Emerson for the Day

"Who hears the fishes when they cry?'
Thoreau

Photos: two views of the hawksbill turtle, an endangered species living in the imperiled ocean, where the fate of life on earth ultimately resides. Yet as Thoreau's statement suggests, where we are most ignorant.

Revolt

They revolted in Egypt, and now it's spreading to Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain and Iran.

Then they revolted in Wisconsin, and now it's spreading to...Ohio.

Protests against proposed laws to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin continue to grow (40,000 demonstrated Thursday) and included Democrats of the state legislature who themselves went on strike, depriving the legislature of the necessary quorum, and said they would not be back until this law was abandoned. The Obama adminstration is openly aiding the protests.

Demonstrations spread to Ohio, where its governor is making a similar proposal.

The rhetoric is about state budgets (though the Wisconsin governor is accused of ginning up his own deficit to enable his anti-union ploy) but the attempt is seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy public employee unions, the last category of the American workforce to be heavily unionized. It is less often noted that public employees are more likely to be racial minorities and women than many other job categories.

As a nakedly political ploy, it is the essence of political cynicism: if you can't convince particular groups of people to support your candidates and positions, you use your power and talent for hypocrisy to weaken institutions that protect them, and you drive these people into poverty and powerlessness. You might even kill them off. It's the worst partisan politics and it's racism as well.

That's the sort of tyranny that ordinary people are fighting against in those other countries. Not meaning to minimize the bravery and the dangers of their struggles, what's going on in Wisconsin and Ohio is our version. In both cases, they are also fighting for the welfare of their countries. Despite the suicidal as well as homicidal rages of the Rabid Right, public employees do work that is essential to our democracy, our society and civilization. Until that is acknowledged, no reform is going to work.

It is justified, as is so much by the party of Voldemort, with lies. Even the Christian Science Monitor knows this:

"One of the arguments [Wisc. gov] Walker has made is that public-sector workers are compensated at a higher rate than those in the private sector. But according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, Wisconsin’s public sector workers get compensations that are 4.8 percent less than those for their counterparts in the private sector.

Dresang argues that the structure of how public workers are paid also saves the state money. He says that 26.7 percent of public-worker compensation is in benefits, compared with 11 to 17 percent for private workers. Because more public-worker compensation is in benefits, the state government is able to purchase health-care and pension packages in bulk, “which actually costs taxpayers less,” he says.

But that's pretty much in line with their professional liars in Washington, who justify a lot of what they try to do by lying about the effects of their budget-cutting (it will destroy jobs and create massive unemployment), about the number of federal jobs and about the effect of government spending, specifically for the Obama stimulus. The Congressional Budget Office numbers are unequivocal and huge: By the third quarter of 2010, "the Recovery Act increased employment by up to 3.6 million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate by up to 2.0 percentage points."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The field of knowledge is the common property of mankind."
Thomas Jefferson

Eat the Future

"On Friday, House Republicans unveiled their proposal for immediate cuts in federal spending. Uncharacteristically, they failed to accompany the release with a catchy slogan. So I’d like to propose one: Eat the Future."

So begins Paul Krugman's latest column, in which he discourses on the sorry hold American voters seem to have on what's actually in the federal budget (as well as states), and their perhaps sensible but contradictory answers to poll questions in which they want more spending on stuff they favor, and lower taxes. Then Krugman continues:

"Which brings me back to the Republican dilemma. The new House majority promised to deliver $100 billion in spending cuts — and its members face the prospect of Tea Party primary challenges if they fail to deliver big cuts. Yet the public opposes cuts in programs it likes — and it likes almost everything. What’s a politician to do?

The answer, once you think about it, is obvious: sacrifice the future. Focus the cuts on programs whose benefits aren’t immediate; basically, eat America’s seed corn. There will be a huge price to pay, eventually — but for now, you can keep the base happy."

Krugman goes on to spell out what this means. Don't miss this column. And don't miss the distinction--that President Obama's proposals are focused squarely on winning the future. It couldn't be clearer.

Following up: a demonstration of some 10,000 union members who work in the public sector protested the Wisconsin governor's proposed attack on collective bargaining. Notably the protest was joined by members of the firefighters union, who are not included in the governor's proposal. Union solidarity is essential, and this is a first good sign. Update: Demos even bigger on Wednesday.

It is also another point of direct contention: public sector jobs. On Tuesday Speaker of the House John Banal asserted that if GOPer budget-hacking results in lost jobs, "so be it." Banal is one of those GOPers who lies regularly in support of his views--for example by asserting that the Obama administration has added 200,000 federal jobs. The number is one-tenth of that--20,000--which puts federal employment on a per capita basis at the lowest level since 1962. Update: Turns out that the jobs Banal is proposing to cut number one million--enough to send the country back into recession.

Not that this has anything to do with the larger proportion of racial minorities who are able to get government jobs because anti-discrimination rules are tougher.

Following up on the Chamber of Commerce story, the Chamber is claiming that "it knew nothing" of these the proposals from the security companies until the emails detailing them were exposed in the media.

Goodbye to Spring

To give you an idea of how seriously screwed up the weather is here on the North Coast, we've essentially had no winter. We didn't want to talk much about it, since nearly everybody else was suffering with cold, snow, ice, rain, wind and storms. We had sunshine and warm temperatures. This is supposed to be our winter, our rainy season, but we haven't had any serious rain since the end of December. Flowers like this rose responded to the early spring. But now, even as I write this, the winds are building, and the forecast is for rain and cold for the rest of the week, for the next 10 days, for as far as the forecasts go. So in mid-February, winter begins. It's likely to play havoc with more than the roses.

Sunday to Monday

At Foreign Policy.com, Marc Lynch's Middle East blog, concerning the peaceful end to the Mubarak dictatorship:

The Obama administration also deserves a great deal of credit, which it probably won't receive. It understood immediately and intuitively that it should not attempt to lead a protest movement which had mobilized itself without American guidance, and consistently deferred to the Egyptian people. Despite the avalanche of criticism from protestors and pundits, in fact Obama and his key aides -- including Ben Rhodes and Samantha Power and many others -- backed the Egyptian protest movement far more quickly than anyone should have expected. Their steadily mounting pressure on the Mubarak regime took time to succeed, causing enormous heartburn along the way, but now can claim vindication. By working carefully and closely with the Egyptian military, it helped restrain the worst violence and prevent Tiananmen on the Tahrir -- which, it is easy to forget today, could very easily have happened. No bombs, no shock and awe, no soaring declarations of American exceptionalism, and no taking credit for a tidal wave which was entirely of the making of the Egyptian people -- just the steadily mounting public and private pressure on the top of the regime which was necessary for the protestors to succeed.

The Obama administration also understood from the start, and has consistently said, that removing Mubarak would not be enough. It has rejected "faux democracy," and pushed hard for fundamental systemic reforms...By the way, for those keeping score in the "peacefully removing Arab dictators" game, it's now Obama 2, Bush 0. The administration has been subjected to an enormous amount of criticism over the last two weeks for its handling of Egypt, including by people inspired by or who worked on the previous administration's Freedom Agenda. It was also attacked sharply from the left, by activists and academics who assumed that the administration was supporting Mubarak and didn't want democratic change. In the end, Obama's strategy worked. Perhaps this should earn it some praise, and even some benefit of the doubt going forward. And now, a day to celebrate before rolling up the sleeves for the hard work to come."


From Think Progress, the first fruits of their investigation: "ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business trade association representing ExxonMobil, AIG, and other major international corporations, is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign."

Just some of the details revealed so far are interesting beyond even this infamy: a plan to plant a false story with a progressive organization, then reveal the story is false to discredit that organization. Sounds just like what happened to Dan Rather. The plan was for the lobbying firm of Hunton and Williams to hire a set of security companies to do the deeds for a cool two million:"HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis)."

Tipped by one of the comments at Think Progress, I looked up the meaning of "Themis." It refers to a Greek Titan, and means "divine law."

Lucubrations

Payoff for night owls: early look at this morning's very interesting New York Times story on the internal dynamics of the Obama Administration's statements on the fast-evolving situation in Egypt. Basically it says that President Obama and his White House team were emphasizing that change needed to begin right away, while old foreign policy hands--including at times Sec. of State Clinton--were emphasizing the need for continuity in the process of change. If you're still wondering what newspapers are for, reporting like this is one important function.


It comes as little surprise that Washington Republicans make many more false statements than do Democrats--this study says three times as many, or over a third of the time a GOPer assert something, he or she is lying or deluded.

But for lies and delusions to work requires a certain gullibility as well as ignorance among hearers, and apparently none of us are immune. For example, I among many others fell for the impression that the U.S. owes the bulk of its national debt to China. But it's not true, and not even close. The U.S. owes most of its debt to...the U.S. That is, 53% of the federal debt is held by U.S. citizens and institutions. China holds 9.8% but Japan holds 9.6%, and the UK holds 5.1%. Makes a difference, don't it?

Still, it seems that the lies and liars are more fascinating, at least on the Internet. I just took a look at my usual first stop among a shrinking number of sites, Talking Points Memo, and literally every single story on its front page is about a GOPer whopper. Now I know CPAC is going on and that's fertile territory for this, but still... It's like there's nobody doing anything constructive...

As California again confronts a budget slicing crisis, Michael Hiltzik's column in the L.A. Times provides analysis and cautionary tale about the dysfunctional state of Texas.

And while Arizona mostly has been making headlines for Rabid Right mania--like its string of proposed racist, violence-engendering and secessionist laws including nullification of federal laws they don't like, even after the gun killings and attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords in Tucson. But somehow this counter-narrative was missed last week: a Public Policy Poll found that a majority of Arizonans favor stricter gun control, which is higher than the national average.

And if you missed it, Gabby's husband Mark Kelly has resumed training to pilot the space shuttle Endeavor in April, saying that he fully expects his wife to be present at the launch. It seemed pretty optimistic, until the news a few days ago that Gabby has begun to speak. And that in itself is truly amazing.

Meanwhile in the Land of the Free

The new Republican governor of Wisconsin is proposing to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights, and has alerted the National Guard to be ready in case of worker unrest. While Eygpt tries to leap into the 21st century, another Rabid Right GOPer leads us steadfastly back into the Dark Ages, with a quick stop in the U.S. 19th century.

Egypt Goes All Hopey Changey

A non-violent revolution of amazing speed has toppled the 30 year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. First stories after his departure suggest that a council of the army is reconstituting the government completely, responding to the demands of the protestors. While the role of the v.p., the Mubarak apparatus, and even the army are all unclear, there is no doubt about the role of the Eyptian people, primarily young, but protestors reportedly cut across all lines of class and religion. While elements of our Rabid Right has been muttering darkly about them, they have succeeded so far with inclusiveness and without second amendment solutions. The road ahead is still perilous and will be contentious, now that the single object they all agree must go is gone. But what has happened so far must be celebrated. It's a sudden infusion of hope in so many ways.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"...the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic."

Edgar Allen Poe

Centered on the Future

Because politics is instantly available spectacle, because the extreme Rabid Right has the power of media to influence the dialogue and agenda and decision-makers, and because of whatever else, nobody wants to be caught in the middle. When President Obama talks about listening to both sides, for combatants on the left and probably on the right, it's code for caving in. Governing from the middle is wishwashy and weak to both sides, it seems. But President Obama is staking out not the middle but the center. He's centered on winning the future with common cause and common truth.

He addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which covertly raised millions to support GOPers and their now uncontrollable and often embarrasing Tea Partiers. Much of what he said was in his State of the Union. But he talked in more detail about one of the great bugaboos: gobment regulation. Yes, it was Ronald Reagan who rode this to prominence, and set various forms of deregulation and privatization in motion, most of which we've paid for dearly. But President Obama didn't talk about that. He talked about lessons for the future.

Unnecessary government regulation is dangerous. Apart from unnecessarily slowing things down and making them more expensive to do, the power bureaucrats have can easily be misused. So there are and should be arguments over what regulations are necessary.

But the Rabid Right has pushed the button that says you get everything for free by having no government programs and no regulations. All (or nearly all, depending) regulations are wrong. This gets people elected, and it makes it easier for unscrupulous people to get very rich by ignoring everything but their own profits. But capitalism and democracy, capitalism and a healthy society, cannot coexist without regulations to make sure all businesses play by the same rules, and none gets a competitive advantage by, for example, skimping on health and safety. They cannot coexist without government investments in what no business or group of businesses can afford to do, which is create the infrastructure--the roads, water systems, air and rail systems, etc.--that the entire society depends on, including businesses but also individual citizens. The same goes for necessary functions like kinds of education and research that aren't always profitable enough for businesses to care about. But society needs them to exist and advance.

President Obama made the case on regulations in this way:

"Even as we eliminate burdensome regulations, America’s businesses have a responsibility as well to recognize that there are some basic safeguards, some basic standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation. Not every regulation is bad. Not every regulation is burdensome on business. A lot of the regulations that are out there are things that all of us welcome in our lives.

Few of us would want to live in a society without rules that keep our air and water clean; that give consumers the confidence to do everything from investing in financial markets to buying groceries. And the fact is, when standards like these have been proposed in the past, opponents have often warned that they would be an assault on business and free enterprise. We can look at the history in this country. Early drug companies argued the bill creating the FDA would “practically destroy the sale of … remedies in the United States.” That didn’t happen. Auto executives predicted that having to install seatbelts would bring the downfall of their industry. It didn’t happen. The President of the American Bar Association denounced child labor laws as “a communistic effort to nationalize children.” That’s a quote."

None of these things came to pass. In fact, companies adapt and standards often spark competition and innovation. "

President Obama got an example from his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu: refrigerators. Refrigerators were a key item in the consumer economy revolution of the 1950s. That's Betty Furness up there, one of the first to effectively use the medium of television to sing the praises of new refrigerators. But the latest innovations didn't happen because of Betty Furness.

"But he started talking about energy efficiency and about refrigerators, and he pointed out that the government set modest targets a couple decades ago to start increasing efficiency over time. They were well thought through; they weren’t radical. Companies competed to hit these markers. And they hit them every time, and then exceeded them. And as a result, a typical fridge now costs half as much and uses a quarter of the energy that it once did -- and you don’t have to defrost, chipping at that stuff -- (laughter) -- and then putting the warm water inside the freezer and all that stuff. It saves families and businesses billions of dollars.

So regulations didn’t destroy the industry; it enhanced it and it made our lives better -- if they’re smart, if they’re well designed. And that’s our goal, is to work with you to think through how do we design necessary regulations in a smart way and get rid of regulations that have outlived their usefulness, or don’t work. I also have to point out the perils of too much regulation are also matched by the dangers of too little."

This is not scoring political or ideological points. It's about what works, and being serious about what we need to be considering and debating and doing, if we're going to deal with the future, let alone win it.

We also may be unused to measuring the benefits of regulations in a broad enough way. Junayd Mahmood, a Center for American Progress energy intern, assembled these amazing facts:

"Studies demonstrate that the costs of environmental regulations are miniscule compared to the benefits to Americans. In a study assessing the net benefit of the Clean Air Act, the EPA determined that Americans gained $21.4 trillion in health and environmental benefits between 1970 and 1990. The Clean Air Act prevented 205,000 premature deaths and millions of cases of asthma, heart disease and child IQ loss. According to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Clean Air Act “returns $40 dollars in health and environmental benefits for every dollar of compliance costs.” Rather than tax future economic growth, benefits are expected to grow further. A 2010 EPA study predicts that the Clean Air Act will produce health, environmental and productivity benefits valued at $2 trillion in the year 2020."

There is not much conflict in these facts. They are a public good. But our political and media and ideological environment is so sensationalistic and toxic that we can't deal with this on those terms: of what helps this society work, every day and to meet the challenges of the future. The toxic blatherers in Washington and their media minions certainly don't want anyone to think about how the Obama federal government saved the U.S. auto industry, and thousands of jobs directly, and millions of jobs indirectly and in the future, and did so by getting the industry and labor centered on what they needed to do. Now GM has paid back almost all of its loans to the federal treasury, and is well on the road to prosperity.

It's worth noting, for the partisan politics and ideologically obsessed, that to the Chamber of Commerce President Obama defended regulations that protect workers and their ability to make a living, as well as his Recovery Act, his planned investments in education and energy innovation and infrastructure, and even his health insurance reforms, on this same basis:

"We simply could not continue to accept a status quo that’s made our entire economy less competitive, as we’ve paid more per person for health care than any other nation on Earth. Nobody is even close. And we couldn’t accept a broken system where insurance companies could drop people because they got sick, or families went into bankruptcy because of medical bills.

I know that folks here have concerns about this law. And I understand it. If you’re running a business right now and you’re seeing these escalating health care costs, your instinct is if I’ve got even more laws on top of me, that’s going to increase my costs even more. I understand that suspicion, that skepticism. But the non-partisan congressional watchdogs at the CBO estimate that health care tax credits will be worth nearly $40 billion for small businesses over the next decade -- $40 billion, directly to small businesses who are doing the right thing by their employees."

President Obama hasn't changed, even if perceptions of him are changing. But perhaps he's making it clearer: He is not middle of the road, nor is he ideological and clueless. He is centered on the future.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“Only that which does not cease to hurt remains in memory.”
Nietzsche

Real Snow, Unreal Paradox

The storms of snow and ice that blanketed much of the U.S. this week became another disinformation occasion for professional Climate Crisis denialists. The cold and snow proves that global heating is untrue, they say. Of course, when intense summer heat waves sweep across the nation with largely unreported death tolls, or kill people by the thousands in Europe and other parts of the world, they deny this is evidence that the globe is heating. They charge that climate scientists are trying to have it both ways, when they are clearly trying to have it both ways.

But people with more of an open mind and actual curiosity rather than fear-based prejudice are learning that the apparent paradox is not much of one. Everyone who has lived in a place that gets cold in the winter, and has paid any attention to the world outside their cars and buildings, has reason to know that when it gets really really cold, it's usually "too cold to snow," as the saying goes. That's folk wisdom, and informed common sense.

The science is also pretty clear in relation to the Climate Crisis, and consistent with models that predict more precipitation, some in the form of snow. So it's been the occasion for explanations, such as this one in England, this one from December which is more complicated but seeks to explain the relationship of global heating to extreme cold with a real world focus, and most recently this one applied to the latest U.S. winter storms.

Since Al Gore went on Bill O'Reilly in the brave but futile attempt to get past the ignoramus mocking and talk about the science in regard to snow and cold and climate change, the charge has been made that while Gore says this is consistent with what climate scientists have predicted for years, there's nothing about it in Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Granted that since pretty much the whole picture was new to much of the American public, this wasn't as emphasized as polar ice melting, sea level rise, or the relationship to bigger and more frequent hurricanes and storms like the one that just devastated a chunk of Australia. But snow is mentioned in the book as a form of precipitation that is likely to increase in some places, particular in big one-time events that leads to flooding (in the book, the section on precip and storms begins at page 92 and continues to 121.)

That these storms are so widespread, that Dallas is so cold, that these snowstorms in the U.S. are happening at the same time as heavy rain and flooding plus a huge storm in Australia, none of it alone proves anything. But in the pattern of extreme weather over time, it's evidence of climate instability (as meteorologist Jeff Masters says), and together with all the other data, it adds mightily to the reality of the Climate Crisis. But even if it alone doesn't prove the Climate Crisis is upon us, it sure doesn't prove the opposite.

Egypt and Media

It's one of those rapidly changing events that takes on a life of its own. At the moment, the Friday demonstrations are close to their scheduled beginning, and there are fears that the Egyptian government is planning a violent suppression.

There's a story going around, originally from the New York Times and apparently confirmed elsewhere, that the U.S. is working to get Mubarak to step down immediately, perhaps Friday. (Even if that happens, I'm skeptical--that v.p. doesn't seem much of an improvement, and the rest of the apparatus is still entrenched.)

But the other story that's getting less play, and is to me also pretty significant, is quoting State Department sources as saying that the attacks on journalists the past 24 hours were organized by the government. That it's the State Department speaks volumes about the Obama Administration U.S. position. It's not on the side of the current government.

For those of us who remember China, who remember the fall of the Wall, the fall of the Shah in Iran etc., the TV pictures are eerily familiar, though these examples show the range of what might yet happen. I haven't watched much TV coverage until today, but a couple of things are different in potentially very bad ways--I mean about the coverage. Most obviously there is FOX that covers this only from a predetermined ideological perspective, with talking parrot heads pushing an extreme rabid right agenda that they partly seem to have cooked up themselves. They've got their vocabulary set, and their "experts" on board, who have remarkable little to say that's different one from the other. For those who think they're getting their news from FOX, and instead they're getting one or more paranoid alternative realities, it's a sad and potentially destructive situation.

The other quite noticeable difference is the absense of the channel that the world used to watch for coverage of these events: CNN's Headline News. It used to be that Headline News did the hard news coverage, while CNN provided longer and more in depth stories. You could switch from one to the other. Now when you switch from CNN to what's now called HLN, you go from Egypt to celebrity chitchat and tabloid crime. It's very jarring, and pretty depressing.

The Future in Mind

The future is a very big place. That's one reason we can't handle it. We can't even deal with the present, and the future is many times bigger than that, because it is comprised of possibilities that fill many presents.

In times when change is quick and apparently unpredictable--as is graphically apparent in Egypt at the moment--we are reminded of this. We see unexpected events with possibly large but utterly unknown effects. We see the conditions of the present changing before our eyes, but we don't know how much, or how little will change, or when, or how.

There's been a fitful but fairly long history of trying to anticipate the future, to help guide present actions. The last time it was a big concern was the 1970s, when there was a wide range of people and organizations convinced that studying the future was the key to managing change so it would be for the better. There was a lot of excitement about applying computers to make sense out of all the myriad possibilities--to enumerate the possibilities, assign probabilities to each, and create scenarios based on how individual possibilities would interact with each other and the given world.

But the number of possibilities and probabilities, their many possible interactions, the range of possible, probable and desirable futures--the future of many possible presents--was too big even for computers. In part, because people had to imagine so much and decide so much in order to instruct the computers on what data to consider and how to handle it, and it was all just dizzily overwhelming.

But one legacy of this period of futures studies was the idea that all kinds of data and many explanations ought to be considered. Today however we cling to single explanations for the present, or at best a few. We like simple and familiar explanations, especially those inculcated by the most powerful influences, the most persistent explainers. Most often it's the explanation overtly and covertly sponsored by the rich and powerful, backed by the dominant religious institutions. In recent centuries, something called science has gotten in on the act, though most successfully when allied with the rich and powerful, which it has been much of the time.

Sooner or later a consensus explanation will emerge for what's happening in Egypt. At the moment that consensus hasn't yet been reached, but one fairly new explanation--or at least contributing factor--is at least in the mix. It is climate: Unrest in the Middle East is emerging in part because of rising food prices, due in part to climate change.

When it's all said and done that's very unlikely to be the consensus explanation, the conventional wisdom. But it might well be true. Is it the whole explanation? Very unlikely. But it may be a strong contributing factor. And it should not be automatically ignored. Food prices are rising faster in some parts of the world, but they are rising everywhere. One big reason is extreme weather affecting crops that supply food for large regions and even the entire world. If those events are increasing in frequency and severity, they could be the result of the Climate Crisis, as scientific models have predicted. Various studies by think tanks, some affiliated with the U.S. military, predict political unrest due to food prices and shortages, among other effects of the Climate Crisis.

Though at the moment climate may be a politically toxic word in the U.S. and elsewhere, the historical role of climate in the rise and fall of civilizations is gaining more credence, most recently in relation to the Roman Empire. It's not a new idea--James Burke made the case in his brilliant television program of the late 1980s, "After the Warming." But it is heard more often these days. It's not that it is the only explanation--though some probably sound like they mean it to be. But centuries of a relatively stable and beneficent climate have blinded us to the possibility. It's not something we automatically consider. But if it was so, and if the extent and length of climate change happening now is caused by greenhouse gases that continue to be spewed in great quantities, then it is a factor shaping the future.

Yet the habits of mind, plus the relentless shaping of opinion by powerful interests with lies, plus how we are currently using our latest communication technologies to fill all available time and space with commercialized trivialities, blinds us even to the evidence of the present. Here in the U.S. we don't know and don't much care about the recent devastating floods in Australia, let alone what scientists are saying about the evident relationship to the Climate Crisis.

The idea that we're vulnerable to climate change, that even seemingly small changes in climate can change everything, is hard to grasp when we're not experiencing its extremes. But many people are, and more will be. The best science predicts that climate change now underway will not end up being small and local. It's going to be big.

What also makes the Climate Crisis so big is that it affects so many other factors, and how they interact. It's as big as the future. Our climate science is good enough to tell us that it's happening (through measurement and observation) and where things seem to be going (through models as well as applying the rules of such sciences as chemistry, physics and biology), as well as basically why it is happening. But it's not good enough to tell us exactly what will happen and when. It can tell us in general what we need to do to prevent the worst and deal with the inevitable effects, but not specifically. A lot of that has yet to be ascertained or at least fully evaluated.

We should at the very least be having those discussions, those arguments, together, all the time. Instead we're ignoring what's likely to be the major determinant of our future. And that future has already begun. We should be applying even our limited knowledge and skills to this problem. Instead we're running from it, although it is clearly gaining on us. You can tell by the relentless ferocity of the opposition (though that is also partly due to the big pots of money supporting the opposition.)

What the history of the future does suggest is that all these possibilities and factors can only begin to be sorted out into whole futures by acts of the imagination. The proper use of the imagination in this sense is to see the possibilities as fearlessly as you can, match them with what you know from experience and instinct about people and the living world, and develop a sense of the future, perhaps as a range of probabilities, or perhaps as a story.

We all have a story about the future that we live by, even if we don't think about it in those terms. I think about the role of climate, and I see it defining conditions of the future, as it is beginning to define conditions of the present. This has led me to think more and more about what characteristics of human beings will help get them through this future, perhaps even about what organized human activity might be like.

But for the moment, this is the point I want to stay with: I look at the present as it unfolds with the climate and the Climate Crisis in mind, as a key to this present and especially, to the future. My sense is that more and more people are doing that, even if they aren't the ones making the most effective noise.

Emerson for the Day

"I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born."
Emerson

I Touch the Future

Judith Resnik and Christa McAuliffe, Challenger astronauts

I was literally in the air, along the same U.S. East Coast, when Challenger fell from the sky. When I landed in Portland, Maine, I was met by grim faced strangers who told me. They were my hosts for a speaking engagement. By the time I was in my hotel room, the television was covering the story, and reflecting the shock. Even by 1986, a space shuttle flight was fairly routine. When my hosts told me "the shuttle" had exploded, at first I thought it was the New York-to-Washington airplane shuttle. I'm sure that only added to the shock. Something that was so normal now--yet still so dangerous. Yet in the hours and days that followed, we reflected again on the miracle of this, of humans exploring space, and of the kind of people who were taking up that challenge.

Today NASA marked 25 years since the January 28, 1986 loss of Challenger and its seven astronauts. Seven was the total number of the original astronauts of the Mercury program, several of whom would continue through Gemini and Apollo, and would make it to the moon. One of them, Virgil Grissom, the second American in space, died in the only previous fatal accident of the space program. But that had happened on the launch pad. The Challenger seven were the first to be lost in flight--though they hadn't even yet reached beyond the atmosphere. The disaster began little more than a minute after liftoff.

What America learned that week was how different this crew was from those original astronauts. The original seven had been military, fighter jocks and test pilots. They were all male and white. This crew had a pilot that fit that profile--Dick Scobee, flight captain. But it also had Judith Resnik, the second American woman and first Jewish American in space; Ronald McNair, the second African American; and Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American in space.

And Christa McAuliffe, a civilian, the star of the mission as the "first teacher in space." She brought a lot of attention to this flight, and so a lot of school children were watching. For them and the many more who saw the footage later, this became one of those anchoring events of a lifetime. (Though there were and remain misconceptions about what happened and why.) It was worst for the children in her New Hampshire school, not all that far from Portland. This day has special meaning for them.

For awhile afterwards, Christa McAuliffe's sacrifice elevated the role of teacher in the national consciousness. Her words "I touch the future--I teach" became a bumper sticker, and are still famous and inspirational. They should be a national guide.

We Do Green Things: Followups on the Speech

Responses to President Obama's State of the Union by professional commentators and online bloviators were mostly predictable. If Obama didn't talk at length or at least prominently mention the issue they consider absolutely the most important (or are paid to represent it that way), they call the speech disappointing or a failure.

That would include Joseph Romm at Climate Progress who has already boxed himself in by declaring this a failed presidency months ago. Hard to up the rhetoric from there, but he tried. He's upset because Obama didn't talk about the Climate Crisis. And it's true that he didn't. One can guess by this and other evidence that the Obama White House has concluded that talking directly about global heating does no good, but that promoting policies that address the Climate Crisis--especially green energy--is the better approach. Indeed his speech pinned major economic hopes on America being a leader in green energy, and he followed that up today with a visit to a plant in Wisconsin that makes solar and other clean energy technology.

So green energy advocates are fairly happy, and at least one commentator saw the Climate Crisis connection. There may yet be a moment when Obama can effectively make the kind of call to arms that Romm demands and the situation merits. I have to guess that he doesn't see this moment as allowing for effectiveness by directly confronting the issue. In terms of congressional votes for cap and trade and so on, he's certainly right--they aren't there, and the Rabid Right is spoiling for a fight on the Climate Crisis. Obama may believe that his combination of optimistic "we do big things" American can-do spirit and economically-inspired fear of losing out to China etc. in clean energy tech will have a better chance of motivating actual change. With money behind it.

This really is the heart of the speech, and I'm a little surprised that few today seemed even to see it, or understand it, especially since it was so effective--with such clear approval among those who watched it. The need to act is wrapped in a strong argument for government action as well as business innovation, and that I still believe is the message that will resonate: "We do big things."

Three additional points centered on the energy/education/infrastructure emphasis of the speech. Obama going to a green energy manufacturer today is getting some media attention, but it's hardly the first time he's done this. He's followed up other speeches with such a visit. They've just been ignored. But as Obama said at his most recent press conference, he is persistent.

Second, after noting the media and blogosphere responses today, I admire even more Obama's ability to block out the insider noise and see things from other points of view--of people out in the country, of people in the world, and of history and the future. That he apparently pays more attention to those ten letters from citizens he reads every night than the nonsense on Daily Kos is all to his credit, but it can't be easy. Well, on the other hand, maybe it can.

Third point, and I may be the first to make this one: I see in this address the influence already of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who he appointed head of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness last week. Apart from whatever the facts are concerning his stewardship at GE, a lot of the points President Obama made are the kind of points that I heard Immelt make, for example in a conversation with Charlie Rose. He's an advocate for clean energy, more attention to research and innovation, manufacturing rather than just services, more American exports, fixing health care, and infrastructure. He claims (though critics dispute this) that he's bringing jobs back to America. Immelt has been a member of that Council for the past two years, so it's not like he's a sudden new voice being heard in the White House. But he's a bigger voice now, and I think we heard it--or echoes of it--in the State of the Union.

To return for a moment to the Climate Crisis, I would prefer that President Obama address this issue with all the rhetorical power at his command. He may need an occasion, or he may need to seize one. I wonder if he has fully appreciated or accepted the implications of recent science, and I am troubled by the resignation of his chief climate advisor Carol Browner. But it's not clear to me--and apparently not clear to the President--what practical effect this would have right now, given the politics. Cap and trade may be dead as the preferred mechanism to deal with that aspect. There may have to be another.

Instead of alienating supporters of the best hope you've got in Washington, Bill McKibben is a strong voice for building citizen and community advocacy, the way Martin Luther King, Jr. and others built the Civil Rights movement and both forced it onto the national agenda, and made it politically possible for JFK to address it and propose legislation with some chance of passage, even though he didn't live to see it pass. It's unfortunately still hearts and minds time on this issue. Why that may be will be the subject of future posts.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present."

Robert F. Kennedy, Seattle World's Fair, August 7, 1962. Quoted in part in President Obama's State of the Union.

Winning the Future: "We Do Big Things"

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama described his agenda for winning the future, with a reasonable tone and a set of convincing arguments. Convincing enough to win overwhelming approval for his speech in the first two polls, including an approval in the CBS poll of 92%.

The President made "winning the future" a refrain as well as a theme:

"The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement." Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.

Now it's our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future. And tonight, I'd like to talk about how we get there."

In support of it, he used two other notable refrains. He talked about unity as a necessity ("What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow...We will move forward together, or not at all - for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.") But he didn't describe a timid agenda, a few minor or meaningless areas of agreement. He talked about major initiatives, with large goals--in education, rebuilding American infrastructure, and innovation, particularly by aggressively growing a green economy, to create jobs and make America competitive in a world of real economic competition, especially in these areas of the rapidly onrushing economy of the future.

He made his arguments in terms that were easy to understand, sometimes by example or the American context, but with the sense that this was a reasonable course, a common sense approach. That was supported by his second refrain: "It makes no sense":

"Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense."

And later...

"Over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change."

These relatively small and specific examples are politically contentious, which illustrates how warped our political dialogue is. But the common sense of them transfers to the rest of his agenda, even when it is not so modest. And that involves the third refrain: "We do big things."

The President had talked about investing in innovation, renewing infrastructure, improving education, streamlinging and modernizing the federal government. He said we have stopped the bleeding in our economy and now "We are poised for progress." He reminded everyone that these proposals were not out of the ordinary in American history, especially of the past century, when Republican and Democratic administrations invested heavily in innovation, infrastructure and education. He specifically evoked the 1950s by asserting that "This is our Sputnik moment," the moment when we respond to the challenges of innovation or face falling behind other powers in the world.

But with a final example that married innovation and compassion in a characteristically American way, with the small Pennsylvania company that quickly invented the technology and techniques to free the buried miners in Chile. President Obama ended his State of the Union with this:

"Later, one of his employees said of the rescue, "We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things."

We do big things.

From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary people who dare to dream. That's how we win the future.

We are a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company. I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree. I might not know those people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try. I'm not sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get there. I know we will."

We do big things.

The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more than two centuries later, it is because of our people that our future is hopeful, our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong."

UPDATE: I swear to you this is true. I had just finished this entry when I checked my email. I had one new message, from Barack Obama. The title line: We Do Big Things.

Astronaut Mark Kelly watching President Obama's State of the Union address, as he holds the hand of his wife, Gabby Giffords, currently undergoing rehabilitation and further treatment in Houston. The President mentioned Rep. Giffords early in his address, and members of Congress left an empty chair in the chamber in her honor.

Emerson for the Day

"The metamorphosis of nature shows itself in nothing more than this; that there is no word in our language that cannot become typical to us of nature by giving it emphasis. The world is a dancer: it is a Rosary; it is a torrent; it is a Boat: a Mist, a Spider's Snare; it is what you will; and the metaphor will hold...Swifter than light the World transforms itself into that thing you name."

Emerson

Short Stuff

A video distributed to Obama supporters provides a preview of the President's upcoming State of the Union. The theme appears to be Winning the Future. Captain Future approves.

Polls are about unanimous now that President Obama's approval ratings have jumped markedly higher. Republicans and the GOPer Congress are going the other way.

Westerner Timothy Egan doesn't buy the Rabid Right's association of freedom with gunslinging.

The 50th anniversary of the JFK Inaugural prompted this detailed reconstruction of that day in Vanity Fair, and E. J. Dionne's recollection and evaluation of the Inaugural Address. So let us begin the reevaluations and celebrations of various milestones of the Kennedy years, aided now by the newly completed and now accessible digital archive of the Kennedy administration at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library site.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"I try to imagine my father speaking to me across the abyss between the dead and the living, and I hear him saying this: Do not pity me because I in my prime awaited romantic challenges which never came. If you wish to carve an epitaph on my modest headstone in Crown Hill Cemetary at this late date, then let it be this: IT WAS ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN A UNICORN."

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

When the Trumpet Summoned Us

President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous Inaugural Address fifty years ago today. Here are some excerpts that usually don't get quoted but should:

"The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."

R.I.P. Sargent Shriver

Nobody embodied the energy, the "vigah" of the JFK administration more than Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps. I was inspired by his enthusiasm and his book about the Peace Corps (though it was apparently written mostly by an assistant and future PA Senator, Harris Wofford.) He gave substance to the Kennedy emphasis on idealism and service, and many in my generation answered the call. Shriver not only built the Peace Corps, but as the first head of the Office of Economic Opportunity which ran the LBJ War on Poverty, he supervised the invention of Head Start and VISTA, the domestic Peace Corps. With his wife Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he started the Special Olympics, and together they championed the cause. Even when he himself succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease, his prominence enabled his family to help bring this condition out of the shadows. He died Tuesday at the age of 95. Here's his obituary at the Washington Post, and an article about him, the Peace Corps and Martin Luther King at the New Yorker. Condolences to his family, and may he rest in peace.

Update: This fine piece by Bono.

Elected 2008, President 2011?

New polls are showing a surge in President Obama's favorability rating, above 50% for the first time in awhile. The difference seems to be from those who identify themselves as Independents. Part of this is likely coming from a more positive mood about economic improvement. But the energy behind it may also be from the overwhelming approval across party lines for President Obama's speech at the Tucson memorial, and his general handling of that situation.

I think it may be even more significant than that. A sort of delayed racism seemed to add to the calculated politics and Rabid Right resentment over President Obama's electoral victory (some of it payback for the left's treatment of GW Bush.) But its general tenor was to deny legitimacy to Barack Obama as President of the United States.

The major mouths of the Rabid Right won't back down on this, but it seems that after Tucson most Americans are ready, however reluctantly, to acknowledge that Barack Obama is indeed the elected President of their United States, and due the respect of his office. That's my intuition and we'll see how true it might be. But if it is true, politics will become at least a bit different than it has been for the past two years.

Second Amendment Solutions: Welcome to Tumbleweed

As we know, only alarmists, political hacks, cowards and blood libellists can be against the right to carry lethal weapons in public, including public meetings and (as legal in one state and proposed in others) on college campuses. I guess high school is the logical next choice. But maybe not: two students were wounded, one seriously and one critically, when an assault weapon brought to Gardenia High School by a student went off accidentally.

And as we also know, any implicaton that the Rabid Right's rhetoric indicates or inspires violent intentions is blood libel and a pogrom and...whatever. Except maybe in Spokane, where a bomb was planted along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade, intended as a weapon of mass destruction. But probably it was actually a left wing socialist plot, cynically aimed at martyrizing other socialists in order to pin it on good Christians, like....

The new governor of Alabama, who spoke at MLK's old church to make the point that Christians are his brothers and sisters, and non-Christians are not.

I don't usually highlight these sorts of stories here, and I really don't like the progressive news blogs that make stars out of these people, but sometimes it's useful to take note of the ongoing hypocrisy parade. Especially when it is leading more and more to dangerous and lethal consequences.

But for all the protestations of progressive sites, they seem to be becoming their enemies in some respects. It suddenly struck me that the tenor, the cynicism, the violence and even the vocabulary at Daily Kos in 2011 to me resembles that of Rabid Right blogs of five years ago, more than the Daily Kos of five years ago...Or maybe I'm just smarting from my latest foray over there.

I knew that Democrats had backed off on new gun control legislation, and that Congress had let the assault weapon ban lapse, but I must admit I wasn't aware of how far things had gone in the direction of insanity on the subject. But re-posting the Guns in Town piece from here to Daily Kos certainly educated me. There was almost no agreement in the comments and a lot of hostility. I was even accused of not being progressive because I was supporting the principle that guns in public are a public danger, and in public meetings are an anti-democratic threat to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble. By suggesting that only the police should be armed in public places, I was in favor of a police state.

It did give me an opportunity to expand my argument in the comments:

If anyone can carry a concealed weapon into a public meeting, then the danger can come from anyone, and therefore there is a threat. The test on free speech and freedom of assembly grounds would seem to be: would a reasonable person be constrained from speaking or asking a question that might offend or anger anyone in the crowd who could respond with lethal gunfire?

More to the point, is an expression in favor of, say gun control, going to be constrained by the fact that others in the crowd may have lethal weapons, concealed or unconcealed?

Moreover, the threat is even greater when this practice is legal, because the presence of guns is more likely. The danger is also increased, simply by the likely presence of more guns. This is as well a prior restraint on the right to assemble and on free speech. Especially having seen the effects of gun violence in a public meeting, and the reasonable assumption that guns are more likely to be present when they are legal, and given the contentiousness at public meetings and especially the anger that is so openly expressed there these days, people who don't want to risk getting in the line of fire or get involved in anybody's gun fight, are less likely to attend such meetings."

However, this cut no ice with most of the other commenters, some of whom used the opportunity to discuss the relative merits of their guns. And this is on the premiere left/liberal blog site. But at least Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times also thinks this is all pretty insane:

"The California Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, meanwhile, has launched a statewide project to demand "gun-free dining," urging restaurants to prohibit firearms on their private property. I told Brady coordinator Karen Arntzen that if we need a conversation about whether it's OK for someone to show up at the local diner with a six-shooter, we've lost our marbles.

Is it 1823? Do we live in Tumbleweed?"

The absurdity and insanity aside, and the now daily harms way we apparently are all subject to every time we leave the house, an America bristling with guns is so much more likely to self-destruct in any nerve-wracking crisis. Those who make lots of money from guns may be as usual the motive force behind all this now, but it's the social fabric--as well as individual innocents--who will pay.

After MLK

Little more than a week after gun violence killed a federal judge and five citizens and severely wounded a member of Congress, we have a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., shot and killed at the age of 39. Weeks later, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed at the age of 43, while running for President. It only takes a glance at, for example, this collection of quotes from MLK to see how far--and how much farther away--we are from becoming the country and the society MLK envisioned. His words may as well come from Mars, they are so far from today's public dialogue. The prevailing attitudes about guns is one depressing indication, but the militarization of spirit is evident throughout. MLK's words--beacons of hope in their time, inspiring action--are today considered heavenly idealism, with genuflection and bows of the head as the response, rather than consideration or determination.

Just about the only positive that can be noted is expressed in the photo above, one of my favorites of the past several years which I've been looking for an excuse to publish. You can read all American history, and particularly the decades from the 1960s to 2008, in Sidney Poiter's face as he embraces President Barack Obama. It was a political outcome only someone with the vision of MLK could have imagined in the 1960s.

But while racial justice was the cause of his life, it was not the limit of his concerns or his vision. Both he and Robert Kennedy had visions of a better America--not just better in some absolute idealistic moral and political sense, but better because the times demanded it. To meet the challenges of their present and their future--which is our present and onrushing future--they knew what was required. It's easy to miss the progress we've made in certain areas. But in others we not only haven't moved forward, we're sliding back dangerously. If we measure 2010 against MLK's words, that sobering conclusion becomes hard to avoid.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The pathos of death is this, that when the days of one's life are ended, those days that were so crowded with business and felt so heavy in their passing, what remains of one in memory should usually be so slight a thing. The phantom of an attitude, the echo of a certain mode of thought, a few pages of print, some invention, or some victory we gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can survive the best of us. It is as if the whole of a man's significance had now shrunk into a mere musical note or phrase suggestive of his singularity--happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of such a dimunition and abridgement."

William James
photo: "Ancestor Portrait Mask" by John Marston (Coast Salish) at Inuit Gallery.