Political Climate Crisis

The reality is undeniable.  According to the World Meteorological Organization of the UN, last decade (2001-2010) was the warmest globally since records began in 1850.  Nine of the 10 past years are among the 10 warmest all-time.  Global land and sea surface temperatures are 0.46 C above the longterm average. That 10 year period was "marked by extreme levels of rain or snowfall, leading to significant flooding on all continents, while droughts affected parts of East Africa and North America."

All of this was predicted by the models based on global heating.  The science based on research of thousands of years of physical evidence (ice cores, etc.), and the basic physics of what happens when greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, they all agree. 

But there are still those who deny the undeniable.  Why?  Apart from other explanations (including psychological factors explored here in the "climate inside" series) that he doesn't contradict, Chris Mooney offers his perceptions.

First, he suggests that denial is shrinking--and getting more specific.  "The denial of global warming is no longer mainstream within corporate America or the fossil fuel industry, then—and that can only be considered a major achievement. And yet at the same time, it is stronger than ever among Tea Partiers and the Republican Party itself. And this fact—that these traditional industry allies have themselves diverged with industry on the matter—surely demonstrates that this is not really a live scientific issue any longer. It is a political issue."

But why?  Corporatist GOPers, not hard to figure out.  But the Rabid Religious Right?  The Tea Partisans? Mooney's answer:   "To understand how to ultimately defeat climate denial, you first have to understand what it is: motivated reasoning on behalf of individualist values. What this means is that libertarian types—often white and male—who have decided that the climate issue is something that environmentalists concocted to impose global socialism will come up with any reason to attack the science that their minds can create. And the human mind can create an awful lot of reasons. Especially among the intelligent."

This is at least a rationale that is of a piece with a lot of other related rhetoric.  It relates to a suspicion of anything big, government or corporations.  And the most important part of it is the suspicion that the cost of efforts to end greenhouse gas pollution will fall on the individual, not corporations or government.  It will be individuals (and families) who will have to do without, and pay more for getting less.

This is an analysis that absolutely has to be kept in mind in crafting specific solutions. There is no doubt that the deck is stacked against the 99%, and it is stacked at least partly by corporate power through government.  That it gets confused and conflated with socialism, totalitarian world government, oppression of white people, etc. does not completely invalidate this perception.

Mooney goes on to suggest that the way the Rabid Right denialism will lose its political potency is when something like Cap & Trade becomes a reality, becomes the new normal.  He suggests that even as early as this summer, if it is as hot and ripped with violent weather as previous months suggest it might be, the political will to do so may start coming together.

We'll see about summer and how it plays into this Big and possibly Fatal Choice election, but I have my doubts about his analysis of how denialism will dwindle.  I think immediately of the Affordable Care Act, and how denialism of a different kind, and virulent political opposition, has not abated much since it was passed, and has begun to become part of the new normal.

As big a political factor as denialism is in the United States, it is not the only factor in the failure to confront the Climate Crisis.  This detailed report based on tapes made in meetings of world leaders during the Copenhagen climate summit provides a pretty clear picture of the geopolitical barriers:  besides the U.S. political lacunae, there is the desire of developing countries (China and India especially) to keep on developing unfettered by carbon limits (at least until they've cornered markets on green technologies.)  Only Europe had the political will to set limits, and who knows if even European nations would be so unified today. 

Update: On precisely this topic, nations again fail to agree on action, with pretty much the same dynamic.

Another bit of perspective is gained by Joshua Green, who points out that without the GOPers rampant misuse of the filibuster over the past three plus years, we would be living in a different America, the first part of which is especially relevant to this theme: "Had the filibuster not applied, the United States would have a market-based system to control carbon emissions, which would limit the damage from global warming, vitalize the clean technology sector, and challenge other large polluters like China and India to do the same. The new health care law would have a public option. Children of undocumented immigrants who served two years in the military or went to college could become US citizens. Women paid less than their male colleagues because of their gender would have broader legal recourse against their employers. Billionaires would not be able to manipulate the political system from behind a veil of anonymity. 

Dozens of vacant judgeships would have been filled. The Federal Reserve would have operated with a full slate of governors, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond. Elizabeth Warren would be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not a candidate for the Senate. And Mitt Romney would be paying a higher tax rate than the 13.9 percent he shelled out in 2010, since a provision to end the carried-interest tax break wouldn’t have died in the Senate. (By my math, that filibuster saved Romney $1,480,000 in 2010 alone, the difference between the 15 percent he paid on $7.4 million earned in carried interest and the top marginal rate of 35 percent.)"

                  I still believe in global warming.  Do You?

Lives of Quiet Inspiration

We may think about what would happen in our lives if a sudden disaster strikes.  Much of the dread associated with apocalyptic scenarios assumes the worst, not only in what happens, but in how people respond.  But real situations don't always turn out that way.  In fact, they usually don't.  In this speech to the Joplin High School Class of 2012, a year after the catastrophic tornado there, President Obama describes the values that help get a community through, both in general terms but most tellingly in the specific case of Joplin.  He returns often to the theme of how these values are imprinted on these students because of what they've experienced there in the past year. 

"As you begin the next stage in your journey, wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing, it’s safe to say you will encounter greed and selfishness, and ignorance and cruelty, sometimes just bad luck. You’ll meet people who try to build themselves up by tearing others down. You’ll meet people who believe that looking after others is only for suckers. But you’re from Joplin. So you will remember, you will know, just how many people there are who see life differently; those who are guided by kindness and generosity and quiet service."

" And so, my deepest hope for all of you is that as you begin this new chapter in your life, you’ll bring that spirit of Joplin to every place you travel, to everything you do. You can serve as a reminder that we’re not meant to walk this road alone, that we’re not expected to face down adversity by ourselves."

"Yes, you will encounter obstacles along the way," President Obama concluded.  "I guarantee you will face setbacks and you will face disappointments. But you’re from Joplin and you’re from America. And no matter how tough times get, you’ll always be tougher. And no matter what life throws at you, you will be ready. You will not be defined by the difficulties you face, but by how you respond -- with grace and strength and a commitment to others."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.”

Northrup Frye

Photo: by Jason Major in Texas--one of many of the annular eclipse of the sun on Sunday.  It would have been visible here except for our customary North Coast cloud cover.  There was some eerie light at dusk, though.  I imagine this is what it would have looked like, on the top of the hill leading down to the Arcata downtown, as the sun set over the bay.

Whither the Weather?

With some of the hottest winter and spring months on record in the U.S. just behind us,  these forecasters say we're in for a hot summer.  Their methodology and predictions are a lot more limited than the headline suggests, but the dryness of soil bumping up the temps by a degree suggests how many "small" effects combine to create a cycle that feeds on itself.

Here on the North Coast, by the way, the pollen is so heavy that people who care about such things can't keep their cars clean of it.  More to the point for me, there are more and more severe spring colds that are exacerbated by hay fever.  I'm just coming out of one myself, and I hardly ever get colds.

In Climate Crisis news,  a new study concludes "A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change."  This is about the ability of mammals (large and small) to migrate when conditions threaten them.  Apart from the specific animal species ability--which is usually greater than human animals would predict--the barriers are the cities and highways in the way.

One of the fears about Arctic melting is the possible release of methane gas, a very potent greenhouse gas which could accelerate the Climate Crisis beyond current predictions.  A new study shows evidence of methane release in various Arctic locations.

Another study looks at an area where Climate Crisis models predict changes, and those changes are happening: the salinity in the oceans.  The effects of these changes are what the models predict: dry areas getting drier, wet areas getting wetter, which in addition to longterm effects translates into longer and more severe droughts, and more floods.

Meanwhile, fire season in the West started early--for example, in Arizona (above photo.)

Any good news?  Yes. Power generation from carbon-spewing coal in the U.S. has fallen 19% in one year.  But the Obama initiatives to replace coal with green energy may founder as GOPer Congress threatens federal tax breaks for green industry.  Although not of course subsidies to oil and coal.

Good News from Gee, Ate

Good news from the Gee, Ate meeting at Camp David.  Seriously.  President Obama announced that the European emphasis is shifting from austerity to jobs and economic expansion.  He noted that the path of encouraging growth while working on reducing longterm deficits has been his own policy, and left the conclusion to observers who might note that the U.S. economy is growing while Europe mostly isn't.  Unemployment in some countries is 20%--for young men, 50%. 

We'll see if policy follows but if it does, it is a test that European democracies pass--the ability to change to avert disaster, which doesn't seem within the capabilities of the U.S. political system at the moment.

Paul Krugman is among those who warned of such disaster if Europe--especially Germany--remains stubbornly committed to austerity, though in recent days he seemed fairly confident that they would be able to contain the Greece situation.  I expect he'll see this as an unexpectedly good sign, provided there is something more than rhetoric behind it.

If Europe averts crisis and the brightening prospects of defusing the Iran situation move towards fruition, then the major drag on the American economy comes from the GOPers and their wealthy supporters who want the U.S. economy to be as bad as possible.

President Obama also announced progress on combined plans to confront the Climate Crisis.

A little media note.  When the President made his statement today, the networks didn't carry it; MSNBC was in prison, CNN started it late and cut it off abruptly, apparently afraid of their viewers attention span--they had to get back to rerunning segments from Friday.  Only FOX news carried the statement from beginning to end, and did a fair summary afterwards.

Update: Here's a more detailed story from the NY Times.

Coming Soon? Computer Generated Hate

When the Times broke the story of the Ricketts Rev. Wright project, and it was repudiated by Ricketts and Romney hours later, it seemed like it could be a one day story.  But it was still alive on Friday and is to be a topic for the Sunday mostly Republican white guy talk shows.  It's being kept alive primarily by FOX News, which I should have realized would happen, because I happened to catch a reference to it the evening before the Times story broke--so the plan to bring it up as a campaign issue was obviously coordinated.

One part of the Ricketts proposal that caught my eye and I haven't seen commented on: the centerpiece of the project was to be a five minute "unusually unique" film (their words), which would not use mostly old footage like most political ads but new footage shot in high definition which would utilize "face replacement technology" to place President Obama's "computer-generated face on the body of a similarly sized actor."

In other words, the film would not just tell lies, it would lie with the images used to tell them in an unusually unique way.

For example, the sample script makes the point that instead of helping the economy, President Obama devoted his time to starting expensive unnecessary socialistic Obamacare. So in one scene, a "proud struggling family" would be shown in front of their house, as "BO" strides by, pushing a gurney, and smiles at the camera.  The family looks on in disgust. (It's on pages 21 and 22.)

As far as I know, this level of deceit hasn't yet graced a political ad, but its potential is clear.  Shots of tornado and hurricane victims, and there striding through the devastation laughing and singing an Al Green song is "BO."   And look--who is that in the first row as Reverend Wright shouts about goddamning America? And smiling too!

Of course, as the proposal notes, face replacement technology is expensive.  Good thing these guys have unlimited funds to go with their complete lack of ethics.

A Cautionary Tale

The revelation on Thursday of the plan to cause the "demise" of President Obama with a $10 million smear campaign has obvious racial elements, and I do think the media is a bit naive thinking it wouldn't work.  It wouldn't work with everyone, but older white male voters who fancy themselves Independents are more than susceptible, with older men in general and older white women in the mix.  As I've pointed out before, racism is already coded into the GOPer campaign.

But even if this line of attack has been blunted by the Times story, the actual document the Times links to online shows the dangers ahead in detail: the kind of thorough, managed blitz in various forms through all the relevant media that ten million dollars can buy.  The purveyors were especially hot on using Twitter to start a firestorm, and the irony for the moment is that a Twitter firestorm is what got the whole thing collapsing within hours of the Times story hitting the wires and the streets.  But the danger remains---there are billionaires willing to pour millions into these efforts, and p.r. whores as well as ideologues ready and willing to put them into play, regardless of how lying, crazy and mutually assured destructive they are.

We can be grateful to whoever leaked this, and to the NY Times for breaking the story.  There's some hope in that.  But the money has just started to talk--or swear. 

The Bully in the Bully Pulpit?

The Dreaming Up Daily Quotes

"So don’t accept somebody else’s construction of the way things ought to be. It’s up to you to right wrongs. It’s up to you to point out injustice. It’s up to you to hold the system accountable and sometimes upend it entirely. It’s up to you to stand up and to be heard, to write and to lobby, to march, to organize, to vote. Don’t be content to just sit back and watch.

Those who oppose change, those who benefit from an unjust status quo, have always bet on the public’s cynicism or the public's complacency. Throughout American history, though, they have lost that bet, and I believe they will this time as well. (Applause.) But ultimately, Class of 2012, that will depend on you. Don’t wait for the person next to you to be the first to speak up for what’s right. Because maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting on you."

"My last piece of advice -- this is simple, but perhaps most important: Persevere. Persevere. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Noone of achievement has avoided failure -- sometimes catastrophic failures. But they keep at it. They learn from mistakes. They don’t quit."

President Barack Obama
Barnard College graduation
May 14, 2012

And congratulations to the Class of 2012 everywhere

The Monster in the Room

Another way of looking at the reaction to change (see previous post)  is in terms of the principal emotions it engenders.  For some, change represents opportunity, or simply the wonder of the new.  For others it represents danger, a threat.  The emotion it stirs is fear.

Fear is immediate and can be overpowering.  It is meant to motivate--to escape the danger, or to fight off the threat, with little time for thought.  But it can have other effects, especially if the fear is not responding to a threat that is seen and heard.  To a threat that is anticipated, imagined.  Then the reality of the threat is questionable, its imminence and proportions open to being minimized or greatly exaggerated.  Sometimes the response is denial, sometimes paralysis.   If the threat is abstract enough and far enough off in time and space, then denial and paralysis can become rationalized.

ABC News science reporter Bill Blakemore posted a commentary he titled "Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)"   I've written several posts about "the climate within" on some conceptual tools for understanding responses to the Climate Crisis.  But Blakemore is writing about a specific response to the Climate Crisis, not by denialists or the polled public but by climate scientists and officials.  He reveals:

"Global warming’s “risk to the collective civilization” (meaning global civilization) has been continually spoken of in secret or unofficial or private conversations among engaged climate scientists and government and policy leaders around the world.  Such terms — catastrophe, threat to civilization itself — have been commonplace in carefully worded private discussions among peer-reviewed experts that this reporter and other journalists have often experienced and sometimes engaged in."

But this isn't how many of these people have talked in public about the Climate Crisis.  Blakemore says why:  "Careful not to prompt destructive panic, nor to lose credibility, responsible experts have been careful to temper their public depictions of what the world’s climate science has been revealing about the worst effects — if humanity does not handle the problem immediately — of the rapid climatic and oceanic changes already under way."

Or more specifically:  "A few years ago, this reporter heard a prominent climate and environment scientist speaking at a large but off-the-record conference of experts and policy makers from around the world.... He told us that he and most other climate scientists often simply didn’t want to speak openly about what they were learning about how disruptive and frightening the changes of manmade global warming were clearly going to be for “fear of paralyzing the public.”

But Blakemore is writing about this now because he sees a change.  "References in some media to looming catastrophic consequences of climate change seem to this reporter to be more frequent."  My presumption was that recent research, particularly in the polar regions, has made this clearer and more urgent, but Blakemore suggests there is another reason, which he explains with the metaphor of hugging the monster:

“Hug the monster” is a metaphor taught by U.S. Air Force trainers to those headed into harm’s way.
The monster is your fear in a sudden crisis — as when you find yourself trapped in a downed plane or a burning house. If you freeze or panic — if you go into merely reactive “brainlock” — you’re lost. But if your mind has been prepared in advance to recognize the psychological grip of fear, focus on it, and then transform its intense energy into action — sometimes even by changing it into anger — and by also engaging the thinking part of your brain to work the problem, your chances of survival go way up.

Blakemore suggests that while scientists and officials have been getting used to hugging the monster in their discussions with each other, they are now going public because it's necessary for society as a whole to hug the monster or perish.

Besides officials and scientists, Blakemore also include journalists among those who have been reluctant to talk about the extent of the threat.  He points to a recent article in the New York Times about the possible consequences of the Climate Crisis as one of the indications that reporters as well are ready to hug the monster in public.  "As a growing number of professional journalists around the world are finding, the story of manmade global warming (and the other evil twin of excess carbon emissions, the rapid acidification of the oceans) is unprecedented in its scale, almost “too big to cover,” and frightening. But there are now signs that, little by little, voices and personalities are beginning to emerge around the world who are starting to hug this monster, manage the fear, and turning the emotions it causes into action."

Blakemore quotes a book on the psychology of survivors in life-threatening circumstances: " Survivors aren’t fearless. They use fear: They turn it into anger and focus.’ The good news is that you can learn to subdue the monster and extinguish some of the clanging bells. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Indeed, with enough hugs, you can even tame the beast and turn him into your best friend and most dependable ally.”

Blakemore's article is an important one, and certainly worth reading in its entirety.  It calls for more courageous reporting, and it ends with a "to be continued."  But even in these excerpts, its revelations are huge.  So are its challenges: applying the lessons of survivors of immediate situations to this different order of threat--another way of saying what's always been the challenge here: humanity's opportunity to take a leap forward by anticipating and dealing with a threat to civilization before it becomes simultaneously obvious and unstoppable.

But to circle back to this issue in the context of fast and pervasive change: for people who fear (with some degree of justification) that their way of life is being destroyed by change, there could not be a bigger change than this.  Gay marriage won't mean much in this world.  Plus the dogmas they cling to either discount the possibility of the Climate Crisis, or see it as God's will, as the Final Judgment, as the Apocalypse that will end all this change, forever and ever.   

USA 2012, An Explanation

What can explain this country today?   Issac Newton + Alvin Toffler.

Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock in 1970.  Future Shock is "too much change in too short a time."   It leads to disorientation and dismay.  Remember, that was 1970.  Things were changing--in some ways, we haven't had a more intense period than 1968-1973 since.  But in general, things are changing more and faster--and future shock is a permanent condition, which I experience as moments of anxiety in a vast sea of numbness.  As fast as technological change was in those days, it seems to be much faster now.  And if not a lot faster, social change in a country with roughly twice the population is probably more intense for a lot of people. 

I first encountered Newton as a cartoon figure in a Disneyland episode on space travel.  He intoned the principle used in rocketry: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Put them together, and you've got the USA 2012.   This theory of cultural physics explains the force of reaction by--well, they aren't called reactionaries for nothing.  By the measures of 1970, change is faster, more pervasive and complete, and to this action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  So by the measures of 1970, political and cultural conservatives are more extreme, and religious conservatives are back at least in the 19th century and heading back fast towards, well, Newton. 

So in 2012 we have politicians who are to the right of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Christian churches without a trace of the 20th century.  But the reaction is not exactly along the timeline--it's towards certainties, which are almost always divorced from complex realities.  Certainties in a time of change.

This doesn't mean that the opposing forces are Progress versus Regression.  Yes, a lot of progress has been lost and the forward momentum in some areas has been slowed, stunted, maybe stopped. But essentially this is a reaction to change--change with no identifiable direction to it, except to threaten the status quo.

Another sense of the status quo is homeostasis, the means by which an organism regulates itself and its environment as far as possible, to stay the same.  A threat to that is a threat to life, at least until the change can be assessed, absorbed, accommodated.  Which takes time.

There isn't enough time in this twitterverse.  Technology is assaulting every aspect of our lives at almost every instant, on the scale of tiny devices and global corporations than can eat us alive in the blink of an eye.  In fact, we have every reason to be afraid.   Not that clinging to dogmas and guns will help.  But it does help to explain things.

Toffler + Newton= USA 2012.          

For Your Urgent Attention

First Bill McKibben and his 350.org sounded the warning, and organized demonstrations opposing the pipeline from Canada, but for all their claims, their main issue--the catastrophic damage to the climate future that exploiting the Canadian tar sands would do--was lost in the general environmental uproar.  In the end--at least as I read it--the Administration's stopping the original pipeline had more to do with environmental fears along its proposed route: insufficiently investigated threats to water and land, for instance.

But now the other American heavyweight on the issue has added his even more prominent voice.  In an oped in the New York Times, "Game Over for the Climate,"  NASA scientist James Hansen wrote:

 "If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."    

Hansen reinterates the Climate Crisis facts, noting that we are experiencing the weather he predicted we would at this time--a prediction he made in 1981.  He calls for leadership, and calls out President Obama.

The power of this statement must not be lost in the ozone of the twittercycle.  Hansen has focused the argument and others must repeat it--not with cute images or generalized slogans but with precision, power and repetition.  So far there has been nothing that has focused attention on this issue for very long.  This is another opportunity.  Now that President Obama has led on marriage equality, this must be the next issue to assume its rightful prominence, its urgency.

And not just in the United States.  This is also a Canadian responsibility--and a global responsibility. 

Vicious

The Washington Post report on Mitt Romney orchestrating a bullying assault on a younger student in high school, and the subsequent ABC report, reveal a character flaw that is shocking but frankly not surprising.  It showed the callousness one could sense behind his apparent cluelessness, and is further evidence of his assumed rich boy/rich guy entitlement.

   His leadership in a cruel and (in the word of one of the others involved) "vicious" attack when he was 18 is bad enough.  But his response to it when it was revealed on Thursday was even more telling.  He didn't repudiate it, expressed no shame, expressed no sense of having learned anything, and (as Jonathan Capehart pointed out on Lawrence O'Donnell) didn't use it to condemn bullying now--which is a much-discussed epidemic, particularly victimizing gay and lesbian teens.  It is no wonder that the incident and his response sickened Matthew Shepard's mother.

Romney led a group of bullies, including a wrestler who helped hold down the crying boy--who remembered his fear for years--while Romney himself cut the boy's offending hair with scissors.
That Romney claimed not to remember the incident, and that he classifies it as possibly a prank that went too far, is in itself enough evidence.  It was an assault that everyone else involved remembers clearly.  It apparently was a memory that the victim took to the end of his troubled life.

Romney tried to defend himself Thursday by saying he did not think at the time that the boy involved was gay, partly because in the 60s, there was little such awareness.  Talk about missing the point.  I was in high school then, and I had no concept at all of what homosexuality was, or who might or might not be one.  But I knew about a gang of stronger preying on a single weaker victim.  Every boy knows this, and has had multiple opportunities to sort out a response by the age of 18.  In my high school I saw it happen when a group of football players were "teasing" a terrified classmate, who was what would today be described as a geek.  And I intervened.  But if I hadn't, I would know today that I should have.

Perhaps Romney is so comfortable in today's GOP because it has become a party of bullies, whose House representatives spent their Thursday voting to cut food stamps, Medicaid and other programs essential for survival of those not smart or hardworking enough to be born a Romney.  Because the United States is too poor a country to share with the most vulnerable those resources that are needed to give tax breaks to the richest corporations and the richest people in the history of the world.

  Taken together, Thursday's revelations are to my mind disqualifying. Mitt Romney is not simply the lesser choice between two presidential candidates, or even a castastrophic political choice. Mitt Romney is not fit to be President of the United States.  And the GOP is a gang of thugs, supervised by gangsters in suits, and funded by criminal billionaires.

It Bends Towards Justice

Hours after the super-swing state of North Carolina voted for a state constitutional amendment that stripped all legal rights from same sex relationships, President Barack Obama became the first President of the United States to state his support for marriage equality. 

He did so in an interview with ABC reporter Robin Roberts (photo.)Contrary to the Fox drone, he had previously stated his belief that the North Carolina proposition should be defeated, his administration had stopped legally defending the anti-same sex marriage federal law, and he had from the beginning of his term set in motion the procedures that culminated in the end of discrimination in the military against gay and Lesbian participants.  So there was no clear political need to state his support for same sex marriage.  He framed it in the context of conscience.

In an email sent to his supporters later on Wednesday, he said:  "I've always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.  But over the course of several years I've talked to friends and family about this. I've thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I've gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.

What I've come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens. Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn't dawn on them that their friends' parents should be treated differently.  So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry."
He added: "I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them."  This 'states rights' aspect of his position on a matter of civil rights remains troublesome, but it is for now a practical compromise.  For as many commentators pointed out, this position is on the right side of history. The arc of the moral universe is bending. Younger generations support it overwhelmingly.  It's going to happen.

But it has an effect now.  Its effect on the gay community I leave to Andrew Sullivan and others to describe.  But empathy suggests the good it will do.

Its political effect on this year's election is more ambiguous at present.  Remember--President Obama did this in an election year, without clear indication that it will be to his political benefit.  It could energize the Rabid Right, not terribly in love with Romney.  Rachel Maddow showed just how extreme GOPers have become in trying to deny rights and oppress gay people, especially on the state level.  

 It may have consequences in swing states like Ohio, Virginia and particularly North Carolina, where the Democratic convention will be held.  It is not supported by many in the African American and Latino communities. 

But this is not the first time that Barack Obama has defied conventional wisdom. There were those who said candidate Obama should not touch the subject of race in his campaign, before he gave the speech on race in Philadelphia that elevated his candidacy.  He was urged to repudiate his Chicago pastor and he didn't do it, he only repudiated some of his pastor's statements.  Then when his pastor continued down that road, he did cut off all ties, and the issue disappeared.  When John McCain said he was suspending his campaign because of the financial crisis and Obama's advisors wanted him to do the same, he refused, saying a President has to do more than one thing at a time (you know, like tell jokes at the Correspondents Dinner while going after bin Laden.)

Now he has done this, and we'll see if the doomsayers are right about the political costs.  Right now the effect is electric.  A huge surge of energy is moving through the Obama campaign.  One of the first statements in praise of his stand came from independent New York Mayor Bloomberg, who had previously said he didn't yet know which candidate he would endorse. Other Democrats who had been circumspect on the issue were free to speak their mind.  Even some non-Democrats, including the Romney foreign policy advisor who became former because he's gay. Even a Fox commentator. 

For those who fear the response from the black community, I'd like to think this is a moment of moral leadership that the black community will follow.  For those who were afraid that the enthusiasm and idealism of 2008 wasn't going to be repeated, well--don't be so sure.  Sometimes it takes a lightning bolt to start a fire.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"His thoughts sleep not.  Yet thought that wakes
In sleep may never meet another thought
Or thing...Now day-break comes."

Wallace Stevens

painting: Vincent Van Gogh

Dark Thoughts

After reading a little of Bernard Shaw on the years leading up to the Great War (and later, some of Don DeLillo's least popular novel, Ratner's Star, which posits--not for the first time--that the humanity we know now de-evolved from an earlier state of development)  I had these dark thoughts, these ugly analogies, to that arc of time...

Germany was an imperial power in the late 19th century, ruled by a plutocracy.  After a long and costly and futile war that everyone saw coming and everyone knew was going to be ruinous, there was a brief period of democracy and progressive government, bedeviled by economic Depression, an angry public looking for scapegoats.  There was a simultaneous atmosphere of giddy excess, modern civilization and political extremism, particularly on what we would now identify as the right.  The Nazi Party kept chipping away at the republic's legitimacy, with a set of ideas that might well be described as fundamentalist, racist and reactionary but promising moral certainty, and restoration of national glory--i.e. getting our country back.

Many Germans could not believe that their country would ever take the primitive Hitler seriously, until he was elected.  And then they couldn't believe the Nazis would actually do what they had claimed they would do, and a lot they had said of course they wouldn't ever do.  Then they did it all.

The dark thoughts were of course that after our plutocratic empire had its futile wars and crashed the economy, this might be our American Weimar.  That the Rabid Right likes to throw around the Hitler and fascism labels doesn't inoculate them from those analogies.  Whoever said "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" (it apparently wasn't Sinclair Lewis) may have had it right.

Probably the most unsettling question about how the American public will respond in this election is how important the factual turns out to be.  On Tuesday, a number of new Etch-a-Sketch moments emerged.  In addition to claiming he would have gotten bin Laden too, Romney claimed credit for saving the U.S. auto industry.  On the economy, President Obama pointed out that in previous recessions--including those under GOPer Presidents Reagan, Bush I & II--government employment grew.  Only during his presidency has government employment fallen--because the GOP Congress won't allow this government to employ this now-traditional remedy to ending high unemployment. 

Will that fact matter?  Will it matter that under President Obama, the U.S. economy has recovered ALL the private sector jobs lost since he took office?   Or even that nearly 2/3 of the private sector job growth since 1960 has happened under Democratic Presidents?

Several pundits opined that the calculation of making false claims, obvious and not --along with the aggressive lies that those millions of dollars in unmarked bills can pay to repeat endlessly--is that just enough people will believe them (or one or two of them) in the swing states like Ohio to throw the election to the GOP.  Which as Tuesday's election results in Indiana and North Carolina show is emboldened in its increasingly extreme agenda, detached from reality in ways that will only cause pain, tragedy and chaos. 

Which was bad enough in the bloodbath called the 20th century.  But in this crowded and dangerous world, with this civilization apparently unaware of the fragility of its current existence,  and particularly with the Climate Crisis on the doorstep,  there does not appear to be time for another lost decade.    

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“Psychology, so dedicated to awakening human consciousness, needs to wake itself up to one of the most ancient human truths: we cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.”

James Hillman

photo: one of many of this weekend's "supermoon"photos, focusing the optical illusion of a rising moon magnified by the moon's unusual proximity to Earth.

That's Baseball

Sunday I watched a little of the San Francisco Giants baseball game on TV.  Maybe it was the first actual game action I watched this year rather than just highlights but it suddenly became more than this game.  It was every game.  I felt how deep baseball and I go together.  I've seen major league games in several ball parks in several cities.  I've seen minor league and amateur baseball.  I've seen the game from the field, wearing a uniform, on the pitcher's mound.  I've seen some of my best-remembered games in my head, listening to voices on the radio.  My experience with no other sport matches this extent or this depth.

After the San Francisco Giants World Series win, Margaret gave me a 2011 Giants calendar for Christmas--the kind with the pages you tear off.  It had some baseball fact or question on each page, and though the calendar is gone, I happened on a small pile of pages I'd kept because something about the fact on it struck me.

I wrote about one of them before, almost exactly a year ago-- about the guy who hit two grand slams in the same inning, off the same pitcher.  Here's a few more...

One of the characteristics of major league baseball is that it's been around so long, and clearly the game has changed, several times.  So the year that this happened isn't too surprising: Who was the last player to lead a league in home runs without reaching the double-digit mark?  Gavvy Cravath of the Philadelphia Phillies, who hit 8 homers in 1918.   But what about this record--who was the last player to lead a league in RBI without reaching 100?  It was another one of the Phillies, who had 91.  But it was Mike Schmidt in 1981.

The Phillies have another one: In 1971, pitcher Rick Wise not only threw a no-hitter against the Reds, but he hit two home runs and battled in three of his teams four runs.  How did I miss noticing this game?   Or this one--Tony Cloninger was the only pitcher to ever hit two grand slam homers in one game, for the Atlanta Braves in 1966. 

Maybe it's not connected to the number of bizarre records they hold, but the Phillies themselves have the record for the oldest team in any pro sport to be continuously in the same city under the same name.

I got two correct answers on questions about fairly amazing stuff--the last 30 game winner among pitchers (Denny McClain) and the brothers who won all four World Series games for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1934 (Dizzy Dean, and his brother Paul "Daffy" Dean.)

Winning 20 games in a season has long been a benchmark for top pitchers.  But who was the last pitcher to win 20 games on a team that lost 100?  Ned Garver was 20-12 for the 1951 St. Louis Browns (52-102), which means that one pitcher won nearly half their games.  The Browns were an American League team (the Cardinals were and still are in the National) that moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

Here's one that piqued my curiosity: Red Barrett of the Boston Braves holds the record for pitching a complete game with the fewest pitches: 58.  So how did that work out?  It was in 1944, and Barrett got that total and still gave up two hits, but apparently those baserunners were erased.  The key is that he had no strikeouts and no walks.  He faced the minimum 27 batters, and--to keep it from being too bizarre--he won the game, 2-0.

There is a game I well remember that was tragically bizarre, and I'm surprised it didn't make it onto this calendar.  In May 1959 Pittsburgh Pirates left-handed pitcher Harvey Haddix threw twelve perfect innings in one game, something no one had done before or since, and no one will likely ever do.  But in the scoreless game, a fielding error in the 13th ended his perfect game, and he gave up a home run and all he got out of it was a loss.  Especially since it was against the NL champion Milwaukee Braves (with Hank Aaron in the lineup) it is considered the best pitching performance in Major League history.  But Haddix didn't even get credit for the perfect game he pitched for nine innings. (I started to listen to this game on the radio but fell asleep before Bob Prince or Jim Woods noted that a perfect game was underway.  I wonder when they did--even announcers in those days were somewhat superstititious about mentioning a no-hitter or perfect game while it was going on.)

But on the calendar was a story about another perfect game that technically wasn't recorded as such.  And it involves Babe Ruth--in  his early days as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.  On June 23, 1917, Babe Ruth walked the first Washington Senator's batter he faced, and became so angry about the call that he was ejected from the game.  So Ernie Shore took the mound--and retired all 26 batters he faced.  He pitched a perfect game, except for that first batter, who was caught stealing anyway.  It wasn't as bad as the Haddix game, but he also didn't even get credit for a no-hitter. 

The calendar also didn't mention the 2010 game in which Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was robbed of his perfect game on what should have been the last out of the game by a blown call at first base--which even the umpire later admitted.

I guess part of the fascination is trying to figure out how these guys feel, especially after one extraordinary game: the perfect game you lost, or the no-hitter you threw while hitting two home runs?  At least Harvey Haddix had nowhere to go but up, and he did become the winning pitcher of the 1960 World Series 7th game (although only Maz's homer is remembered.)  But Rick Wise?

He had nowhere to go but down  But for awhile it wasn't very far down.  His no-hitter with his 2 homers was on June 23, 1971.  That August, he again hit two home runs in the same game.  And that September, after a rocky start giving up three runs, he retired 32 batters in a row (4 fewer than Haddix did)--and he hit a homer that won the game in the 12th inning.   He also eventually duplicated Haddix in a World Series--he was the relief pitcher of record for the deciding game of a World Series won by a home run, this time by the Red Sox in the 12th inning.  On the other hand, he had two other no-hitters going that he lost in the late innings.

And now, as I check ESPN online, it turns out that Sunday was a bizarre record-setter: for the first time since 1925, teams playing each other had a position player pitching in the final inning, because they'd used up their available pitchers.   Chris Davis, the DH for the Baltimore Orioles, who went 0-8 as a hitter, was the winning pitcher when he struck out Boston Red Sox All-Star Adrian Gonzalez and got the next batter to hit into a double play---in the 17th inning.

Well, that's baseball.

It's On

President Obama officially began his reelection campaign with speeches before 14,000 in Ohio and  8,000 in Virginia.  With a slightly new color scheme, a new play-off song (The Boss singing "We Take Care of Our Own") and a new slogan, he wrapped the speech with the assurance that the campaign this time is also about hope and change--the change that he started, but needs to be completed.

He warned the crowds of the millions that would be spent on negative ads, and his opponent asking the question of whether you are better off now than before the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression (kind of a trick question.)  He said the question should be, will we be better off in the future?  His speech made the case that his policies, his achievements and his proposals for a second term would move the country towards a better future for all, not just the super-rich. 

Here's that part of the text:

"Over and over again, they will tell you that America is down and out, and they'll tell you who to blame, and ask if you're better off than you were before the worst crisis in our lifetime," Obama said. "The real question - the question that will actually make a difference in your life and in the lives of your children - is not just about how we're doing today. It's about how we'll be doing tomorrow."

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/05/05/2056162/in-launching-2012-bid-obama-targets.html#storylink=cpy

He said that the Romney campaign is about turning back to the failed policies of the past (sometimes, as in the case of affordable contraceptives and equal opportunity for women, to the distant past), in the belief that in their dissatisfaction Americans won't remember the consequences of those policies from the Bush years.  But he asserted "We were there, we remember, and we're not going back."   In one of his strongest lines, President Obama linked this with the bloody battles he fought in his presidency to make progress, as well as the legacy of such struggles in the past that he called upon in 2008:  "We've gone through too much to turn back now."

The crowd in Ohio was larger because the venue held more people.  The Virginia crowd seemed livelier, responding more quickly and more loudly.  Among the lines that got the most applause in both places--but especially in Ohio--was about the clean energy future not only for an economic future but "for the safety of our planet."

The rallies also revealed that if President Obama is the best politician in America, Michelle Obama is a close second.  Her opening speeches were tremendously affecting and effective.  Once Bill Clinton gets out there, and with Joe Biden doing what he does best, this is a formidable team.

Then there's the Obama campaign, and for all the noise about it, the early indications are that it's just as smart and dedicated, and even stronger.  TPM drew a number of contrasts between Obama and Romney campaign events (including Romney's crowds being in the hundreds, and the Obama crowds being way more diverse), and here's a striking one:

Supporters at Obama’s rally in Virginia were given homework – the campaign and the speakers on stage (including Obama) urged them to sign up with the campaign and register voters. First Lady Michelle Obama even reminded the college kids in the audience to change their registrations if they’re moving over the summer. Everywhere you turned, supporters were being asked to hand the Obama campaign a phone number, address or social media account handle.

This is not the scene at a Romney rally, generally. While campaign staff often sign up supporters with clipboards, voter registration booths and social media stations (both fixtures of Obama’s Virginia rally) are nowhere to be found. And Ann and Mitt Romney rarely, if ever, talk about voter registration."

I keep thinking of that Times story about organized and funded  Obama campaign efforts to register voters even in states that have made this more difficult.  Even the League of Women Voters is too intimidated to register in Florida.  But not the Obama campaign.  That says a lot.

I've also been thinking that I want to enjoy this.  There is something to the "happy warrior" idea.  Hubert Humphrey got that nickname when he fought for civil rights and progressive causes, win or lose, he kept fighting.  With President Obama, there's not so much frustration with the message or the way it is articulated as I've sometimes felt in past campaigns.  I know who's side I'm on, and I'm all for taking in all the emotion of fighting the good fight.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last presidential campaign I'll follow closely.  So I'm going to embrace this one for every moment I can.    

                                     I still believe in global warming.  Do you?

The latest Rabid Right madness manifested as a billboard showing Ted Kacziynski (The Unabomber) with those words under it, "I still believe in global warming.  Do you?" It was sponsored by the increasingly notorious Heartland Institute.  It immediately drew more attention than any effort of say 350.org to publicize their Climate Impacts Day of action, which is today (Saturday May 5.)

What is actually newsworthy about this is that a firestorm of criticism--including from GOPers--forced the Institute to take it down.   And presumably to scuttle their announced plan to add to the series the faces of Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden.  I wish I could say this story is from the Onion, but it's from a Bangor, Maine newspaper.

But good marketing ideas never die.  I'm starting my own series right here, with the image above.

 Meanwhile, NASA has been studying the changes in Arctic ice:  "And it now appears that changes in Arctic sea ice affect everything from weather in Europe to the amount of sunlight the Earth absorbs. "The once seemingly insignificant and remote Arctic region is now understood to be intimately connected to the rest of the planet," noted Goddard Space Flight Center's Nathan Kurtz in a post from the field in late March."

A study of Greenland ice says that while melting is not at a worst-case-scenario speed, it has speeded up to a faster rate than UN projections from 2008, and threatens the world's coastal cities with a 3 ft. rise (together with other factors) by the end of the century. “’Glacial pace’ is not slow anymore,” said study author Twila Moon, a glacier researcher at the University of Washington.

As for Connect the Dots day, I wish I could say that I even understand what they're doing, but I am clearly not their demographic.  Best of luck to them anyway.  For the record, here is what Bill McKibben says is happening:

"We desperately need to put real human faces on climate change — to make sure that people understand it’s not an abstraction and a future threat, but a very present and very real crisis. And a crisis with solutions — in many places people are putting up green dots of hope, at their solar panels and windmills. (At my mom’s retirement home the residents are heading out to dig a big new community garden!)

So please: if you can spare an hour or two for the planet on 5/5, make sure you go to climatedots.org to find out where the nearest action is, and make sure you call a few friends and get them to come with you. We won’t solve climate change in a single day — but if we don’t manage to show our fellow citizens that it’s a problem, we’ll never solve it.

And here’s the thing — you’ll have a good time. On too many occasions we ask you to do really hard things, like get arrested. This action is crucial but simple — just lend your body for a little while to make the most important point we can make right now.

We’re asking everyone, at every local event, to take a photo of their “climate dot” and upload it to our website — and we’ll assemble those images into a global mosaic that puts a real human face on climate change. Our crew at 350.org will do everything we can to deliver your photos and stories to the media and decision-makers the world over. We can't let our elected officials pretend that this crisis is still in the future, and we’ll make sure our actions on 5/5 are a crucial first step to get global leaders to connect the dots on climate change."

The Depression They Believe In

Paul Krugman has a new book with a very provocative and timely title: End This Depression Now!  I haven't yet read it but here are the major points he's making in interviews:

We may no longer be in an economic recession, but we are functionally in a depression, though not as great as the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Krugman points out that within the Great Depression period were years when the U.S. economy grew, just not enough to rebalance the economy and in particular, not enough to re-employ enough people and otherwise end the misery.  This is the state of things now.

The stock market crash precipitated the Great Depression, and the financial crash of 2008 precipitated this one, though in both cases there was a long period of preparation.  One of the factors was the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, with a commensurate rise in real poverty at the other end. 

While figuring out all the right moves to make in 2009 in order to get the U.S. economy back on track was complicated, the way to pull the U.S. out of its current depression now (Krugman says) is relatively simple.  Government spending to stimulate the economy is what works, and smart government spending works better.  It might have been difficult in 2009 to identify what this money should be spent on, but now the situation makes it pretty clear.

State and local governments have been savaged during the Great Recession, and have shed about 600,000 jobs, most of them serving a public good, if not utterly essential to civic well-being and to both the short and long term economic future.  In this period, the natural growth in government jobs (responding to population growth etc.) would be an additional 700,000 jobs.

That adds up to 1.3 million jobs, and if the federal government would simply sign those paychecks for awhile, it would in itself generate enough economic activity to lower the unemployment rate to under 7% in 18 months.  This might well be enough to start the "virtuous circle" of people spending, and business responding to new demand by employing more people, who will spend that money, etc.  This would End This Depression Now!

What makes this especially possible now, Krugman said, is that some of the other weaknesses in the economy are healing.  Household debt was a huge problem, and it is down substantially.  The housing market is poised to come back because of pent-up demand.  Those additional paychecks and the economic activity they generate would likely to go spending (rather than paying down debt) and the pent-up demand for housing would be a natural place for some of that spending to go.  Since the housing market is a particular drag on the economy, that would be good.

What we cannot do, he says, is follow the European example and go for austerity.  Those governments that have cut back spending substantially have further weakened their economies.  The U.S. debt is manageable, and although federal spending on "entitlements" is an issue that may well need to be addressed, it doesn't require that spending be cut now or in the near future. 

Here's the Reuters report on Krugman's book that gives some of the economic background concerning Europe.

I'm sure Krugman makes fact-based arguments in favor of this thesis, but even without reading his book (and unfortunately not reading his column as much as I used to), all of this makes a lot of sense to me.

With high unemployment over the past three plus years and dropping slowly, the income of the very rich growing fast, and the incomes of the 99% stagnating or dropping, and especially with the extent of poverty in America--the highest percentage the Census Bureau has measured in 52 years--it's not much of a stretch to conceptualize this as a depression.

As for the solution, I've been noting the drag on the employment figures each month by continuing job losses in state and local governments.  Here in California, austerity in state government is crippling education, and ruining the state university system, a process over years that I've watched up close and personally.  Unemployment and insecurity for teachers, police, fire, EMTs, etc. is truly depressing to communities in all senses of the word.  And clearly these are overwhelmingly jobs that are necessary to the public good, and necessary to the short and long term economy.

I'm not sure if Krugman goes into the politics of this, but that's what's driving this.  Our current political polarization tracks neatly with the growing income inequality (as graph-happy Rachel showed on Tuesday.)  GOPers promoting federal austerity and trying to panic people about the deficit (which they by the way created entirely in the Bush years) are not just serving a high-sounding ideology.  Nor are they only trying to keep taxes low for the very wealthy (since that's where voters would want the government to look for the money necessary to pay for 1.3 million government workers), although that is certainly a mighty motivation.

No, there's very clear and present party- political motivation.  It should be remembered a day after May Day, the international workers day, that the once powerful economic and political force of labor unions have faded to almost nothing in the private sector.  The strongest unions represent workers in the public sector, especially state and local government employees.  Rabid Right GOPer legislatures and governors have been busy trying to end union rights for public sector unions quite directly in several states.  But the indirect method--or maybe it's the more direct method--is just as effective: get rid of the employees altogether, at least until you can get rid of the unions.

And in fact, that's where the biggest drops in government employment have been--in these very red states (doing nothing for their economies except weakening them, or or their state budgets, since they typically lower taxes for corporations and rich people.)  Unions of course are the largest financial backers of Democratic candidates, and their members provide a lot of political organizing.  It's another partisan political attack without conscience, without regard for other consequences, like the laws to make voting and registering harder for certain people.

Krugman's book comes at a fascinating moment--just as the Obama campaign is gearing up, and as President Obama is providing the rationale for the government's role.  It will be interesting to see if proposals like Krugman's become an explicit part of the President's agenda this summer.    

One more point.  Krugman mentioned that he hoped the entitlement problem (Medicare & Medicaid) can be addressed in the long run largely by bringing down health care costs themselves.  This was a major intention of the Affordable Care Act.  Even before the Act takes full effect, there are signs that health care costs are stabilizing, as cost containment mechanisms begin to take hold, and thousands of seniors are seeing billions in savings on their medicines.  

Where the Wars Will End

Tonight President Obama addressed the nation from Afghanistan, where he signed the agreement that leads to the end of the war, on the first anniversary of the action he ordered that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Pundits swarmed afterwards to say how complicated and fraught the situation still is, and how many ways it could all collapse.  I don't think the American people actually care anymore what happens to Afghanistan.  They want the war to be over.

President Obama refocused Afghanistan as much as he could on dismantling al Qeda, and in his address he made it clear that this is the objective, and continuing a large U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is no longer necessary to that end.  That's also what the American people wanted: the terrorist threat to be crippled.  Osama bin Laden's death or capture was probably necessary to allow a U.S. president to get us out of Afghanistan, and so this address was more than symbolic on this anniversary.

As I listened, I could feel the accumulated weariness of so much war.  Vietnam exhausted my generation to a point that has still not been fully reckoned.  Then El Salvador--does anybody remember the proxy war in El Salvador, the Contras?--further poisoned the poisonous 80s.  And the horrible Iraq aggression further sucked the life out of this country in so many ways. 

The military-industrial complex has been the most direct way the 1% has used government to enrich itself.  That as much as anything explains these awful years, and all the lives lost and ruined and diverted over these decades. 

It's still possible that this carefully geopolitical policy will yield some pleasant surprises, like an actual coalition government in Afghanistan.  But who really cares anymore?  Just so it is over.  For most Americans, it is over.  President Obama made sure to mention the country's obligations to the veterans who executed this policy, and paid for it in some very sad ways.  We must make sure they are not casualities of our exhaustion.  Otherwise, we're probably too tired and sick at heart to celebrate.  But it will be over.  And we have at least a chance--financially , politically and morally--to address our real problems, the real threats to our country and the world.