American Slaughter

This is the blackest day for America in this decade.  The slaughter of innocents is testimony to our collective inanity and insanity.  That we produce such horrific weapons is bad enough, that young adults or even boys and girls use them against each other in war zones is worse.  But the worst is permitting them to be used against helpless children in our own communities.

Nothing else correlates with gun violence than the laxity of gun control laws.  Days ago Michigan passed newly lax laws to permit concealed weapons in schools, dormitories and sporting events.  And today those who voted for those laws demanded that the governor sign them, as their response to the slaughter in Connecticut.  It is this deification of guns that is the most insane.  Guns will solve every problem.  What problem did these guns solve?

It is long past time that this insanity is addressed.

A Brink Too Far

UN Ambassador Susan Rice has withdrawn from consideration for Secretary of State, and most reporters say that Senator John Kerry is now almost certain to be nominated and approved by the Senate.

President Obama is meeting with Rice on Friday afternoon, at which time it would be most appropriate to announce that she will be his White House National Security advisor in his second term. 

Personally I doubted she would be appointed Secretary of State.  She obviously has the credentials, the intelligence, the experience and the contacts.  But she is the public face of the U.S. abroad and sadly that face cannot smile, at least not convincingly.

I fully sympathize.  I can't either anymore.  But in terms of ceremony and confidence, the job requires somebody who has the look and the political skills.  Secretary Clinton is a perfect example.  Sure, the job has had its share of stiffs in the past, but this is a different world.  The way Susan Rice was hounded from the nomination was despicable and dishonorable.   But maybe she wasn't right for that public part of the job.  I don't really know, of course.  But that's how it looks from a distance.

Nevertheless, she is a brilliant, capable woman, and President Obama should bring her to the White House--and stick it in the eye of the GOPer critics.

Now a little credit for not making a single rice pun.

I heard several voices on TV suggesting that not nominating her after defending her so passionately makes President Obama appear weak.   We'll see what they say after tomorrow.  And we'll see what they are saying after the fiscal cliff nonsense is over, and in particular after the congressional GOPers take refuge in their delusional "leverage" by threatening not to approve the required rise in the debt ceiling. 

When defending Ambassador Rice, President Obama said that if he decided she were the best for the job, he would nominate her no matter what her GOPer critics said.  But on the debt ceiling he was not at all conditional: he said "I will not play that game" over the debt ceiling, adding that he would stop negotiating with GOPers on budget etc. if they even suggested that the debt ceiling vote was on the table.

Apparently GOPers were not as sure as I was what he meant, because they are still talking about doing it.  Ezra Klein spells it out:
 
"Whatever House Republicans might think, the White House is all steel when it comes to the debt ceiling. Their position is simple, and it’s typically delivered in the tone of voice that Bruce Willis reserves for talking to terrorists: They’re happy to raise the debt ceiling on their own, as would be the case under their proposal to take authority for the debt ceiling away from Congress. But if Congress rejects that offer, then the debt ceiling is Congress’s problem, and the White House will not help.

The Obama administration is utterly steadfast on this point: They will not suffer a repeat of 2011, when they conducted negotiations over whether the United States should default. If Republicans go over the cliff and try to open up talks for raising the debt ceiling, the White House will not hold a meeting, they will not return a phone call, they will not look at the e-mails. They will move to an entirely public strategy, rallying voters and the business community against the GOP’s repeated brinksmanship." 

It would be unfortunate if GOPers saw their disgusting political character assassination as a success, and an indication that President Obama doesn't mean what he says on the debt ceiling.   This is December 2012/January 2013,  not any other time or circumstances.  Taking the world economy hostage is not going to be a successful strategy.

12/12/12

We're getting close to the Mayan calendar apocalypse date (which is either 12/21 or 12/23, depending on...something.)  But today's is the date that may really be freaking people out.

Sure, for some it's a great day to get married, gamble, hold a benefit concert, or ascend into a higher consciousness.  But beneath the shininess, isn't there something ominous?

Why?  I'm guessing it's because it will the last of its kind for a long while. With the possible exception of some of the infants among us, it's the last of our lifetime.

As I've mentioned, there were repeated digits in the 20th century--I even recall 6/6/66 being noted on the Huntley-Brinkley Report.  The exact repetition of three dates however hadn't happened in my lifetime until the 21st century, when we had a bunch: 1/1/1, 2/2/2 etc.  But this is the last one.  After this, the numeral of the year outruns the 12 month cycle.  So there will be slant-rhyme dates like 12/21/12, 3/1/13, 1/4/14 or 5/15/15.  An even closer symmetry won't happen until 2/22/22, and it gets more distant after that (there will be no 3/33/33, unless our calendar runs out.)  It won't get to the pure repetition until the 22nd century. 

So what does it mean?  I can't recall anything memorable about those previous dates. It's all basically artificial: not just the notation (the full date, after all, is 12.12.2012, which is close but not a full repetition --12.12.2112 comes closer ) but just the fairly arbitrary dating system, a relatively recent calendar in its details and its wide acceptance.  Nevertheless, this one may be "the luckiest day of the year" for some, but for others it may also add a little to the general apocalyptic anxiety that seems to be the unconscious undertow of our present.

To Remember the Future

Anticipate the past.

2014

What political speculation there is--and there's as usual too much--is about 2016.  Will Hillary run?  Should she? Can anyone defeat her? 

But by that time it may not matter in substantive ways.  What has become increasingly clear in the first weeks after the 2012 election is that we are still in the dark power of 2010.  The dreaded off-year election (as it's called, because it isn't a presidential year) when a comparative handful of voters even show up, and yet those who did in 2010 empowered those who are still busy destroying the future.

Yes, part of the devastating effect was due to it being a census and therefore reapportionment year, and so GOPer state houses could rig congressional elections according to party, which is why the GOP retained control of the House even though Democratic candidates got more votes, and under the redistricting of 2008, would have won it back.  So we may be living with those effects for a long time.

But it was the dramatic takeovers in governorships and state legislatures, largely fueled by big money unleashed for the first time by the Citizens United decision of the GOPer Court.  The mildest thing about the resulting stranglehold on state governments in many states was that it quickly became very extreme, and its extremism was coordinated from state to state.

The worst of it we see most dramatically right now in Michigan, where Governor Snyder and the lame duck legislature has suddenly rammed through a union-busting law (with a provision apparently preventing it from being overturned by voters) with blinding speed, without advance notice or the usual hearings or debate, really in a matter of hours on an otherwise ordinary Thursday.  Taking away union rights in Michigan is a breathtaking step, and this is being done without public support--the latest poll shows all of 6% of Michigan citizens support it.

Snyder could sign this into law on Tuesday, ignoring the warnings of political chaos that could result.  Demonstrations are ongoing and are likely to be massive Tuesday. These people are being silenced as a result of elections.  (Hitler too, it must not be forgotten, was elected, at first.)  There could be no more graphic lesson of the need to organize and vote in 2014. 

For this totalitarian blitzkrieg is only the latest iron fist of autocracy to take off the glove in Michigan.  There are entire cities now ruled by a state-appointed dictator, superseding all elected officials.  Funny how those folks afraid of nonexistent interference by the UN are silent on the very real dictatorships in Michigan.

The voter suppression laws, the anti-choice and anti-health laws, all of that, all coming from the states. They all are intrusive, autocratic (even if Theocratic) attempts that take away rights and freedoms.  In states like PA and Ohio, the fracking-happy state governments are helping to destroy communities and the environment.  Many of those governors and many of the legislatures must face the voters in 2014.  All it will take to ruin the last years of the Obama presidency plus the next one will be voters not paying attention again in 2014.

It's going to be hard enough even if they are.  Michigan couldn't pass a strong pro-union initiative, and Wisconsin returned their legislature to GOPer rule in the big Dem year of 2012.  But if voters don't return sanity to their state capitals in 2014, 2016 may be nothing much but show biz.

The Crisis of Cause and Effects

The Climate Crisis is two crises.  There are the causes and there are the consequences.  The causes of global heating--carbon and other greenhouse gases pollution--are about the future, because there is a time lag in when they add to the ongoing heating of the planet and what that does to change the Earth for the worse, and for a long time.

Although there are some efforts on the agenda of this year's climate talks to address at least procedures for addressing causes, the UN is scheduled to once again revisit what the nations of the world can do, separately and together, to deal with those causes in 2015.

The effects that are being felt now and will be felt in the near future were caused by greenhouse gases pollution that happened years ago.  Nothing can be done about that pollution now.  But those effects are already wreaking havoc around the world.  Rich countries can still absorb the costs of extreme weather, sea level rises and other land displacements, upticks in related diseases, economic losses from forest fires and droughts and floods.  They can still do so even while ignoring the reasons for these changes.

But poorer countries can't afford to deal with the effects, and they also can't afford to ignore what caused them.  What the rich countries should and can and will do to help poorer countries address the effects of the climate crisis is the chief subject of the 2012 UN climate conference, which is at the moment struggling to make some sort of agreement before it ends.

According to this story, things are going just as badly in dealing with effects as in addressing causes.  This report tells basically the same story.   Poorer countries are basing their requests on justice: the richer countries caused the pollution, they should pay for the effects they caused.  A mechanism to assign responsibility and create a fund has been proposed, but rich countries are very reluctant, and unless last minute negotiations result in a miracle, the best that will come of this is  some advance in the debate, and the worst even more bitterness and division.

Basing this on justice is perhaps not the best approach or the most practical, since rich countries are not wild about being locked into levels of participation by law, regardless of what's going on in their own economies. In any case, the world is very far from where it needs to be on both causes and effects

Update: The final agreement did establish the principle of compensation by rich countries, and formally extended the Kyoto Protocol, though it may be superceded by an agreement on causes in 2015.  

The New York Times account ended with this paragraph: “What this meeting reinforced is that while this is an important forum, it is not the only one in which progress can and must be made,” said Jennifer Haverkamp, director of the international climate programs at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The disconnect between the level of ambition the parties are showing here and what needs to happen to avoid dangerous climate change is profound.”

In his remarkable novel 2312--about the future three hundred years from now--Kim Stanley Robinson calls the historical period we're now in "The Great Dithering."  Surely future generations will see it as such.  Even while issues get clarified and some progress is made, it is not fast enough or big enough to address this long crisis.  But let's have a little sympathy for the people who go to those meetings and fight the good fight, even knowing that little if anything will be accomplished.  It may pay off one day.  In any case, what else can they do but the best they can do right now.    

Cliffnotes 2: Everybody Strikes Back

Last week or maybe the week before who can keep track President Obama offered his proposal for budget and taxes, which the GOPers literally laughed at, and that's what made the news.  What didn't was that it was a detailed proposal, with facts and figures.  Congressional GOPs offered their "counterproposal" which was a letter with no actionable specifics.  And since then the two sides have been publicly criticizing each other, while (it is rumored) coming closer to a deal.

Most--let's make that almost all-- of the news noise has been about tax rates.  The CW this past week was that GOP will cave, somehow, sometime, and there will be a middle class tax cut (or status quo) but a marginal tax hike on incomes over $250,000 per year.  (The people really fighting this have incomes of over $250,000 a day or an hour, because the great bulk of their money would see a tax hike, whereas everybody else will see it only for the portion of their incomes above 25K.)

But GOPers want budget cuts as part of a package which gets complicated, and it's not altogether clear Speaker John Banal can deliver the votes for anything.  There are several paths that require varying degrees of participation on his part.  There's a deal.  There's a backdoor of allowing (either directly or through allowing some GOPers to sign on to the discharge petition) a vote on the pending middle class tax cut from the Senate.  And then there's the ultimate punt: on Jan. 1 all the Bush tax cuts expire, and on January 3 the new Congress can vote to cut m.c. taxes, leaving the 2%ers tax intact at Clinton era levels.  Politically this still seems the most likely, unless Banal's power over his GOPer members has increased more than anybody knows.

The past couple of days has seen the trial balloon go up for raising Medicare eligibility age to 67 over a decade or more, as a face-saver for GOPers in a bigger deal.  Bad idea.  REALLY bad idea.  The idea of a political maneuver to save face by penalizing seniors while not really saving all than much money is repugnant.  It's symbolically a terrible move as well.  It reads like a betrayal of what people voted for.

President Obama hasn't spoken to this in public but otherwise he's been firm on three basic and vital issues: cut middle class taxes, raise tax rates on the rich, and stop the nonsense of holding the world economy hostage by means of the ridiculous debt ceiling vote.  By now everybody knows or should know that GOPers lie about this--it doesn't authorize new spending, it just says sure the U.S. is going to pay its bill rung up by--guess who?--Congress.  Because the Executive can't spend a dime that Congress doesn't appropriate.  So it's a stupid vote in the first place.  And President Obama announcing this week that "I'm not going to play that game" this time is fair warning, and GOPers better take it more seriously than the media seems to so far. 

What people aren't talking about are all the other components of what is about to take effect or stop taking effect on Jan.1, like the huge across-the-board cuts that includes defense, the payroll tax cut, the unemployment extension.

And then there's the Senate filibuster.  When the new Congress convenes in early January, its procedures say any rule changes have to happen that first day.  So whether and how to change the filibuster rule is being discussed, with little apparent agreement.  The issues came together this week when Senate minor leader McC asked that the Senate immediately consider a proposal to give the President responsibility for raising the debt ceiling, because he thought the Dems didn't have the votes to pass it.  But maj leader Reid agreed to an immediate vote, at which point McC filibustered his own proposal.   So it goes.

This is the Senate where 38 GOPers voted against ratifying a treaty that suggests that the rest of the world follow the U.S. guidelines to bring the disabled into a tolerable public life because of some right wing apocalyptic fantasy about the UN taking their children.  It ranks among the most disgraceful votes this decade, and it demonstrates just how extreme the GOP has become.  Those 38 probably feel no urgency to deal with the fiscal or any other problems on Jan. 1--problems that by the way were all created by this Congress-- because the world will have ended by then, as the popular and profitable interpretation of the Mayan calendar foresees.    

Progressively Worse

There's another round of UN climate talks underway, predetermined to be useless.  Which is not to say there isn't any climate crisis news.  There is.  Well, it's news but not new.  More evidence that the climate crisis is well underway.  And more evidence that not nearly enough is being done to prevent it from becoming far worse.

The climate crisis now: A UN report finds that sea levels are rising 60% faster than predicted.  The European Environment Agency issued a report saying that the climate crisis is evident across Europe, and it's about to get worse.  Etc.  Update: In a new NOAA study, which sounds exactly like old NOAA and other studies, the Arctic experienced record sea ice loss in 2012.

The future impacts: Another UN report quantifies the consequences of a permafrost thaw that releases methane stores.  A research paper suggests that regional consequences of global heating will likely be more complex and extreme than previously thought, due to atmospheric flow.  And the World Bank released a report on the consequences of a 4C rise, and they are dire, and unsurprisingly hit the poorest areas the hardest.

Previous international efforts have been aimed at capping the temperature rise at 2C.  But according to the latest report on actual carbon emissions, goals set at the Copenhagen and Kyoto are becoming "unattainable."  Carbon emissions increased 3% in 2011 to their highest levels ever, and are set to increase another 2.5% in 2012. 

Depite the treaties and all the efforts, only two major countries reduced their carbon output: Germany (by 4%) and the U.S. (by 2%.)  Japan was up very slightly, and Canada was up by 2%.  But by far the biggest addition was from China at a 10% rise, followed by India at 7%.

The burgeoning industrialization of China and India are not covered in the Kyoto Treaty, which sought to bring carbon pollution down 5% from 1990 levels.  Carbon pollution is now 54% above 1990 levels.

Yes, the phrase "we're cooked" does spring to mind.

There's ample reason to note the contribution of China and India, for economic growth.  But none of us are immune to denial, displacement and excuses.  China's factories are busy making stuff for the U.S. consumer market, and prices are kept low not only by low low wages but low energy costs from China's most abundant source: coal. 

There's no sense in guilt-tripping ourselves as individuals and measuring carbon footprints with a meaningless precision, versus the large scale changes that must be made.  Still, let's not kid ourselves either--especially the tech-happy progressives, who frown deeply at conspicuous consumption but snap up the latest instantly obsolete electronics: the cell/smart phones, etc. that will be ewaste in months.  Not to mention the vast amounts of power and manufacturing involved in server farms and the Internet.  It may seem ethereal, but it is based on wires, cables and machines that eat energy sources that all together account for a big chunk of energy costs.

So merry fuck the planet fuck the future Christmas.

There are positives--that sneaky 2% drop in a country that can't even talk about the climate crisis without starting a flame war.  Progress on scaling up clean energy and promising new clean energy tech.  And one little story from today:  President Obama is "putting in place the building blocks for a climate treaty requiring the first fossil fuel emissions cuts from both the U.S. and China," Businessweek reports.

"State Department envoy Todd Stern is in Doha this week working to clear the path for an international agreement by 2015. While Obama failed to deliver on his promise to start a cap-and-trade program in his first term, he's working on policies that may help cut greenhouse gases 17 percent by 2020 in the U.S., historically the world's biggest polluter."

The headline on this Political Wire item is that President Obama is "quietly" working on this.  In the current political climate this makes sense, and there's an historical template for such an effort.  The U.S. and the Soviet Union quietly negotiated on a nuclear test ban treaty in the early 60s.  Powerful elements within both nations were against it, fervently. When the talks stalled, President Kennedy made his historic American University speech on the issue, and it so impressed the world--and the Soviet Premier--that it instantly revived the talks, which (thanks in part to the work done already) quickly came to an agreement.

There was substantial political opposition to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 in the U.S. Senate (which had to ratify it.)  The country was split.  But President Kennedy went out and made speeches supporting it all across the U.S., and by the time the Senate voted, it had clear public support and the political opposition faded.

Nothing now is going to change the climate crisis we need to prepare for, and need to prepare for the world of the next several generations.  The world is not likely to ever be as it is now for maybe thousands of years.  But we can do quite a bit so it doesn't become even worse, hundreds of years from now.

Fiscal Cliffnotes

Besides being a painful waste of time, following the so-called fiscal cliff shenanigans is at least marginally more fun than last time.  Watching GOPers roil as their own alternate universe comes in contact with the real one--like matter and antimatter clashing at the edges--has become at best boring, but it has unfortunate real world waste in economic terms, which always get paid ultimately by the least able to pay and the most vulnerable. (This link also source of this cartoon.)  The last insane fight, over the debt ceiling, cost over $16 billion just to the federal government.  This time the entire economy is likely to take a big hit.

But it's worth at least a few notes.  First, the White House is sticking to what it believes the economy and the country require.  President Obama's opening proposal was delivered to Congress by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and quickly leaked to the press by GOPers in the act of rejecting it.  The Washington Post:

President Obama offered Republicans a detailed plan Thursday for averting the year-end “fiscal cliff” that calls for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, $50 billion in fresh spending on the economy and an effective end to congressional control over the size of the national debt.

But it also offered some $60 billion in budget cuts and savings, which GOPers lied about before they rejected it.  GOPer congressional leadership had hissy fits over it, but don't seem able to come up with their own proposals, only demands on what the President should and shouldn't propose.

A few days later comes word (at least unofficially) that President Obama and the Dems are not going to make another proposal until GOPers agree to higher taxes on the wealthy.  And why should they?  Several polls show strong public support for it, and Warren Buffett went public again with a minimum tax proposal for the rich.

President Obama is out making speeches about this tax proposal, but also supporting the bill the Senate passed to make sure the tax cuts for the middle class remain past January 1.  A couple of GOPers in the House said publicly the GOPer should take this deal right away, but the leadership is balking, or perhaps just floundering.

On Friday, House Dem Leader Nancy Pelosi said if the House leadership doesn't schedule the Senate bill for a vote, she would circulate a discharge petition, which would overrule the leadership and bring it to the floor.  The petition requires 218 votes and therefore some GOPer support, and while it is unlikely to get 218 right away, it will be there as an alternative as time goes on and the cliff gets closer.  Once it gets to the floor, it will be hard even for GOPers to vote against a tax break for 98% of the population.

Meanwhile,  Michael Grunwald at Time called out the media for its mindless reporting on GOPer hypocrisy and nonsense (as Rachel did last week) :

"Mainstream media outlets don’t want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans insisted that anyone who said they wanted to cut Medicare was a demagogue, because I’m more than three weeks old.

I’ve written a lot about the GOP’s defiance of reality–its denial of climate science, its simultaneous denunciations of Medicare cuts and government health care, its insistence that debt-exploding tax cuts will somehow reduce the debt—so I often get accused of partisanship. But it’s simply a fact that Republicans controlled Washington during the fiscally irresponsible era when President Clinton’s budget surpluses were transformed into the trillion-dollar deficit that President Bush bequeathed to President Obama. (The deficit is now shrinking.) It’s simply a fact that the fiscal cliff was created in response to GOP threats to force the U.S. government to default on its obligations. The press can’t figure out how to weave those facts into the current narrative without sounding like it’s taking sides, so it simply pretends that yesterday never happened.
Whatever. I realize that the GOP’s up-is-downism puts news reporters in an awkward position. It would seem tendentious to point out Republican hypocrisy on deficits and Medicare and stimulus every time it comes up, because these days it comes up almost every time a Republican leader opens his mouth. But we’re not supposed to be stenographers. As long as the media let an entire political party invent a new reality every day, it will keep on doing it. Every day."

We don't get much autumn up here in far northern California.  For those of us who remember it from other places, or even for those of you in those other places, this is a pretty neat time lapse film in which you actually see the leaves change color in Central Park, NYC.

Today's Crazy

I'll tell you a secret--I thought I'd be making some big changes by now.  I thought I'd stop my concentration on electoral politics with the election, cut down on blogging altogether--and really, finally give up cable TV.

Then I got hit with the second part of a double-dip virus, and barely could keep up with my external responsibilities let alone change much.  So here I am.  But...we'll see.

Anyway, today's crazy.  Senator John McBlame and Lindsay "head dick" Graham are making a spectacle of themselves over UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  The CV news figures it's because they want John Kerry to be Secretary of State--instead of Rice-- so his Senate seat opens up for a special election that Scott "Asshole" Brown might win. Besides that they can't stand uppity black women.  And they want revenge for all the nasty things Dems said about Condi Rice.  It's all crazy because Susan Rice is not going to be nominated as Secretary of State, the country's head diplomat.  And it's not because of her talk show appearances (not exactly) or where she stands on policy, etc.  It's because she can't smile.


The CV news has it that the GOPers in Congress haven't learned anything and are intent on destroying millions of dollars in wealth and threatening the economic recovery by resisting and dithering on the lineup of fiscal decisions that must be made in the next month or so.  The politics are complex but basically stupid and crazy.  The stock market is already swooning, though consumers seem unrattled.  But never underestimate the lunatics running the asylum known as congressional GOP.  According to a CNN poll, a majority of Americans are ready to blame them for failing to agree on taxes, the budget, debt ceiling, etc.  70% say they haven't done enough to cooperate with President Obama.  So everybody knows they're going to cave somehow, but they have to make everybody miserable and anxious for a month first.  See, that's why I wanted to ignore politics for awhile.

I also accidentally had the sound on for a commercial for some product that doses the armpits of men old enough to watch the news with testosterone. This commercial began with one, maybe two sentences describing the product, with no great claims for its benefits.  And the rest of the commercial--at least ten minutes--was an increasingly alarming and horrifying list of possible side-effects, first to any women and children nearby, and then to the men with the armpits.  And this was a commercial FOR this product?  This is yet another reason that cable TV is some hellish booby hatch.

Oh, and the latest stories on that Mars thing claim it was all a misunderstanding.  There's no life on Mars, nor presumably among brain-dead reporters for NPR.   How long do you suppose it will be before there's a conspiracy theory about this?  Don't tell me.  It's been Twitter # for hours?

Forward! Continued

The news continues from the November 6 elections:  While Mitt Romney has been variously described as the sorest loser and most immediately repudiated and irrelevant candidate in presidential election history, President Obama's victory continues to look stronger--even in the South.  The Washington Post via Political Wire: "President Obama finished more strongly in the South than any other Democratic presidential nominee in three decades, "underscoring a fresh challenge for Republicans who rely on Southern whites as their base of national support."

"Obama won Virginia and Florida and narrowly missed victory in North Carolina. But he also polled as well in Georgia as any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, grabbed 44 percent of the vote in deep-red South Carolina and just under that in Mississippi -- despite doing no substantive campaigning in any of those states."

Which suggests again the subject of race.  Right after the election, Chris Hayes at MSNBC  had a perceptive commentary that began with the overwhelming support one racial group gave President Obama--but probably not your first assumption.  Asian Americans.  Among Asian Americans are a substantial number with high incomes, but they did not vote very much for Romney.  Still, what do all these people in this category have in common--with roots in China, Japan, Korea, Pacific Islands?  Not a lot, Hayes said, no more than many members of other racial groups.  That's because, he said, race doesn't exist.  It's a construct, a category.  There may be similar cultural backgrounds, but that's not the same as race.

Race is essentially maintained by racism. What turned non-white individuals into racial voting blocs, Hayes said, was the race-based hostility and disrespect Romneyryan and the Republicans showed to President Obama and various non-white communities. 

It's a profound point, and one that TPM is humanizing with reader responses--for example, here and here.   So it's the other side of dog whistle politics: the groups being dissed hear them, too, loud and clear, and as one of these readers wrote, race-based disrespect to a black President reminds them of their own experiences with racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice.

Meanwhile, the Obama army is not disbanding, even though they've gone home.  They're being mobilized on behalf of the President's agenda, starting right away.  As the NY Times reports:  "The president is planning rallies in influential states to remind supporters of the need to keep the pressure on lawmakers during the fiscal talks. And should negotiations break down, Mr. Obama’s team is arranging for Republican lawmakers to hear from of tens of thousands of riled-up activists through angry Twitter posts, e-mails and Facebook messages."

But it won't stop there: Obama aides view keeping their grass-roots supporters energized as important to the president’s second-term success on broader tax changes, an immigration overhaul and efforts on climate change.

Chris Hayes, by the way, had one of the better tributes to the Obama army organizers and volunteers--starting with his brother.

Hats Off to Jerry

I don't want to write no damn Black Friday post.  Instead I'll write about Jerry's Records.

Jerry's Records is a used record store in Pittsburgh.  Jerry used to have a shop or two in Oakland but now he's got one big one in Squirrel Hill.  He sells music in other new and used formats but vinyl is his specialty.  Like a lot of quality used stores, he does business on the Internet (the photo is from his web page.)

I shopped at his Squirrel Hill store when I lived there, and sold him about half my record collection when I left.  He dealt fairly and I enjoyed talking to him.  He's about my age and when the conversation drifted to how the ecological shit was certain to hit the fan someday soon, he owned what is our generation's secret guilty thought--fortunately by the time it gets really bad we'll be dead.

Recently Jerry has had one of those rare and maybe once in a lifetime experiences--in a pile of old records, most of them in bad condition, he founds gems--and one major gem in particular: a very rare original Robert Johnson record: the 1936 Vocalion release of "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," the second song the reclusive Johnson is known to have recorded.  All Robert Johnson records are rare.  This one, says Jerry, is the "Holy Grail of 78s."

True to his nature (and besides, it's good for business) Jerry is sharing this wonder by playing it for anybody who comes by the store on the next few Saturday nights.  I'll be there in spirit.  The last time I talked to him (about 2  or 3 years ago, when I went in to buy back an album I sold him years before--might have been the same copy) it was clear that the used record business was becoming a tough one.  Now that the sale of new vinyl records has reached its highest volume since the 1990s, maybe interest in the old stuff will also increase.  This one record is bound to pay off pretty big.

So good for Jerry is all I want to say.

Gratitude 2012

It's only been a couple of weeks since the election, and so perhaps appropriately it comes to mind when considering this year's reasons for gratitude.

Of course there are the personal and family things--everybody being healthy at the top of that list.  Several of our younger generation bought homes in recent months, despite recent tough times.  So there's that.

But considering how close we came to disasters of amazing breadth and proportion, and how important these election victories are to the near future and hopefully to the farther future, it's hard not to think of gratitude at the outcome.

We need not even speak of the poetic justice of Mitt Romney's final share of the popular vote likely being 47%.   But considering the consequences of electing him and fellow GOPers is inevitable even while viewing the consequences of the positive outcome.  For example, President Obama's southeast Asia trip, and his successful gaining of a cease fire in the Middle East, with the important assistance of Secretary Clinton.  President Obama is pursuing a forward-looking Pacific strategy that has vast potential for American benefits for decades to come.  No GOPer these days seems to have any conception of a forward-looking foreign policy.  They don't even approach a sane one.  Mitt Romney and Ryan were together the least experienced, least interested and most incompetent candidates in history on foreign policy and diplomacy.  It should be shocking, and maybe, judging by the election returns, it was.

As details about the election continue to come out, we can become even more thankful for the volunteers and the staff of the Obama campaign that worked so hard and so well for so long. And again, as GOPers in several states push even more voter suppression, we can be thankful for those who stubbornly stood in line for hours to make sure their votes counted.

I'm still a little wary of the talk about amity in Washington and the new weakness of the GOP--we heard it all right after the 2008 election.  Then came 2010, and soon comes 2014.  But maybe the mood has changed.  It's one thing to give a brand new President a vote of confidence in approval ratings, etc.  But it's something more to boost a reelected President's approval rate (to 58%), and to have more confidence in his leadership (and his party) to solve pressing problems by a wide margin, as evidenced in other recent polls.

The country is perhaps ready to treat this President as their President, more openly than before.  That photo above, for instance, is the most shared photo in the history of Twitter, and the most liked photo in the history of Facebook.  Not long histories exactly, but that's overcoming some big, big numbers.

But this President very deliberately campaigned on a philosophy and a set of policies, so they won, too. There has never quite been as stark a choice before.  In terms of general issues like fact-based science, womens rights over their bodies, equal rights, against growing income inequality, for universal health care, etc.--the future was affirmed.  A diverse American community was affirmed--even slightly in advance of true demographic equality. 

And so, perhaps most appropriately to the holiday, let's note that compassion won.  "We're all in this together" won.  "You'd do the same for me" won.  

So with wishes for a happy thanksgiving to U.S. readers (and belated greetings to readers in Canada, who celebrate their thanksgiving in October), once again here's a link to excerpts from Joanna Macy's essay on Gratitude.

Shhhh--The Biggest News Story in History

News from the NASA Rover on Mars has been pretty perky lately.  For instance, that surface radiation isn't as bad as feared for humans--it's about the same as in low Earth orbit.

But today NPR has a story about a story that can't yet be told.  It's about data that suggests a discovery by the Curiosity rover--"a big" one--but that has to be further evaluated before an official announcement is made.

It's pretty clear what that story might be: life on Mars.  Probably not alive now, but evidence of it in the past.  Or at least the organic compounds.

Other news, of Curiosity moving to a new location, tends to cast some doubt on how strongly NASA feels the data is.  Still.

It would be the biggest news story in human history, unless we're contacted by intelligent extraterrestrials before then.  Life has existed somewhere else.  In the broadest sense, but a very profound one, we are not alone. 

It may take several weeks to test this data.  Which means that an announcement, if it comes, might be made very close to the winter solstice, and all the holidays that celebrate birth, life emerging from winter, life emerging from darkness.

Click on it to make it readable. Check out daily Doonesburys here.

Monday Night Football

It's a pretty sad contrast.  Both the Pittsburgh Steelers (who played Sunday night) and the San Francisco 49ers (who played Monday night) lost their primo quarterbacks to injuries before an important game.  The Steelers defense stopped a mostly inept Ravens offense, but the Steelers' backup quarterback, a skilled veteran, and their beat-up running backs couldn't score more than 10 points, and gave up 3.  Special teams gave up another 7, and that was the ball game.

On Monday, the 49ers backup quarterback, a first year player, became a future and maybe present star. True, they beat another backup quarterback, but the 49er defense totally dominated.  They won easily over the Chicago Bears.

I was bred a Steelers fan and always will be loyal.  But the truth is that the Steelers haven't been fun to watch for awhile.  And the 49ers are fun to watch, as they certainly were Monday night.  (They're also easier for me to watch--more of their games are broadcast here.)

It's also true however that for me pro football is increasingly hard to watch in general.  There's just so many guys you can watch being carted off the field in pain, before it's not a fun game anymore.  And when so many of the best players are injured--as is increasingly the case, certainly this year but for at least the past few--the games are less interesting, less admirable.

A New Climate

At long last, there was a question and a long answer on the climate crisis at President Obama's press conference.  Here it is in full:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of attacks on carbon?

THE PRESIDENT: As you know, Mark, we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily -- there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.

And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we've got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.

Now, in my first term, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks. That will have an impact. That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. We doubled the production of clean energy, which promises to reduce the utilization of fossil fuels for power generation. And we continue to invest in potential breakthrough technologies that could further remove carbon from our atmosphere. But we haven't done as much as we need to.

So what I'm going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers, and elected officials to find out what can -- what more can we do to make a short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary -- a discussion, a conversation across the country about what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we're passing on to future generations that's going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.

I don't know what either Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do at this point, because this is one of those issues that's not just a partisan issue; I also think there are regional differences. There’s no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices. And understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused, and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth, that if the message is somehow we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don't think anybody is going to go for that. I won't go for that.

If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth, and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that's something that the American people would support.

So you can expect that you’ll hear more from me in the coming months and years about how we can shape an agenda that garners bipartisan support and helps move this agenda forward.

Q Sounds like you're saying, though, in the current environment, we're probably still short of a consensus on some kind of attack.

THE PRESIDENT: That I'm pretty certain of. And, look, we're still trying to debate whether we can just make sure that middle-class families don't get a tax hike. Let’s see if we can resolve that. That should be easy. This one is hard -- but it’s important because one of the things that we don't always factor in are the costs involved in these natural disasters; we just put them off as something that's unconnected to our behavior right now. And I think what -- based on the evidence we're seeing, is that what we do now is going to have an impact and a cost down the road if we don’t do something about it."

So in this answer President Obama alludes to both components of the climate crisis: the causes (carbon and other greenhouse gas pollution) and the effects (weather and other related disasters.)  This is in the context of renewed interest on both the left and right in the idea of a carbon tax, which also has the virtue of being a revenue source.  And despite national inaction, the state of California is about to start its own cap and trade system.  Here's another article on this.

President Obama's position here is pretty clear.  It seems to me that if events and other actions accelerate the willingness for action, he will respond. For it may be as a former Congressman who lost his primary because he said global warming exists, "I think the impossible may be moving to the inevitable without ever passing through the probable," said former Rep. Bob Inglis.

 In any case President Obama is now on the record as making the climate crisis a priority for his second term.  We'll probably hear more on Thursday, at least on the "effects" side, when the President tours areas of New York hit hard by superstorm Sandy.

Of the Day

Headline of the day: Two Generals, Two Women and the FBI: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Epic Fail: Lakers hire D'Antoni over Phil Jackson.  They will now lose their season, and Dwight Howard after it.

Wonder which Mitt was the real one?  Wonder no more.  In yet another confidential conversation with big money donors on Wednesday, Mitt Romney blamed his loss on President Obama "giving gifts" to blacks, Latinos and young voters.  You know, the ones who just want stuff from the government and won't take personal responsibility for their own lives.  So yeah, it's this one:

Smackdown of the day: President Obama defends UN Ambassador Susan Rice against cynical and baseless attacks by John McCain and the Senate's prick-in-chief, Lindsay Graham.  "If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me."  I know who my money's on.

Insanity of the day (if insanity is repeating something and expecting a different result):  As Rachel pointed out, while the NRA spent millions of dollars this election and won essentially nothing, Planned Parenthood won essentially everything--every candidate they supported, every candidate they opposed, every ballot measure--for their contributions. 

So Ohio Republican legislators decided to repair their problem with women by...voting to defund Planned Parenthood.

Virtue of the day: Perseverance.  Instead of being exhausted by the election campaign, and depressed because every though they won so much, there is still so much opposition, supporters of Planned Parenthood in Ohio came out in strength to fill the halls and adjacent rooms of the Ohio legislature, to demonstrate their support in no uncertain terms.

Perseverance also for the high school activists in Arizona who protested that state's restrictive and prejudicial (anti-Latino) voter registration process by going out and registering thousands of voters.  When election day came, suddenly election officials didn't have those voters on the rolls, so they had to file provisional ballots.  Most of those ballots in Arizona are routinely thrown out, but those high school kids are on the case, demonstrating publicly to hold those election officials accountable and get those votes counted.

For it turns out that there's actually a state worse at elections than Florida.  It's Arizona.  The counting isn't over there.  Several late-breaking House races have flipped to Democrats.  The Senate seat may still be in play, and Gabby Giffords old seat definitely is.    

Election 2012: Winners

 

 

 

 

Election 2012: Losers

 

 

 

Victory Continued

The news and the numbers continue to define the 2012 elections.

As of today, President Obama has more or less officially won Florida,  making the more or less final electoral vote tally as Obama 332, Romney 206.

As votes continue to be counted, President Obama is expanding his popular vote lead, which is now above 3 million votes.  It's now Obama 51% to Romney 48% with a margin that surpasses GW Bush in 2004. 

Although Paul Ryan won reelection to his House seat in Wisconsin, it was not only by a narrow margin, but he lost his hometown in spectacular fashion.  At the beginning of his vp campaign, Ryan made a big deal out of going back to his hometown of Janesville and accusing the Obama administration of going back on its promises to save a plant there in the reorganization of the auto industry.

It didn't exactly work.  Ryan had been used to winning reeelection handily and Janesville by big margins.  Not this time.  He lost Janesville by 11 points. His Democratic opponent led 55% to 44%. 

The Romneyryan ticket did even worse than that in Janesville.  They lost by 25 points.  President Obama got 62% there. 

Who's Better At Business?

Mitt Romney ran on the image that he was better at business than President Obama.  He made millions in the private sector, while Obama was a community organizer, a professor, a public servant and an author.  Slam dunk.

Except it was all an illusion, and for the Romney campaign, a delusion.  Being good at business also means getting the job done.  It means efficiency and organization.  And Romney turned out to be very bad at business.

This is becoming clearer in the campaign postmortems. Usually a strategist or candidate will divulge the moment they knew they were probably going to lose.  But apparently, with the same data available to them as to everyone else, they never believed it.  They were in denial on election night.  They were so very sure of themselves.  Confidence is great.  Not being able to read the numbers is incompetence.

But that's just one bit of evidence.  The Romney campaign spent millions and perhaps billions on media, enriching its senior staff but getting little bang for their bucks.  They made inefficient media buys throughout the campaign.

Their ground operation also failed.  It failed partly for the same reason their media did: they outsourced.  Their vaunted system to target and deliver voters called  ORCA  was an ineffective mess. 

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign ran what some are calling the best political operation in history.  They used their strategic advantages, made some big bold moves.  But basically they worked the details.  They were very organized and disciplined about identifying and bringing in new voters, and identifying and delivering their voters. 

So it turns out that President Obama is the CEO of this campaign.  The Obama campaign was good at business.  The Romney campaign was terrible at their business.

The truth is that Mitt Romney has never been good at business.  He's been good at making money, which is an entirely different thing.   

Ripples of Hope

This video has been making the rounds since some of us got the link in our in-boxes. At his Chicago campaign hq the day after the election, the President is talking about the hope he has for the future based on the young people who he met working on his campaign.  It's not the first time he's teared up recently when talking about his supporters--he did so in his Des Moines speech (photo below) but it was prompted basically by the same thing--he was talking then as this time about the people who worked in his campaigns.  The full circle of his campaigns turns out to be the circle in the center of the pond, from which the ripples flow out--the "ripples of hope" Robert Kennedy talked about, and President Obama quotes in the video above.

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, June 6 1966 (South Africa address)

Action

In about 8 minutes, President Obama outlined his plan for immediate action on the economy.  Missing from most accounts of this statement I've heard is the President convening not just the same old Washington leaders but business, civic and academic leaders next week to bring some reality to the search for political solutions.  Here's a transcript of the above statement.

By the way, FDR and now President Obama are the only Democrats since the Civil War to have achieved popular vote majorities in two successive presidential elections.