It's the Technology, Stupid

Within the major movement of President Obama's speech in Kansas that's the subject of the previous post, there's a more specific one that is a lesson of the past that he is applying to "winning the future."  In a way, it is what he means by winning the future.

President Obama was in Osawatomie because it was where Teddy Roosevelt made his New Nationalism speech in 1902.  It's clear by the way that Obama has known the TR speech for a long time, as it seems a source of his own rhetoric and approach--for instance in his first famous speech, to the Democratic Convention in 2004.

 TR made the speech in response to economic and social problems he saw as a consequence of income inequality and corporate domination (huge corporations called trusts.)  But both of these were partially products of the same phenomenon--one which we share now.  And it is not in itself political.  Here is what President Obama said about what TR faced:

At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: Would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were being controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because there were people who thought massive inequality and exploitation of people was just the price you pay for progress."

This transition was the result of the industrial revolution; it was in essence caused by new technologies.  Those technologies allowed corporations that controlled them, and the few who controlled the corporations, to benefit greatly, while workers did not.  The economy expanded rapidly, but since workers weren't making enough to buy enough, there were severe economic downturns, called panics (there were other causes and specific events that set them off, but this was an underlying problem.)

Though TR and others in the Progressive era began the process to institutionalize economic justice that would eventually profit the entire economy, it was only partially accomplished.  The Great War expansion and other factors created a bubble of prosperity in the 1920s, though again mostly a very small percentage--the 1%--got most of the wealth and the buying power.  By the end of the decade, the stock market crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"Seen in perspective, the Depression appears to have been the last convulsion of the industrial revolution creating a hiatus before the technological revolution," writes William Manchester in his sadly neglected historical masterwork, The Glory and the Dream.  The techniques of mass production, he continues, raised efficiency by man-hour over 40%.  "This enormous output of goods clearly required a corresponding increase of consumer buying power," but that didn't happen.  Workers weren't making more money, though they were being urged to spend more.  They did, on credit.  Sound familiar?  Enter the Great Depression, caused in part by a failure to respond to an economic problem caused by new technology.

"Today, over 100 years later, our economy has gone through another transformation," President Obama said, with reference to the time of the TR speech. "Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it’s made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere they want in the world."

And that's just for starters: once again, there is a gap between technological change and the response of the economy.  Now a rational politics (not to mention a discipline of economics not controlled by ideology and corporate interests) would see how this problem has recurred, and would recognize it when it happens--even anticipate it.  And act accordingly.

President Obama has recognized it (see? He just said so) and since he took office he has advocated and engineered programs to address it, some of which he emphasizes in the rest of this speech: education, infrastructure, innovation in new technologies, particularly in the globally growing sector of green energy.  These lead to tech jobs that pay well (and with wages rising globally, America becomes more competitive.)  All of these recognize that technology now defines and largely determines the global economy.  (He didn't mention programs like health care but they also contribute in increasing buying power for people as well as for businesses, not to mention, you know, health.)

But here's something else that isn't part of this speech, or even part of the public dialogue anymore.  Because the impact of new technology--so quickly obvious in the last couple of decades--has been clearly in the cards for a half century.  It went by the name of automation for awhile, and it was a major topic for economists and sociologists in the 1960s.  (My first paper in my freshman sociology class was about a book on automation and alienation.)  The larger problems were foreseen: more production, less work.  The current situation wasn't always foreseen: employed people working a hell of a lot more, tied to their jobs around the clock by computers and cell phones, while millions of others aren't employed at all.  So these academics worried about the increased leisure time.  But they also worried about the basic problem that always occurs, that had happened in the Great Depression when many of them were in school--when technology increases production and the economy expands, but not enough people have enough money to buy what's being produced. 

They went so far to seriously consider...well, you're not going to believe me.   You might believe me if I told you there is really a Hogwarts, or that Jane Austen really was a vampire.  But you won't believe this.  But it happened, it really did.  What was seriously considered, by mainstream economists among others, was something called the Guaranteed Minimum Income.  It was clear that a high tech economy could produce such an abundance that the economy would actually work better if everyone got a minimum living, so they could buy stuff.  Businesses would profit far more than supporting the Guaranteed Income would cost them in taxes.

There were other benefits.  Poverty would essentially be abolished, if that means anything to you.  And therefore a lot of other social costs would decline--as poverty-borne disease and a lot of crime declined.  There would also be long term benefits.  Crazy geniuses wouldn't have to starve or get wage slave jobs--they could just create and innovate, and some of their art or science or whatever might benefit society. 

In any case, there was concern that at minimum there would be a gap between changes caused by new technologies and the ability of many people to deal with those changes, especially economically.  And that the economy itself would suffer, again. So something new--something to fill the gap--would be needed.  If not the Guaranteed Income, then something else.  This was foreseen in the 1950s and 1960s, and we've had half a century to figure it out.

So here we are, having not figured it out and having apparently forgotten we even knew the problem, in a situation that includes several important features of the early 1900s and the 1930s: a small number of extremely wealthy people, and a lot of people barely getting by or not getting by.  A few pigs, and a lot of suffering.  A dwindling middle class sunk further by credit (card) debt.  Growing unemployment, including people who will not be employable again, at least not with their current skills.  Technology increasing prosperity for some, but sinking many many others.

Oh, and one more factor, which the 60s economist didn't foresee.  They assumed that strong unions would protect workers incomes, and so would society.  They may have realized that capitalism has always depended on some form of slavery, but they thought that thanks to unions and the kind of progressive laws advocated by TR and instituted by FDR, the slaves of the future would all be machines.  They didn't realize they would at first be Mexicans and then Asians, and then de-unionized Americans. 

And you can tell how sophisticated our political dialogue is about these problems by listening to Mitt Gingrich and his plans to return to the child labor of the mid 19th century. Once again, the poor and the unemployed have nobody to blame but themselves, it's all their fault.  The necessary role of government in preventing economic collapses, and in responding to technological and other change, which was largely accepted 50 years ago, is now considered an alien ideology.  As President Obama said in this speech, this is partly a consequence of income inequality--the filthy rich and their institutions are dominating and corrupting the political system, and actively destroying the resources of institutions that they see as a threat.  Beyond the bumper sticker of greed, this is a source of the growing darkness.

Fair Shot, Fair Play, Fair Share

I saw headlines about President Obama's speech in Kansas on Tuesday, so I figured it must be significant since most of his speeches are ignored.  Then I heard some soundbites on cable news, which puzzled me a little: he was saying things he'd said before, maybe a little more sharply, but in somewhat the same phrases.  So why were these shows taking precious time out from their lascivious interest in Newt Romney and Mitt Gingrich?  (It wasn't much time, of course.)

The answer turned out to be in watching and listening to the whole speech (which I did on the C-Span site, but which you can do in the post below.)  It is a one hour brief for what we need to do to create jobs and revive the American economy, and why.  As part of that argument, it is about what we should not do, and why not.  It is a speech shorn of jargon, with some cliche but basically very direct and yet pretty comprehensive.

In this post I will try to outline the basic argument of President Obama's address, that combines economics with American values, as informed by history.  In a later post I'll focus on an argument within the argument, more specific but important.

President Obama began by noting that his mother and grandparents were from Kansas, but he quickly turned this into his premise: that his grandparents, who were young adults during World War II (grandfather in Patton's Army, grandmother in war plant), were able to enter the middle class, along with millions of other Americans.

"They believed in an America where hard work paid off, and responsibility was rewarded, and anyone could make it if they tried -- no matter who you were, no matter where you came from, no matter how you started out. (Applause.) And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known...So you could have some confidence that if you gave it your all, you’d take enough home to raise your family and send your kids to school and have your health care covered, put a little away for retirement."

But over the decades, this changed, and here's as succinct a summary of what has happened to the 99% that I've seen: "But for most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments -- wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up. Now, for many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality.

But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or even sometimes understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets -- and huge bonuses -- made with other people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to look at all.

It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic security of millions of people -- innocent, hardworking Americans who had met their responsibilities but were still left holding the bag."

At this point is the part of the speech that made the soundbites, when the President called redressing this 'the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement."

He said that some (read GOPers) propose solutions that show signs of a "collective amnesia," for their solutions are to return to the conditions that caused this economic breakdown in the first place.  He will come back to this with particulars, but he identifies the difference that is a theme of the speech, which harkens back to his "one America" speech at the 2004 Democratic convention--the speech that launched his national political career.  At this point he identifies the opposing ideology as everyone for himself.   "And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules. I am here to say they are wrong. (Applause.) I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. (Applause.) These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them. (Applause.)"

Now he goes to the historic occasion: Theodore Roosevelt's speech in 1902 in this very same Kansas town in which he proposed his New Nationalism, a program that outlined much of the progressive legislation now deep in the country's fabric and taken for granted.  “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” (Applause.)

Now, for this, Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist -- (laughter) -- even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women -- (applause) -- insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax. (Applause.)

The big corporations in TR's day were called the trusts, and TR was the trust-buster, and they opposed him.  Obama links their ideology to that of GOPer politicians and their corporate masters today, through the intervening history:

"Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade."

He gets specific about the Bush era:
"Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.

Remember that in those same years, thanks to some of the same folks who are now running Congress, we had weak regulation, we had little oversight, and what did it get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity and denied care to patients who were sick, mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford, a financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.

We simply cannot return to this brand of “you’re on your own” economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. (Applause.) We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future. We know it doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens."

President Obama then recited statistics about the current level of income inequality, the largest gap between the 1% and the rest since the 1920s.  But he doesn't rely on the emotional effect.  He first makes the economic argument for why this is so damaging.  The rich spend a smaller proportion of their money.  It is what the middle class spends that generates an economy, and they can't spend what they don't have.

"Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run."

Add to the economic, the political argument:

"Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. (Applause.) It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans."

And the American values argument from before, the opportunity to make it into the middle class:

"But there’s an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try."

"It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It is wrong. (Applause.) It flies in the face of everything that we stand for." (Applause.)

The speech turns towards the positive agenda needed to create a better future.  He outlines this approach through three concepts: "... in America we are greater together -- when everyone engages in fair play and everybody gets a fair shot and everybody does their fair share. (Applause.)"

The "fair shot" involves making it possible for Americans to compete in the world economy, not by a race to the bottom (the low wage economy envisaged by GOPers, all too bluntly articulated by their presidential candidates) but a race to the top, to innovation, and high skill, high wage jobs.  (I'll have more to say about this section of the speech later.)  Government, as an expression of "we're all in this together," has its role in supporting education and fairness for individuals and families, but also in a larger sense, in creating a national economy that can compete.  As through infrastructure--here the President makes the argument for infrastructure spending not only as a win-win for meeting known needs and employing idle workers, but for competitive advantage among nations quickly improving their infrastructure to create better efficiency for businesses. 

He correctly identifies this position as one that's been mainstream throughout American history, and certainly since the Great Depression.   "But as a nation, we’ve always come together, through our government, to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed. (Applause.) And historically, that hasn’t been a partisan idea. Franklin Roosevelt worked with Democrats and Republicans to give veterans of World War II -- including my grandfather, Stanley Dunham -- the chance to go to college on the G.I. Bill. It was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, a proud son of Kansas -- (applause) -- who started the Interstate Highway System, and doubled down on science and research to stay ahead of the Soviets."

But to do this requires spending, and to pay for it requires the second factor: fair share.  The wealthy must pay their fair share.  This section of the speech isn't new, but it is a succinct summary of what he's been saying, and again it's folded gracefully into the complete argument. "We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high-tech manufacturing -- all those things that helped make us an economic superpower? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That is not politics. That’s just math." (Laughter and applause.)

His comparison of the Clinton and Bush years, which he also often makes, is more deftly elaborated:

Now, so far, most of my Republican friends in Washington have refused under any circumstance to ask the wealthiest Americans to go to the same tax rate they were paying when Bill Clinton was president. So let’s just do a trip down memory lane here.
Keep in mind, when President Clinton first proposed these tax increases, folks in Congress predicted they would kill jobs and lead to another recession. Instead, our economy created nearly 23 million jobs and we eliminated the deficit. "

Contrast this with what he said earlier in the speech about the Bush era approach: "Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security."

Then comes the third element: "Finally, a strong middle class can only exist in an economy where everyone plays by the same rules, from Wall Street to Main Street."  Here he makes his best case so far for the regulations his administration has put in place to control Wall Street and to protect consumers.  But just as importantly, he articulates the rationale for this kind of regulation:

"Some of you may know, my grandmother worked as a banker for most of her life -- worked her way up, started as a secretary, ended up being a vice president of a bank. And I know from her, and I know from all the people that I’ve come in contact with, that the vast majority of bankers and financial service professionals, they want to do right by their customers. They want to have rules in place that don’t put them at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. And yet, Republicans in Congress are fighting as hard as they can to make sure that these rules aren’t enforced."

Discussing the banks, he makes some politically blunt statements:"We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening oversight and accountability... The fact is this crisis has left a huge deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit of trust. At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis. They should be working to keep responsible homeowners in their homes."

President Obama then broadened beyond these arenas to talk briefly about individual and family responsibilities, but also about the responsibilities of businesses to their communities (a very Dickensian Christmas theme.)  He brought it back to TR and his main theme:   "We are all Americans,” Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. “Our common interests are as broad as the continent...” We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, “The fundamental rule of our national life,” he said, “the rule which underlies all others -- is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.” And I believe America is on the way up. (Applause.)

President Obama's address on the American economy, in Kansas on Tuesday.  For those who want to get beyond the soundbites, as well as the analyses in the next few posts.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

...one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure but turn out to have been the pleasure itself."

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night

War of the World

"The rise of the human neocortex is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use."---Arthur Koestler

That the international climate crisis talks in South Africa are being universally ignored in U.S. media, including the progressive shows and sites, and even including such climate sites as Climate Progress, speaks volumes not only about how unproductive these talks are expected to be, but about the dire state of human civilization at this stage in its lifecycle.

All the news coming out of the conference (which is being reported, if you look for it) is of a downward spiral of conflict.  Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy on climate crisis, is blaming China and India for not joining in binding agreements (though you know not in a bad way) so the U.S. won't either.  So-called Third World countries are blaming the U.S.( saying in an echo of charges against the Bush team, that the U.S. is not a leader but a barrier) and going after Canada for some severe retrenching from Kyoto promises, and for burying its head in the tar sands.   And the poorer countries are going after everybody, including China.   It's even worse than no new agreements. Old agreements, even promising ones made at just the last conference, are unraveling.

Meanwhile the evidence behind the scientific consensus keeps getting stronger, including a study which further confirms the determinative role of greenhouse gases--especially CO2--in heating the climate.  The news of what's happening just keeps getting worse--on releasing methane, on the warming Arctic, on rapidly degrading environmental base to human civilization and the life of the planet.

In fact, once you get outside whatever news bubble you live in--from social networks, sports sites, political porn, entertainment etc.--and click on an environmental story on say, the BBC site, you are confronted with a list of other stories that sounds like a countdown to doomsday.

Long ago in the 1890s when Darwin's work was relatively new and some Europeans were already worrying about decadence in western civilization,  H.G. Wells was beginning to make the case that the survival of the human species--or at least of civilized humanity--was going to depend on global self-government, on governing the world as a whole.  He saw even before the invention of the airplane that mechanized warfare was going to push civilization into destroying itself as long as nations pursued self interest first and foremost.

After the immense devastation of the Great War, and again after the even more widespread destruction of World War II which ended with atom bombs, the practicality of an international body governing common interests was grudgingly recognized.  But Wells was making a larger point: that in order to govern themselves as a planet, civilized peoples were going to have to think of themselves as planetary citizens.  They would have to deeply feel that war was a global problem, and so were the causes of war.

Now we face a global threat requiring a global solution, though in not such a simplistic way as an invader from another planet or a giant asteroid on its way.  The Climate Crisis requires that we understand that we are truly all in this together.

Yet at this crucial point, we aren't even at the stage of political mindset we were after World War II. In the U.S. at least there is more suspicion of international agreements and the UN that at any time in my memory, precisely when international action is most necessary.  And it will be necessary in part for exactly the same reason that H.G. Wells said.  The effects of the Climate Crisis are going to be longlived and extreme, but uneven.  There are going to be nations that are suffering from drought, and nations that have plenty of water (though maybe too much.)  And there are going to be wars over resources, which not only can have--but will have--dire effects everywhere in this delicately interconnected world, with greater vulnerability than I've ever seen thanks to our dependence on trade and transportation (and therefore energy), and on electronic communications. 

  As Todd Stern says, all these nations at the climate crisis conference are pursuing their self interests, which he doesn't find all that upsetting apparently.  A certain amount of what's going on is understandable, given the state of the world economy and the problems in individual countries, including the U.S.  But instead of so easily giving in to this, it is the time to emphasize how serious this is by transcending it.

It seems that the human mind is capable of grasping the concept of global problems, but apparently not enough minds share it, or can overcome their own darker and dumber selves.  About the only words of significance out of this conference so far that I've seen referenced came from Bishop Desmond Tutu, who called for concentrating on confronting the Climate Crisis as a moral imperative as important as fighting apartheid was. "Now we are facing another huge, huge enemy. And no one, no country can fight that enemy on his own... an enemy called global warming, climate change...We have only one home. This is the only home we have. And whether you are rich or poor, this is your only home... you are members of one family, the human race."

The statement is significant because of Tutu's moral authority in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, and his subsequent efforts in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  And perhaps for the fact that he was a voice in the wilderness at first, but that there were relatively sudden changes that ended apartheid.  Now these words, so simple and yet so scientifically as well as morally profound, are not yet heeded--perhaps not even in South Africa, where he spoke before only a few hundred people.  If time has not already run out for human civilization moving on from this level to greater fulfillment, it soon will.  Enormous changes at the last minute may still be possible, but it is far from certain that even such a fantastic turn would be soon enough.  

The Ron Paul ad attacking Mitt Gingrich.  It's now widely believed among poltalkers that the upcoming Iowa caucuses may come down to Gingrich v. Paul, although Romney is making a belated effort.  That's our political porn for the day.

You Read It Here, Now Read It There

You happy few, you happy band of readers, smaller than the Henry V army but maybe smarter.  At least you got a lead on a couple of heavy-hitter opinionaters with way bigger readerships.  To wit:

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times sez what I've been saying: President Obama's real accomplishments are being overlooked by the sometimes rabid left as well as the media, and while differences are of course legitimate, the danger is in creating such a sour mood that the President's reelection is endangered--and you really, really don't want that.  You don't want Newt Romney, Mitt Gingrich or any of the Rabid Rightists.

And Kristof makes exactly the analogy I make, maybe too often: the self-hypnotic chant of the year 2000 that there's no important difference between Gore and Bush (remember the Bore v. Gush bumper stickers?) so it doesn't matter, vote for Nadir or stay home, flip a coin, who cares.  Please, please remember how that turned out.  As Kristof and a lot of people have been saying this week, the election is a choice, not a referendum.

Kristof was on Lawrence Tues. with Tom Friedman, usually the model of a moderate business-oriented futurist.  He was even more insistent on the absolute necessity of reelecting Obama, not just for the sake of the U.S. but for the world.  He thinks there's a strong possibility that the world will face a major crisis before election day. 

The other preview you got was to the thrust of Frank Rich's piece in New York Magazine.  Frankly, for me this was validation, because I hadn't seen anyone make these connections besides me.  Rich was writing about this year's books on JFK, comparisons to Obama, etc.  He writes that JFK was getting about the same media treatment as Obama--disappointment, he should be communicating better, he doesn't work Congress enough, etc.  But the main similarity Rich sees is that  JFK was surrounded by Rabid Right hatred that led to his assassination, and President Obama is surrounded by even more widespread hatred now.  So Rich takes the assassination attempt of 11/11/11 seriously.  These are both points I've made here.

Apart from several hours of conversations on the phone and in New York over several years a good many years ago, I don't have a great deal in common with Frank Rich except experiences of that week of November 22, 1963.  We were roughly the same age, we both idolized President Kennedy, we both were glued to the TV that weekend, and we both saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot to death on live TV.  So all of that remains real to us the way such a formative experience would.  And it remains an in-formative experience. 

R.I.P. Lynn Margulis

Lynn Margulis was one of the most original, fearless and important scientists of our age.  She died on November 22 at age 73.  Here's her Washington Post obit.

She studied the smallest forms of life, and developed theories and spoke about larger issues that eventually encompassed the Earth.  In fact she formulated the Gaia Theory, along with James Lovelock.

Her most important and striking work was a modification of evolutionary theory that was considered heretical.  She particularly butted heads with Richard Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists, who saw genes as the missing element in Darwin's theory of natural selection and the origin of species by means of random mutations.  But Dawkins and Darwin and other evolutionary theorists came out of the zoology tradition, she maintained--to them, only the big organisms mattered, the plants and animals.  She studied fungi, slime, algae and especially bacteria, which comprise most of the life on the planet.  She saw how microorganisms changed by symbiosis, by an eventual mutual dependence and a kind of cooperation. More complex forms emerged from this combination, a process called endosymbiosis.  Another important element was the role of these processes that had nothing directly to do with genes.  "There's much more to life than genes," she maintained.

This cut to the heart of a larger implicit view.  The selfish gene was singular, always out for itself.  Symbiosis suggested that organisms are created and thrive by working together for mutual benefit.  Since neither of these processes is likely to be conscious on that level, these are descriptions that turn into metaphors for an approach to the world, just as theories of evolution always have.

Margulis applied her approach to humanity, and its inborn need to cooperate in order to survive.  At the end of one event captured by C-SPAN cameras she got the audience to clap rhythmically to suggest the human propensity to cooperate in the rhythm of the hunt.  Through millions of years it has become part of us--we need to breathe together.  "If we don't use both our feelings and our rational approach we can't understand this [Earth] of which we are a part."

On an even larger scale, she brought greater rigor to Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, which she defined as a set of ecosystems where the cycling must be complete.  Bacteria is as essential to life--to human life as well--as any other factor.  Diversity is not just a pleasant idea, it is how this system of systems works. And understanding this was part of her mission: to understand "how the planet works and how many people can survive on the planet at what quality of life."

From her first paper on symbiogenesis in 1967, it took some 30 years until her theories were accepted.  But she never wavered.  "I don’t consider my ideas controversial,” she said. “I consider them right.”

Her first marriage was to astronomer Carl Sagan, and several of her books are coauthored with their son, Dorion Sagan--for example, the book that brings all these elements together: Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origin of Species.        

Political Gossip Monday

Her Man Koch-Cain earned his Dreaming Up Daily nickname again Monday with seemingly airtight allegations that he's had a mistress for the past 13 years.  It's a shortlived story probably, since he's been sinking out of the GOPer prez wannabe sweepstakes, so its life will depend on prurient interest, both sexual and the kind that likes to watch car wrecks.  It's hard to feel sorry for the guy, but it's a good bet that his attempt to increase his market value by just enough exposure as a prez candidate has backfired: he got too much.  Lawrence had the most interesting story on this, though, when he claimed that Koch-Cain's long suffering wife (but how much longer?) voted in the Georgia Democratic primary in 2008.  He speculated that she might well have voted for Barack Obama, the first black candidate to have a real chance at the presidency, and if she did, she is among those black people that Her Man claimed were "brainwashed" into supporting Democrats.

So at least for the moment the GOPer race is between Newt Romney and Mitt Gingrich, and if you've wondered why Dreaming Up Daily keeps confusing their first names, Jonathan Chait confirms what is implied: "The Republican race now seems to be between Mitt Romney, the consummate establishmentarian, and Newt Gingrich, an hysterical blowhard. But if you watched Tuesday night’s national security debate, you’d never have guessed which was which."  Though Chiat's point was tht each sounded like the other used to sound (and David Letterman suggests it's easy to confuse them because Romney is the Mormon but Gingrich is the one with three wives), it ultimately supports my point within the conflict-driven horserace chatter: in policy, both foreign and domestic, they are two sad, corrupt and dangerous peas in the same extreme right pod. 

Right now Gingrich is pulling away in the national polls, and he got the endorsement of New Hampshire's largest (and extreme right) newspaper.  In one sense it's more important than the usual newspaper endorsements because that newspaper openly slants it coverage to support its endorsee and destroy his foes.  But among their past GOPer primary favorites were Steve Forbes and Pierre DuPont.  So they aren't exactly kingmakers.

Pol chatter opinion is divided on whether or how long Gingrich will last, and though it seems unlikely he will, GOPers seem hellbent on self-destruction so who knows.  Barack Obama has been very lucky with his opponents, but can he get this lucky?  Meanwhile, the Obama campaign and the DNC are wise to concentrate their fire on Romney (as in the ad above): it could weaken him in New Hampshire, favoring a weaker candidate, or it can define him before he's officially the party candidate.  Which might be awhile, even if he gets there.  Jonathan Bernstein warns that even if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, it's not a done deal, and others are talking about a brokered GOP convention to select an entirely different nominee.

While attacking Romney as a flipflopper makes sense at this point, eventually the nominee's extreme and dangerous views as well as character (Romney's spinelessness, Gingrich's erratic lack of self-control, etc.) should be the central point, the opposite of the positive case for change.  In other words, the 99% versus the 1%.
 

Emerson for the Day

"If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one."

William James
photo: Big Bend

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.