are quite sure it is so.  The stimulus benefited state and local governments above all, but mostly by keeping them from collapsing, from firing a lot of police, teachers, etc., but they didn't have to, so while the status quo was a victory, it's not an obvious one.

Even the deal that the White House got under the duress of the debt ceiling hostage crisis may turn out to have turned the tide of GOPer power.  Last week the GOPer House tried to force cuts in a green jobs program--for hybrid cars--to balance FEMA funding for emergencies, as part of the overall federal government appropriation.  When they couldn't get any Democrats to support it, it was defeated because the more Rabid Right members also voted against it--because it didn't cut enough.  Then they passed another such bill, which won't pass the Senate intact.  All the while claiming they wouldn't force a government shutdown--a very marked change in tone.  It could be because such a shutdown would violate that earlier agreement and set all kinds of things in motion.

House GOPers crow about President Obama's declining favorables, but theirs are in the tank--less than half of the President's.  They're on the defensive, despite the media's fixation on the President's numbers.

As for 2012, Cowboy Rick has had two universally panned debate performances in a row, while the debates have exposed the true nature of the Rabid Right, with audience cheers for the high number of executions in Texas and the death of someone because he didn't have health care, and for booing a soldier serving in Iraq because he admitted he is gay.

At the moment the same punditry that was anointing Cowboy Rick as the certain nominee is claiming that he is done.  But the next round of polls will tell that tale.  If Cowboy Rick hasn't slipped substantially, they may well be stuck with him.

Emerson for the Day

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,---
Nothing refuse.

Emerson
with flowers for Sam, R.I.P.

Here It Is

President Obama this morning:

"It comes down to this: We have to prioritize. Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount -- by $4 trillion. So what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

This is not class warfare. It’s math. The money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we’re not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit and we are trying to reach that same target of $4 trillion, then the logic, the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more: We’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor. We’ve got to scale back on the investments that have always helped our economy grow. We’ve got to settle for second-rate roads and second-rate bridges and second-rate airports, and schools that are crumbling.

That’s unacceptable to me. That’s unacceptable to the American people. And it will not happen on my watch. I will not support -- I will not support -- any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans. And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share. We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable."

Ezra Klein comments:

The White House's strategy here isn't to appear so reasonable that Republicans can't help but cut a deal. They feel they tried that during the debt-ceiling debate, and it failed. The White House's strategy here is to produce a popular plan that strikes directly at Republican vulnerabilities on taxes and Medicare. If that scares the GOP and makes them more interested in coming to an agreement in the supercommittee process, then great. If not, it gives the White House a message to base its reelection campaign off of."

And here's Andrew Sullivan's take, with the numbers made easy.

Here It Comes

GOPers are probably now beginning to realize how much they really pissed off the President when they held the population of the United States and the world economy hostage over raising the debt ceiling.  Now that this immense danger has passed and there are none quite like it left, President Obama has put forth his own agenda aggressively and effectively, and is taking it to them.

First he proposed a brilliantly conceived jobs bill, and introduced its provisions with a brilliant speech watched by more than 31 million people.  "Pass this bill" was the refrain of the speech, and has been the refrain of his speeches around the country--shortly to be repeated in front of the broken bridge that spans John Banal's district with Senate minor McConjob's state.  At a time when all of 6% tell pollsters that Congress should be re-elected.

Only then did the President drop the other shoe: he proposed to pay for the job bill by restoring taxes on the very wealthy and closing tax loopholes that favored fossil fuel companies and corporate jetters.  Two quite popular ideas with the electorate. 

And then he doubled down on that.  Last week it became known that today (Monday) he would propose a tax on billionaires and millionaires according to "the Buffet Rule" as proposed by billionaire Warren (rather than thousandaire Jimmy)--that his tax rate should be the same as his middle class employees.   Again, this idea is favored by 81% of Americans polled.  It got Paul Ryan to confirm his typecasting:   "It adds further instability to our system, more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. "Class warfare may make for good politics but it makes for rotten economics."  Yes, another case of that sophisticated GOPer technique from the poster boy for the corporate rich's class war against everyone else, "That's what you are, what am I?"  And it is the very best economics to return money to the economy that's sitting in some billionaires vault.

If that wasn't enough, there is this stunner in this morning's New York Times story, reporting on what President Obama will propose today to the congressional debt commission.  He proposes a large cut in the deficit and debt, but this graph is the attention-getter:

"In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy."

The Times' immediate if duh conclusion:

"That veto threat will put the president on a direct collision course with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, who said last week that he would not support any legislation that included revenue increases in the form of higher taxes."

There are going to be those who say that President Obama learned his lesson during the debt ceiling crisis, that conciliation is futile, etc., as if he's a six year old just learning about the playground.  President Obama sacrificed some dignity in order to prevent grievous harm to millions of people, which would have resulted from failure to raise the debt ceiling.  Now the GOPers have less to threaten the country with--or the President.

This fight is not without its risks and its consequences.  But President Obama is taking positions that are both popular and clearly useful and crucial.  He gave them the chance to do their political dances but come around to be partners in governing.  They aren't interested.  Now he's gathering political strength with the American people so that they might prevail upon GOPer politicians to do the right thing.  If they don't, the reckoning will come.

A Doonesbury series involving the new Joel McGinnis book on Sarah Palin is being censored--that is, several newspapers are refusing to run them.  So in the interests of anti-censorship and free expression, I take the opportunity of running a Doonesbury cartoon without worrying too much about getting sued.  Click on the image to make it big enough to read.

I Have a Nightmare

The new memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington has experienced a number of problems and setbacks.  Some say it is at best an undistinguished likeness, while other castigate the somewhat fake quote that is set there in stone.  There was controversy about how it was built and who built it, with allegations of near slave labor.  And of course, its dedication on the anniversary of Dr. King's March on Washington speech was cancelled due to Hurricane Irene.

But the biggest injury to Dr. King's legacy is happening in state after after across America, where the very voting rights he championed on that hot August 1963 afternoon are being wiped away for many African Americans and for others.

GOPer sponsored changes in state laws to make it harder for minorities to vote have been chronicled by Rachel Maddow for months, and more recently the subject of an excellent Rolling Stone article, and a speech by Bill Clinton quoted in that article:.    "One of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time," Bill Clinton told a group of student activists in July. "Why is all of this going on? This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate than the 2008 electorate" – a reference to the dominance of the Tea Party last year, compared to the millions of students and minorities who turned out for Obama. "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today."

Almost as disturbing as this blatant injustice is the relative quiet that has greeted it.  There have been some legal challenges, specifically by the Justice Department, but there need to be more, and they need to be a front-burner issue.  I had expected the ACLU to make it a priority, but I see no evidence of that.  There are a lot of important issues to address, but there are also priorities.  This is a real threat to the progress of democracy.  And if successful, along with other machinations and chicanery, could disenfranchise those with the greatest stake in the future.  It is racist in effect and in intent.  It must be stopped.  So forget the monuments, and remember what the struggle was for.  Because it's not over.

Climate Reality Project

Tonight in Mexico the Climate Reality Project begins its 24 hours of continuous presentations on the reality of the Climate Crisis--a new presentation in a different part of the world, as each time zone reaches 7 p.m.  It all ends with Al Gore's presentation in New York City at 7 p.m. tomorrow, September 15.  Here's the Grist explanation and tool for following it. 

I can't say I've been overly impressed so far by what's been produced as preview, but I'm not the audience for this, nor am I the demographic it seems primed to reach, with all its emphasis on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  But I'll be interested in what it comes up with.

As a preview of his own presentation, Al Gore talked to the Washington Post.  He ascribes the steps backward in acceptance of Climate Crisis reality to the very well funded disinformation campaign run by the folks who brought us smoking is good for you.  That's undoubtedly a big part of it, especially because it works with the desire in all of us not to want global heating and its inevitable effects to be true.  But the visceral violence of denial is becoming proportional to the visible signs of the Climate Crisis.  So another crisis is coming.

Gore confronts other questions in this interview, and states his reason for this project:  "But my message is about presenting the reality. I have faith in the United States and our ability to make good decisions based on the facts. And I believe Mother Nature is speaking very loudly and clearly. We’ve had ten disasters in the United States this year alone costing more than $1 billion and which were climate-related. It’s only a matter of time before reality sinks in, and we need both parties involved. And the only way to get the right answer is to understand the question."

The question about the information to be presented in these 24 hours is how to get beyond the same old same old, assuming that a whole lot of new people aren't more receptive to more of the same.  I think messages like this with something new in them would help (also from this interview):  The interviewer notes that scientists are much more willing to say there's a link between our many climate disasters and the causes of the Climate Crisis.  Gore agrees, saying:  "As scientists like James Hansen [of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies] and Kevin Trenberth [of the National Center for Atmospheric Research] point out, the changes brought about by man-made global-warming pollution have reached the stage that every event is now being affected by it in some way."

The Road to Hell

Political chatterers are talking about this piece by a former GOPer congressional staffer Mike Lofgren.  He takes aim at both parties but in particular the GOP, which he has quit because he doesn't want to be a member of a cult.  I'll have more to say about this article later.  But responding to the part of Lofgren's analysis that says that the GOP has been totally captured by a Rabid Religious Right faction, Andrew Sullivan wrote the following:

That too is my view: that the GOP, deep down, is behaving as a religious movement, not as a political party, and a radical religious movement at that. Lofgren sees the "Prosperity Gospel" as a divine blessing for personal enrichment and minimal taxation (yes, that kind of Gospel is compatible with Rand, just not compatible with the actual Gospels); for military power (with a major emphasis on the punitive, interventionist God of the Old Testament); and for radical change and contempt for existing institutions (as a product of End-Times thinking, intensified after 9/11).

His conclusion:

If you ask why I remain such a strong Obama supporter, it is because I see him as that rare individual able to withstand the zeal without becoming a zealot in response, and to overcome the recklessness of pure religious ideology with pragmatism, civility and reason. That's why they fear and loathe him. Not because his policies are not theirs'. But because his temperament is their nemesis. If he defeats them next year, they will break, because their beliefs are so brittle, but will then reform, along Huntsman-style lines. If they defeat him, I fear we will no longer be participating in a civil conversation, however fraught, but in a civil war."

This is not the only reason I remain a strong Obama supporter, but it is certainly an important one.  I think Sullivan is exactly right about Obama and about 2012.  The leading GOPer presidential candidate at the moment is Cowboy Rick Perry, the perfect combination of a corrupt big money pol and RRR zealot.  With any GOPer nominee, this looks like it's going to be a Goldwater kind of year for the GOP, on steroids.  If the election doesn't have the same resounding result as 1964, I believe Sullivan's fear is well founded.

 A set of politicians and lawmakers who deliberately set out to drive America to the bottom could not conceive of a better set of policies than are currently being advocated and engineered by the GOP.  The future is going to be tough no matter who is President.  But with Rick Perry or his RRR ilk, it's going to be hell.

Momentum

President Obama's speech on Thursday continues to signal a political change.  TPM noted that the speech (which Howard Fineman called the finest of Obama's presidency) got "an astonishing" 31 million viewers.  That's a bigger audience than watched the opening NFL game between the Super Bowl champion Packers and the New Orleans Saints, a little later that evening.

E. J. Dionne noted that the stimulus to the economy of the Obama plan would be greater than the Recovery Act stimulus, because it is more concentrated--$450 billion in one year basically, versus $787 billion over several years.  He also approved of Obama's direct call for Congress to pass the bill--indicating urgency, and congressional responsibility for doing something positive for a change.

When the bill is introduced, perhaps today, observers may be surprised how ready for passage it is, and how fast its provisions--both tax cuts (including tax incentives) and spending--could perculate through the economy.  

As for GOPers continuing to resist needed spending, Senate minor leader McConnell of Kentucky got a little extra incentive over the weekend, when a major bridge linking Kentucky and Indiana was shut down for being unsafe.  

9/11 Now: You'd Do the Same For Me

I've mentioned this phrase here before.  But this is the essay that was its origin, which I wrote in 2001, responding to the events of September 11 and the immediate aftermath.

A few days after the World Trade Center towers came down, a fireman from Michigan or some other place distant from New York City was explaining to the TV reporter why he was starting a 24-hour shift digging through the rubble: because the firemen working there and buried there were his brothers. And because "they'd do the same for me."

That phrase once before had prompted a moment of illumination for me. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, nursing a coffee one afternoon while reading and writing at a table in a restaurant in my neighborhood. I knocked a pen to the floor which was immediately picked up by a maintenance worker, a black man who I judged to be past 60 years old. As he handed it back to me I thanked him, and he said simply, "You'd do the same for me." He said it with a casual gravity, as though it was something he said regularly, but it also had the quality and weight of a personal mantra of some importance.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard it of course, but this time it hit me differently, mostly because of who said it to me and the sound of his voice. Gradually I realized what an important statement it is. It sums up entire philosophies and puts many book-length ethical treatises to shame. "You'd do the same for me" is nothing less than the basis of civil behavior, from courtesy to heroism.

By saying it to me, moreover, this man was stating both his own moral standard and his faith that others share it in the delicate informal system of day-to-day civilization. In the simplicity of this statement, in its simple assumptions, he was educating me and challenging me to rise to this standard. It is in some ways an ultimate equality, and a testament of faith in human possibility and the human heart.

I've thought about this for years. I wanted to write about it, about how I saw its truth in the ordinary behavior of so many ordinary people, there on the Murray Avenue and everywhere I traveled, and now where I live in Arcata. I confess I hesitated. I really don't need more rejection in my life, and this idea seemed so counter to the attitudes that news media, entertainment and books like to present as the prevailing one in society: Look out for number one, dog eat dog (and top dog fires disposable little dog); he who dies with the most toys wins.

And then after the shock of epic violence came the surprises of the response: not just the volunteers in the hell of lower Manhattan, but the people bringing food and flowers to them, or giving blood and contributing money when the economy is doubly uncertain, and being conspicuously kind to each other. Such behavior may be temporary, or our attention to it may be what's fleeting. And its opposite has also emerged in racist violence. But I am struck also by the biographies of the random victims in this deadly episode. So many of these people are remembered for their dedication to others, their efforts to benefit future generations as well as those around them in their lifetime.

And among them are heroes, quite probably including someone from our own community. Those who study altruism notice that people who go to extraordinary lengths to help others often don't think there's anything unusual about it. "They'd do the same for me" is the foundation of beliefs they can't otherwise explain.

That fireman's words—spoken diffidently, as if he didn't expect anyone to really understand—also illuminated a very different phrase that was stuck in my mind. I don't remember who said it but it struck me as true, though I couldn't say why: "the reason academic infighting is so vicious is that so little is at stake." In the light of those too-often repeated explosions, I realized this could be applied to any arena—business, family, politics, small towns. Compared to life and death and to our common interest in the basic behaviors of living together, the envy, betrayal, cynicism and denial that rule so often in so many arenas can't be accepted as the inevitable responses of human nature nor the unfortunate byproducts of a generally beneficial economic system. They are what some in past generations would call them: small and mean. Because most often so little is really at stake for the perpetrators, while the consequences are profound for others, and for the fabric of our common lives. In times of crisis our best instincts seem to tell us this.

All of this emboldens me to assert that "you'd do the same for me" is a mantra in the heart of millions. Perhaps they do not always hear it, or even literally believe it, but it is our common faith, the ideal we live by as citizens of human civilization. It gives new meaning to the concept of the brotherhood of man. Beyond gender, and beyond any other distinction, this is what brotherhood means.

It is not too early to say that not honoring and acting upon this impulse enough is one reason we're in this tragic mess. It isn't the only reason, I suspect, but it is one. That is not of course an excuse for violence.The dispossessed of the world have grievances against the powerful who have ignored and abused them. But our fates excuse none of us—powerful or abused—from decency in our dealings as individuals.

"You'd do the same for me" may not tell us much about those who name themselves our enemies, but it might tell us something about ourselves, and what we need to defend in our own lives together.

The Essential Obama

In his address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday evening, President Obama challenged Congress to immediately pass the American Jobs Act, which brings together bipartisan proposals which would produce immediate effects to cause and stimulate employment and economic renewal.  He will be talking about the specifics all over the country in the coming days and weeks.  (Here's Ezra Klein's breakdown of the proposals.) But his address to Congress was exceptionally clear, focused and passionate.  It was the essential Obama.

For those who missed it and want more than soundbites, here is an enhanced version which includes sidebars of supplementary information.  Here's a transcript of the prepared address.

Congressional GOPers, perhaps mindful of their 87% disapproval rate and fresh from an earful from constituents, did not dismiss the President's proposals out of hand.

Others praised the speech for its forthright passion, and for the likely effectiveness and size of the American Jobs Act itself.  President Obama began by naming the urgency: "Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that’s made things worse."  Everything he said followed from this premise.  His proposals were shrewdly targeted-- for example, the incentives for hiring the long-term unemployed, when stories have appeared that employers are refusing to consider hiring anyone who has been unemployed for six months or more.  But together they added up to a package that was broad and deep as well as specific and targeted.  The construction and repair programs are needed anyway, the President said, and now is the time to do them.  Roads, bridges, airports, schools--for now and for the future.

Andrew Sullivan: "This was indeed a speech directed at independents and also at those who fear that America is in terminal decline. It was rooted in patriotism; it was framed to portray Obama as the pragmatic centrist he actually is. And it was not dishonest - these are the choices, short-term and long-term, that we have to make. And we should not be required to wait for another year and a half for action...

Game on, in other words. Except this isn't a game. And any politician who acts like it is in the next year or so will pay a price."

And here are some of the more entertaining responses from Sullivan's readers. Along with Sullivan's comment: "He seems utterly unafraid of the GOP."

As Ezra Klein says, the ball is in the court of Congress now.  While Paul Krugman joins the conventional political wisdom that not much of it will be passed, he concludes:  "The good news in all this is that by going bigger and bolder than expected, Mr. Obama may finally have set the stage for a political debate about job creation. For, in the end, nothing will be done until the American people demand action."  Getting that demand communicated to Congress is what President Obama will be doing now. He's going to the grassroots.  That, too, is the essential Obama.

Economy

from the photonovel, Ruins of Detroit

Later today President Obama gives his speech before Congress outlining his proposals to spur job growth.  The Democrats at least are likely to keep pushing the jobs issue to the forefront, though how successfully remains to be seen.  Despite persistent high unemployment and underemployment, there wasn't a lot of prominent and consistent attention towards the jobs issue until now, as several commentators have noted.

In a way this inattention was surreal, but telling.  Apart from the attention focused on health care costs--a huge drag on the economy and the finances of small businesses and families--and apart from the distractions fomented by GOPer politicians, the seeming invisibility of unemployment pain was a reflection of the current corporate economy.

With financial corporations bailed out by huge government loans, the world economy avoided a catastrophic implosion in 2008 and 2009.  Banks and then major corporations based in the U.S. recovered quickly.  They have been rolling in cash for well over a year.  Apart from a very slowly recovering housing market (due to part to banks thwarting efforts to settle foreclosures),  the economy has been slowed by a lack of corporate investment in the U.S.



India

 That investment has gone overseas, where production is, and increasingly, where consumers are.  American corporations are prospering because they have new markets in the rest of the world, as something like a middle class grows in places like India and China.  U.S. corporations don't have to hire Americans because they can hire workers elsewhere who work cheaper, and they are closer to growing markets.  U.S. corporations don't have to worry about impoverishing a U.S. middle class, because they no longer depend on Americans to buy their products and services.  For these corporations, the U.S. supplies infrastructure, some skilled and professional labor not so readily available elsewhere (at least temporarily), and increasingly, the U.S. serves as a tax haven.  If corporations could just get rid of regulations and environmental restraints, they could complete the process of turning the U.S. into their ideal, a Third World country on a hill.

That's the U.S. economy in the fall of 2011.  It is unsustainable and it's temporary--perhaps very temporary.  Everyone knows this, or at least suspects it is.  Fear of the future may not be a conscious component of the denial that has become the increasingly aggressive posture of U.S. corporations, especially in fossil fuels.  But it is itself the fuel.


China


The resources of planet Earth cannot support a world of 7 billion people with the lifestyles of middle class Americans or Europeans.  We would need several more planets for that.  That's just the math.  If peak oil hasn't been reached already, it will be soon enough.  The global Climate Crisis is already wreaking havoc on food costs and supply, and in drought areas, even on human water supply.  Huge populations remain available for the kind of low-wage labor and virtual (if not actual) slavery that capitalism apparently demands. But wages for skilled labor will go up, and quickly approach U.S. standards.  So costs will go up for the currently deliriously wealthy global corporations.

In the short term, the U.S. economy still has a lot of residual strength.  Some of it may even spark an upturn next year.  Buried in the dismal employment numbers last month were continuing growth in health care jobs--a sign that the affordable care act is not depressing employment, and may be spurring it, as its major provisions unfold.  There are other positives that may pay off.

But that residual strength can also mask a situation that may well be worse than it might appear.  America is still awash in cheap stuff.  People don't look like people looked in the Great Depression.  They are better clothed, they have TVs etc.  Food is still plentiful, even if what's cheaply available is bloating people to a grotesque degree and creating long-term health problems.  The first visible sign of trouble now is housing, and that's likely the first to become very obvious.  We've somehow learned to live with a degree of homelessness that was unthinkable between the Depression and the 1980s.  But it could get more obviously worse.

All that Americans have to hang their hopes on at the moment is their vote, and GOPers are aggressively trying to take their right to vote away from them.  It's hard to see how an election can be really decisive, since 2008 turned out not to be.  But it was always going to take more than one election.  Then there's some hope in the demographics, which is what's driving a lot of current politics: it's the last of the white supremacists, now driving the GOP.  The economy itself may spring a few surprises, but when corporations seem so blindered that they don't care about the catastrophic future they are creating--along with the equally cynical fostering of present pain--they can't be counted on to do anything but evil.             

B.S. Detector Hits the Shelves

The beauty of Bullshit Studies is that it applies not only to the hugely pretentious.  For one thing, the Bullshit Detector would go into overload at something like the GOPer candidates debate.  No, to be a comprehensive field of learning, Bullshit Studies must also go home.

Where I am calling bullshit on three products I've used for years, which have suddenly decided, without provocation or warning, to make themselves worse.

I've been pouring a small envelope of Emergen-C Super Orange into a glass of water every morning for decades.  (In fact, if you go back even further, I virtually invented the name "Emergen-C" in a short story published in 1970 or so.  Only it was the name of a spaceship. Actually it was Emergent-C, but that's even better!)

So here's the box--with its blue border and orange center, it was a delight to look for on my shelf--it was part of the experience.  But now the bs Alacer company has gone and changed it to a bright ugly uniform sickish yellow orange box, and matching envelopes.  Plus they've changed Super Orange itself!  It's not even orange anymore.  It's yellow.  That's bullshit!  Three hems worth on the BS Detector.

I've been drinking Stash tea since I got a sample of its organic brand sometime in the 90s.  I added it to my regular breakfast (it's the next drink after Super Orange) at least a decade ago.  I alternate the selections: one day English Breakfast, the next Earl Grey, then when they run out, maybe Irish Breakfast alternating with Chai Spice.  They all came in these nice sized attractive boxes that lined up together, with the teabags accessible from a slot near the bottom.  Perfect!

But why stop at perfection when you can fuck it up?  That's just what Stash is apparently doing.  The only boxes of English Breakfast I found recently were bigger, uglier and without that slot.  The whole system is ruined.  It's bullshit!

But just to make sure that breakfast is not my only meal of the day to be ruined, there's Ovaltine.  I lost track of Ovaltine when Captain Midnight left the air, and Nestles Quick replaced it on the shelf (let's face it, Quick tasted better.)  But several years ago, when I was pondering a selection of very expensive protein health drink mixes, I remembered Ovaltine.  Okay, it may not have all those healthy ingredients, but it does have a lot--and malt alone is a significant boost.  So I started up with Ovaltine again, first as an energy drink (with milk and some protein powder, banana for body, a few seconds in the blender.)  I went as far as mixing and matching: the old basic Malt flavor, the Chocolate Malt ("chocolate-flavored Ovaltine" of my youth) and the new Rich Chocolate, which is maltless, but can be mixed with the malt flavor to taste.  Eventually it became a nighttime hot chocolate as well.

I was pleased that the label and packaging hadn't changed much since Captain Midnight days.  Then a few years ago, the brown glass container was replaced by brown plastic.  Not great, but I got used to it.  But now they're changing everything: the color (another bright yellowish monstrosity--the same color consultant as Emergen-C, apparently), the shape and the size.  And to add injury to insult, they've got an "all new formula!" for the chocolate malt--and it's terrible.  Ovaltine was never that great tasting to begin with, so the margin for error was never very great.  So now they've done this New Coke thing.  Awful!
And bullshit!  But it doesn't stop there.  In the new Ovaltine jar, there's no inner seal!  Imagine!  No inner seal to carefully tear out so you can enclose it with your quarter--I mean, how else are kids going to get their Captain Midnight Decoder Ring?  Or their Captain Future Bullshit Detector?

I'm not giving in.  I've kept a few blue Emergen-C boxes, and I empty the new envelopes into them so I don't have to look at that bullshit new package.  I am bypassing the chocolate malt Ovaltine and mixing my own using classic Malt and Rich Chocolate. I don't have a fix for the Stash packages, except to try to reuse the old ones but that probably won't work for long.  That's what makes it more than stupid, more than an inconvenience.  It's bullshit.

The End of Moderation

Human civilization flourished in several thousand years of moderate climate.  American civilization flourished with several decades--and arguably, several centuries-- of moderate politics. 

These days the weather is either very wet or very dry, though some places like New Orleans go from one to the other.  And these days politics are extreme, at least in a functional sense, or in the way that caricatures compare to paintings.

I doubt that these are unrelated.

But even in moderate political times, a little change could cause convulsions.  There was a pretty broad consensus in the Eisenhower years--a consensus foreign policy, a consensus on building the highway system, providing housing loans, on funding health and education, and on government regulating business for safety and to protect everyone (the businesses included) from the galloping perils of unrestricted and lawless competition.

But there were bitter political struggles in the Kennedy years over raising the minimum wage, over augmenting Social Security with medical care for the aged, the program that became Medicare.  And especially over segregation, integration, and equal rights for black Americans--even equal voting rights.  That alone was enough to drive some people mad with anger and hatred.

In some ways President Barack Obama has positioned himself politically in an enviable way.  His adherence to bipartisanship and to at least the explanation for what he advocates places him in the left/center to center/right chunk of the political spectrum, which should have wide appeal.  Even his full-throated advocacy for unions on Labor Day was from the premise that unions and good wages created the American middle class.

  This has forced his opponents who prefer ideological caricature to nuanced differences on policy or administration to move entirely to the extreme right.  They've gotten themselves in a small corner, as far from moderation as it's possible to be.  They are daily redefining how extreme they can be and still be taken seriously within legitimate political discourse.

But because of hard economic times--created by the GOPer presidency of Bushcheney (or Cheneybush), enforced by GOPer-supporting corporate and financial interests and a Do-Nothing but Screw Things Up Congress--the extreme Right, the Rabid Right, may take advantage of immoderate emotions.

That's not all that's involved in the current hysteria.  There's the still powerful powder keg of racism.  There's a newly hysterical greed among corporate interests, particularly the ones that see the writing on the wall of their extinction--the fossil fuel interests, but also the most abusive financial interests.  But hopelessness and fear due to an economy that corporations and financial institutions appear to be deliberately strangling are potent and unpredictable forces in the electorate.

The Left is screaming for President Obama to become FDR.  But in the 1930s there was an extreme right (to the point of Fascism) with lots of money and ignorance behind it, but also an extreme left, with several varieties of revolutionary changes that had substantial support.  And there were populisms that took bits from both extremes, and jumped wildly from one to another (Father Coughlin being a prime example.)

President Obama does not have an extreme or even a Hard Left.  Much of the time this helps him.  But there are times when it doesn't.  The Rabid Right can try to make him seem like a socialist because there are no real socialists around.

Still, there's a certain craziness that may or may not last.  I can't help thinking of Cowboy Rick, ostensibly still the governor of Texas.  Much of Texas is currently in extreme drought.  The number of extreme fires about to reach populated areas including big cities have forced Cowboy Rick off the bloviating campaign trails and back home to the range.  Whether they can force him to face reality is doubtful.  But they might suggest that to everybody else.