Political Climate

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If I did this right, this is a 9 minute plus clip from Rachel Maddow--a succinct big picture on climate crisis politics featuring a neat couple of minutes with Rep. Rush Holt, a nuclear physicist who is also a Member of Congress from New Jersey.  Talking about how we can't afford NOT to confront climate change, he says: "We're not a poor impoverished country--we just act like one.  We should be investing as though we believe there will be a future for us."

More Gray, No Green

Over at A Plain Blog About Politics Jonathan Bernstein every Saturday asks the question, what mattered this week?  I was otherwise engaged for the weekend, so I'll make my answer here, especially since it's a strange one.  Of all the mostly idiotic things that happened last week, what may have mattered the most is the New York Times shutting down its climate information site, the Green Blog.  This follows the Times' shutting down its environmental news desk in January.

As Revkin points out in his note, the Times still maintains nine fashion blogs and eight sports blogs. But they couldn't be bothered with one on the most important elements in the fate of the planet.  (And I wonder, can Revkin's Dot Earth be far behind?)  What ever happened to that great gray lady responsibility?  She just couldn't think green.

This is a terrible time to be lacking in trustworthy places to find climate reporting.  There were so few sources to begin with, and now the newspaper site with the greatest clout has given up on that.  If the Times had continued, other newspapers with like ambitions would have to as well.  This is a setback.

We need a range, and we need some commitment.  Even while touting its Blue Marble enviro blog,  Mother Jones speculated that the Times action was because environmental news is inherently boring.  What I find inherently boring is progressive as well as regressive trendy cynicism, or the reflexive inflated coverage of every inconsequential stupid thing GOPers and other deniers say plus Joe Romm's ego trip at Climate Progress.  

Real Climate is really for climate scientists,  Grist can be good and also weightless, etc. Elizabeth Kolbert at the New Yorker is consistently solid and eloquent, but she alone is not enough. They all deserve a place in the mix, but where's the mix?  At least enough newspapers and other sites are covering the stories and studies they all believe are big stories that you can compare their reporting and analysis.  But how about a site that does its own reporting, or that can quickly evaluate what's really new in a particular research finding?

As for environmental news being boring, ask folks on Staten Island and on the Jersey shore how bored they are. Frightened certainly--and climate news can be frightening.  That's probably more to the point than "boring."  Less stress to read those nine blogs on fashion, and forget.  

The Wolf is in the Details

Stock market soars on surprising jump in jobs--236,000 private sector jobs added, and unemployment drops to 7.7 in February.  Celebrate now, because by April, it's unlikely to be the same kind of news.

Despite Washington efforts to downplay the effects of across the board congressional cuts to federal funding that includes state and local projects, Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel at the Huffington Post ( an outlet I don't like to quote because it depends on forcing writers to write for free, although not these two I assume) collected local news reports which showed some of what's starting to go on:

Recovery efforts following a tornado in Atlanta are being drained of federal help because of sequestration related cuts. [WAGA-TV]
The Georgia Department of Labor is figuring out how to reduce unemployment benefits by nearly 11 percent starting on March 31. [WSB-TV]
The Spokane County Meals On Wheels is looking at a $45,000 budget cut. "I'm scared," the program quoted one official with the group saying. "How do we keep serving all the people that need it?" [KREM-TV]
Cleanup efforts following the Hanford nuclear leak in Washington state are complicated by171 million in sequester-related budget cuts. " [KCPQ-TV, KPTV-TV]

The San Diego Housing Commission is staring at $7.5 million in cuts. [KSWB-TV]  Housing and social programs in San Antonio and Austin, Texas are also looking at cuts.
Little Rock, Ark., faces potential losses in funding for domestic violence prevention services. [KARK-TV]
Mississippi food pantries are likely to take a hit with officials expecting "to see more people in line." [WAPT-TV]
Advocates in Kansas City, Mo., are going to Washington to try and prevent expended cuts to scientific research into disease control and prevention. [KCTV-TV]

They also found that airports in Detroit, San Francisco and St. Petersburg are closing airport towers, and six air traffic control towers are closing in Oklahoma.  As for economic impacts:

One official near a military base in St. Louis estimates that there could be a $28 million economic impact in the region. [KSDK-TV]  Approximately 8,500 civilian defense employees at Fort Bragg are facing furloughs, and "officials and business owners say that could have a trickle down effect on the local economy" and that "the sequester will also impact schools at Fort Bragg and its five thousand students." [WRAL-TV]

The writers conclude:

"Not every station was convinced that sequestration would spell doom for their communities, and a more thorough search of local television programs beyond the major markets could of course be done. But the coverage was pretty consistent at the local level, revealing that viewers of these channels are getting a different story about the ramifications of the budget cuts than those simply consuming their news from cable television."

Where the Brains Are in Congress

"By ending his filibuster only when he finally had to take a leak, [Senator Rand] Paul made a powerful case for the proposition that our government might function far more smoothly if our elected representatives’ bladders rather than their brains called the shots."
--Frank Rich, New York Magazine online

Hey Ho

Here's the good news from peer-reviewed research results just published in the journal Science on the last 11,300 years of the Earth's climate:

“We have, through human emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, indefinitely delayed the onset of the next ice age" said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University.

So no ice age to worry about.  And now back to reality. The study also found:

The decade of 1900 to 1910 was one of the coolest in the past 11,300 years — cooler than 95 percent of the other years, the marine fossil data suggest. Yet 100 years later, the decade of 2000 to 2010 was one of the warmest, said study lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University. Global thermometer records only go back to 1880, and those show the last decade was the hottest for this more recent time period.

“In 100 years, we’ve gone from the cold end of the spectrum to the warm end of the spectrum,” Marcott said. “We’ve never seen something this rapid. Even in the ice age the global temperature never changed this quickly.”

When he says "we" he means "we the species that calls itself human beings." This 11,000 years pretty much constitutes the known history of human civilization, beginning with organized agriculture.

The speed of the change tells the story:  "Scientists say it is further evidence that modern-day global warming isn’t natural, but the result of rising carbon dioxide emissions that have rapidly grown since the Industrial Revolution began roughly 250 years ago."

  Or in more scientific language: "What we found is that temperatures increased in the last hundred years as much as they had cooled in the last six or seven thousand," he said. "In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we've seen in the whole Holocene," referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago.

In more other words, for those hoping that today's global heating is part of a natural long term trend that would be discernible with a longer timeline, sorry, no can do.

This actually should be good news.  Because if it were a natural trend, there might be little we could do. But if it's caused by greenhouse gas pollution, stopping it could eventually at least level off the upward trend in time to save that human civilization.

But maybe that is the scariest part.  It could be the rest of Katharine Heyhoe's quote: "...and we are now heading into an unknown future where humans control the thermostat of the planet."

Hey, ho.

But Not Forgotten

Congressional Republicans pushed back today against critics of their effort to de-fund ACORN in the current budget, a voting registration organization that has not existed since 2010.

"Whether or not ACORN exists is not the point," declared House Subcommittee on Pandering to Useful Illusions chair Flushlord Tuber.  "Some 49% of Republicans surveyed recently agreed that ACORN had stolen the 2012 election for Barack Hussein Obama, and that's good enough for me."

Tuber will now lead an effort to take the passenger pigeon off the endangered species list.

Ancient Remains

"You don't believe in that climate change stuff."
"Nah.  Does it feel colder to you?"

Giant Ancient Camel Remains Found in Canadian Arctic

The Future Faces Us

Here are two not just inconvenient but inescapable facts: For the foreseeable future, dealing with the effects of global heating will take up an ever-increasing proportion of human attention and resources. These are the effects of causes in the past.  But in terms of causing more havoc in the future: if human civilization and most of the larger animal species now on this planet are to have any future beyond this century, the spewing of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will have to slow significantly and then pretty quickly stop.

Scientists once settled on a rise in 2 degrees C as the upper limit, not for any damaging change, but for survivable change.  If the planet goes on as it has, we will blow by that and double it to 4C by the end of the century.  At which point this will likely become another planet, with few if any humans on it by, say, 2200.

There is much that can be done with energy efficiency and the already robust course of developing clean energy.  But most observers believe that to have any chance, the use of carbon must be discouraged through some financial mechanism that will raise its price.

Cap and trade is one such system.  The state of California is currently getting a cap and trade program up and running, so far successfully.  But the last national attempt was rejected by Congress.

  Another is a tax on carbon.  Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker wrote persuasively that the carbon tax is attracting support among conservatives as well as others---including fossil fuel behemoths:

"Perhaps because a carbon tax makes so much sense—researchers at M.I.T. recently described it as a possible “win-win-win” response to several of the country’s most pressing problems—economists on both ends of the political spectrum have championed it. Liberals like Robert Frank, of Cornell, and Paul Krugman, of Princeton, support the idea, as do conservatives like Gary Becker, at the University of Chicago, and Greg Mankiw, of Harvard. (Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Mitt Romney, is the founding member of what he calls the Pigou Club.) A few weeks ago, more than a hundred major corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever, issued a joint statement calling on lawmakers around the globe to impose a “clear, transparent and unambiguous price on carbon emissions,” which, while not an explicit endorsement of a carbon tax, certainly comes close. Even ExxonMobil, once a leading sponsor of climate-change denial, has expressed support for a carbon tax. “A well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” a spokeswoman for the company said recently in an e-mail to Bloomberg News."

A carbon tax makes the price of carbon-based energy higher, which discourages carbon-based energy and encourages the development and use of clean alternatives. It makes financial sense, not only in reducing carbon in the air but in revenue available to help the efforts to deal with the effects of global heating already in the cards, due to the time lag between cause and effect.  At first that might just be to lessen budget deficits, but even that strengthens the ability to respond when needed.

There's another wrinkle to these systems, called "cap and dividend" or in the tax system "fee and dividend."  In the most recent formulation of fee and dividend, introduced as a bill in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, a fee is imposed on the 3,000 largest carbon polluters, and most of the money collected is paid out to American citizens to help defray their higher energy costs, with some of the rest going to weatherization and other energy efficiency programs.  And the money is substantial: $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Any mechanism that helps slash carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions begins to pay off immediately by lessening bad health effects of air and water pollution, but it may well help lessen climate effects even within this century, according to a new study.  Though it's no escape clause:  this relatively conservative study suggests it forestalls 20% to 65% of the bad effects.  The greater payoff is if it forestalls runaway climate apocalypse thereafter.

The dimensions and onrushing effects of climate change already underway are beginning to sink in, as in this weekend's USA Today story that signals a commitment to cover climate more systematically.  We are still at the very beginning of understanding its role internationally, as in the turmoil of the Arab Spring.  

According to chaos theory, small changes may lead to very big changes, and very big changes are required.  Sure, another kind of chaos grips politics these days but even though nobody now would bet much that the U.S. Congress is going to pass a carbon tax any time soon, it's still worth talking through the idea and setting the table.  The congressional elections of 2014 loom larger all the time.

Wolf Bites

After a weekend of GOPer pols trying to minimize the impact of their meat cleaver cuts to the money needed to pay for federal employees and federally funded programs, the dimensions are emerging anyway.  Some impacts are being felt now but most will ripple through in the coming weeks.  As the New York Times noted,    those disproportionately and most meaningfully hurt are the poor and the most vulnerable.  This is coming at a time when further evidence emerges that the economic recovery has so far almost exclusively benefited corporations and the wealthy, rather than the middle class or the poor.

And the effects go beyond our shores.  According to the organization One  these cuts result in:

171,900 people would not have AIDS medication, resulting in 39,200 deaths and 77,200 more children becoming orphans
1.2 million fewer insecticide-treated mosquito nets, leading to over 3,200 deaths from malaria
836,800 fewer pentavalent vaccines would be available for children, resulting in 8,900 more deaths from completely preventable diseases

That's the specific background for the cartoon above.

Moreover, according to a new CBS poll, Americans aren't fooled by the GOPer strategy: a majority believe they will feel the pain of the sequester cuts, and they support President Obama's formula of a balanced approach to a deficit deal.  Though in fact such a deal is unlikely to ever be balanced: closing tax loopholes on the uber wealthy will cause them much less pain than any cuts to programs that poor families and children and the elderly depend on.

But maybe the slightly less rich who don't own their own jets or have access to those of their corporate overlord will notice that in the coming weeks the wait time at airports may well double as screeners are laid off.  And that's before we get to air traffic control.

Hot Heads

In the typically deadpan drone, so muted and clotted with quantitative analysis that it comes close to stupidly missing the point way of some scientific research findings, this report on "it's the humidity as well as the heat" study of the effects of global heating dances around what to me is a primary dread about it all, even in the present and very near future.

So these scientists studied people who work outside, and conclude that with more very hot summer days, it will become more dangerous to spend as much time out there as they normally do now.  Well, duh. But at least they factor in the effects of humidity.

My own ahah moment came in a couple of summers at the end of the 1980s in Pittsburgh.  I had experienced searing heat growing up in western Pennsylvania, though it was not as bad as summers in downstate Illinois.  But those weeks of horrendous heat waves changed my life.  They were one big reason I fled at the first opportunity to this strip of very northern California coast, where a heat wave would be more than a few successive afternoons of 75F.  And I haven't experienced one of those yet.

But I'm not talking about the physical effects of being outside.  I'm talking about the effects of heat and humidity on my ability to think straight and feel like myself.  The physical effects as they translate to the band of heat around my head and the humidity taking over my sinuses.

Not everyone is affected to the same degree I suppose, but I'll bet a lot of people are meaningfully affected, and this is something seldom discussed when contemplating the climate crisis and its future. Longer, more frequent and more intense heat waves are already here, and every feature of them will only increase.  So at a time when cooler heads should prevail, we will have more hot heads.  At a time when innovative and systematic thinking will be needed, we will have sloggy brains flailing around in the humid murk.  Not to mention heat prostration, heat exhaustion.

One of those summers I didn't have air conditioning, so I spent as much time as possible in the cold of Eat & Park and other eating and drinking establishments, and movie theatres.  The next summer I had a room air conditioner that I carried from bedroom in the morning to office and back again at night.  That kind of heat and humidity that does not really relent at night cannot be completely blotted out with air conditioning.

These thoughts may seem strange when for example the Midwest is being smashed with another snowstorm.  But that's part of the point.  When it's actually hot you can't actually think straight. I worry about the effects of recurrent persistent high heat and humidity not only on health (something that is itself not taken seriously enough) but on mental health, on the ability to think clearly and make smart decisions.  Especially if we wait until the heat is merciless.

The Wolf Defined

While media attention was mostly focused on other aspects of President Obama's press conference Friday, the following exchange I felt was the heart of it.  If I had video editing skills I would post a clip of just this portion, because it's much more powerful to see and hear it.  President Obama presented a cool and reasonable demeanor, even when he was not mincing words, and at times he projected a weary optimism about the long-term triumph of common sense.  But during this exchange, his anger and his compassion surfaced.  He was almost overcome by those emotions by the end of these statements, so that he stumbled over getting to the next question.   The best I can do is link to the video, and note that this question is asked at the 21:58 mark.

 Here is the exchange in its entirety.  It's long for a blog post, but then, it's my damn blog.

"Q    What do you say to the people like Mayor Bloomberg -- who is no critic of yours in general; he endorsed you -- who argues that there is some what he calls "posturing" in these claims that there are going to be big layoffs and a lot of people out of work, and thinks that the effects of the spending cuts are being overstated by the administration?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well Jessica, look, I'll just give you an example.  The Department of Defense right now has to figure out how the children of military families are going to continue with their schooling over the next several months, because teachers at these Army bases are typically civilians.  They are therefore subject to furlough, which means that they may not be able to teach one day a week.

Now, I expect that we'll be able to manage around it.  But if I'm a man or woman in uniform in Afghanistan right now, the notion that my spouse back home is having to worry about whether or not our kids are getting the best education possible, the notion that my school for my children on an Army base might be disrupted because Congress didn't act, that's an impact.  Now, Mayor Bloomberg and others may not feel that impact.  I suspect they won't.  But that family will. 

The Border Patrol agents who are out there in the hot sun, doing what Congress said they're supposed to be doing, finding out suddenly that they're getting a 10-percent pay cut and having to go home and explain that to their families, I don't think they feel like this is an exaggerated impact.  So I guess it depends on where you sit.

Now, what is absolutely true is that not everybody is going to feel it.  Not everybody is going to feel it all at once.  What is true is that the accumulation of those stories all across this country, folks who suddenly -- might have been working all their lives to get an education, just so that they can get that job and get out of welfare and they've got their kid in Head Start, and now, suddenly, that Head Start slot is gone and they're trying to figure out how am I going to keep my job, because I can't afford child care for my kid; some of the suppliers for those shipbuilders down in Virginia, where you've got some suppliers who are small businesses, this is all they do, and they may shut down those companies, and their employees are going to be laid off -- the accumulation of all of those stories of impact is going to make our economy weaker.  It's going to mean less growth.  It's going to mean hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.

That is real.  That’s not -- we're not making that up.  That’s not a scare tactic, that’s a fact.

Starting tomorrow, everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol -- now that Congress has left, somebody is going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage -- they're going to have less pay.  The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they've got to figure out how to manage that.  That’s real.

So I want to be very clear here.  It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the kind of crisis we talked about with America defaulting and some of the problems around the debt ceiling.  I don’t anticipate a huge financial crisis, but people are going to be hurt.  The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have.  Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have -- and there are lives behind that.  And that’s real.  And it's not necessary -- that’s the problem."

And Then the Wolf Finally Came

We've been artificially and needlessly pushed to the economic brink so often by GOPers in Congress that on the eve of the March 1 mandatory across the board cuts in the funding of all federal programs and employment, Congress went home early without doing anything, the stock market hit a new high, and the American people aren't exactly caught up in the drama.  According to the overview of the latest Pew poll:
"After a series of fiscal crises over the past few years, the public is not expressing a particular sense of urgency over the pending March 1 sequester deadline. With little more than a week to go, barely a quarter have heard a lot about the scheduled cuts, while about as many have heard nothing at all."

It's a living example of the old fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  Cry "Wolf!" enough times with the wolf not appearing and people are no longer thrown into a panic, or even calmly take precautions, they just ignore it.
That's what most people take to be the moral of the tale.

But that's not the end of the tale.  Because the wolf finally comes.  And no one is prepared.

Absent some last minute miracle, the wolf finally comes tonight in the form of the across the board disappearance of money to fund the federal government. We will see in the coming days and weeks just what will happen, and how ferocious this wolf turns out to be.   But we could see February 28 as the apex of the economy for the rest of the year or longer.  The U.S. economy seems to be turning around, the dollar is strong internationally, and while the rich are still soaking everyone else, there is at least still unemployment insurance and Medicaid, and older people (and others) can count on Medicare and Social Security at current levels.  We'll see what and how much of what the wolf eats up before it's done.

Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke testified to a Congressional committee the other day, and said what most other economists and smart people have been saying.  According to the New Yorker:

Departing from his statutory duty of reporting to the Senate Banking Committee on the Fed’s monetary policy, Bernanke devoted much of his testimony to fiscal policy, warning his congressional class that letting the sequester go ahead would endanger the economic recovery and do little or nothing to reduce the country’s debt burden.

There are plenty of articles about how bad this budget sequester is, for everything from daycare to national defense, especially long term but with lots of short term pain.  Just allowing it to go into effect for one day (though it is scheduled to last for ten years!) will cost the federal government a lot of unnecessary expense.
But even though other crises have been averted or dialed back, there are reasons to believe this one will go on for awhile.

One reason is that its basis reflects a failure to communicate--or at least a failure to understand--the real situation of government spending and debt. There are those who think unleashing this wolf is worth it because finally the federal deficit goes down.  It turns out that most American know shit about the federal deficit, let alone the ins and outs of government spending. Something like 6% of Americans apparently realize that the Obama administration has been cutting government spending and dialing down the debt.  That's just a question of fact.  Just as serious is the failure to communicate that government outlays are a vital part of a healthy economy as well as a strong civilized society--that the decrease in government employment at all levels is in fact a major reason the economic recovery is as slow as it is.

The Pew poll is just the latest to show how confused the public is on this.  They say they want the deficit cut as their highest priority, but can name not a single program they're willing to cut.  Except maybe foreign aid, which is commonly thought to be a huge part of the budget, whereas in fact it's tiny.  And they also agree that spending shouldn't be cut when recovery is so tenuous.

The second reason is the most obvious: more than any time in my memory and possibly a lot longer than that,   the opposition between Democrats and Republicans in Washington is a state of war.  So far firearms are not involved, but the opposition is just as profound.

It is worse than it was six months ago or even two months ago, because Republicans have gone faster and harder to the extreme right.  Look no further than the sequestration:  all President Obama is asking for in terms of revenue is cutting tax loopholes on the wealthy and big corporations,which pretty much was supported by Mitt Romney in his presidential campaign.  That was way back in--do you remember?--October.

This time the wolf may be a dog of war.  Political war but just as total.

Supremely Racist

In a terse statement in front of the just-unveiled statue of Rosa Parks, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that in response to statements made in oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, he was ordering that a new entity be placed under the protection of Section 5 for its evident predisposition to discriminate on racial grounds.

That entity is the U.S. Supreme Court.  Notwithstanding its various decisions in the past upholding equal rights, Holder said that the Court's historic pattern of racial prejudice has clearly been revived, most notably by the statements of Justice Antonin Scalia, who referred to Section 5 as a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."  Since the only "entitlement" granted under the Voting Rights Act is the right to vote without regard to race, the Attorney General concluded the the Court is now more of a threat to the rights guaranteed under this law than Alabama and Arizona put together.

Reporters asked if Holder had considered placing only Scalia rather than the Court as a whole under Section 5.  He replied that he had considered it, especially since Justice Scalia scoffed at the relevance of the U.S. Congress renewing the Act's provisions for 25 years, after 21 hearings and thousands of pages of testimony, by a near-unanimous vote in the House and a 98-0 vote in the Senate in 2006.  The renewal was signed by President George W. Bush.

That Scalia felt that all of this doesn't matter and that the Court can decide whether Section 5 is needed to safeguard voting rights for minorities, certainly suggests that he should himself be restrained by the Voting Rights Act, Holder said.  But he noted that while their language was less overtly racist, the other Republican-appointed Justices seemed to agree with Scalia on his main points.  Since they seem to have a majority, Holder said he had no choice but to add the Supreme Court to those states and districts within states that require Justice Department scrutiny and possible intervention, in order to protect the equal right to vote in the United States.

Nailed It

Back on January 23 I noted the continuity of President Obama's Inaugural Address to earlier speeches, in particular his commencement address at Knox College in 2005 (Knox being where I did my four years plus, though in the previous century.)

Now through the Knox alum newsletter I learn of confirmation from President Obama's speechwriter that indeed this Knox address was a major inspiration for the 2013 Inaugural.  Cool.  (Here's another link to the local Galesburg paper which links to an earlier article and includes photos and video of the speech.)

At Knox in 2005 then Senator Obama spoke outside Old Main, a site of a Lincoln-Douglas
 debate, commemorated by that plaque.

Evolution of Mom Dancing

Opening the envelope for Best Picture at the Oscars is one thing--but this First Lady has some serious moves.  P.S. This is what those bangs are made for.

Oscar Night Heist

HOLLYWOOD, CA—Los Angeles police confirmed that Denzel Washington, Naomi Watts, Joaquin Phoenix, and nearly a dozen other top-name actors had gone missing ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards after following a fake red carpet laid outside the Dolby Theatre that reportedly led into the back of an idling, windowless van. “It appears that the kidnappers were able to use an array of camera flashes, canned fan screaming, and an imposter catty fashion reporter to lure these unsuspecting movie stars right into their grasp,” said police sergeant Mark Morales, noting that Reese Witherspoon, William Hurt, and the entire starring cast of Silver Linings Playbook were seen waving and turning to show their outfits to an assembled corps of fake paparazzi before wandering into the cargo hold of a Ford Econoline vehicle.

Oscar Report from the Onion

Cry Havoc: How the Iraq War Began

We are weeks away from the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war's beginning.  Books, articles and TV docus have begun, concentrating on the deceptions before the war, and the war's long and terrible extent. 

 On a Sunday almost exactly ten years ago today, the San Francisco Chronicle published my essay on what everyone already knew was the upcoming bombing of Baghdad which would start the war.  It was supposed to be so devastating that the war would be over quickly.  At first it may have seemed that way, and President Bush declared combat operations over.  But of course, it went on for nearly nine more years, at immense cost.

But lost in this history is the horror of the bombing itself, and what it represented beyond introducing the p.r. term of "Shock and Awe."  The piece reflects how it was advertised, and the reality turned out to be even worse.  For weeks some 1700 air sorties including more than 500 using cruise missiles bombed Baghdad, before the first American ground troops arrived.

 I refer also to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and its line,  "Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war."  Once the dogs of war are loose, they are very difficult to rein in.  Once started, the machinery of war is very hard to stop.   The logic of war-including the emotional logic-- is that warfare feeds on itself, and there are plenty of corporate as well as political and ideological interests eager to keep feeding off the continuing warfare.  

The echo of the Iraq war continues to be loud, though now so distorted that it isn't always identifiable.  This war that depleted so much continues to have consequences in what this nation did, and what it did not do.  Those consequences may well continue for a very long time.

And this was a preview of how it began.  Here is the essay as it first appeared in the Insight Section of the San Francisco Chronicle on February 16, 2003.


When Islamic armies were the most powerful in the world, conquerors of Asia Minor and North Africa, and poised at the gates of Europe in the 8th century, Abu Hanifa, founder of a school of law in the city of Baghdad, proposed that the killing, maiming and raping of civilian noncombatants in war be forbidden. It was one of the first attempts to codify some kind of moral and legal restraints on civilized societies engaged in the dangerously uncivilized practice of warfare.

If and when war comes to Iraq, it will likely feature the relentless and perhaps unprecedented bombing of Baghdad. According to CBS News and other sources, the United States is considering implementing a strategy called "Shock and Awe," developed in 1996. The plan could result in at least 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles raining down on Baghdad in just the first day of an aerial campaign - more than were used on all targets in the entire Gulf War. And the plan calls for an equal or greater number on the second day as well, up to 800 total, each capable of carrying 1,000 pounds of explosives. There was no estimate of how many days the bombing would continue.

Although missiles would likely focus on infrastructure including electricity and water supplies, an average of one missile striking a city of 5 million inhabitants every four minutes around the clock could kill and maim thousands of civilians.

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," according to an unnamed Pentagon official quoted by CBS. "The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before."

The prospect of war in Iraq is crowded with moral as well as political questions, with multiple possibilities for ethical outrages of stunning proportions. But the continuous bombing of a city of civilians would probably be the first that confronts the watching world.

In A History of Bombing (published by New Press in 2001, and forthcoming this spring in paperback), Sven Lindqvist follows three main threads: the technology and use of aerial bombing in history, the attempts to deal with the moral implications of its use against civilian populations (Abu Hanifa is one example he cites), and social attitudes toward bombing found in sources such as popular fiction.

The historical parallels to the current prospect as well as the ironies are disquieting. The impact of the "shock and awe" strategy is meant to be on hearts and minds: to destroy the enemy's will, and mental and psychological ability to resist. But bombing's ability to terrorize - the sudden explosive death from the sky without warning - was one of the first effects to be observed, noted in 13th century China. It has often been a prime strategy of bombing, according to Lindquist, used extensively by European colonial powers in Africa, India and Asia.

Bombing is especially terrifying when used on the helpless. At first it was shelling from ships far offshore (which is how the United States bombed Nicaragua in 1854), then bombs dropped from airplanes. Bombing was a cost-effective way of keeping subjugated populations in line. Baghdad was a British target more than once in the 1920s.

As airplanes, bombs and cities all got bigger, moralists and diplomats negotiating the international rules of war and definitions of war crimes struggled to keep up. Several prohibitions against air warfare and the bombing of cities were proposed, and some were signed, except by the major powers capable of the bombing. Well into the 20th century, bombing was considered not so bad if the victims were of "inferior races." Some authors wrote glowingly of bombing as a way to civilize the world by permanently subjugating or even wiping out these races.

European bombing gradually got closer and closer to home, until the German military on behalf of Franco tested new kinds of bombs by dropping them on cities in Spain. Japan bombed civilian cities in China. Then in the 1940s, bombing of even the capital cities of combatant nations - Berlin, London, Tokyo - became a normal instrument of warfare, finally leading to the annihilation of the undefended cities of Hamburg and Dresden by British saturation firebombing, and of Hiroshima and much of Nagasaki by the U.S. atomic bomb.

By that time, terror was not the only result of bombing. Fifty thousand civilians were killed in a single night in Hamburg, most of them women, children and elderly. Twice that number died in Dresden. Two atom bombs did fill Japan with shock and awe, and killed several hundred thousand civilians in the process.

There are various strategic arguments for bombing campaigns that dovetail with apparent moral concerns, usually involving shortening a war's duration or substituting for ground assaults, thus saving lives, especially the lives of the side doing the bombing.

When facing the possibility that this war would unleash chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that have been largely absent from warfare for decades due to international taboos of one kind or another, it may seem quixotic to argue that bombing of civilian populations should be regarded as an evil in itself, and beyond the pale for nations that desire any sort of international relations. But it seems morally obtuse that there is a stronger taboo against assassinating a declared enemy's head of a state than against slaughtering babies in their beds. Surely bombing should be a last resort, not the first.

For even if the historical parallels are coincidental and not disturbing echoes of residual racism and empire-building, the bombing of Baghdad to begin this war would have a terrorizing effect on more than its residents. In Shakespeare's time, there was another word for the terror, the shock and awe that accompany a war without moral limits. The word was "havoc," as in the famous quotation from Julius Caesar, "Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war."

The bombing and havoc may already be starting by the time you read these words, although according to Los Angeles Times reporter Doyle McManus on the Washington Week in Review, "You can pretty well mark on your calendar March 15. " It's the date formerly known as the Ides of March.

The bombing of Baghdad began on March 19, 2003.

Moronic Inferno

Once more unto the brink my friends.  We unhappy many, we band of blatherers.  Once more our GOPer congressmorons are taking Americans through an elective crisis, a self-inflicted disaster rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling catastrophe.

Congress passed a law mandating across the board cuts in the federal budget, with no judgement allowed in what is to be cut.  The uber-morons of Fox and the Rabid Right don't think these cuts are even deep enough, yet just about everybody else recognizes they'll cripple the country and sink the economy.  These cuts were meant to be this bad--to be soooo bad that Congress would do anything to forestall them, even come up with rational budget changes that would cut the deficit without trashing the economy.  They didn't, and now the cuts are coming.

Did they have to do this?  No.  Can they stop it easily by just...well, stopping it?  Yes.  Are they talking like they will do that?  No.  "As simple as it is stupid," as Rachel Maddow says.

President Obama outlined some of the consequences:

Now, if Congress allows this meat-cleaver approach to take place, it will jeopardize our military readiness; it will eviscerate job-creating investments in education and energy and medical research. It won’t consider whether we’re cutting some bloated program that has outlived its usefulness, or a vital service that Americans depend on every single day. It doesn’t make those distinctions. 

Emergency responders like the ones who are here today -- their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings."

Though Medicare and Medicaid aren't affected directly, the cuts will of course hit the poor hardest.  They'll hit  families with children as Head Start gets cut, teachers are disappeared. But as the President noted, the business class will also feel it, at the airport.  And those are just some of the direct consequences.  When people lose their jobs, a lot of other people eventually lose their jobs too.

There's a kind of apotheosis to this latest apocalypse, partly because there's no ongoing drama.  No negotiations, just fatalism.  Unless Speaker Banal's attempt to blame this all on Obama is a clever preliminary to saving the country from him by cancelling the cuts--by declaring victory and going home--there is no exit strategy.  Congress isn't even bothering to be in session.  

This is the seventh time GOPers have gone to the brink in a hostage-taking, manufactured crisis, since Obama was elected (the first time.) Each time, the U.S. economy has paid, the federal deficit has grown because of it.   And it's not like they've gained political advantage.  The latest polls show President Obama's approval at from 51% to 55%,  with GOPers anywhere from 20 to 40 points behind that.  Most Americans surveyed believe this is the GOPers fault.

So what's really at work in this moronic inferno (a phrase coined by Martin Amis in the 80s)?  Apart from the imploding GOP, on the brink of a nervous breakdown, or more likely having one.

Maybe they have to manufacture apocalyptic crises because they dare not face a real one--one so big and frightening that they can't even admit it exists, let alone put in the emotional work as well as the long, difficult intellectual and political work to confront it.  It's a crisis that is going to be here for a very long time, and it can't be ignored away.  And the longer we fail to confront it with all the energies we possess, the worse it is going to be.

  Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called for action to combat climate change and spur the American economy by investing in clean energy technologies.

"We share nothing so completely as our planet," Kerry said in his first major speech since becoming secretary of state at the University of Virginia. "If we waste this opportunity, it may be the only thing our generation - generations - are remembered for."

This Week in Fascism (Updated)

Uncivil War among the GOPers has become so vicious that a Tea Party group had to apologize for creating the above portrait of Karl Rove as a Nazi stormtrooper.  They're still a tad upset that he wants his billionaires to back non-crazy (i.e. non-Tea Party) candidates.  So to review: a Rabid Right fringe of the Republican White Peoples Party thinks Karl Rove is a Nazi.  Pot, kettle, black?

Also in the department of reaping your own damn whirlwind, John McCain faced his own Rabid Right whites  in Arizona, shouting at him for not deploying soldiers to shoot to kill on every inch of the southern border.  Another GOPer suggested a model for our border security should be East Germany.  Build up that wall, Mr. Gorbachev!

But the prize goes to the Show Me state, where a GOPer legislator wants to make proposing a gun control law a felony crime in Missouri.  You know the old saying in politics, if you can't beat 'em, arrest 'em!  Or as stormtrooper Karl might say, if you can't arrest 'em, beat 'em!

But actually the prize for effectively installing fascist dictatorship while hidden in plain sight goes to the state of Michigan, which re-installed its Emergency Manager law that was voted down in 2012 (but this time in a new voter-proof package!) and is looking towards the GOPer state government-mandated totalitarian takeover of the big prize, the city of Detroit.  

Meanwhile, not separated at birth:

Senator Ted Cruz

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Cardinals Not Happy with Pope Distraction

It’s not as if they’ve got nothing else to do. As the Cardinals gather for spring training in Palm Beach, they’ll be trying to figure out how to replace injured starting pitcher Chris Carpenter and the second baseman they traded to the Dodgers, Skip Schumaker. Among other problems.

And suddenly they’re faced with one more task: electing the next Pope.

“The Pope’s resignation just came out of left field,” said a clubhouse source at Roger Dean Stadium where the Cardinals train. “And the Vatican’s a holy mess. We were one game away from the pennant last year. We really don’t need this. It's a high massive distraction.”

One of the Cardinals’ coaches agreed, though not for attribution. “We’re breaking in a new second baseman. We’ve got to figure out how to keep Rafael Furcal and Jaime Garcia healthy. And Carlos Beltran isn’t getting any younger. But instead of concentrating on all that, we’ve got to go through all these bios and resumes, organize a conclave—Jesus, it’s a mess.”

Several observers noted that second year manager Mike Matheny will be under particular pressure. “Mike’s just figuring out what minor leaguers and draft choices to look at,” said one veteran scribe. “Now he’s supposed to come up with a supreme pontiff? The truth is nobody in the organization is prepared for this. Nobody even knows how to make the white smoke.”


Though only pitchers and catchers are present at training camp so far, the Cardinal organization insists that the election of a Pope will not interfere with the spring schedule. Not everybody agrees.

"They're working out a plan for like conclave in the morning, workouts in the afternoon, but who knows how long this is going to take?" said an informed batting practice catcher.

“We’ll probably cancel an exhibition game or two,” said pitcher Marc Rzepczynski. “Personally I’m rooting for another Polish Pope but I’m just one vote. Quote me as saying I’m keeping an open mind. And spell my name right.”

The Whimpering Warmongers

Beginning with Presidents Day, this week might well turn Zeitgeist's attention to the international arena, and wars past, present and to come.  On Monday MSNBC premieres a documentary on the presidential-level lies that promoted the Iraq war.  According to its narrator, Rachel Maddow, it will ruffle some political feathers.  Those same feathers are already in tatters, after an ugly barnyard brawl with Chuck Hagel.

The unprecedented filibuster stalling the new Secretary of Defense from taking office, and preventing him from accompanying the President to an important international conference this week, is definitely part of this mix.  The GOPer Senate filibuster, led by the permanently confused John McCain and the ever more craven Lindsay "Cracker" Graham, seemed like just another moronic inferno--continuous blather about issues that appointee Chuck Hagel had nothing to do with or will never set policy on, while neglecting to even try to find out if he can do the actual job of defense secretary.  But Josh Marshall at TPM makes a very interesting case that this is all still about Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, and the warmongering foreign policy those wars represented.  It's the neocon's last hurrah.

"Basically everything Barack Obama has done since coming into office has been to unwind the thicket of commitments, practices and open wars begun under George W. Bush. People who don’t know the policies and the agendas in detail can miss this," Marshall writes.  But the neocons know exactly what's going on, and they don't like it--they especially don't like that Republican Chuck Hagel agrees with this dismantling, and said so even while Bush Lite was in office.

The American people are so far past this that President Obama's announcement in the State of the Union that half the troops still in Afghanistan would be home by year's end didn't even make much news.  But the neanderthalic neocons don't care.  They have security consultants and gun manufacturers to feed, and their carefully cultivated mad voters' buttons to push.   But they're losing.  So they weaken their own country's defense and international standing, just to express their pique.

These are the guys responsible for thousands of deaths, billions of wasted dollars, immense human suffering and more than a decade of awful displacement of the energy and attention needed to save the planet.  No wonder they're reacting like terribly guilty criminals.

 But at least they're not going out with another bang.  Just with an ugly whimper.

Towards Climate Action

"Today was the day. Finally, powerfully, decisively -- the movement to stop climate change has come together," activist and writer Bill McKibben wrote in an email to 350.org supporters.

"This was the biggest climate change rally in US history. By our count, 50,000 people gathered by the Washington Monument and then marched past the White House, demanding that President Obama block the Keystone XL pipeline and move forward toward climate action."

Other sources put the number at 35,000--USA Today said "tens of thousands" in their story, with its unflattering photo of McKibben, so reminiscent of press coverage of early Civil Rights and antiwar marches.  The Sierra Club news release contains a list of speakers and excerpts from speeches.  Think Progress has a brief story and photos.

We Are All Newtown

From Thursday's rally in Connecticut  marking two months since the Sandy Hook assault weapons massacre.

Happy Valentine's Day

Response to Reaction

The day-after political/ media "analysis" of the State of the Union included the typical mixture of cynicism and stupidity.  State of the Union addresses never have any effect or are remembered (except of course when they are.)  This speech was just another "laundry list," which apart from being the easiest cliche to find in the deeper recesses of small minds, may well be the impression you'd get if you weren't actually listening, but busily twittering and tweeting and checking others doing so.

Those wearing the typical political blinders said it was "partisan" because it didn't cave to the extremely bad ideas of the GOPer sulking in the audience. 

Here's a decent summary of some of the proposals in what Bob Shrum called the most progressive agenda of the past 50 years.  

The Next Great Chapter

I got the sense of a liberated Obama in his State of the Union address, but not because he doesn't have to worry about be re-elected, as the pundits say.  Let me do something novel and take him at his word.  He began the speech by referring to how the country has come out of the Great Recession with which he was greeted on his first Inauguration, and how the second of the two wars he inherited is being ended.  "So, together, we have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and we can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger."

So the rubble is cleared, and it's time to build it.  And that's what I heard: the Obama we probably would have heard in 2009 if  the GOPers Wall Street hadn't conveniently tanked the economy during his presidential campaign.  The 21st century America that he wants to build.

This address was full of proposals and declarations of the directions we need to go, and why.  It was clearly and logically articulated in the language of common sense.  The sense we have in common, and of what we do in common.  "Obama's repeated plea to the nation tonight was to face reality: his tone was relentless reasonability," wrote xpostfactoid in the critique that best reflects my own response of any I read.

(Here's the transcript of the speech as delivered.)

Yet President Obama did not dwell on a single issue or argument but proposed an exciting scope of ideas and initiatives.  A lot will depend on follow-through, but I did get the sense that these were not thrown-together notions at a p.r. brainstorming session but legislative proposals that were worked out in terms of cost, and either executive actions or public-private initiatives that have been started. 

The more you look into issues like the climate crisis, the more you see that valuable stuff can be accomplished without Congress.  And what choice do we have?  It's clear that little of significance is going to be done by this Congress except through the back door (i.e. the Senate and a majority of Dems with some GOPers in the House, but only on a few issues), so you have to go to working with the states, with business and academia, etc. as well as through executive action and going to the citizenry for political heat.

Howard Fineman on msnbc said he was in the chamber for the speech and felt that President Obama's mantra on gun violence legislation was very powerful in the room, and that translated over the TV.  "Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight [the Chicago teenager gunned down days after performing in the Inaugural parade], along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote. (Applause.) Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. (Applause.) The families of Newtown deserve a vote. (Applause.) "  

As someone said, President Obama was shaming the Republicans in this and other sections of the speech, but this mantra was applicable as well to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who doesn't want to bring the assault weapon ban to a vote.  It's going to be very hard for him to deny it now.

But he ended the speech with what will live from it in quotation--yet another distillation of President Obama's core belief, and a subtle transition to tomorrow (which is today)--when he goes out on the road and takes his case beyond the Beltway:

"We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title -- we are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story." 

Idle No More

U.S. environmentalists have allies to the north, including this First Nations protest in Canada against the tar sands exploitation, specifically of Native land, that is the front end of the Keystone pipeline.  As described in this Rolling Stone article, these First Nation protests have spread beyond Canada to a very interesting spot across the border in the U.S.---the Mall of America in Minnesota.

Building a Movement

This weekend 350.org , along with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups is organizing a Forward on Climate Rally (on Sunday the 17th) and other activities in Washington in support of federal action on confronting the climate crisis, and specifically calling for the Obama administration to deny approval for the Keystone pipeline.

Demos and pressure from groups and people who are otherwise allies can be very helpful not only in spurring action but in giving the Administration some political room to act.  It was the March on Washington in 1963 that told Washington there was a lot of support for Civil Rights legislation, which gave President Kennedy the political room to propose what became the Voting Rights Act and other laws.

One of the problems on responding to the climate crisis as well as other issues has been the lack of a cohesive and persistent progressive movement.  It still doesn't exist--marches like this should have the kind of broad institutional support that the March on Washington had, from most Civil Rights groups to religious groups to Big Labor.  We'll see if this particular march has made any progress in that regard.

So the 350.org web site's call to action --"Tell Obama to Step It Up!"--is relevant, although as everybody knows, the real problem is Congress.  Still, there are things that the President can do and advocate that don't require Congress, and I hope we do hear some of those in the State of the Union.

But it's very important to the effectiveness and credibility of this effort not to go too far in personalizing this, especially in regard to President Obama.  And that's for a very clear political reason.  As this last election proved, there are millions of voters who feel very protective of President Obama.  They are mostly but not exclusively people of color, and members of other minorities.  They are very sensitive to the kind of slights they've heard about themselves, and they won't tolerate personal attacks on this President. 

To name a conspicuous example, Joe Romm at Climate Progress declared the Obama administration a "failure" because it didn't succeed in passing cap and trade or otherwise do what Romm wanted them to do.  That was (if memory serves) barely two years into Obama's first term, although Romm has repeated it several times since.  It got him attention, but not all of it was positive.  It turned people off, including me.

Whether an administration is a success or failure is a judgment for history, when more is known and the consequences are clearer.  We all wish the last 5 Presidents, including Obama, had been more successful in leading on what is very probably the most consequential issue of our time. If we fail to confront this crisis, there will be plenty of blame to go around.  But making a premature judgment on success or failure of a presidency is arrogant and unfair--and in this case it has been perceived as such.  Repetition of this will only alienate more people. 

 The environmental movement needs to move beyond affluent white liberals, and the perception that it still is that.  The necessary environmental coalition--let alone the necessary progressive coalition--will not happen if a lot of natural allies are driven away.

Winter Hurricane

(Reuters) - "The U.S. Northeast started digging itself out of a blizzard that dumped up to 40 inches of snow with hurricane force winds, killing at least nine people and leaving about half a million customers without power."

Dr. Jeff Masters: "A historic Nor'easter roared through New England overnight, bringing snowfall measured in feet, not inches, hurricane-force wind gusts, and serious coastal flooding. The snow was heaviest in coastal Connecticut, where snowfall rates of 6"/hours were recorded, and an astonishing 40" piled up in Hamden. An all-time snowfall record was set in Portland, Maine, where 31.9" fell, and numerous cities in the Northeast recorded top-ten snowfall amounts, including Hartford, CT (2nd all-time with 22.3"); Worchester, MA (3rd all-time, with 28"); Providence, RI (8th all-time, with 17"); Concord, NH (2nd all time, with 24"), and Boston, MA (6th all-time, with 21.8.")

The great storm, dubbed "Nemo", bombed out to a central pressure of 971 mb at 7 am EST Saturday, February 9. This is the type of central pressure one sees in Category 1 hurricanes, and Nemo generated numerous hurricane-force wind gusts along the coast, including a 76 mph gust at Boston's Logan Airport. Significant wave heights of 30' were measured in Massachusetts Bay, and 35.4'at the Cape Ann Buoy 44098, off the east coast of Massachusetts...

The high winds from the storm drove a damaging storm surge into the coast of Eastern Massachusetts Friday night and Saturday morning. Hardest hit was the coast of Cape Cod Bay southeast of Boston, where major flooding forced residents of low-lying areas to evacuate. A storm surge in excess of four feet inundated roads, damaged coastal buildings, and caused severe beach erosion."


The global heating relationship to this storm is probably most obvious in the warmth of the ocean leading to snow but also winds.  Higher sea levels mean higher storm surges.  Here's one piece on the global heating contribution, and here's another.

This storm is also notable for the response.  The New York and New England state governments closed highways and roads in advance of the storm, quickly issued emergency declarations when it hit, and used new sophisticated means for dealing with it, like GPS on emergency vehicles and snowplows, with computer mapping of affected areas and where the vehicles were.

That these governors and governments are doing this is encouraging because a lot more can and must be done to minimize deaths, suffering and damage of these less and less rare but larger and larger weather events.

Fortunately this storm hit chiefly in these Blue states where governments take their responsibilities seriously, plan and spend money to prepare.  Other states may not be so prepared, and the consequences may be even greater.  

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future.  Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow."

Victor Hugo