As Black Friday Goes...

from the site Pepper Spraying Cop

Who would have thought the hot product for Black Friday would be pepper spray?  Cops spraying customers and customers each other, plus tasering and a couple of shootings--all part of the ritual apparently. Can't wait for Buy Small Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Actually the fashionable use of pepper spray since the despicable incident at U.C. Davis, in heavy video rotation on the Internet and cable news, was already being satirized at the collective site Pepper Spraying Cop, which included this fake-comes-true image:

Check Wikipedia and see that this instance of Black Friday is the only one that isn't overtly (as opposed to ironically) a catastrophe. Our society's dependence on consumption is at least as dangerous as its dependence on fossil fuel, and of course the two are intimately related.  Yet it is dependence in every sense of the word.  And so this Black Friday is both different from the others and exactly the same.

Black Friday follows Gluttony Thursday, and Think Progress has two instructive notes on that: the fact that hunger in the U.S. is increasing both statistically and in plain sight, and that the cost of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is increasing--clearly related to, and as clear evidence of the Climate Crisis.

Speaking of which there is a provocative new study that suggests it may take a little longer for civilization to destroy itself, which would be good news if there seems any likelihood that the requisite action will be taken to use the time to stop it from getting worse.(Which some claim is simpler --at least in part--than generally feared.)
Meanwhile, new evidence of the oppression of the 99%: the average Bush tax savings for the 1% is greater than the average annual income for the 99%:  about $66 thousand versus $58.5.

And what's keeping things from being even worse for the 99%?  The Obama federal stimulus and its millions of jobs, the federal tax cut for the 99% and unemployment insurance, both set to expire unless this Tuesday-to-Thursday workweek Congress prevents it.  And such Obama federal initiatives as the evil health care law--evil in the rhetoric of candidate Cowboy Rick, but a great boon to Governor Cowboy Rick who has been way less than shy about claiming as much of that money for Texas as he possibly can, I reckon.   

Gratitude 2011

"Perhaps respect and gratitude are more important than we may think, ranking near the top of those modes of action we call ethics," writes Frances Cook, after describing Buddhist ethics.  Linking these--respect, compassion and gratitude--as Buddhism does, suggests that without respect and compassion, gratitude is empty, prone to be a celebration of selfishness.

There's some sense of that combination beyond selfishness in Thanksgiving traditions of family and extended family.  (I recall a few Thanksgivings comprised of a motley collection of people who had nowhere else to go.)  And in the ritual turkey dinners for the poor and homeless.  So it might be a necessary combination beyond the holiday, linking compassion, respect (for others, for the planet) and gratitude.  

I've been quoting Joanna Macy's essay on gratitude pretty much every year at this time.  Considering the news of the world these days, here are the most appropriate paragraphs:

"That our world is in crisis--to the point where survival of conscious life on Earth is in question---in no way diminishes the value of this gift; on the contrary. To us is granted the privilege of being on hand: to take part, if we choose, in the Great Turning to a just and sustainable society. We can let life work through us, enlisting all our strength, wisdom and courage, so that life itself can continue."

"The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It's like a setting or a channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what's going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. It's a stance of the soul...."

"There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it is real, offers no blinders. On the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy, it can ground us, especially when we're scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done."

Happy Thanksgiving in advance to U.S., belatedly to Canada.

Pol Quiz

Which of these news stories is not an Onion parody?
a)

For Halloween, these employees of a New York law firm that specialized in foreclosures made fun of people being thrown out on the street.  The firm has now folded and its employees are on the street.

b) Poll: Fox News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Read No News

c) Gingrich Says Child Labor Laws Should Be Rolled Back So Kids Can Be Janitors

Answer: a, b, c.

The Political Moment

A certain drama has taken a decisive turn.

 After the 2010 elections, while GOPer extremists strongarmed their extremist and anti-democratic measures in the states, the GOPer House zealots combined with the willing Congressional career GOPer tools of fossil fuel and finance billionaires to impose their extremist agenda and humiliate the President, at any cost.  They held unemployment insurance hostage.  They held the budget hostage. And finally they held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage.

The country, the world, held its breath.  No one could quite believe the true believer recklessness of the GOPer Congress.  The President of the United States had no choice but to appear calm and reasonable, in order not to spook the markets around the world into an uncontrolled panic.  He almost pulled off an enormous deficit deal that would have restored some badly needed revenue.  GOPers ran away from that, and the deal that was made seemed at the time to be all on their terms.

Turns out it wasn't.  It made budget cuts to take effect over ten years but mostly not beginning until 2013.  It set up a Super Committee charged with agreeing to more deficit reduction, with penalties if they didn't agree.  On Monday, they didn't agree.  But it turns out these cuts won't take effect until 2013, and Congress has a year to meet the deficit-cutting goal in other ways.  If they don't, there are deep cuts to defense and to domestic programs, but not to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

On Monday President Obama placed responsibility for the failure squarely on the GOPers who would agree to no new tax revenue from the very richest. (Polls show Americans see it this way.)  He said that he would not sign any bill that sought to just circumvent the mandatory cuts--that Congress was going to have to pass a real deficit reduction, a mix of cuts and new revenue.  He challenged GOPers to help pass extensions of soon to expire tax cuts for the 99%, and to extend unemployment insurance.  He challenged them to prove they cared as much about cutting taxes for the 99% as they evidently do about the 1%. 

All this comes after President Obama, no longer constrained by the threat to force the nation into default, has talked in direct terms about the need to pass what were formerely bipartisan provisions to address unemployment.  After all the complicated and muddy deficit talk, he has hammered home "Pass This Bill" (the American Jobs Act) and "We Can't Wait."  And he has named names of those who are opposing what the American people overwhelmingly want Congress to do.  All this comes as Occupy Wall Street has made the 99% a national identity.  And there was getting to be a lot of agreement to the proposition that this is the Worst Congress Ever.

On Monday President Obama continued to call for provisions of the American Jobs Act to be passed.  He also signed into law the one element of the Jobs Act that was passed--that provides tax incentives to small businesses who hire veterans.

Though it looks more than ever like for the next year we'll be gripped by the starkest showdown of modern times, the extremist positions of the Rabid Right--leading back beyond the 19th century of Dickens to the Dark Ages--are increasingly isolated.  Still, it remains a dangerous time, if for no other reason than this degree of repressed anger can explode in a destructive direction, and can still be manipulated.  But the empire of the Rabid Right is naked, and everyone can see it for what it is.

Politics of the Future

But while the politics of the moment clearly has consequences for how we confront the even larger phenomena that will more profoundly determine the future, we can't be deluded into seeing this as much more than a tragic distraction.

It's been in the wind for awhile now, that the climate scientists and others working through the UN were about to unleash some really grim news over the coming months.  In just the past few weeks and the past few days, it has certainly started.

A few days ago, an IPCC report confirming the reality and effect of the Climate Crisis, and warning that extreme weather is going to increase: heavier rainfalls, storms and droughts.

  Then Monday the UN confirmed that despite all the talk and even a little action, greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are at a record high.  Another story put it this way:

"Heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are building up so high, so fast, that some scientists now think the world can no longer limit global warming to the level world leaders have agreed upon as safe.

New figures from the U.N. weather agency Monday showed that the three biggest greenhouse gases not only reached record levels last year but were increasing at an ever-faster rate, despite efforts by many countries to reduce emissions."

Other scientists have seen the writing on the wall for months if not years.  This is official confirmation that we are not going to avoid a serious Climate Crisis, and unlike a lot we all blather about every day, these are realities that will shape the lives of billions of people, many billions of creatures and other lifeforms, over centuries, many centuries.

Another international meeting of politicians as well as scientists begins soon in South Africa.  We'll see if all this news--and there's likely to be more--is enough to concentrate the world's mind.

Emerson for the Day

"No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance."

William James

Sunday Tweets

In his second Inaugural in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke famously of "one-third of a nation, ill fed, ill housed and ill clothed."  This week the U.S. Census Bureau released a study showing that 100 million Americans--one third of the nation--is living in poverty or in "near poverty," or what the New York Times called "that fretful zone just above" the poverty line. “These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

With this in mind, judge for yourself a segment I caught on the Saturday CBS Evening News, about "successful" programs to defeat unemployment.  One example was a previously unemployed woman who now has a job at a call center, dunning and threatening other poor people who are behind on their credit card payments.  Another "success story" is a new company that employs ex-military to clean the homes of the rich.  From combat in Iraq to cleaning toilets of a McMansion.  Thanks, America.

The Occupy movement is currently embroiled in actions and reactions to coordinated efforts to dislodge their encampments in various cities.  I saw a story on this, followed by a story on a Congressional vote to defeat another infrastructure bill.  By the logic of events, it seems to me inevitable that sooner or later, all these local Occupy movements will have to go to where the fateful decisions are being made.  They are going to have to Occupy Washington.  An encampment of thousands from all over America, outside the U.S. Capitol for as long as it takes. 

As GOPer presidential primary politics becomes an ever-greater public disgrace, it seems obvious now what the outcome is going to be.  Newt Romney is finally showing his hand in Iowa and will be openly campaigning there.  He is either going to win the Iowa caucuses or Ron Paul will.  Either outcome will take any remaining drama out of the New Hampshire primary, which Romney will win, and it's unlikely that any one candidate will defeat him.  It is very unlikely that the current Mitt Gingrich boomlet will last long enough to challenge Romney, especially now that his campaign is going into high gear in the early states.

Meanwhile, President Obama is still rising in the polls. On Veterans Day he attended a college basketball game between Michigan and North Carolina on the deck of the U.S. Naval vessel Carl Vinson, reportedly in the company of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.  Now the Obama campaign has announced an "Obama Classic," a series of basketball games to raise money for the campaign, featuring current NBA stars.  And the roster just so far is impressive.

Swiftboating's Progress

President Obama addressing the Australian Parliament.   

In the summer of 2004, after the Democratic National Convention nominated John Kerry for President, a series of political ads featured someone who once served with John Kerry on his swiftboat in Vietnam claiming that Kerry's heroics were made up, and that he was essentially lying about them.  There was so much evidence to the contrary easily available to the media that the Kerry campaign ignored the charges, assuming they would be debunked or that they were so obviously and sleazily false that they would never be taken seriously by anyone, and would just fade away.

But apparently responding to the juice of controversy, the media did take the charges seriously, repeating them over and over, giving them more attention than the ads themselves.  News organizations were very slow to offer the convincing counter-evidence, which of course meant that the story would die and readers and viewers would go away.  At least that's one interpretation of their motives.

This slander now has a name.  It's called "swiftboating."  It has that name because it was remarkably successful, and politics and the media have not been the same.  Swiftboating can be identified as a Karl Rove strategy to attack a candidate's strength.  John Kerry had a compelling story of heroism in battle, the kind of story that ordinary Americans and perhaps especially Republicans might respond to.  Not since JFK's heroism saving the lives of his PT Boat crew did a candidate have such a story.  Perhaps it was even the notion that to question a war hero's heroism was dishonorable that gave fuel to the charge--because who would dare lie about that?

In the past week both Cowboy Rick and (with less notice but with more importance) Newt Romney have made the same charge against President Obama: that he said that Americans are lazy.  Some observers feel this is the kind of charge that will surface strongly in the general election campaign, as they have in the past couple of years, to reinforce the idea that President Obama is alien, not one of us, not a "real American," and someone who disdains ordinary Americans.  (This was elaborated in a slightly different way by Cowboy Rick and Her man Koch-Cain, indicating that President Obama thinks he's so smart, he's looking down at you. Rick went so far to say that Obama grew up "privileged.")

President Obama did not say that Americans are lazy, but then again, John Kerry really was a hero.  But before we get to the media response, let's deconstruct these assertions a little more.  The more general impression fed by this particular lie is that Obama is alien, which reinforces the notion that because he is black he is not a real American.  Glenn Beck was much more straightforward when he said, not that Obama disdains real Americans, but that he hates white people.  Not every racist GOPer wanted to hear those words said out loud, and maybe they can't even say them to themselves, but that's what this "real American" thing is about.  This is further reinforced by the very word "lazy."  The lazy black man is one of the oldest racist stereotypes in America.  So how dare that black President say that white Americans are lazy.  As for Obama being privileged, he clearly was not--unless of course you don't believe anything anyone has ever said about him, including the state of Hawaii on where he was born.  But that doesn't matter.  The point is to reinforce the accompanying racist notion that Obama was privileged by affirmative action.  He was given a free ride into the best schools because he is black.  And because of those high class schools, he arrogantly thinks he's smart.

So far there has been a markedly different media response to specifically the Cowboy Rick charges.  After it had been reported in the marginally objective way by, for example, NBC's First Read, the cable talkers had at it.  Black commentators pointed out some of the racist dog-whistle subtext.  Several shows demonstrated how out of context the lazy quote was by playing it in context (It turns out that President Obama was saying "we" meaning U.S. government and businesses that weren't promoting investment in the U.S. as assidiously as they should.) By the time the evening came around, Lawrence O'Donnell was lifting the words "Americans are lazy" from these Republican candidates in the same way they had lifted the words out of context from President Obama, to make the point.  Print outlets like the NY Times also made this point.  By Friday, shockingly, even Bill O'Really at Fox was questioning Cowboy Rick about it.

What's changed is partly institutional.  There are places like factcheck.org that are quick to analyze statements, and news organizations find them credible enough to quote.  There is also, paradoxically, the rise of Fox "News."  For years Fox News looked like the future of cable news.  It apparently caused CNN to dismantle itself as a mostly news organization.  Everyone was running scared in the direction of Fox's "conservative" orientation because it had the largest audience.  But as Fox became more brazenly and obviously partisan and ideological, MSNBC discovered--almost accidentally--that an audience that had nowhere to go, was ripe and ready for progressive political shows.  This was discovered by means of the mildly progressive political segments of Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" which started out with the countdown gimmick of rating the day's events in terms of outrageousness, and at least half of which was devoted to exploring comic events and videos. Olbermann also found an anti-Fox audience by going after Fox's O'Reilly, often on O'Really's distortions.  Thus accuracy as a progressive media value was born as part of the brand.  Then as Olbermann became more outspoken--especially with his "Special Comment" segments--his ratings and visibility shot up, and the MSNBC of today was born, as a progressive counterpart to Fox, minus the actual Fox lying. 

As this was going on gradually, very quickly the blogosphere was morphing and consolidating, and a few sites were growing into powerful institutions.  But while the most prominent of the early political blogs were Rabid Right, the progressive blogosphere became dominant.  So now there is progressive synergy--not so much with talk radio (though there is more progressive talk radio than before)--but with the big progressive blogs and MSNBC as well as particular journalists for newspapers, magazines and TV--media companies.  So the model now is someone like Howard Fineman, who moved from print to the AOL-Huffington Post conglomerate, partly due to his prominence on MSNBC shows, beginning with Keith.



President Obama in Australia with its prime minster 

 This clearly does not mean that swiftboating, along with other slanders, won't be prominently attempted.  Nothing much is beyond the pall now.  For example, Cowboy Rick was making his statements that further impugned President Obama's ability to represent the United States with foreign powers, at a moment when President Obama was abroad, representing the United States.  Until very recently, it was considered dishonorable and unpatriotic and actually dangerous to criticize the President while he was on foreign soil, and no official of either party ever did it, or ever got away with it.

Whether swiftboating in 2012 can be as effective as it was in 2004 is still an open question.  But so far it seems that it won't go forward so easily through a gullible and disconcerted media--or more to the point, through a media that has no identifiably progressive element in its audience.

Rabid Right Zealot Arrested for Attempt to Assassinate the President

Update: This story broke Thursday afternoon.  By Thursday evening, nobody was even mentioning it on the political cable shows, at least that I heard.  By night it had completely disappeared from the google aggregator--the top story was the possible reopening of an investigation into the death of Natalie Wood.

This is a mistake.  The attempted assassination of a President, no matter how half-assed, is important.  If for no other reason than these things tend to happen in bunches.  You can go back to the JFK assassination and see how some half-assed attempts on public figures were given short shrift in the media, and turned out to be precursors. The shooting of Gabby Giffords and the others who were shot to death that day should have shocked this country, but it didn't really.  This is another event that should be taken much more seriously.  

A Rabid Right religious zealot has been arrested for attempting to assassinate President Obama.  Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is believed to be the person who on 11-11-11 shot a semi-automatic assault rifle at the White House, where a bullet is lodged in a window in the area where the First Family resides.

President Obama and Mrs. Obama were not in Washington at the time.  There's no word on whether the Obama children were in the residence, or other family members.

The alleged shooter considers President Obama the anti-Christ.  Not too hard to figure out where he got that idea.  Nor is it difficult to figure out how he got his hands on a semi-automatic assault rifle for his attempted Second Amendment solution. 

The Secret Service and other agencies are reportedly "reviewing" security procedures.

Tweets Tuesday into Wednesday

Tuesday's Rachel on Occupy Wall Street here, here and everywhere was terrific.  And kudos as well to revealing coverage of fracking, the consequences of no effective regulation on health, despite the ads that precede videos from the show defending fracking.  The fracking exploitation is a textbook case of the 1% increasing its wealth and avoiding the consequences (by being able to afford to buy clean water) by endangering and in some cases condemning members of the 99%.  In my original part of the world we've seen it with coal for decades.

Cowboy Rick and Her Man Koch-Cain have proven themselves incompetent.  Newt Romney daily proves his reckless disregard for the truth, by any definition.  Now climbing in the polls is Mitt Gingrich, whose sneers only partly obscure his most persistent quality: as a serial liar. 

Our massively unpopular GOPer Congress at work: Presumably too busy organizing insane legislation like declaring pizza sauce a vegetable for school lunches, House Speaker Banal couldn't spare the time to visit Member of Congress Gabby Giffords during her long hospitalization after being shot by a Tea Party assassin, even when he was conducting state business at a basketball game in the same town .

Here in Arcata, the Buy Local movement is a longstanding tradition.  Interesting that today I saw so many ads and promos for Buy Small Saturday, urging consumers to shop for Christmas on Main Street--but not asking for too much, like forsaking the malls on Black Friday.

President Obama is in Australia, where he has a friend.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Not unfortunately, the universe is wild--game flavored as a hawk's wing.  Nature is miracle all; the same returns not, save to bring the different."

Benjamin Paul Blood

How to Deep Six Your Own Movie

So how was your weekend?  I watched DVDs.

Bill Nighy turned some more heads in the U.S. last weekend with his starring performance in the David Hare directed and written Page Eight, seen here on PBS.  This was his best starring role-- better than the also political TV film, The Girl in the Cafe, which was more brilliant in part perhaps but uneven.  Nighy is best known however for his scene-stealing smaller roles, notably in Love Actually but he's added unique moments to films well known ( in the Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter series) and not so well (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.)  One of my favorite of his performances was in a Richard Curtis film called Pirate Radio over here, and The Boat That Rocked in the UK.

The subject is pirate radio in the late 60s in the UK, a fascinating bit of history that seems incredible now--(yes, Virginia, rock music wasn't allowed on Brit radio and was played only from ships broadcasting from outside the territorial limit) and it's done with high 60s Richard Lester style and reverence for rock music. It's not for everyone but  I loved it when I first saw it on DVD.  The DVD also offered the Deleted Scenes--the longest set of deleted scenes I've ever seen, accompanied by the director's doleful commentary on what he cut out and how maybe the movie would have been better received with these scenes in it.

Apparently the movie didn't do well.  And now that I've seen it for the second time, he's right to be doleful.  This is the only case I know of where the deleted scenes are the most memorable. Literally, they were the ones I wanted to see again. There are at least three sequences that are as good or better than what's actually in the movie (actually more like five or six), and a couple of them are classic. There are even a couple that pay off a running joke (one with Bill Nighy.) It's just stunning.

It occurs to me that among these photos from this movie, I should include one of Bill Nighy. Here it is.

     

11/11/11

Veterans Day in the U.S. seems to have gotten the media attention, but the date of 11-11-11 did not go by unnoticed.  It was a popular date for weddings in Vegas, and babies born today (especially those at 11:11) became temporarily famous. The number was so popular in the day's lotteries that several states put caps on them.  A number of rumors involving arcane rites that might be conducted at the Great Pyramid because of the date caused Eygptian officials to close it for "necessary maintenance."

Then there are supposed connections of 11-11-11 to the Mayan Apocalypse of 2012, but don't expect me to explain it because I can't.  (Here's an attempt I still don't understand.)  What all this does seem to show is the power of the "Immediacy Media" (a term I just made up) of Facebook, Twitter etc. to conjure a global phenomenon out of thin air.

Sunshine Today

Update: The postponment of the pipeline approval is official now, and attacks have already begun from GOPers on the issues of jobs and energy.  They are also asserting that this was a decision based on electoral politics.  With his crowing of victory, McKibben is playing into that perception.  It's worth mentioning that though the President made the final decision, the recommendation to postpone came from the State Department.  They want to consider all the factors.  From their statement: "After obtaining the additional information, the Department would determine, in consultation with the eight other agencies identified in the Executive Order, whether the proposed pipeline was in the national interest, considering all of the relevant issues together. Among the relevant issues that would be considered are environmental concerns (including climate change), energy security, economic impacts, and foreign policy."

While I've joined in the call to stop the pipeline, I recognize--as apparently environmentalists who seem capable of congratulating only themselves do not--the other considerations, and the questions that have not been answered.  One of these has to do with the impact on the Climate Crisis, if Canada decides to exploit their resource anyway and sell the energy to China.  I'd like to hear that addressed.  And it would be nice if the Obama administration got a little credit for taking the political heat for pulling back from a project that at least looked like it could generate jobs in hard times.  



Several news outlets are reporting that the Obama administration will postpone a decision on the tar sands pipeline from Canada for at least a year, which means among other things until after the election.  It will still probably emerge as a campaign issue but not as prominently, and perhaps a better final decision can be made outside the heat of that kind of politics.

Meanwhile, progress towards ending such dependence on fossil fuels continues.  California has passed a milestone in solar energy--one gigawatt installed, joining five entire countries in solar capacity.   Paul Krugman has added his economically inclined voice to, well, mine, in championing solar energy as the energy source of the present-becoming-future:

"We are, or at least we should be, on the cusp of an energy transformation, driven by the rapidly falling cost of solar power. That’s right, solar power. If that surprises you, if you still think of solar power as some kind of hippie fantasy, blame our fossilized political system, in which fossil fuel producers have both powerful political allies and a powerful propaganda machine that denigrates alternatives."

Which of course the Koch Brothers are all about, and the GOP, which is a mostly owned subsidiary of fossil fuel industries.  Krugman points out that one of the fossils with a new look--fracking--violates the principles that GOPers chant incessantly:

"So it’s worth pointing out that special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government “pick winners,” yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner."

But despite the fossils who prevent the scale of investment in solar energy that a sane nation would insist on, the cost of solar energy is dropping rapidly and Krugman writes that it won't be long before electricity generated by the sun will be as cheap as that generated by coal.  That of course won't stop the fossils from pouring their billions into disinformation and worse, but it will persuade the 99%.

Hope is On the Way

 It's the morning after election day 2011, and the news could hardly be better: Ohio voted resoundingly to repeal the GOPer anti-union law. Maine voted to repeal a GOPer law that ended same day voter registration, by a wide margin. Mississippi voted down the bizarre but dangerous amendment that would have declared a fertilized egg a person, taking anti-abortionism into Orwellian territory.  And in a very conservative state, it wasn't even close.  Arizona voted out  the author of its anti-immigrant law.

It's almost exactly a year until election day 2012, and it's game on.  Voter anger and disgust with the GOP is strong and getting stronger.  There's more evidence that Americans believe that GOPers are subverting the economy for their supposed gain, while independents and moderates are on the President's side.   While Occupy Wall Street has shifted attention to the banks most responsible for the ongoing economic downturn and its injustice, President Obama has shifted the debate from deficits to the crisis in jobs, and he's rising in the polls.  Another court victory upholding the Affordable Care Act may yet contribute to more approval for what should have always been a popular achievement.

 So that means game on, and this tremendous change in the zeitgeist means among other things that the Obama campaign can focus on making the choice clear, and the consequences of electing GOPers who are committed to policies and attitudes that would further wreck the present and bury the future, making Herbert Hoover confronting the Depression look good in comparison.  That's the implication of the video above, and it should to be thrust of the campaign against Newt Romney, the likely GOPer nominee--not on his flipflopping as on his actual very scary proposals, as per this post.  It should also encourage President Obama to be even bolder.

Wall Street Week

The momentum continues, and the movement flowers.  Given the amount of time I can spend on following it, I'm always behind.  So here are a few notes.

First, on the various urgings for people to move their money out of the big banks and into smaller community institutions, especially credit unions.  First there was Bank Transfer Day, which got the attention of Forbes,  and which Kos judged a great success.  That was actually more than one day, but it ended this past weekend.  Another action was Tuesday: Dump Your Bank Day, which got the Monitor's attention.  The numbers are impressive so far, but the power of it may be even more in what it says about support for other actions and proposals.

Like the financial transaction tax, which also goes by the name of the Robin Hood Tax--a very very small tax on all financial transactions that could yield amazing amounts of money for all kinds of good things.  When I posted that great Bill Nighy video that explains it with very droll comedy, I thought it was mostly a British and European idea.  But according to Rachel, not so.  The U.S. actually had such a tax, from around World War I to the late 1960s.  President Obama and his administration considered it in 2009 and almost proposed it--and still are interested in a more targeted version, on big banks.

Last week, primarily union folks (including a lot of nurses, see photo above) through Occupy, marched on the U.S. Treasury building to demand just such a financial transaction tax. Two Democrats filed a bill to impose one.  Among its supporters is Bill Gates.  But there were sufficient complications that the G20 didn't endorse one.  Still, it's a live idea.

As for Occupy, there are signs that it is both a movement that is developing targeted direct actions, like preventing a foreclosure or keeping the heat working in an apartment building.  But at the same time, it is incubating a subculture--one that seems naturally committed to non-violence and participatory democracy, which is requiring improvizations and inventions, but also focus on serious things.  It is a wonder to watch.   

Emerson for the Day

“There is no worse enemy of God and Man than zeal armed with power and guided by a feeble intellect...The great lesson of history is to keep power of life and death away from that kind of mind, the mind that sees things in the light of evil and dread and mistrust rather than that of hope.”

William James

The Pipeline to Oblivion

On Sunday, reports Think Progress,"more than 12,000 people from across the United States and Canada gathered at the White House to call on President Obama to stop the TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. After a rally in Lafayette Square addressed by elected officials, youth climate activists, environmental leaders, climate scientist James Hansen, religious leaders, Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, Naomi Klein, and local opponents of the pipeline from South Dakota, Texas, and Nebraska, the boisterous crowd formed a human chain that completely encircled the White House."

Meanwhile, Politico suggests that many expect President Obama won't make the final decision on the pipeline until after the election, probably citing environmental concerns that must first be addressed.

Still Crazy: Dick Gregory at the Sunday demo

There are other environmental issues involved--and that's the problem, there always are--but a major one is the accelerating effect on the Climate Crisis.  Well-funded denialism is one big problem to confronting this.  Ordinary, natural, 'I-don't-want-to-contemplate-the-end of life as we know it so let's obsess on Kardashians' denial is another.  A third is crappy communication--dumb media, environmentalists and scientists who can't say anything clearly or in a compelling way.  Perhaps a combination of all of them explains why manifestations of the Climate Crisis right now either don't get attention in the media at all or for very long, as well as not being reported as manifestations of the Climate Crisis.

 This becomes really obvious when such manifestations happen far, far away, or to mostly poor people of another race.  Places like Thailand, where more than 500 people have died in flooding that has resulted from unusually heavy and persistent rains.    

Waking Up to the War on Voting

The so far successful legislative efforts in a number of states to limit voting rights had gone virtually unnoticed for months, except for a few voices, notably Rachel Maddow.  So it's fitting that her show be quoted announcing that Democrats are finally paying attention, and starting to do something about it.  (Note by the way in her script below the phrase "vote anyway.")

Dems in both the House and the Senate want to hold hearings.  But more substantively (from the Maddow transcript of Thursday): 

"Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison todayintroducing two new bills. One would allow you to register and then vote on the same day in federal elections. The other bill from Congressman Ellison would ban states from requiring you to show photo ID when you vote, since millions of eligiblevoters in the country do not have photo ID.

Also in the Obama re-election campaign, signs that they are taking seriously these Republican laws to make voting so much harder in 2012. The Wall Street Journal" reporting today that President Obama`s former White House counsel, a big powerful, big deal of a lawyer named Bob Bauer,is heading up efforts to battle back the Republicans on this with a multi-pronged effort that includes stopping these laws when they can be stopped and helping voters targeted by these laws figure out how to vote anyway though it has been made so much harder for them.

That the White House picked a lawyer like Bob Bauer shows that this drive to protect voting will not just be a matter of educating people about what ID they need and how to get it. The White House picking its own chief lawyer shows it is ready to bring serious legal muscle to this."

"What do you think, Barack?"

So here's a line leading a Reuter's report on the financial crisis in Europe that caught my eye: "Use the Reuters Breakingviews stress test calculator to calculate how the Target core Tier 1 capital ratio and sovereign haircut levels affect the amount of capital banks need to pass the stress test."

Right.  Well, apart from George III instructing his barber to take a little off the sides, I have no idea what a sovereign haircut level could mean.  So I have no idea what's actually going on in the European debt crisis, except that if it isn't solved, it could mean another recession in the U.S.

President Obama was in France meeting with European leaders on the crisis.  Apparently there was a deal in the works that fell apart at least temporarily due to more problems in Greece.  President Obama had expected to be on hand to express support for the done deal, but as it turned out he became an advisor to the European leaders.  He essentially chaired a panel discussion, and offered advice based on U.S. experience with the banking crisis of 2008-9.  According to an aide, the leaders wanted to know "What do you think, Barack?"   Regardless of the ignoramuses who think America leads with bluster and intimidation or is weak, this indicates actual respect for our President (though they are certainly mindful of U.S. economic power.)  Partnership and mutual respect-- the way to a better future.

As to what actually did and didn't happen at the G20, this Monitor article seems a decent summary.

KochCain: It's Official

“I’m very proud to know the Koch brothers... I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother.”

Herman KochCain
11/4/11

We Really Can't Wait

I've just started reading a 1984 science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson called Icehenge.  The first section (which in many ways seems a clear forerunner to his Mars trilogy) is set in 2248, and has the common glitch of futures written then of referring to the Soviet Union.  But it also mentions an earth troubled by resource depletion, environmental and political problems due to the burdens of a population of six billion.

And in the real world of November 2011, Earth's human population reached 7 billion.  It is the burden that is least talked about by environmentalists and politicos alike--the very definition of that wearisome cliche, the elephant in the room.  It is the elephant, and the room.

It's a major factor in how hard it is going to be for the planet to respond to not only dwindling fossil fuel and the consequences of immense environmental poisoning and other destruction, but to the Climate Crisis.  

It took about 24 hours for the environmental community to pick up on Politico's report of some surprising statements by President Obama, pretty much stating an environmental case against the oil pipeline, the Keystone/oil sands project that Bill McKibben and other Climate Crisis activists have been agitating about for weeks.  So in the past couple of days a number of stories about it have emerged, in the mainstream press as well as enviro sites like Real Climate.   So whatever is going to happen now, is not going to happen quietly.  Update: I forgot to note that McKibben's group and allies are converging on Washington this Sunday, and asking supporters to join them. 

The Real Climate piece again quotes James Hansen as saying this pipeline will mean "game over" for attempts to limit the effects of the Climate Crisis.  But then there's this story, indicating that despite all the talk and so-called treaties, the amount of greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere jumped significantly in recent years, so that their concentration in 2010 is higher than the worst case scenario of climate experts four years ago.  That's not encouraging, let alone good news for attempts to save the planet from our worst.

Though there's been little doubt in the science--the case only getting stronger and more detailed--the media has waxed and waned on the facts of global heating.  In view of that recent study, more media outlets have seized the opportunity to call it settled.  One predicted phenomenon that follows from this may also be gaining credibility: that extreme weather is becoming the new normal.  All of this as folks are getting wind of a very grim IPPC report in the works.  The Climate Crisis is going to drive the future, and even though it's pretty scary--even paralyzing or surreal to consider--it's much better to recognize this now instead of when panic sets in.

We Can't Wait

While the political media obsessed over GOPer entertainments that will soon be forgotten, President Obama has continued his relentless Pass This Bill campaign to build public support for action to create jobs and help the country come out of this recession stronger than when it went in.  Three sections of his original jobs bill have been reintroduced separately, and all three stopped in the Senate by unanimous GOPer opposition to even discussing them.  The latest was Thursday, when the Senate by a 51-49 vote, stopped consideration of a bill that would immediately hire workers to rebuild American infrastructure, basically because it would be paid for by a .07 tax increase on the very few Americans who make more than one million dollars a year.  Supporters by the way were the 51--they had a majority to pass the bill, but not the 60 required to override the GOPer filibuster.

Why Congress is so intent on protecting the 1% became clearer with this chart introduced Thursday: it's because an awful lot of Congress is among the 1%.

At the same time, President Obama began his We Can't Wait initiatives, attacking some of the most pressing problems with executive orders, wherever possible.  The President took some administrative steps to make it easier for hard-pressed Americans to re-finance their home mortgages.  He announced steps to help returning veterans to get jobs in community health.  He announced several changes to help students deal with crushing school loan debts.  Although none of these are large-scale solutions, each one of them will make a big positive difference for at least some thousands of people.  (We Can't Wait, by the way, was also the title of a book by Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Polls continue to show that on his job proposals, the American public is strongly on his side.  These efforts tend to get lost in the media frenzy and the political spin on everything (the irony being that MSNBC spends more time talking about GOPers than Obama by a factor of ten, and despite their oppositional slant on everything Obama, FOX actually spends more time reporting what he actually says and does.)  

But GOPer congressional intransigence is not going by unnoticed.  How about this for a poll in Florida?  Very close to a majority believe that the GOP is deliberately sabotaging the American economy for political gain. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly writes: "Here’s a suggestion for other pollsters: given these results in one of the nation’s largest states, and the fact that the charge has been made by so many prominent political voices, perhaps it’s time to start putting the question to a national audience?"

This is the Washington element shaping the future.  But in these volatile and chaotic days, much is happening outside Washington with just as much power to shape that future: in Oakland (where the Occupy actions get larger, wider and more significant), in Ohio (going to the polls to vote on a union-busting law) and right now in Europe, where President Obama meets with leaders who must steady European finances or else plunge themselves into another recession, taking the U.S. down with them.

Then there's what's happening to the planet: subject of the post above.

JFK and Obama

Chris Matthews has been aggressively shilling for his new book, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.  And shamelessly, using major amounts of time on his own show to do so.  That's an observation, I don't actually know how I feel about it.

But to pump up interest in the book, Matthews has been making a lot of comparisons between JFK and President Obama.  Some of his points are interesting and worth checking out (when quantitative), others are interpretations that seem at least partly colored by his admiration for JFK.  Not surprisingly, he thinks Obama is no JFK, particularly in his personal relationships with other politicians and media figures.  At times he seems to be saying that President Obama is too aloof.

Well, the two American Presidents of my lifetime that I admire the most are JFK and Barack Obama.  As Matthews must surely know, JFK was criticized in his time for being aloof, distant, too cool for school.  (And people were forever saying that what he needed to do was communicate better with the American public, and/or resurrect FDR's New Deal programs.)  Whereas President Obama gets tagged as "professsorial,"  JFK was supposedly too "reserved" and intellectual--not the gladhander his brother Joe had been, for example.  Teddy was the one who was said to have the people skills.

On the other hand, I marvel at President Obama's enthusiasm and warmth in dealing with people.  It's evident to me that he's a tactile person--he always has his hands on someone's arm or shoulder.  Compare him with eight out of ten American men, and he scores high on people skills.  President Obama is especially good with ordinary people in a way that the "reserved" JFK could not match.



Caroline Kennedy with Michelle Obama
in the White House this week.

 As for all the other ways Obama doesn't measure up to JFK (as it was said that JFK didn't measure up to FDR), I offer one compelling piece of evidence: the Kennedys.  Caroline Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy, Bobby's wife, the wife of the sitting Republican governor of California-- almost the entire surviving Kennedy clan were way out in front in embracing Barack Obama, and making the analogy of Obama to JFK (Caroline Kennedy did so explicitly in a New York Times oped.)  It was the Kennedy imprimatur that propelled Obama through some tough primaries.

These are different times--even more different than JFK's 60s were from FDR's 30s and 40s, in political terms.  I don't see that much increased chance that President Obama would be getting his jobs program through the GOPer House if he just played cards every night with Eric Cant.  So while Matthews makes some good points about Democrats who should be publicly supporting the President better, I just don't buy the idea that if Obama were more like JFK he would be so much more effective. Nor would he be cruising to reelection.  (By Matthews own admission, JFK didn't believe he was cruising to reelection in 1964 either.)  Matthews' book sounds very interesting, but I favor the Kennedy family's judgments about JFK and President Obama.

Circus News

It's hard to even summarize the past few surreal days in the GOPer presidential race.  The Herman KochCain sexual harassment story is still evolving (as are his answers), but it obliterated the more immediately substantive story of improper campaign funding, involving the Kochs.  Whether KochCain survives all this long enough to start losing primaries is still an open question, but it does look like the already tanking Cowboy Rick is done (despite all his money), since he stuck a fork in himself with his bizarre speech in New Hampshire.  He was either drunk, high on something else or helplessly coming out.  These guys are giving new meaning to the title of a 1980s book by Neil Postman: Entertaining ourselves to death.

Meanwhile Newt Romney has performed his most obvious flipflop to date, which gets no points for grace but full points for sheer effrontery.  He merely states now that he has no idea what causes climate change, whereas just a few months he stated with the same baritone sincerity that he believes it's real, it's caused by human industry and cutting greenhouse gases is a responsible task.  Yet it seems more likely than ever that he's going to be the GOPer nominee.

Folks handicapping the 2012 presidential race this far out are themselves engaged in entertainment only.  If the American economy is currently hostage not only to souldead GOPers in Congress but to European politics or even Greek politics, there are just too many factors.  However, pundits like Chris Matthews have narrowed the possibilities to a close election with either Obama or Romney winning, or a GOPer blowout.  The one alternative off the table as far as they are concerned is an Obama landslide.  Heh heh heh.  You guys.  Maybe Americans will be more mindlessly angry and scared than smart on election day 2012, but there is a clear path for the Obama campaign to turn this into a rout in their favor. 

Who has a better chance to fix the economy?  Most people agree with President Obama's ideas. All he needs is a Congress to pass stuff.  Romney's ideas will make matters much worse, and most people know that.  He's running as a slick Herbert Hoover.  The contrast between President Obama and Romney could itself be decisive.  What the polls say now is one thing.  Pennsylvania for example went for Hillary over Obama in the primary, but they went for Obama in the general decisively.  Two candidates.  Pick one.  After a campaign focused on the choice, this country could very well do what it did before: elect Obama in a landslide.

Occupy This

So what Occupy Wall Street firebrand just said this:

"Our Congress today is a forum for legalized bribery. One consumer group using information from Opensecrets.org calculates that the financial services industry, including real estate, spent $2.3 billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990 to 2010, which was more than the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined. Why are there 61 members on the House Committee on Financial Services? So many congressmen want to be in a position to sell votes to Wall Street.  We can’t afford this any longer."

Yes, you guessed it--it's that well known radical, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

Because you know (from watching Fox and listening to Rush, and nothing else) that this radical movement is all about class warfare (i.e. Marxism) and socialism, especially when they propose to tax the obscenely rich a bit more.  Of course this tax increase on the wealthy is supported by two-thirds or more of the public, including (it now turns out) about 68% of the millionaires who would be the target of the millionaires tax.

GOPers scream at being accused of deliberately subverting the economy for political gain.  Well, it's either that or they are too stupid to read economic reports, which show that the jobs being shed are mainly government jobs thanks to their stupid economic theories (stupid because they demonstrably haven't worked) and stupid policies in Washington and in the states (though its cupidity as much as stupidity, of course.)  The latest example being the jobs that will be lost thanks to their federal spending cuts that they claimed would create jobs.  A quantitative assessment from the Center for American Progress figures that these cuts will result in the destruction of 370,000 more jobs. 

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, 1883
engraved on the Statue of Liberty
Happy 125th Birthday, Lady Liberty!

What's Really Happening (Maybe)

Applying some educated intuition to stories from here and there, on three topics:

Iowa GOPer Caucus

One of the Iowa conservative leaders says he doesn't feel strongly enough about any candidate to endorse.  Meanwhile a Tea Party leaders calls on Michele Backmann to drop out.  Taken together what they mean: unless Teaevangelists coalesce around one candidate in Iowa very soon, Romney is going to win it.

The U.S. Economy

While the major media narrative remains the same, there have been signs of economic improvement, most recently of a higher than expected--and normally respectable--economic growth rate.  The conventional wisdom is that nothing will lessen the unemployment rate before the election enough to matter.  But a feeling that the economy is growing might--and it might even be Wall Street that gets behind it.  Why?  Because of Occupy Wall Street and all the support and attention it's getting.  That support may generate interest in the efforts of the New York and Delaware Attorneys General to investigate Wall Street and the mega-banks chartered in their states, which so far has drawn the often prescient attention of Rachel Madow.  How do they get the public view turned away from them?  A better economy.  Whether that motivation is enough to sway them from the temptation to try to get a wet dream deregulatin' GOPer in the White House by cooperating in keeping the economy weak, remains to be seen.  But actually promoting a better economy to lower the temperature and get eyes off them is a possibility--especially if Occupy Wall Street and jobs remain a hot focus, and the GOPer presidential field continues to look so weak than their efforts on their behalf wouldn't make a difference anyway.

Climate Crisis Denial

The most recent study once again proving that the planet is getting warmer has gotten a lot of attention, probably because it convinced at least one prominent denying scientist.  But the economically and politically  motivated professional deniers just go to the next of four levels.  First, prove to our satisfaction that the earth is heating.  Second, prove to our satisfaction that this heating is caused by industrially produced gases--i.e. that it's "manmade."  Third, prove that it's going to get so bad that we have to do something preemptive about it.  Fourth, prove that your solutions, like green energy, will work.

It's taken at least 20 years to win the first argument, if it is well and truly won now.  The pros are moving on to the second.  So this is not much of a victory, if we continue to insist that we have to convert deniers before we do what's necessary.

Meanwhile, Cowboy Rick has announced a jobs program which is all about extracting more oil and gas.  If this gets traction, it's very dangerous.  If there's any hint of public acceptance of this premise, it could doom efforts to influence the Obama administration to stop the oil sands pipeline from Canada, an issue which is otherwise gaining strength among the environmentally conscious.  I don't think activists appreciate the political risk in stopping the pipeline, though I support stopping it.  It vivifies an issue for the GOPer candidate--it puts a name on the abstractions of too much environmental regulation, etc.  Just about the only hope is that authentic polls show that voters aren't buying the "drill our way out of this" strategy.  Beyond electoral politics, it's hard to say no to something that will create jobs, especially if "safety" isssues are addressed.  Unless opposition coalesces around the longterm Climate Crisis catastrophe with enough clarity and force to make it real.  Or--even better--unless opposition can show that the promised jobs won't materialize.