"Small Friendship" by Eunice Henry. Vtnet.com.

Broken Faith

It cannot be an easy time to be a fervent Christian conservative. Someone who truly believed that if fundamentalist Christians took political power, they could end everything that threatened God-fearing Christians who were also patriotic Americans, and they would begin doing the Lord's work, bringing morality to public life, especially the government, and perhaps approaching the world's problems with Christian charity, or at least justice.

Well, the fundamentalist Christians did take power, to an extent we're only just learning. We know they represent the single most important bloc of voters that got G.W. Bush close enough to seize the White House. Now we're learning how much the Bush government was staffed by fundamentalists. Not in top positions, where the qualifications were knowing and being personally loyal to either G.W. Bush or Dick Cheney, and when they ran out of them, people who had been loyal to Bush the First, as well as Reagan and Nixon. But in the jobs where people actually did things; the people who really ran the government.

It's important to note that Bush was successful because of those who tried to make Christian fundamentalism and the Republican party virtually identical, and so the people who staffed the Bush administration had to be both zealous Christian fundamentalists and zealous Bushites. Every political regime prizes and rewards loyalty. But the Bushites took it to unmatched extremes, and further, this combination of Christian fundamentalism and zealous Bushitry was the only necessary qualification for just about any job in the government that the Bushites controlled.

Those are the people, we learned in the book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, were given the responsibilty of running the Iraq occupation. Their loyalty to Bush was their top qualification, followed by their adherence to the Fundamentalist social and "moral" agenda.

Now we are learning how extensive this is in Washington as well, through the example of Monica Goodling, the Justice Department official who is preemptively taking the Fifth in refusing to testify before Congress on matters related to her job. Goodling it turns out is a graduate of Messiah College and received her law degree in 1999 from Regent University, run by Pat Robertson. Further, since this information came to light, some 150 other Regent grads were identified in the Bush administration.

Whether she was in over her head, or her political zealotry overwhelmed her commitment to religious ideals (of Messiah College, for example), it's pretty clear that she's in the middle of a sordid mess. It may be that she believes, as some fundamentalists apparently do, that their ends or simply their beliefs entitle them to use any means necessary to accomplish their goals, including lies on a grand scale, and corrupting the very basis of the American judicial system by--among other things--firing prosecutors who follow the evidence instead of the party line.

Outside of these precincts of zealotry, I expect a lot of sincere Christians are in shock. Their people got power, and whatever was in their hearts, or whatever the condition of their souls may be, they have acted immorally with a frequency and on a scale that adds up to the most functionally immoral administration in my lifetime at least, and given the wars in Vietnam and Nicaragua, Watergate etc., that's saying a lot.

Though some may argue with the extent of that judgment, I doubt anyone is going to claim that the Bushites brought higher moral conduct to Washington. The corruption over the past six years is so extensive and pervasive that it's impossible to keep track of it all.

Among the most immoral acts I can remember being discussed in my religion classes was the unjust war. And yet, the Bushites invaded a country that had not attacked us, was no threat to us, and yet our bombs and firepower have killed and maimed many thousands, and driven many more thousands from their homes. The Bushites lied to justify this war, then they lied to cover up the lies. They continue to make war, destroying American families and killing and maiming the flower of our own youth. I'm sure many conservative Christians are troubled as well by the aggressive championing of torture, even if they feel it is sometimes necessary.

I don't know if fundamentalist Christians go in for sins of omission, but in the Church I was brought up in, something like Katrina would weigh pretty heavy against this government. G.W. Bush and President Cheney have broken faith with the American people, and with the American system of government, as well as with the core Christian principles as I learned them. It seems to me they've broken faith with many of the Christians who believed in them.

cups in place #7

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.

79. Tao Te Ching. Stephen Mitchell.

The announcement that Elizabeth Edwards must undergo treatment for bone cancer came on the anniversary of my mother's death. She also had survived her breast cancer for five years before it reappeared. That was 1974, and treatments are much more successful now, to the point that some cancers are treatable as chronic diseases.

By all evidence from this distance, Elizabeth Edwards is a courageous and quite wonderful person. She is a smart and effective advocate for the same issues that animate her husband. I wish her the best. I also believe that the decision she and John Edwards made to continue his presidential campaign is the right one. It is more than ironic to me that there are so many echoes of Watergate in the Bush administration these days. When my mother was hospitalized for the last time, Watergate was unfolding, and I remember that in her weakened and medicated state, my mother was visibly frightened by the sight of Richard Nixon on television. This is an even more crucial time in this country's history, and for the human future. John Edwards is advancing ideas and gaining a hearing for important priorities, such as health care, poverty and the Climate Crisis. He said today that when Elizabeth needs him he will be there for her. In the meantime, Elizabeth Edwards will be there for all of us.

"I promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and ask one of two questions: Either, what in God's name were they doing? What was wrong with them?...What were they thinking? Or How did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy, and do what some said was impossible, and shake things up, and tell the special interests, 'okay, we heard you, we'll take your considerations into account, but we're going to do what's right...We do not have time to play around with this."

Al Gore
March 21, 2007

HARRY POTTER, ENVIRO WIZARD? Why not? With more than 12 million copies of the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, expected to be sold in the U.S. alone, a lot of trees could bite the dust. But its publisher, Scholastic Books, has promised to use 30% post-consumer recycled paper in each copy, and 65% of the virgin paper will come from sustainable forests as certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

It's none too soon, especially since more than 90% of printed paper and writing paper still comes from virgin forests, and paper recycling in general is lagging. Worldwide deforestation is a major threat to the biosphere, in particular making the Climate Crisis worse. So good job, Harry. We need more magic like this.

Remember When...The Invasion and Before

Nostalgia from four years ago and a little more, the runup to the war and its beginning: excerpts from my posts over at Scorched Mirth, then called American Samizat (and then American Dash when I realized I'd been spelling Samizdat wrong, and somebody else was using the title.) Today, when the war is unpopular and the media is covering the invasion anniversary with righteous indignation, it may be particularly interesting to note the media's inflammatory role in 2002 and 2003.

October 6, 2002

There is little international support, and some important international opposition to this invasion. While the Bushies are using television pretty skillfully to create the drumbeat for war (not that this is too difficult), it's hard for anyone who's paying attention to avoid realizing that nobody has made a good case for why this "regime change" must occur right this very minute. There's been no clear and present danger demonstrated, and as the stock market reflects and many forecasters agree, a war is not likely to be good for a precarious economy.

The only reason to be talking about this right now is to increase Republican chances in the congressional elections. It's all part of a coordinated strategy. Republicans throughout the country are draping their TV ads in the red, white and blue, trumpeting their patriotism and calling into question the patriotism of Democrats. It wasn't a slip or a mere sentence, when President Bush castigated Democrats in Congress for concentrating on petty special interests ( you know-- like prescription drugs, the economy), and said they weren't concerned with national security. It is a political strategy. ..

Of course, politics may not be the main reason. It may also be that the representatives of Big Oil in the White House (which includes nearly everybody of any importance) are using the political argument to advance their own interests with a takeover of Iraq and possibly other areas of the Gulf. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why this isn't delusional. The idea that the U.S. can run the Gulf region like an oil corporation is insane. They can't even run Afghanistan.

An invasion of Iraq is at least equivalent to Vietnam in quagmire potential, but then this war isn't being led by the best and the brightest. They're looking more like the worst and the dumbest.

But it's the insanity of the situation that may offer the greatest hope, because Colin Powell, even though a Republican, does not appear to be crazy. He is going to look at what it takes in personnel and technology, in logistics and costs, to first of all successfully invade Iraq and take down Saddam. That might be relatively easy, but costly (not that we'll know the cost for years to come), or it may take a long time and be very obviously costly in every possible way. But then he's going to look at what comes next. "Regime change" sounds so simple. But the last time America with a huge coalition behind it invaded Iraq---led by Colin Powell--- the march to Baghdad was stopped short. Why? Could it be that Powell knew that the cost of regime change was beyond what the coalition would commit to doing, in resources, attention and time?

This time is different. It's worse. There isn't even a coalition. Last time in the Gulf the American military did most of the warfare, and the coalition mostly paid for it. Guess who pays for the whole thing this time? Odd how the tax cuts for the wealthy will be kicking in right about then.

It's possible Powell would publicly support an invasion he privately opposes, just . But can he then turn his back on the chaos that would ensue in the region, or the fate of the occupying force over time, when the slow accumulation of death is no longer fodder for the 24/7 media frenzy of the month? ... America suffered a great trauma last September 11. Only a sober assessment of both threats and actions to neutralize the threats will make anyone safer from terrorism. The most terrifying aspect of the current leadership is its appearance of being both cynically manipulative and seriously out of control.

But just because this invasion is crazy in so many ways doesn't mean it won't happen. World War I was insane, and lots of people at the time knew it. This is how some wars start. So I expect that Colin Powell is going to be at the center of one of the more fateful backstage dramas of the next few months in Washington, DC.

January 3, 2003

Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war.

Julius Caesar III, 1 - William Shakespeare

In yet another example of accidental intelligence, the Bushies managed to make the war they haven't launched yet into boring old news. The American attention span having already been exhausted by the heavy fever in the fall, it's as if it all happened already and we're on to the next thing. But it hasn't happened; this is the last lull before what could be the perfect storm. And it's coming.

Come the Ides of March, the dogs of war will be frothing at the mouth all over the Gulf region and the Middle East, and who knows where else. There are too many weapons, too much anger and ambition, and warfare feeds on itself, the frenzy trumps judgment and overrides other considerations. When the biggest bully on the planet is talking the talk and bombing the bombs, everybody gets permission to cry havoc---which in Shakespeare's time meant to fight until you've destroyed everyone and everything. There will be valiant headlines, and there will be excitedly portentous news voices and endless speedfreak telexpert chatter, and once it's over, if it ever is, we'll find out what really happened in a few months or a decade or pretty much never.

At first we'll get the pretty stuff---the war is hell if hell is a good slasher movie stuff---but some collateral damage will seep in... We're already hearing the fears of veterans of the first Bushie Gulf War that this time, like that time, all the nice smart bombs acting just like video games on TV will distract from the massive equipment failures and shoddiness, like gas masks that don't work, that harmed the unknown soldiers of that desert storm. ..


Soldiers have been killed, maimed and sickened in all modern wars because of shoddiness by suppliers and by the screwups of the military machine, the ambitions of politicians and generals and other careerists. Maybe you won't read that in the latest gauzy nostalgia about the Greatest Generation, but look at some closer to contemporary and closer to the ground accounts of World War II and it's there in abundance. Soldiers come home cynical not only because of all the carnage they've witnessed. ..

This war is particularly inflammatory because the bar has been set so low on why it's going to be fought. The official reasons, that is. Now anybody who thinks somebody else is evil, or is afraid somebody else will get bigger and better weapons, or is preparing weapons that might someday threaten them, even if they are preparing them with such intense secrecy that foreigners trained to detect them can't find much of a trace so far, well--that's good enough to start a war that will costs millions of dollars and many lives, though a lot of those will belong to people who won't be counted in death any better than they counted in life.

But of course everybody in the world knows the real reason, and so twenty-first century enlightened America endorses one of the chief motives for war of the 10 thousand years of so-called civilization: greed. Great to see we've come so far.

Once it gets going, war is a disease epidemic. People who think of themselves as normal do incredibly awful things for what seems like rational reasons. They put themselves, or are put into situations where they will kill anyone and destroy anything that seems to threaten their lives or the lives of their buddies, and pretty soon anything that threatens their military careers or their honorable discharge. Meanwhile, people who find themselves surrounded by war will fight back, and some will attack anybody they have a grudge against-or have had a grudge against in the last five thousand years---regardless. Permission has been granted by the dogs of war, and the international arms industry---including the good old USA's---have supplied them with the teeth and the jaws and the claws. Why is it that every generation has to learn all this for themselves?

Some things on the Homefront are apt to be predictable---the increase in latitude for government intrusions and the increase in intolerance for dissent, the viciousness with which dissenters are attacked and peace advocates are insulted for being wusses or (worse) liberal-humanists---but other aspects could be different. Modern industrialized war used to stimulate the domestic economy, but it's not clear that will happen this time, even if the fighting spreads and is prolonged. Postmodern war might have the same effect as other prosperous postmodern economic engines: it might make an obscene amount of money for very few, and subtract from most everybody else... But in terms of people's lives, the local economies and the economy in general, the effects will be 100% bad.

February 8, 2003

Remember when...? Watching the purple city through infrared night cameras, as the scuds fell, the scud-busters rose and supposedly destroyed them? (It turns out they didn't but it was a good show anyway.) And the interview in a bunker in Israel or somewhere, when word comes that a scud attack is imminent, and both female interviewer and male interviewee don gas masks, and when nothing much happens and there's only dead air, they continue the interview without taking off the masks? And sound just as cheesy as before, except slightly muffled? Yeah, well you can bet they remember every thrilling moment at CNN. It was the height of their glory, when Sadamm and George Bush the First both watched them to see what the hell was going on. So did everybody else. The Gulf War made CNN into the global news network.

So it's little wonder that the prospect of Gulf War II has them salivating. CNN has fallen on hard times...

What could be better? Only one answer: a war. Boom, boom, cry, cry, hooray hooray. So big surprise that CNN has been camped on an aircraft carrier for the last three months, panting for a war it can cover with minicams: the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, now the Gulf War II logo and the flag is still there!... And even less of a surprise that CNN (along with NBC and Fox) refused to run anti-war ads---slickly made, with celebs and legitimate product spokespersons like major clergy, and with cash in hand to pay the same price for the time as Budwiser or the Republican National Committee would. CNN made up a policy on the spot: "we do not accept international advocacy ads on regions in conflict." Region? Conflict? Either that leaves out exactly no region I know of (not even northwest Antarctica) or CNN is breaking the story---It's war! It's war! CNN is going to war! Oh the nostalgia, oh the ambition, to recapture lost glory and save the collapsing Time-Warner-AOL empire! Yes, it's the empire strikes back, in more ways than one! Tune in, America, it's all war, all the time! Peace is way too boring, not even our perky anchors can distract you from the foaming at the mouth over at Fox. And the beauty of it is, CNN has more footage of Gulf War I than anybody else. Show it again, Sam! Who'll know the difference! Un-mothball the Scud Stud! Bring back the good old days!

Thursday, March 20, 2003.

The circus has started, the media whipped war fever is underway. It’s almost inescapable—wafting through the drug store, the frenzied voice of radio DJs hyping the prospect of bombing which will be described the moment it happens so don’t touch that dial, the flow of idiocy on TV that pops up when the VCR is not yet on to play something sensible (Aaron Brown of CNN describing in detail the meaning of an Oval Office photograph as if he were describing a Polaroid of the Last Supper, only to be contradicted by his White House correspondent who says it was taken at an entirely different time with a completely other purpose, and then goes on to describe “riveting details” of the bombing’s beginning, how Our Lord Bush sayeth unto them the historic eloquent holy words, “Let’s go.” Jeez, whatever happened to Let’s roll? So 2001!

and another post from October 2002

So far no one is saying it out loud, in the newspapers I read or the TV I've seen. But I imagine it's on the minds of many people, especially Americans, in this suspended moment before the war promoted by the President of the United States takes center stage: namely, we didn't really elect this guy...

Though no one now is connecting those dots, I'm sure future historians (if any) will do so in a matter of a few paragraphs. The first paragraph on George W. Bush will refer to his dubious claim to the presidency---that it came down to how to count or not count votes in a single state, where as result of error and designed suppression of votes, he carried the state and hence the election by a handful of actual votes---but only as validated by a split Supreme Court decision, defying both logic and law. The second paragraph of this history will note that the G.W. Bush administration was dominated by the political cronies of the president's father, who spent their time out of government using their contacts to enrich themselves and large corporations, and blatantly represented those same interests when in government.

It will note that the Bush administration was floundering until terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Then Bush made an off-the-cuff remark while standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center and saw immediately the makings of a political identity in the cheers of rescue workers that obviously surprised him. He could be the symbol of fighting back, even though he wasn't going to be doing any of the fighting, just as he could cry "Let's roll!" into Iraq, and then go take a nap. He could parlay that figurehead/talking head leadership into time-tested political manipulation based on patriotism and the fear of seeming not patriotic. The third paragraph, I imagine, will be about the invasion of Iraq, and its tragic consequences.

This history will perhaps note the puzzling lack of emotion and debate opposing this war until it was too late to stop it. It will note however that most of what then happened was foreseen at least in outline (columnists like Molly Ivins, Robert Scheer, and locally in San Francisco, Jon Carroll and Rob Morse, have been remarkably clear.) These historians will fill in the details of the ensuing chaos and violent death in the Gulf region and the Middle East, the chaos and strife spreading to various political and economic alliances. This history will note the damage to the world economy, weakening it at a time when it needed to be strong to cope with the changes slowly but surely taking hold as consequences of the climate crisis. It will note the costs on life in the United States of more economic hardship and a greater siege mentality against real and imagined threats-with one of the real threats being an increasingly intrusive, powerful and arrogant police state government.

We owe all of this partly to the blindness of Americans who fell for the simplistic idea that it did not matter if Bush or Gore won the 2000 election. That Bush and Gore are part of the same corrupt political system is true, and has consequences. But that doesn't deny their differences, and one or the other was going to be president. We reap the whirlwind of this failure to understand the differences between these two men, and the people they bring into power.

Millions of Americans voted on small differences. If you can believe the media conventional wisdom, many voted for Bush because he seemed like a nice guy, not as stiff as Gore. This extraordinarily stupid test for presidential fitness was granted legitimacy by media's failure to even question it-but then how could many TV "news" personalities challenge the wisdom of judging on nice guy appearances when they owe their jobs to the same standards.

The Bush presidency is leading America and the world to a disastrous twenty-first century in three interlocking ways: internationally, by arrogance and war; domestically, by bankrupting the federal government on tax breaks for the wealthy; and globally, by ignoring global heating and other environmental threats. The agenda behind all of this is pretty clear: favor entrenched corporate interests, keep the oppressed people of the world in control through force, and keep the American people scared: scared for their safety and their country, so they will support Bush and the Republican establishment from now until doomsday, and scared for their own livelihoods so they won't rock the boat, so they will keep fighting each other for crumbs, with their nose to the grindstone and nothing in their heads but dreams of sudden wealth and celebrity.

We can see the consequences of those apparently small differences between Bush and Gore and between these two parties pretty clearly now. Though most Democrats are too scared of appearing unpatriotic to do more than stutter, at least Al Gore has spoken forthrightly about the folly and arrogance of the Bush administration's march towards war, and its foreign policy pretensions that would make the Roman Empire jealous, especially as it was falling. We can hear echoes of Gore's campaign call to fight for middle class Americans who are being lacerated now, and who will have their futures mortgaged by Bush war and tax policies...

Other differences may seem smaller, but loom as large. Clearly, Gore would talk differently on global heating and other environmental matters, though even if he had become president, environmentalists would have had to keep the pressure on to get real change. But at least they wouldn't have to spend such an immense amount and proportion of energy and resources to even get the climate crisis on the table...

So we would not be seeing the folly now being perpetrated in Washington of replacing scientists with political and corporate hacks at EPA and on the federal scientific advisory boards to the CDC, the FDA and other agencies charged with health and safety. It's a virtual certainty that at some point people will get sick and die because of these decisions.

With the challenges inevitably ahead-the health impact of global heating alone is going to be monstrous---this small act may turn out to be among the most consequential, just as important as that handful of votes in Florida...

The premise that humanity and perhaps all life on earth is in real peril in this century is also a kind of starting point for discussions among respectable scientists and knowledgeable observers. A feature of collapse in its early stages, and perhaps even when it is well underway, is likely to be that not many people notice. They continue to judge problems in the same narrow frameworks; they fail to "connect the dots" in today's favorite cliché. There was an article in The New Yorker a few years back that caught my eye, called "The Tipping Point." ...The tipping point of the twenty-first century may very well turn out to be the moment American forces invade Iraq....

Demonstrations on the 4th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of
Iraq are worldwide. This one was in Heroes Square,
Budapest. AP photo.

Valerie Plame Wilson at Friday's hearing.
AP photo.

Exposing the Masters of Deceit

They lied us into the war that began four years ago today. They said Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and were collecting materials to build nuclear bombs. We now know that they knew there was little evidence that those weapons existed, and the one bit of supposed evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material was false. They not only insisted it was true--they went to treasonous lengths to keep their lie from being discredited.

In an effort to destroy the credibility of the messenger--Joseph Wilson, who the CIA sent to track down the nuclear rumor--at the interfering insistence of VP Cheney--the White House exposed the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA officer, and falsely accused her of sending her husband to Niger. (As if, by the way, that alone is enough to make the fiction of Iraq's nuclear attempts true.)

On Friday, Rep. Henry Waxman began his hearings into security breaches with a statement in which General Hayden, current head of the CIA, affirmed that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent when her name was published, having been distributed to the press no fewer than 20 times by multiple members of the Bush administration. In her testimony, Plame said under oath that she had been on covert status, that she had in fact travelled outside the U.S. as a covert agent within five years (a technicality in the law protecting the identity of covert operatives), and that her outing had destroyed her 20 year career investigating weapons of mass destruction programs that might threaten the U.S.

Despite President Bush's statements that he would investigate the leak of her name, and fire anyone involved, there was further testimony from the Director of the White House Office of Security that there was no investigation whatever. And Karl Rove, one of the leakers, is still an official force in the White House.

Plame under oath denied that she had "sent" her husband on this mission (she didn't have that authority) and even that she had suggested him. Plame said that she knew that her identity might be discovered and exposed by a foreign government. She never imagined it would be exposed by high officials of her own government.

Still, the supporters of Bush, the right wing TV and radio babbleheads, continue to insist that Plame was not covert, and that this is mere politics. Which leads to the question: if killing more than 3,000 American soldiers and maiming thousands more, as well as killing and maiming countless thousands in Iraq as well as destroying that society, all based on lies, and the outing of a U.S. covert agent for political purposes, and the continung defense of these acts by means of more lies--if all this is not treason, what is?

Oregon/California. BK photo.

It Can Happen Here (Latest Chapter)

The Bushite scandals come so fast they are hard to keep track of, and start becoming indistinguishable, but the latest is worth isolating for its meanings and implications.

What is it? A number of federal attorneys--at least 7, probably more--were fired by the Bush Justice Department, officially by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. After some local news stories and blogger investigations, congressional hearings revealed that many of them appear to have been fired for not being sufficiently zealous on behalf of Republicans, in several cases after improper questions and pressure on their current investigations--suggestions that they ought to be prosecuting Democrats (for "voter fraud") and not prosecuting Republicans (for corruption.)

At first, Gonzales denied to Congress there were any political considerations--these were personnel matters, based on performance. When evidence of good performance reviews etc. appeared, Republicans changed their tune to: the President has the right to fire these officials, and all Presidents do it on a political basis. But, in fact (they said) it wasn't political, at least the White House wasn't involved, specifically Karl Rove.

Now it's come out that this was a political decision from the beginning, going back to early 2005, and that Gonzales was involved even before he was Attorney General, when he was on the White House staff, and that Rove was involved--in fact (according to emails revealed Thursday), he was a chief instigator.

What's the underlying problem with this? Presidents often change federal prosecutors at the beginning of their terms, as Bush did--they are in that sense political appointments. But firing prosecutors selectively based on how they are prosecuting Republicans or not prosecuting Democrats strikes at the heart of the justice system, already admittedly weakened by the political appointee tradition. What the Bush White House is doing in this instance, as in others, appears to be unprecedented. It's also unusual to replace one Republican appointee with another because Karl Rove wants a pal in his place--especially when the office is in Little Rock, where yet another round of investigations into the Clintons could begin, just as Hillary runs for President.

What else is behind this? Howard Fineman for MSNBC points to the practices and intents of Rove and the other Bushites as far back as Texas:

Judges are elected in Texas. Karl Rove made his fortune not by running George W. Bush for office, but by training, building and running slates of conservative Republican judges.

The Austin Gang – Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers – saw the legal world as something to control, if for no other reason than if they did not, the Trial Lawyers – the backbone of the modern Texas Democratic Party – would.

Gonzales made his bones literally keeping Bush out of court when, as governor, Bush was called to jury duty. Had Bush been subject to questioning by attorneys over his suitability to serve, he would have had to reveal that he had been arrested for drunk driving. Not a good thing to do before a presidential campaign. Gonzales managed to get the Boss out of the jury pool.

But it's even more specific, according to a New York Times editorial:

In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings.

In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

The integrity of the election system, the integrity of the justice system--just two attacks on the integrity of the Constitution that characterize this Bush administration. I don't know if it is possible, but impeachment is more warranted now than ever.

On this assertion, here's this update from Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly :

Of all the scandals that have increasingly bedeviled George W. Bush’s presidency, none has more direct ties to the president than the flap over the firing of federal prosecutors. Any remaining doubt about that was cleared away last week, when the White House press secretary acknowledged that the president had a conversation with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October about complaints regarding some of the U.S. attorneys who were fired weeks later in what critics are calling a politically motivated, inappropriate purge.


(Here are specifics from the Times editorial:

Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. They have intimidated Native American voter registration campaigners in South Dakota with baseless charges of fraud. They have pushed through harsh voter ID bills in states like Georgia and Missouri, both blocked by the courts, that were designed to make it hard for people who lack drivers’ licenses — who are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities — to vote. Florida passed a law placing such onerous conditions on voter registration drives, which register many members of minorities and poor people, that the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its registration work in the state....

The United States attorney purge appears to have been prompted by an array of improper political motives. Carol Lam, the San Diego attorney, seems to have been fired to stop her from continuing an investigation that put Republican officials and campaign contributors at risk. These charges, like the accusation that Mr. McKay and other United States attorneys were insufficiently aggressive about voter fraud, are a way of saying, without actually saying, that they would not use their offices to help Republicans win elections. It does not justify their firing; it makes their firing a graver offense. )

Elsewhere

Master of Space! Hero of Science! Captain of the Video Rangers! The 1950s Saturday Morning Sci-Fi review continues at The Boomer Hall of Fame.

Waiting for water in Darfur. EU photo.

Darfur and the World

While hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered, and millions driven from their homes in Darfur, the world has found plenty of ways to look away. Now slowly, slowly they turn. According to an AP story:

A U.N. human rights team investigating crimes against humanity in Sudan's Darfur region zeroed in on the international community Monday for the first time, accusing the world's governments of an "inadequate and ineffective" response to widespread atrocities. In one of the hardest-hitting and most explicit reports in a series submitted to the world body, the team called for U.N. Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution.

The Guardian adds: Headed by the Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, the UN assessors found the Sudanese government was responsible for waging a ruthless campaign resulting in war crimes and human rights abuses. "The principal pattern is one of a violent counter-insurgency campaign waged by the government of the Sudan in concert with Janjaweed/militia, and targeting mostly civilians. Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law," Ms Williams's team found.

It calls on member states to raise a protection force in the Sudan. Among its other recommendations are that the UN Security Council "freeze funds, assets and economic resources" of those who commit the violations.

How bad is it? According to Time: If it's possible to degenerate from genocide, Darfur will probably do so in 2007. The four-year war that has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis has spread and atomized. What was once a war zone the size of France has become an area the size of Western Europe. The 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur are overwhelmed. The threat of pullout hangs over the aid program in southern Sudan and Chad after persistent attacks on its workers. Last year the journal Science estimated the number killed since 2003 at more than 200,000. If news of another humanitarian crisis in Africa sounds grimly familiar, that's partly because the international response has also conformed to type: divided and ineffectual. China, which has large oil concessions in Sudan, continues to sell the government weapons and block sanctions at the U.N. Darfur is a test of man's humanity to man. So far, we're wanting.

It's not that nobody cares. There are efforts to raise money and awareness, such as Amnesty International's Global Music Activism Project, for which Yoko Ono has donated publishing royalties to the entire John Lennon catalog, to raise money for relief efforts in Darfur. But what little relief efforts are possible there now may be halted completely unless the violence is brought under some control.

While all of this--right down to the benefit concerts--seems sadly familiar, there is one new component: as mentioned in An Inconvenient Truth and supported in more detail by a new article in the Atlantic magazine (via Climate Progress ): one of the major causes of turmoil--the fight over dwindling resources in a prolonged drought--has as a major contributing cause: the Climate Crisis. “This was not caused by people cutting trees or overgrazing,” says Columbia University’s Alessandra Giannini, who led one of the analyses. The roots of the drying of Darfur, she and her colleagues had found, lay in changes to the global climate.

The article points out two conclusions from this: that the Climate Crisis contribution adds to the moral responsibility we have to address the Darfur genocide, because If the region’s collapse was in some part caused by the emissions from our factories, power plants, and automobiles, we bear some responsibility for the dying. And that, as the Climate Crisis continues and gets worse, this is likely to be only our first Darfur, and the first climate war of the century that may be characterized by them.

If this war now engulfs an area the size of western Europe, it comes close to what we call the First World War. It is in many way the whole world's first war of this century.

The Long Dubai

So after screwing the U.S. taxpayers from here to eternity for their billions in no-bid contracts to serve tainted food to U.S. soldiers, and various other hyperinflated and substandard services in Iraq, Halliburton is getting out of town. Way out. Moving headquarters to Dubai. Yes, that same sandy paradise where corporate capitalism on steroids meets the terrorist network, and where the companies are that the Bushites wanted to put in charge of U.S. ports.

Halliburton, the company that gave its former prez and now ours, Dick Cheney, a $35 million severance package, though its doubtful the severance was all that, shall we say, severe. They are leaving the building. In fact, the whole country.

Gee, what do you think they have in mind? Your first guess may be as good as Hillary Clinton's:

"I think that raises a lot of serious issues we have to look at," said the former First Lady. "Does this mean they are going to quit paying taxes in America? They are going to take all the advantage of our country but not pay their fair share of taxes?"

She continued, "They get a lot of government contracts - is this going to affect the investigations that are going on? Because we have a lot of evidence of misuse of government contracts and how they have cheated the American soldier and cheated the American taxpayer. They have taken the money and not provided the services, so does this mean that we won't be able to pursue these investigations?"

I expect that within a year or two of the move (into the Cheney Complex in Cheney City), they'll quietly change their name and go after U.S. contracts again, although thanks to them there may not be any money left by then. But Senator Frank Lautenberg has even darker thoughts than this: he suspects the move is a way to circumvent U.S. law so that Halliburton can continue to pursue contracts with--get this--Iran. Yeah, the one with the "n" at the end.
It seems a Halliburton subsidiary already in Dubai has been doing business with Iran for years.

There is a possible upside: if Halliburton does get some big contracts for Iran's nuclear program, that's virtually a guarantee that it will be set back for years. If the Iranians think they're the Axis of Evil, they are about to meet the real thing.

cups in place #6. BK photo.

The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle

The climate crisis deniers are abuzz about a TV show broadcast in England and available on the Internet, called The Great Global Warming Swindle, which has instantly turned out to be itself a swindle.

As the British newspaper the Independent reports: But now the programme - and the channel - is facing a serious challenge to its own credibility after one of the most distinguished scientists that it featured said his views had been "grossly distorted" by the film, and made it clear that he believed human pollution did warm the climate.

Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint.

Professor Wunsch said: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled."

The "programme" is further tainted by the fact that charges of distortion similar to this were made in the past against its producer, and the network that commissioned and aired it, called Channel 4, has been forced to apologize for distortions in other recent programs on environmental matters.

People who are making major amounts of money for climate crisis denying (principally from Exxon-Mobil, which continues to break its own records for the largest profits and as the largest company in the history of the planet), or who use it to get attention or political power--these are pretty simple if obviously corrupt motives. They do great harm when they persuade ordinary people that there is enough doubt among scientists to make action unnecessary or unwise, when the science shows that every year we delay, we make the problem so much worse until very soon, it could be literally out of control.

And I guess I can understand people who use ideology to hide from what is not merely inconvenient truth, but very painful facts. Facts that require pervasive change.

But even more sadly, they are intent on ignoring evidence, which at this point is so scientifically overwhelming on the basic points that some scientists say that only things like gravity demonstrate a stronger scientific consensus. One of our local bloggers who seems to think the climate crisis is a slightly silly political conspiracy has admitted that he hasn't even seen An Inconvenient Truth. That's apparently how he knows it's wrong. Not only is it a political conspiracy of some kind, it also involves thousands of climate scientists over half a century. Climate crisis skeptics are one things, but those who refuse to engage the evidence join the climate crisis deniers.

While climate scientists endorse the basic evidence and conclusions in An Inconvenient Truth, the so-called science in The Great Global Warming Swindle has already been debunked on line, and all the major arguments also have been carefully corrected on various other sites. But some people will not be swayed by evidence, even in the unlikely event that they read it, or read the accounts of climate crisis effects already underway.

Of course, an unusually warm day in March, as today was here, is not evidence, nor is snowfall in Washington, DC the other day. But there is plenty of real evidence of real climate disruptions over time, in places like Alaska where entire villages have had to relocate. But U.S. Fish & Game officials aren't supposed to talk about that, nor are they supposed to discuss the plight of polar bears or any of the other evidence the current Administration wants to keep quiet.

I understand the general suspicion of science as well as of politicians, and I believe in being skeptical. But this is denial, which is not often affected by evidence. Obviously, saying that the scientific consensus for civilization's causing a climate crisis is as strong as the consensus for Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is not going to be convincing to people who don't believe Darwin either.

But besides religious fundamentalists, the people who by now will not accept the accumulation of evidence that surely should be enough to motivate urgent action, may be beyond my abilities to reach. Which is one reason that on this site I don't normally engage the latest denying. As this latest attempt in England shows, only distorting the evidence provides counter-argument on the basics. In the end, perhaps only the constructive way that the actual problems are approached will persuade them. If their opposition is powerful enough, it could be fatal to our already questionable common future, and that's a heavy responsibility. But our responsibility may be to go forward without them.

Another view of the eclipse, from Scotland.

The Lies That Bind

It's a sad day in a sad time. With the Lewis Libby conviction on obstruction of justice and perjury, we have the spectre of a White House--most specifically, the Vice President's office but also others in the Administration-- that consciously lied to get the country to invade and occupy Iraq, then tried to suppress the truth, then tried to punish Joseph Wilson, the former Ambassador to Iraq under Bush Sr. who actually saved lives there, for exposing one of these lies, by revealing that his wife was a covert operative at the CIA, thus endangering her life and ending her career, as well as ending her decades-long work in uncovering weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the U.S.

President Bush said repeatedly that he would fire anyone who had leaked Valerie Plame's identity. During Libby's trial, several other officials were implicated in doing so, including Rove and the VP. The statement about firing people who committed what some would call treason is currently inoperative.

Lewis Libby obstructed justice and lied to the Grand Jury to protect his boss, VP Cheney, and the White House. Some speculate he did so after being given assurances that he will receive a presidential pardon. A sad-eyed John Dean appeared on "Countdown" to say he expects that Bush will pardon Libby before Libby spends a single day in jail.

The corruption of this White House was further revealed today in congressional hearings that are showing that several federal prosecutors were fired because they didn't play politics with their offices. Other congressional hearings are detailing how this administration, after sending young Americans to Iraq on false pretenses, for brutally long tours of duty, with poor planning, confused mission, and insufficient resources, including insufficient armor and other protection that led to needless serious injuries, failed to provide the proper care to those who were so injured after they returned.

I've said here before that to confront the problems ahead, we need to get away from knee-jerk us/them, either/or responses. We need in many cases to understand the concerns that underlie the otherwise inexplicable positions and behavior. We need to listen to contrary evidence and arguments. We need to honor sincerity. We need to communicate and find common ground.

But we also need to be clear. What this administration has done and is doing is evil. It is corrupt and corrupting, and it is dangerous.

It also goes hand in hand with practices and attitudes by those who identify themselves as conservatives or the Right, that are unacceptable in a civilized society, let alone a democratic one. Though the left is not without its vitriolics, its knee-jerk responses to opposition, I believe Kos was right today in noting that "Michael Savage is the third most popular talk radio host in the country, a hero to millions of conservatives" thanks to venomous rhetoric." Like Coulter, Savage knows what the conservative movement craves and delivers -- a steady diet of hate and rage." In an earlier post, Kos quotes another blogger, Glenn Greenwald on Ann Coulter: [T]he significance lies not just in this specific outburst on Friday but in the whole array of hate-mongering, violence-inciting remarks over all these years. Its significance lies in the critical fact that Malkin expressly acknowledged: "She's very popular among conservatives." The focus of these stories should not be Coulter, but instead, should be the conservative movement in which Ann Coulter -- precisely because of (not "despite") her history of making such comments -- is "very popular."

I heard Coulter herself on TV say that the lesson of this latest flap should be that conservatives need not restrain themselves, because she's done this many times and it hasn't damaged her career at all.

We have reached this point where baseless accusations, open bigotry, and expressions of hate and rage are normal discourse, and this is not unrelated to the ideological justifications for an us/them partisanship that knows no bounds--not the law, not the Constitution, not common decency, and certainly not accuracy or the truth. Our leaders feel justified in doing anything they can get away with, and they are supported loudly by the most watched news network which routinely distorts for ideological effect (Fox's coverage of the Libby conviction was a screenful of "Libby Not Guilty," which applied to one of the five counts, and that, according to a juror, because a single juror voted against that particular count) and by an entrenched ideologically driven political force that has no respect for the truth, and traffics in hate, rage and venom. It's a sad day indeed.

Elsewhere

Kudos to our Congressman Mike Thompson at This North Coast Place.

Notes on a couple of books, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, edited by Maxine Hong Kingston, at Skills of Peace and on The American Dream and the Gospel of Wealth at Books in Heat.

Did you see Harold Pinter and/or Mikhail Baryishnikov on Charlie Rose? Read about what they said at Stage Matters.

There's the latest on the just announced new Trek movie at Soul of Star Trek, and memories of Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers at the Boomer Hall of Fame.

Most of Europe and eastern North America got to see a
total eclipse of the moon Friday night. This is one of the
photos, taken by amateur Matt Ohman in West Somerset, England.

The Daily Babble

Bitter Mysteries

The buzz, the chattercable shows are thrashing the issue of poor medical care for soldiers, first in the outpatient services at Walter Reed Hospital and now with congressional hearings into Veterans Administration "facilities." And of course it's all being treated as if it is startling news.
Despite the fact that leftie blogs like E Pluribus Media have been on this issue for months and months, the fact that lots of people have known about this and have been trying to get attention paid to these neglects and abuses for years, including the folks at the GI Hotline as well as veterans groups, this is being treated as a sudden revelation and immediate scandal.

VA hospital care has been notorious since at least Vietnam. Didn't anybody see Oliver Stone's movie, Born on the Fourth of July, or read Ron Kovic's book? It was there in living color and living prose. The excessive bureaucracy as well as neglect and substandard care is yet another reason that the people who nobly call for a new military draft are insane.

But why now? The Washington Post article seems to have sparked this attention, but that couldn't have been predicted. A lot of stories in the Post and the Times and other newspapers are ignored. Nobody paid any attention to the scandal of poverty increasing in a time of economic expansion--McClatchy newspapers found that the number of Americans in severe poverty--with half or less of the income that defines the poverty line--increased by 26% just between 2000 and 2005. And this isn't an exception. According to their report:"Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries."

But even on this topic, all the stories about the scandalous neglect and treatment of soldiers--from the lack of body armor and armored vehicles, the lack of training and the abuse of the National Guard--as well as about treatment once they're back, have been ineffective in sparking this kind of outrage.

Probably the Democratic takeover of Congress has a lot to do with it--that, and the immediate hearings the Democrats are holding, gives permission to our media to do the story without feeling they'll get killed for being unpatriotic. And the Post story was easy to photograph. Still, the Zeitgeist remains a bitter mystery. The other story the babblechannels are hitting hard today is video of a couple of teenagers giving tokes to their siblings, two and four years old. I guess Anna Nicole finally is dead.

Then there's the noisemachine manufactured controversy over the speeches Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton made in Selma, both of them using different--and "southern"--cadences and vocabulary. Pandering to the audience! Hypocrisy! Of course if they didn't fall into those rhythms they would have been "out of touch!"

Above all we want to forget about the human element. Haven't you ever been to a place where people speak differently, and found yourself adopting their speech rhythms and accents? I do it during a telephone call. Please. Can we get serious? I know it's a rhetorical question.

It's also like the headlines about the "medical miracle" of Barry Bonds requiring larger shirt and shoe sizes. Maybe it is evidence of steroidization. Or maybe it's looser shirts (which have become the style in all sports) or swelling feet. My athletic shoe size went from 8.5 to 10.5 or 11 partly because shoe and foot people are now recommending bigger sizes (with more inserts, and more room), and partly because as you get older, your feet swell up more with exertion. But it's spring, and Barry is probably going to be baseball's big story this year, so let's find something to get outraged about preemptively. Because we don't have enough real problems.

cups in place #5. BK photo. (another blue-green alliance?)

The Climate Crisis Future

Moving Heaven and Earth

Note: A version of this essay is frontpaged at the European Tribune.
UPDATE: and now on the "Rescued" list at Daily Kos.

It's hard to be hopeful about the Climate Crisis future. Accepting his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday, Al Gore made his pitch for confronting the climate crisis to one billion viewers worldwide. “We have everything we need to get started,” he said, “with the possible exception of the will to act. That’s a renewable resource. Let’s renew it.” And the Republican/Dirty Energy noise machine has been in high gear ever since, demonizing Gore and his Hollywood supporters, and engaging in even more ferocious Climate Crisis denying. Finding the kind of political will and effective leadership necessary seems only remotely possible.

Still, something pretty hopeful did happen in Washington last week, though little notice was taken. It's worth suggesting what it was and why it is hopeful, before I get to the last essay I planned in this series, speculations on what the future may hold, near and far.

The good news in Washington last week was the Apollo Summit for Clean Energy and Good Jobs, a meeting of the Apollo Alliance. If there is any hope for America's future, it will depend on what Apollo and that summit represents: the blue-green alliance of blue collar and environmentalists, and governors and mayors who make things happen, as well as national legislators who keep at it regardless of where the headlines are.

Doing It

While others argue, governors are acting. They know that most of the world is aware of the Climate Crisis, and that there is a growing need for clean energy technology. Not only because of the Climate Crisis, but the many other environmental and health disasters caused by or exacerbated by dirty energy and its byproducts. They see also the economic consequences of dependence on foreign oil and the loss of good jobs, and they foresee the future that Peak Oil will soon bring. So they are acting.

At the Summit, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proclaimed his clean energy priority as a total package: "I don't just want the wind farms. I want the companies that build the turbines. I want the ones that assemble the hybrid vehicles and consult on the conservation strategies. I want the companies that design and manufacture the solar panels. The whole integrated industry ought to and can have a place in Massachusetts ... I really believe that if we get this right, the whole world will be our customer. "

Then Colorado Governor Bill Ritter said he had the same goals for his state. These governors have seen what Governor Ed Rendell did in Pennsylvania: his administration brought a company(Gamesa) into the state to build wind farms and manufacture turbines. An early member of the Apollo Alliance, Rendell worked with the Democrats' traditional ally in Pennsylvania, the United Steelworkers union, and he got legislation passed that guaranteed the Commonwealth would buy enough renewable energy to give Gamesa a minimum market base. The result will be 1,000 union jobs, many in manufacturing, and the beginning of a new industry with global implications.

As Rendell told the Summit: "What else can clean the environment, boost the economy, free us up politically in world affairs, make us better able to withstand a terrorist attack or natural disaster, and help us with our trade imbalance? There's nothing else, this ought to be our number one priority."

The Blue-Green (and other colors) Alliance

While these governors talked about jobs and economic opportunities, the important thing in hoping that this alliance can be sustained is that there is a strong committment to the environment as well: it appears to be a true alliance between blue collar and green. Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, spoke at the Summit, along with Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who said: "it's time for an environmental intervention."

This is crucial because environmentalists and those in the forefront of warning about the Climate Crisis have long been marginalized as a wealthy overeducated elite out of touch with the American public (an image that the Fox Noise Machine is currently promoting in attacking Al Gore and his "Hollywood" supporters.)

On the ground, many conflicts have arisen when big companies successfully pitted workers against environmentalists (as in the Timber Wars here in California and the Pacific northwest.)
But the blue-green Apollo Alliance shatters those images and those cynically-created conflicts. The blue-green alliance is politically potent, as it could well be the basis for reinstituting and reenergizing the traditional Democratic party blue collar base. But even more importantly, it could be the basis for economic progress as well as giving us a fighting chance for the future threatened by the Climate Crisis.

There's another important part of this alliance that must be noted. Part of the elitist image of the environmental movement has been that it is lilly white. But Jerome Ringo, the inspirational President of the Apollo Alliance, is black. So is Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.

Alliance at All Levels

We are absorbed by conflict, and such headlines as there were from the summit emphasized the competition for clean energy jobs expressed by the governors. But it's more important to emphasize the strength in partnerships, and the breadth of this alliance and its potential power to transform the country and maybe even the world.

The above named are not the only governors committed to clean energy and battling the Climate Crisis. Nor were those named the only union, environmental organization and government officials present at the Summit.

Trenton, N.J. Mayor Douglas Palmer spoke, (note: that's Trenton, not Beverly Hills),representing more than 372 mayors from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have signed onto the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Among them are mayors who are instituting clean energy programs and efforts to confront the Climate Crisis in their cities. They called for federal block grants to help them in their efforts. "we can no longer behave as if there aren't any consequences from inaction."

U.S. Representative Jay Inslee (WA) called the Apollo Alliance the "most important coalition" in America today, because "this is a matter of our American destiny ... to lead the world in solving this global warming crisis."

Senator Hillary Clinton spoke, as did Senator Bernie Sanders, who has introduced the most aggressive bill against global heating now in Congress. On the blue-green alliance itself, he said: "This is a marriage made in heaven. This is a marriage that will move heaven and earth."

All of this is encouraging and in fact could be crucial. But almost nobody reported on it, and the left blogosphere in particular was quiet about it, including clean energy advocates who have yet to become part of the alliance. Bill Scher of the Campaign for America's Future, a cosponsor of the Apollo Alliance, blogged about it at Huffington Post, which is how I learned about it. But he apparently felt it necessary to attract attention by highlighting the competition between governors for clean energy industries, using "battle royale" in his headline.

But the importance of this alliance isn't about competition (though undoubtedly that will drive some useful efforts)--it's about cooperation: working together in partnerships among groups that were indifferent or hostile to each other in the past.

Yet it is all the noise of charge and countercharge that gets the attention. The left blogs playing into the hands of the right by making Ann Coulter the political equivalent of Anna Nicole Smith, and by covering a convention of conservative Republicans in detail while ignoring this meeting of the hope of the Democratic party as well as the nation and the future.

Here's more on "green collar jobs" at Sentient Times.

Just what the perils may be of all of us ignoring the future is the subject of my final essay in this series.

R.I.P.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was a respected biographer of FDR when he became an advisor to John F. Kennedy and then a special assistant to him in the White House. In the early 1960s, he transferred a phrase from Emerson to devise "The Politics of Hope" as a bold assertion that survives Camelot to still speak to some of us today. He was a political player and theorist, judicious and penetrating. In the Kennedy years he showed that an intellectual could provide inspiration as well as guidance in politics, and as a writer he showed that intellectually substantive prose could also be popular. His 60s experience informed his subsequent writing on presidential power, and he also wrote one of the better books on the John F. Kennedy's presidency, and another on Robert Kennedy. He continued his incisive political commentary for the rest of his life--his last book was in 2004. As an elder and an inspiration, I pay my respects to his memory.

This is as close to a snow scene as we've come in Arcata
in a decade. It's actually hail, or maybe sleet. But it's not
snow. Folks in the hills nearby have seen a foot of the real
stuff, though.

Elsewhere

This North Coast Place

New template features, links and a new post at This North Coast Place, and template changes at its companion site, North Coast Texts, which join Captain Future's growing fleet of affordable blogs, patrolling the blogosphere and serving the universe from Secret Squadron Headquarters in Arcata...

And a few new entries in the Saturday Morning Sci-Fi series at the Boomer Hall of Fame.