The Essential Obama

In his address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday evening, President Obama challenged Congress to immediately pass the American Jobs Act, which brings together bipartisan proposals which would produce immediate effects to cause and stimulate employment and economic renewal.  He will be talking about the specifics all over the country in the coming days and weeks.  (Here's Ezra Klein's breakdown of the proposals.) But his address to Congress was exceptionally clear, focused and passionate.  It was the essential Obama.

For those who missed it and want more than soundbites, here is an enhanced version which includes sidebars of supplementary information.  Here's a transcript of the prepared address.

Congressional GOPers, perhaps mindful of their 87% disapproval rate and fresh from an earful from constituents, did not dismiss the President's proposals out of hand.

Others praised the speech for its forthright passion, and for the likely effectiveness and size of the American Jobs Act itself.  President Obama began by naming the urgency: "Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that’s made things worse."  Everything he said followed from this premise.  His proposals were shrewdly targeted-- for example, the incentives for hiring the long-term unemployed, when stories have appeared that employers are refusing to consider hiring anyone who has been unemployed for six months or more.  But together they added up to a package that was broad and deep as well as specific and targeted.  The construction and repair programs are needed anyway, the President said, and now is the time to do them.  Roads, bridges, airports, schools--for now and for the future.

Andrew Sullivan: "This was indeed a speech directed at independents and also at those who fear that America is in terminal decline. It was rooted in patriotism; it was framed to portray Obama as the pragmatic centrist he actually is. And it was not dishonest - these are the choices, short-term and long-term, that we have to make. And we should not be required to wait for another year and a half for action...

Game on, in other words. Except this isn't a game. And any politician who acts like it is in the next year or so will pay a price."

And here are some of the more entertaining responses from Sullivan's readers. Along with Sullivan's comment: "He seems utterly unafraid of the GOP."

As Ezra Klein says, the ball is in the court of Congress now.  While Paul Krugman joins the conventional political wisdom that not much of it will be passed, he concludes:  "The good news in all this is that by going bigger and bolder than expected, Mr. Obama may finally have set the stage for a political debate about job creation. For, in the end, nothing will be done until the American people demand action."  Getting that demand communicated to Congress is what President Obama will be doing now. He's going to the grassroots.  That, too, is the essential Obama.

Economy

from the photonovel, Ruins of Detroit

Later today President Obama gives his speech before Congress outlining his proposals to spur job growth.  The Democrats at least are likely to keep pushing the jobs issue to the forefront, though how successfully remains to be seen.  Despite persistent high unemployment and underemployment, there wasn't a lot of prominent and consistent attention towards the jobs issue until now, as several commentators have noted.

In a way this inattention was surreal, but telling.  Apart from the attention focused on health care costs--a huge drag on the economy and the finances of small businesses and families--and apart from the distractions fomented by GOPer politicians, the seeming invisibility of unemployment pain was a reflection of the current corporate economy.

With financial corporations bailed out by huge government loans, the world economy avoided a catastrophic implosion in 2008 and 2009.  Banks and then major corporations based in the U.S. recovered quickly.  They have been rolling in cash for well over a year.  Apart from a very slowly recovering housing market (due to part to banks thwarting efforts to settle foreclosures),  the economy has been slowed by a lack of corporate investment in the U.S.



India

 That investment has gone overseas, where production is, and increasingly, where consumers are.  American corporations are prospering because they have new markets in the rest of the world, as something like a middle class grows in places like India and China.  U.S. corporations don't have to hire Americans because they can hire workers elsewhere who work cheaper, and they are closer to growing markets.  U.S. corporations don't have to worry about impoverishing a U.S. middle class, because they no longer depend on Americans to buy their products and services.  For these corporations, the U.S. supplies infrastructure, some skilled and professional labor not so readily available elsewhere (at least temporarily), and increasingly, the U.S. serves as a tax haven.  If corporations could just get rid of regulations and environmental restraints, they could complete the process of turning the U.S. into their ideal, a Third World country on a hill.

That's the U.S. economy in the fall of 2011.  It is unsustainable and it's temporary--perhaps very temporary.  Everyone knows this, or at least suspects it is.  Fear of the future may not be a conscious component of the denial that has become the increasingly aggressive posture of U.S. corporations, especially in fossil fuels.  But it is itself the fuel.


China


The resources of planet Earth cannot support a world of 7 billion people with the lifestyles of middle class Americans or Europeans.  We would need several more planets for that.  That's just the math.  If peak oil hasn't been reached already, it will be soon enough.  The global Climate Crisis is already wreaking havoc on food costs and supply, and in drought areas, even on human water supply.  Huge populations remain available for the kind of low-wage labor and virtual (if not actual) slavery that capitalism apparently demands. But wages for skilled labor will go up, and quickly approach U.S. standards.  So costs will go up for the currently deliriously wealthy global corporations.

In the short term, the U.S. economy still has a lot of residual strength.  Some of it may even spark an upturn next year.  Buried in the dismal employment numbers last month were continuing growth in health care jobs--a sign that the affordable care act is not depressing employment, and may be spurring it, as its major provisions unfold.  There are other positives that may pay off.

But that residual strength can also mask a situation that may well be worse than it might appear.  America is still awash in cheap stuff.  People don't look like people looked in the Great Depression.  They are better clothed, they have TVs etc.  Food is still plentiful, even if what's cheaply available is bloating people to a grotesque degree and creating long-term health problems.  The first visible sign of trouble now is housing, and that's likely the first to become very obvious.  We've somehow learned to live with a degree of homelessness that was unthinkable between the Depression and the 1980s.  But it could get more obviously worse.

All that Americans have to hang their hopes on at the moment is their vote, and GOPers are aggressively trying to take their right to vote away from them.  It's hard to see how an election can be really decisive, since 2008 turned out not to be.  But it was always going to take more than one election.  Then there's some hope in the demographics, which is what's driving a lot of current politics: it's the last of the white supremacists, now driving the GOP.  The economy itself may spring a few surprises, but when corporations seem so blindered that they don't care about the catastrophic future they are creating--along with the equally cynical fostering of present pain--they can't be counted on to do anything but evil.             

B.S. Detector Hits the Shelves

The beauty of Bullshit Studies is that it applies not only to the hugely pretentious.  For one thing, the Bullshit Detector would go into overload at something like the GOPer candidates debate.  No, to be a comprehensive field of learning, Bullshit Studies must also go home.

Where I am calling bullshit on three products I've used for years, which have suddenly decided, without provocation or warning, to make themselves worse.

I've been pouring a small envelope of Emergen-C Super Orange into a glass of water every morning for decades.  (In fact, if you go back even further, I virtually invented the name "Emergen-C" in a short story published in 1970 or so.  Only it was the name of a spaceship. Actually it was Emergent-C, but that's even better!)

So here's the box--with its blue border and orange center, it was a delight to look for on my shelf--it was part of the experience.  But now the bs Alacer company has gone and changed it to a bright ugly uniform sickish yellow orange box, and matching envelopes.  Plus they've changed Super Orange itself!  It's not even orange anymore.  It's yellow.  That's bullshit!  Three hems worth on the BS Detector.

I've been drinking Stash tea since I got a sample of its organic brand sometime in the 90s.  I added it to my regular breakfast (it's the next drink after Super Orange) at least a decade ago.  I alternate the selections: one day English Breakfast, the next Earl Grey, then when they run out, maybe Irish Breakfast alternating with Chai Spice.  They all came in these nice sized attractive boxes that lined up together, with the teabags accessible from a slot near the bottom.  Perfect!

But why stop at perfection when you can fuck it up?  That's just what Stash is apparently doing.  The only boxes of English Breakfast I found recently were bigger, uglier and without that slot.  The whole system is ruined.  It's bullshit!

But just to make sure that breakfast is not my only meal of the day to be ruined, there's Ovaltine.  I lost track of Ovaltine when Captain Midnight left the air, and Nestles Quick replaced it on the shelf (let's face it, Quick tasted better.)  But several years ago, when I was pondering a selection of very expensive protein health drink mixes, I remembered Ovaltine.  Okay, it may not have all those healthy ingredients, but it does have a lot--and malt alone is a significant boost.  So I started up with Ovaltine again, first as an energy drink (with milk and some protein powder, banana for body, a few seconds in the blender.)  I went as far as mixing and matching: the old basic Malt flavor, the Chocolate Malt ("chocolate-flavored Ovaltine" of my youth) and the new Rich Chocolate, which is maltless, but can be mixed with the malt flavor to taste.  Eventually it became a nighttime hot chocolate as well.

I was pleased that the label and packaging hadn't changed much since Captain Midnight days.  Then a few years ago, the brown glass container was replaced by brown plastic.  Not great, but I got used to it.  But now they're changing everything: the color (another bright yellowish monstrosity--the same color consultant as Emergen-C, apparently), the shape and the size.  And to add injury to insult, they've got an "all new formula!" for the chocolate malt--and it's terrible.  Ovaltine was never that great tasting to begin with, so the margin for error was never very great.  So now they've done this New Coke thing.  Awful!
And bullshit!  But it doesn't stop there.  In the new Ovaltine jar, there's no inner seal!  Imagine!  No inner seal to carefully tear out so you can enclose it with your quarter--I mean, how else are kids going to get their Captain Midnight Decoder Ring?  Or their Captain Future Bullshit Detector?

I'm not giving in.  I've kept a few blue Emergen-C boxes, and I empty the new envelopes into them so I don't have to look at that bullshit new package.  I am bypassing the chocolate malt Ovaltine and mixing my own using classic Malt and Rich Chocolate. I don't have a fix for the Stash packages, except to try to reuse the old ones but that probably won't work for long.  That's what makes it more than stupid, more than an inconvenience.  It's bullshit.

The End of Moderation

Human civilization flourished in several thousand years of moderate climate.  American civilization flourished with several decades--and arguably, several centuries-- of moderate politics. 

These days the weather is either very wet or very dry, though some places like New Orleans go from one to the other.  And these days politics are extreme, at least in a functional sense, or in the way that caricatures compare to paintings.

I doubt that these are unrelated.

But even in moderate political times, a little change could cause convulsions.  There was a pretty broad consensus in the Eisenhower years--a consensus foreign policy, a consensus on building the highway system, providing housing loans, on funding health and education, and on government regulating business for safety and to protect everyone (the businesses included) from the galloping perils of unrestricted and lawless competition.

But there were bitter political struggles in the Kennedy years over raising the minimum wage, over augmenting Social Security with medical care for the aged, the program that became Medicare.  And especially over segregation, integration, and equal rights for black Americans--even equal voting rights.  That alone was enough to drive some people mad with anger and hatred.

In some ways President Barack Obama has positioned himself politically in an enviable way.  His adherence to bipartisanship and to at least the explanation for what he advocates places him in the left/center to center/right chunk of the political spectrum, which should have wide appeal.  Even his full-throated advocacy for unions on Labor Day was from the premise that unions and good wages created the American middle class.

  This has forced his opponents who prefer ideological caricature to nuanced differences on policy or administration to move entirely to the extreme right.  They've gotten themselves in a small corner, as far from moderation as it's possible to be.  They are daily redefining how extreme they can be and still be taken seriously within legitimate political discourse.

But because of hard economic times--created by the GOPer presidency of Bushcheney (or Cheneybush), enforced by GOPer-supporting corporate and financial interests and a Do-Nothing but Screw Things Up Congress--the extreme Right, the Rabid Right, may take advantage of immoderate emotions.

That's not all that's involved in the current hysteria.  There's the still powerful powder keg of racism.  There's a newly hysterical greed among corporate interests, particularly the ones that see the writing on the wall of their extinction--the fossil fuel interests, but also the most abusive financial interests.  But hopelessness and fear due to an economy that corporations and financial institutions appear to be deliberately strangling are potent and unpredictable forces in the electorate.

The Left is screaming for President Obama to become FDR.  But in the 1930s there was an extreme right (to the point of Fascism) with lots of money and ignorance behind it, but also an extreme left, with several varieties of revolutionary changes that had substantial support.  And there were populisms that took bits from both extremes, and jumped wildly from one to another (Father Coughlin being a prime example.)

President Obama does not have an extreme or even a Hard Left.  Much of the time this helps him.  But there are times when it doesn't.  The Rabid Right can try to make him seem like a socialist because there are no real socialists around.

Still, there's a certain craziness that may or may not last.  I can't help thinking of Cowboy Rick, ostensibly still the governor of Texas.  Much of Texas is currently in extreme drought.  The number of extreme fires about to reach populated areas including big cities have forced Cowboy Rick off the bloviating campaign trails and back home to the range.  Whether they can force him to face reality is doubtful.  But they might suggest that to everybody else.        

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Tadpole by Susan Point at Inuit Gallery

"I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him [the frog.]  And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives."

Loren Eisley
The Immense Journey

A Dramatic Announcement

As yet another academic year begins, I am making this dramatic announcement of an entirely new discipline: Bullshit Studies.  This will not only join the many Studies now extant but also critique them, yet in a more robust manner than the former reigning champions, deconstruction and postmodern semiotics, which incidentally were bullshit.

Bullshit Studies has vast potential.  Bullshit fertilizes every field, in and beyond academia.  Some fields, such as politics and television, produce very little other than bullshit.  Calling bullshit is our chief mode of analysis.  But we are developing tools to measure it.  We will start with the Bullshit Detector, and a scale of from 1 to 5 units of bullshit.  These units are called Hemingways, or "hems."

For example, calling this a "dramatic announcement" gets 1 hem, as it is simple p.r. bullshit.  Referring to "we" gets 2 hems, as it is actual quantifiable deception.

Some people more or less embody bullshit, which will require a different tool to measure.  We're working on that.  We must develop a way to distinguish bullshit by membership ( Republicans are basically bullshit) and then bullshit beyond that (Cowboy Rick, Newt Romney, etc.)  Of course, individuals can belong to a not entirely bullshit political party or view, and still be bullshit.  Ariana Huffington, for example, is bullshit.

As an academic discipline, we look forward to taking over as many academic departments as possible.  It's a long road.  We'll probably start small, perhaps at the Fringe Festival of the Modern Language Association convention.  But it can be done, as deconstruction proved.  When we are able to deny tenure to anybody not swearing fealty to Bullshit Studies, then we know we have conquered.

But professing Bullshit Studies does not require advanced degrees.  We uphold the highest standards of scholarship and analysis, but as everyone knows, advanced degrees are bullshit.

Today we start by calling bullshit on those big mouths-- Republican, Democrat, and Mr. & Ms. InBetween--who are complaining that Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene was overhyped.  Defining "overhyped" in non-tautological terms in reference to cable television will require years of systematic analysis (and perhaps a particle collider), so absent that, let's look at the substance of the charge in terms of impact and of actions--evacuations, precautions, money spent.

The impact of Irene is still being felt, long after the cable TV reporters have put away their rubber boots.  It's true that the media capitals of Manhattan and Washington did not suffer the impacts forecast in television animations.  The cameras, starved for shots of the Washington Monument toppled by the wind, or the Statue of Liberty swamped by the seas, had to be content to focus on reporters too dumb to get in out of the rain.  But since the cameras were switched off, the death toll has more than doubled.  Entire towns are flooded, in Vermont, New York state and New Jersey.  Roads are split and useless in North Carolina.  A million or more people are still without power.  Damages are likely to amount to from $6 billion to $12 billion--which ranks Irene in the top twenty most expensive hurricanes, and possibly the most expensive category one storm ever.

As for the precautions, pointing to the very statistic that suggests their success as evidence of their failure--the relatively low casuality figures--is bullshit.  It's 3 hem bullshit, which is characterized by repetition and is shared by a number of people who should know better, but that group of people is not totally bullshit--there are a fair number of idiots (including hopeless and temporary idiots) there as well.  Here's some suggested reading on the subject.

It's worth noting that an additional problem with forecasting storms these days is that we're in terra incognita thanks to the Climate Crisis, and its multiple effects over time.  That Irene may turn out to wreak most of its devastation with inland flooding is a prime example.

It's not clear at this point whether House maj leader Eric Cant is going to force FEMA to shut down without a deal on cuts to offset its budget appropriations, or whether he's just making those noises.  Cant is a challenge to Bullshit Studies.  He is himself bullshit.  But then there are his various actions, which require careful and nuanced application of Bullshit Detector categorization.  Fortunately, unlike FEMA and weather forecasting, this does not require GOPer-approved government funding. Which by the way has been cut for improving the very forecasting that bullshitters are complaining was inadequate.  That's a lot of bullshit.

Meanwhile there are huge ongoing wildfires in the heat of Texas and Oklahoma, and another tropical storm (Katia) in the Atlantic.  Storms, by the way, are not bullshit.

Footnote: (see, it is an academic thing.)  Our unit of measurement, the hem, is named after Ernest Hemingway because of his famous quotation (which is not so famous perhaps since I'm about to explain it): "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."  Unlike many famous quotations attributed to people who never said or wrote them, this one is not bullshit--that is, Hemingway actually "said" it: in his Paris Review interview (republished in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series, p.239.)

1000 Times Better

Vermont

The career of Hurricane Irene was full of surprises, and it's not over.  A storm that unexpectedly weakened  as it began moving up the U.S. coast unexpectedly retained its power and its huge extent depite making three separate landfalls.Some of the worst flooding seems to be happening near the storm's end, in Vermont.  There are reports of windows blown out by wind in Montreal.

And it still goes on.  More than 4 million are without power.  More than 20 have died, and that toll is likely to go up.  It will take at least days for New York City's transportation to be up and running, and at least that to restore power to some areas.  Roads are damaged, bridges washed out. Flooding is still continuing, and getting rid of the water in some places will take weeks.  The damage will take time to assess, but it could have been worse.  The injuries, the loss of life, could have been so much worse--and not only because the storm wasn't as intense as first believed.

The outcome is better and will be better because government worked.  President Obama on Sunday called it "an exemplary effort of how good government at every level should be responsive to people's needs."

Leading the effort was the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA--the agency that became a dirty word during hurricane Katrina and its notorious aftermath.  But this time, said one local official, the FEMA response was "a thousand times better."

Even GOPer Governor Christie of New Jersey lauded the effort. FEMA officials, he said on NBC, are "working incredibly hard in providing things to us that we need."

That the storm did not reach the more dire dimensions that had been forecast prompted some second-guessing about the ordering of massive evacuations. But Christie said there would have been a "significant loss of life" if as many as 1 million people had not left the Jersey shore ahead of the high wind, heavy rain and tidal surges.

The officials who responded may get political credit.  The LA Times suggested "The federal government has come far since Hurricane Katrina, and the response to Irene could restore a measure of public trust and goodwill for President Obama."  But it's just as likely that he won't get any more credit than he has for supporting the rebels in Libya, or getting another major terrorist leader in Pakistan.  At least not in the media, and certainly not from the biggest GOPer mouths, who will start loudly complaining before Monday sunrise.

But the most important point isn't political, at least not in party politics.  It is simply this: that the value of people helping people is affirmed, and the idea that society is just a collection of everyone for themselves proves stupid once more.  People who want to making helping people their lives work do so in nonprofit organizations like the Red Cross, and they do it in government agencies like FEMA, or as first responders.  This was and remains an emergency affecting millions of people.  But every single day is an emergency for someone.  "You'd do the same for me" is as important an idea as any the human mind and heart has devised to live by.

Real Time

Lincoln Park, New Jersey

With the effects of Hurricane Irene still being felt, the postmortems on the forecasts has begun.  I've seen at least three major articles, none of which has much to say beyond the obvious.  Once again, the relationship of this huge storm to Climate Crisis conditions is suggested, but is not "proved."

There are two certainties about this storm, and about any storm, flood, heat wave, etc.  First, someone will call it a "wake-up call" and expect immediate changes sweeping through Washington to take the Climate Crisis seriously.  But as long as fossil fuel money controls the GOPer brain, that kind of consensus is unlikely.  Second, even scientists will deny that the extent or behavior of this storm--of any storm--"proves" that the Climate Crisis is involved, or is real.  But the question isn't proof, and never has been.

Other scientists who go at it the other way around, see the relationship.  They know the Climate Crisis is real, and they know that certain phenomena associated with this storm is both generally consistent with Climate Crisis models and adds to the knowledge base of what specific effects we might expect.  A few of the relationships are outlined here.  Others will be discussed and studied in the coming months.

But just consider this: no one knew for certain what Irene would do.  Yet it was generally known that wind, storm surges, and rain were going to be destructive and life-threatening.  So places in most danger were evacuated, response teams were organized and put in place, precautions taken by government, businesses and families.  All without 100% certainty.  Well, something like 97% of climate scientists agree on the general cause and consequence of the Climate Crisis.  Shouldn't that be enough to take action?  

And consider the context of this storm.  It was more destructive because a lot of the East Coast has been very wet lately.  A lot of rain, and (in New England especially) a lot of flooding.  According to Dr. Jeff Masters: Emergency managers reported that the nearby town of Lindenhurst (population 28,000), on the south side of Long Island, was mostly under water due to a storm surge. The storm surge at The Battery on the southern shore of Manhattan reached 4.0 feet, overtopping the sea wall in several locations. Fresh water run-off from Irene's torrential rains, riding on top of a 3 to 4-foot storm surge, allowed the swollen East and Hudson Rivers to overflow at the edges of Manhattan. Irene's rains have now ended in New York City, after accumulating to 7.60" at Central Park. This brings total rainfall for the month of August in New York City to 19.68", making it the wettest month in the city since record keeping began in 1869. The previous record was 16.85", set in September 1882. Philadelphia, PA and Newark, NJ have also set all-time wettest month records, thanks to Irene's rains. The 19.40" of rain that has fallen in Philadelphia this August is probably the most rain any major city in the Northeast, U.S. has received since 22.43" fell in Newark, NJ in August 1843, according to wunderground's weather historian, Christopher C. Burt.

While this part of the country has been very wet, other parts are parched to the point of drought.  Continuing heat and drought in southern California have officials very worried about fires.  And of the state of ace Climate Crisis denier Cowboy Rick, Dr. Masters writes that Houston hit 109F Saturday, tying the record as the hottest day in the city's history.   "This year, Houston has set its record for all-time hottest temperature, most 100° days in a year (36, old record was 32, and 4 is normal), and most consecutive 100° days (24, old record was 14.) Weather records in Houston go back to 1889. Houston needs 20.18" of rain to get to normal levels of rainfall for the year. Today's high is predicted to be 107°F in Houston, so yesterday's record may be in danger of being broken today."

If the science--the physics, the chemistry--of the Climate Crisis were correct, these are the things that would be happening.  And they are happening.  Record after record gets broken, disaster after disaster deforms lives and depletes resources, but there's nothing to see here, move along, pardner.

Irene Update: Early Sunday

Hurricane Irene remains a huge and only slightly diminished storm after raking the East Coast from North Carolina into New Jersey.  It is just dawning on Sunday. With first light, the overnight damage will begin to be assessed from the continuing winds and rains--more than seven inches in Annapolis, Md., and up to 15 inches elsewhere--from storm surge and flooding, and from wind.  Millions are or were without power.  The Bay Bridge tunnel is flooded.  Roads are closed in the Tidewater area.  There have been ten deaths so far, most involving downed trees.  There have also been tornadoes associated with the storm.  At the moment there is a tornado watch for Long Island.

It's dawning over a very quiet New York City, where the big test will likely be around 8 a.m. EDT when high tide arrives at about the same time as Irene winds, now approaching at 75 mph with gusts over 90 mph.  Late forecasts however suggest that the feared widespread flooding in lower Manhattan may not happen, but that remains to be seen.  Another unknown is the effect of higher wind speeds higher in the air, meeting Manhattan's skyscrapers.

So far it seems preparations have paid off.  Up to 90% of Atlantic City's population evacuated.  Manhattan is shut down and few are on the streets.  President Obama was at FEMA's emergency control center.  But the danger won't be over at least until Sunday turns into Monday.  Later on Sunday, Irene moves into New England without totally relinquishing its effects on New York.  It will also be later Sunday that damage in Washington etc. can be assessed.  But it does so far seem that the Delaware/Maryland area got the worst of the storm.

Irene Update: Early Saturday

Not much has changed since Friday afternoon.  Irene has weakened (this photo was taken from space before the eye deteriorated) and it is expected to make first landfall in North Carolina as a weak category 2 or strong category 1 hurricane.  But Dr. Jeff Masters notes that this is deceptive because " Irene is such a huge storm--tropical storm force winds extend out up to 290 miles from the center--it has set a massive amount of the ocean's surface in motion, which will cause a much larger storm surge than the winds would suggest..." 

On Friday afternoon the potential storm surge damage was still rated at what "a typical Category 4 hurricane would have."  Though the storm will likely weaken further as it moves up the coast, storm surge will still be higher than the wind speed would usually indicate.  There is an additional factor: tides will be especially high anyway on Saturday night and Sunday morning due to the new moon.  Masters writes: " I continue to give a 20% chance that a 3 - 4 foot storm surge high enough to over-top the Manhattan flood walls and swamp the New York City subway system will occur on Sunday."

What noone knows is what the duration of the winds will mean. Because of the storm's size, some places will get high winds for 12 to 24 hours straight.  Given the population increase, difference in the built environment, etc. since the last big storms on the Atlantic coast, and given the hugeness and eccentric internal behavior of this storm, nobody really knows what the effect on tides, rivers, buildings, infrastructure (especially electricity) etc. will be.  And then there are the nuclear power plants.  

Fortunately both officials and the general population are taking this storm seriously. President Obama will be monitoring events from the White House. Evacuations and precautions and emergency efforts (see previous post) should help everyone get through this.   

What Matters

The good news concerning Hurricane Irene is that it is no longer a category 3, and is unlikely to intensify.  The bad news is that it is the size of Europe.  According to Dr. Jeff Masters' latest post, it is likely to make first landfall in North Carolina as a category 2, and decline to a category 1 by the time it reaches New England.  He expects flooding to be the major threat rather than wind damage.

Media coverage can't seem to be anything but excessive--either ignoring the storm or as now, filling the airwaves with simulations that make it seem that the storm damage is already a fact.

But the coverage is bringing home one important message: what matters.  What turns out to be important is the disaster planning and drills that hospitals, schools and municipalities have been working on.  Kim Kardashian's wedding does not matter. It never did. Disaster planning, the dedication of public employees, of nurses, police and fire, teachers and civil servants at all levels of government--they matter.  They always do. 

Irene Update: Early Friday

Early Friday from Weather Underground:

"Irene is forecast to make landfall on the North Carolina coast Saturday afternoon. It will likely be a Category 3 storm, with windspeeds around 115 mph. As Irene moves northwards through the mid-Atlantic region it will weaken considerably. On Sunday, Irene's center will pass through the Tri-State region of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, with impacts spread over a wider region due to Irene's size."

Note that landfall is not by any means the first effect.  Strong winds will start hitting North Carolina coast on Friday. The "weakening" also doesn't mean the threat of catastrophic effects is over.  Even a category 1 or tropical storm can cause considerable damage, especially with the amount of rain associated with this storm.  Flooding is a big worry. "Six to ten inches of rain are possible along Irene's track from the Carolinas northward, with 15 inches possible in isolated areas. As a result, flooding is very likely...The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC)... thinks that river flooding in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey is likely, while flooding along the rest of the northeastern US is possible."

Earlier Dr. Jeff Masters warned: "I am most concerned about the storm surge danger to North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and the rest of the New England coast. Irene is capable of inundating portions of the coast under 10 - 15 feet of water, to the highest storm surge depths ever recorded."

According to an early Friday morning story, CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard says Irene could still strengthen to a category 4 before it hits North Carolina.  The CBS story quotes an official suggesting that the storm will likely cost billions in damages, enough to affect the U.S. economy.

As for the storm itself, "It is a massive storm - spanning as wide as 700 miles - with tropical-force winds extending almost twice as far as normal. Irene is about the same size as Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005."  Although Katrina was a category 5 hurricane at its most intense, it was a category 3 when it hit New Orleans.

Murky as Tar

Update: This TPM story clarifies the situation better than anything on the enviro tar sand sites.

I just signed a petition urging President Obama to deny permission for the tar sands oil pipeline from Canada.  I've followed the issue cursorily, but the "game over" statement by James Hansen opened my eyes to the full import of the decision.  He feels it will release such a quantity of carbon that the future will be lost.

The President is expected to make the yes or no decision before the end of the year.  But opponents have been demonstrating in front of the White House this week, some inviting arrest.  Bill McKibben was one.  He spent 2 days in a D.C. jail.  He had about 15 seconds to say why as a guest of Chris Hayes on Thursday's Last Word, and he used it well.

However, I can't say the same for the associated web pages on this issue, such as this one.   Now I admit that I am behind the curve on new informational techniques that younger folk use, particularly the reliance on Facebook, Twitter and texting.  But I still think I'm right about the ineffectiveness of this site, which is crammed with insider information and so many arguments that it looks like the usual environmental advocacy technique of throwing charges against the wall to see which ones stick with various constituencies.

Contrast that with the simple, clear message conveyed by the Exxon ads in favor of tar sand oil exploitation, which in that good ol American way, happened to run on MSNBC within seconds of McKibben's appearance.

There is no simple, clear, compelling argument that hits the eyes of anyone going to this site.  There is no sense of what is of greatest importance about this.  It's all a bunch of acronyms and political social networking, plus access to a bewildering ton of information.  It's a site for activists--but where is the site for those not yet converted? 

Emergency

The new predicted track is in and it's the "worse." (See previous post.) Though Hurricane Irene failed to achieve category 4, after battering the Bahamas it has reconstituted as a strong category 3 and is headed up the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

Hardly a blip on the news last night when I posted, this is now the dominant story.  Why?  Well, the media centers of New York City and DC are threatened, but it's otherwise warranted as well: this storm could affect areas where 55 million Americans live, including 20 million in the New York City area, and 2 million on the New York/New Jersey shoreline alone.  In Manhattan, Ground Zero (the World Trade Center site) is particularly vulnerable.

Six states on or near the eastern coast have declared emergencies.  Mayor Bloomberg of NYC has ordered the evacuations of hospitals and nursing homes in low-lying areas, and will consider larger evacuation by Friday morning.  He suggests the city's subway system, pretty much a lifeline for New York, may shut down on Saturday.

As of Thursday afternoon, Irene was an "unusually large" storm, spread 250 miles in every direction.  As it moves up the U.S. coast it will cross the warmest waters ever recorded off New York and New Jersey.  "Irene's middle name is Global Warming," said Bill McKibben on MSNBC.

Right now the storm is tracking to begin affecting North Carolina on Friday, as a category 3 hurricane. It would reach Virginia and Washington late Friday and Saturday, possibly weakening to category 2.   Then it moves up the coast from Saturday to Sunday and Monday, expected to weaken as it goes but still a category 1 when it reaches New York/New Jersey.  But even if it is down to tropical storm force winds, the damage could still be considerable.

  The population areas it could affect dramatically include Washington,   Philadelphia, New York City and Long Island, and possibly Boston.  Storm surges could flood New York subways and airports.  Heavy rain and wind are also expected with this storm.  "We could be looking at mandatory evacuations up and down the East Coast," said a Weather Channel reporter.  Already, commercial air flights and scheduled trains are being cancelled.  The scheduled dedication of the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington has already been cancelled as well.

But amidst what could be a catastrophic storm, affecting these areas for days and weeks, GOPer House majority leader Eric Cant's office is insisting that no federal emergency aid be rendered unless offset by budget cuts.

Hurricane Irene Update: Dangerous and Potentially Historic Storm

CBS News meteorologist says that Hurricane Irene could be an "historic storm."  He calls the two more likely storm tracks "bad" and "worse."

He outlines those two scenarios:

"The bad scenario cuts the hurricane across Long Island and into New England as a large and strong Category 2 storm. This scenario brings tremendous storm surge on the back bays of Long Island and from the ocean. Massive power disruption and tremendous wind damage will result.

The worse scenario has the hurricane hug the coast all the way to New York City. This would bring tremendous storm surge and wind damage affecting everything from Maryland, right up to the Hudson Valley and across New England."

Earlier on Wednesday, Dr. Jeff Masters:

Irene continues to be embedded in a large envelope of moisture, and wind shear is expected to remain low to moderate, 5 - 20 knots, for the next three days. With water temperatures very warm, 28 - 30°C, these conditions should allow for intensification to a category 4 hurricane (winds of 131 to 155 mph). The only reliable model that's not forecasting this intensification is the GFS, and this is likely due to its relatively course spatial resolution. The National Hurricane Center expects Irene to intensify to a category 4 tomorrow, with a decrease in intensity back to a category 3 on Friday."

Emergency management officials in the eastern states, and particularly FEMA director Craig Fugate are on the job.  Residents are urged to be prepared for storm effects as well as aftereffects (loss of power, infrastructure damage, etc.)  Evacuations from the area of the U.S. coast expected to be hit first,  North Carolina Outer Banks, will be underway Thursday.  The Bahamas will bear the brunt on Thursday.  This storm has already caused flooding in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and killed two people.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."

Shakespeare

Photo: the endangered mountain gorilla, mother and child.

Shake and Blow

Update: Hurricane Irene reached category 3 strength overnight Tuesday and is holding a track that takes it up the U.S. East Coast. 

The East Coast got rattled by an earthquake on Tuesday, but that may turn out to just be the beginning of a bad week.

As resident of earthquake central, I both sympathize and roll my eyes (TPM has a nice running account of the inflated reaction.)  Quakes do shake you up, and they are all different--though I did hear descriptions that remind me of the only non-California quake I've experienced, when I was watching TV in a college student union in Illinois where I was visiting, and I felt somebody grab the back of my chair and pull it sharply back.  But noone was there.  And a second later, the TV announcement of a quake from the New Madrid fault, which I soon learned is a very big fault indeed.

Unlike CA where our quakes come largely from lots of plates rubbing, the eastern half of North America is all one big solid plate, and (as several seismologists put it) a quake there is like ringing a bell--it reverberates a long way.

But there were no reported injuries and so far not much damage.  Things might be different by next week, though.  Hurricane Irene is heading north over very warm waters.  Predicted to be a category 3 or higher at its height, its track could take it across the North Carolina Outer Banks and up to Washington and New York, and even New England.  Stay tuned.     

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Anais Nin

Emerson for the Day

"There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live."

Emerson

"Moon" by Robert Davidson at Lattimer Gallery

This is Government

One of the many pleasures of Congress not being in session is that CSPAN gets to feature some interesting people those of us outside the Beltway might not otherwise see.  I caught part of this presentation by Craig Fugate, who President Obama appointed to head  FEMA.  He previously worked for Republican governor Crist of Florida.  He is one impressive guy.

In this year of nine disasters costing over a billion dollars in damage each, and certainly as we look to the immediate Climate Crisis future, the role of emergency management, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is going to be very important.  If Fugage can truly transform FEMA in the way he describes, it's a godsend, not just for now but for that future (assuming somebody like ol' Heckava Job doesn't get the job.)

Fugate is updating the agency, not only in terms of technology and streamlining bureaucracy, but in attitude.  In an article about him from about a year ago, he said: "We need to change this methodology that the public are victims, and realize they're survivors and that they oftentimes will contribute to greater success if we incorporate them into the plans and remember who we're working for," he said. "We're working for survivors."

Since this statement, the Joplin tornado happened, and Fugate was there immediately.  What he found was that a quite recently developed emergency plan created locally was working smoothly.  It not only coordinated local resources but allowed for improvisations.  Knowing that people were relying almost entirely on cell phones they were carrying--but that their chargers might well have been lost along with their homes--a local casino raided its lost and found cache of rechargers and donated them to the Red Cross.

As Fugate recognizes and asserts, most rescues in the first hours after disaster are by neighbors looking out for their neighbors.  Some may call this the Golden Rule ethic, but I prefer to describe it with the common phrase, "you'd do the same for me."  It is one of the most important bases for all human society. Emergency management must recognize it and liberate it, must coordinate and manage it.

Fugate has instituted other reforms that sound like common sense, like making sure that resources for infants and old people are in the mix in every batch of emergency supplies.  But it took an incisive intelligence, skilled in the vocabulary of business as well as government bureauracy to make the case and get it done.  This guy is a real bright spot, and rekindles my hopes for this difficult future we're embarking on.

This, by the way, is government.  This is what government is about, and government also attracts people with the commitment and smarts of Fugate.   

GOPer Racism Roundup

GOPer pols are so overtly racist so much of the time that noting each instance is beyond a poor unpaid blogger's resources or patience.  But Senator Tom Coburn at a town hall on Thursday made a number of outrageous and near-crazed comments, including a classic of GOPer racism that appeals to their racist base with a characteristic line of argument: blacks like Obama get all the benefit from "dependency" on government programs.

This is a dog-whistle reminder that the black President must be channeling government billions to fellow blacks, which is the usually unstated substructure of the "anti-government" argument.  (I'm sure the White House didn't fail to notice that this emerged the same day as stories and statements saying that Obama hasn't done enough for black Americans, who are twice as likely to be unemployed as the population in general.)

 It's also behind the frequent charges that Obama is not up to the job, which more than implies that he got ahead not because of intelligence or hard work but because of Affirmative Action. 

But while we're at, in case you missed them here are a couple of other recent GOPer racism examples:  a GOPer member of Congress who referred to President Obama as a "tar baby," and a commentator referring to him as "boy" (although Pat Buchanan's analogy was unfortunate, it could well have been just insensitive to the language he was using.)  All of these are followed by apologies and offstage winks.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Friedrich Schiller

photo: meteor shower from above by NASA astronaut Ron Garan from the International Space Station.

The Billion Dollar Disaster

Well, there wasn't just one Billion Dollar Disaster in America this year.  There were nine.

Nine weather-related disasters causing at least a billion dollars in damage, which ties the 30 year record established in 2008.  But with hurricane season and the first part of winter to go.

There were two billion dollar floods, five billion dollar tornadoes and a billion dollar blizzard.  And assorted thunderstorms tacked on another $20 billion, double the normal.  And we're just heading into the traditional thunderstorm season in the East. 

GOPer Gawk: Thursday Edition

Government spending--baaaad.  Federal government spending--oooooh so very baaaaddddd.  Why hell, everybody knows that, right Cowboy Rick?

Cowboy Rick is runnin for president because he knows how to create jobs.  Just look at all the jobs he created as governor in Texas.  Well, not too closely.  The unemployment rate there is higher than any of the neighboring states.  And it turns out that   Texas lost 178,000 private sector jobs between 2007 and 2010.  But it gained 125,000 public sector jobs.  That's primarily GOVERNMENT JOBS.  It's a mirror image of our current jobs situation nationally in that regard, for the private sector is creating jobs, but government is shedding jobs even faster, which largely accounts for the weak job creation numbers last month, for example.

So how did Texas do it?  Shoot, that's easy.  The Obama Recovery Act!  You know, the one that got ol' Cowboy Rick so riled up he threatened to secede from the Union?  Then he took billions from that socialist stim to shore up and expand state and local government, and there were lots of federal jobs, too. 

But hypocrisy isn't the only gold standard for the GOPers.  A study of TPers revealed what won't be news to readers of this blog: they are primarily Rabid Right, Christian Right white good ol' GOPers with deep suspicions of non-whites, and anybody not Rabid Christian Rightists.

Just what their agenda is--the agenda of Michele Blaughman and Cowboy Rick--is reportedly  a little something called Dominionism: "Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing".

For believers in Dominionism, rule by non-Christians is a sort of sacrilege—which explains, in part, the theological fury that has accompanied the election of our last two Democratic presidents. “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ—to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness,” wrote George Grant, the former executive director of Coral Ridge Ministries, which has since changed its name to Truth in Action Ministries. “But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice ... It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time ... World conquest.”

In case you're confused, dominion ain't about Canada.  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary it means "supreme authority" and "absolute ownership."

Recent polls indicate that TPers are about the least popular political group in America, but then, nobody is very popular right now.  It's a very volatile moment.  Cowboy Rick is counting on that.  There was a brief flurry on Wednesday about Chris Christie getting into the race, though not a serious one.  But it tells you two things about GOPerville.  First, the Bush Gang really doesn't want Cowboy Rick to win the nomination.  Second, they are afraid he might.

Emerson for the Day

“Dreams and beasts are two keys by which we are to find out the secrets of our own nature.”

Emerson

photo: jaguar in Costa Rica, one of the recently released photos by Conservation International.  This jaguar is classified as near threatened.

On the Road Again

With a cloud of dust and a hearty hi-Beltway commentariat-yo mama, President Barack Obama took to the road again this week, starting in rural Minnesota and Iowa, and ending up today (Wednesday) in Illinois.

First of all, it is Escape from Debt Crisis Prison.  As E.J. Dionne correctly surmised, "Having done so, the White House now sounds liberated. Even a government shutdown would be a day in springtime compared with the economic Armageddon that default might have let loose. Obama has a margin for maneuver and action he didn’t have before."

Lest we forget, candidate Obama always said he was leading a movement.  At the crucial moment of the debt ceiling crisis, President Obama called for American voters to let Washington know they wanted a solution, and millions did.  This week he went back out there to ask them in person to help him gets a jobs agenda through Congress in September.

 Despite the grumbling from leftie pundits who work themselves into a lather by talking only to each other, he saw the opening: with members of Congress out of Washington, there was nobody else on the media stage.  Even if the commentariat is so much more interested in talking than listening, at least some of what he was saying might get through to audiences beyond the ones right in front of him.  (Although CNN had their faces analyzing what the President was saying while he was still saying it--after all, it is so much more important to promote your own personalities than to let the country see and hear their President.)

So I report to you from watching the C-Span videos of both recorded appearances on Monday, and his closing remarks at the Rural Economic Forum on Tuesday.  Some of the themes and languages had been tested in recent contexts that weren't even this well covered.  But others were fresh, and together these themes seemed remarkably polished and powerful.  America isn't broken, he said.  Government isn't broken.  Our politics are broken.  What we need now is for members of Congress particularly to put "country ahead of party."

Some of his more memorable lines were probably prepared, as when he took on the description of his healthcare package as Obamacare.  "I have no problem with folks saying 'Obama cares'," he told the crowd. "I do care."  Others were spontaneous, as when he declared, "  I make no apologies for being reasonable."

Progressives who could sit still and listen may have heard a lot they were clamoring to hear. In response to questions, he made a spirited defense of unions, and took on GOPers directly on the issue.  He declared "we're going to be monitoring voting rights all over the country while I'm President."  He defended government at every stop.  He had to start with noting that the debate too often was between those railing that government is bad and those insisting everything the government is doing is good.  "It's not either/or."  He defended education in very strong terms.

But most of all he talked about jobs.  He hammered away at his proposals already before Congress, including the infrastructure bank to get construction workers on the job to rebuild America's aging and failing infrastructure.  He promised to present a bigger agenda of economic incentives to Congress when it returns in September.  And nervous progressive take note--he also promised: "I will take my case to the American people that this is the vision to move America forward."

While pundits knowingly note that President Obama is riding his bus through states he needs to win in 2012, they've failed to note that there really arent' that many votes in the places he's going.  If this was purely political, he'd be in big cities.  But this is a deliberately rural tour, not just for the pretty pictures it produces, but because his administration has consistently bet on the role of rural America in the future.

At every stop, and particularly at the Rural Economic Forum on Tuesday, President Obama talked about the convergence of small business/rural America/the Internet/ clean energy.  The Internet provides small businesses with global reach, and so a bunch of stim money went to support bringing broadband and wireless technology to rural areas, where commercial outfits don't see the profit in doing it.  Rural areas, with lower costs, are prime for small businesses.  The wide open spaces are also perfect for large scale clean energy technologies, such as windpower farms and larger solar.  It's where the "bio" for biofuels is grown, and increasingly where it is turned into fuel--not just from corn either.  Small business with agricultural components are perfect for family farms, as is sustainable and organic agriculture that can be sold via the Internet.

(And speaking of biofuels, President Obama mentioned the U.S. military initiatives I mentioned in this recent post, that were either started or supported by his administration.  It's been getting noticed elsewhere as well.)

President Obama's roadtrip comes when last week's poll numbers look grim.  But watching him out there, I wouldn't bet against him.  There are other numbers much more significantly in his favor--like his 70% support for reelection among Democrats, about 15 points higher than Bill Clinton's towards the end of his first term.  The poll numbers for GOPers are much worse, and the TPers are fading fast.  He's sounding themes that resonate.  He talks about an America that is "big and bold and generous."

It is that America that he sees here, and on Tuesday he said why: Not only do I continue to have absolute confidence in you, but you’re what gives me strength. As I was driving down those little towns in my big bus -- (laughter) -- we slowed down, and I’m standing in the front and I’m waving, I’m seeing little kids with American flags, and grandparents in their lawn chairs, and folks outside a machine shop, and passing churches and cemeteries and corner stores and farms -- I’m reminded about why I wanted to get into public service in the first place.

Sometimes there are days in Washington that will drive you crazy. But getting out of Washington and meeting all of you, and seeing how hard you’re working, how creative you are, how resourceful you are, how determined you are, that just makes me that much more determined to serve you as best I can as President of the United States."

GOPer Gawk

The only way to view GOPer politics these days is with your mouth hanging open.  This stuff makes Barry Goldwater in 1964 look like a socialist, a real one.  But don't let the far far far far far far far far right cast of the remaining presidential candidates who are given any chance at the GOPer nomination for (gulp) President obscure what they really have in common: they are liars.  Maybe ideological liars or tactical liars or religious zealot liars or stragetic political liars.  But just about everything Boogieman, Wrongney or Cowboy Rick say of attempted significance is a lie.

Lying has been successful for GOPers, so why not?  G.W. Bush lied his way into the White House, and promptly abandoned his center-right "compassionate conservative," Climate Crisis affirming campaign statements for his centralized and militarized right wing agenda.  All those GOPers who won in 2010 on platforms of job creation haven't paid any attention to jobs, but a lot to stripping union rights, voting rights, women's right and minority rights, slashing support for education and the poor, and giving more tax breaks to their corporate and super-wealthy masters.

His first day out, Cowboy Rick tried to modify some of his most outrageous stands, but old habits die hard, and by calling the chairman of the Fed a traitor, he showed his true colors as well as getting the Bushies to show their cards.  He was immediately castigated by Karl Rove, who also desperately suggested that other candidates could still get into the GOPer race.  The Bushies aren't letting Texans bygones be gone.  Before Cowboy Rick gets to Washington, he's going to have to escape ambush by the Bush Gang first.

GOPers may seem hard to figure out, but I've got some suggestions for what their political calculations might be.  Obviously they're going after public sector unions to cut off funding for Democratic candidates, and they couldn't more obviously be going after minority voting rights because minorities vote Democratic (Scott Walker rammed through a law in Wisconsin that says voters must have drivers licences, and then he closed a bunch of places that issue drivers licenses--in minority areas.)

But they haven't written off minorities entirely.  There are fundamentalist Christian zealots in all races and nationalities, and in particular, homophobia remains to a greater extent in minority working classes.  By the way, cutting money for education, which GOPer governors are doing, has several political effects for them: corporations are called upon to take up the slack and they inject their own agendas along with their "help;" and they help keep people ignorant and out of college, which lessens the likelihood that they will choose to become Democrats.  When your strategy is lying, it's important that people not be likely to know the truth.             
    

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"For every poet it is always morning in the world. History is a forgotten, insomniac night; history and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of history."

Derek Walcott