For Your Urgent Attention

First Bill McKibben and his 350.org sounded the warning, and organized demonstrations opposing the pipeline from Canada, but for all their claims, their main issue--the catastrophic damage to the climate future that exploiting the Canadian tar sands would do--was lost in the general environmental uproar.  In the end--at least as I read it--the Administration's stopping the original pipeline had more to do with environmental fears along its proposed route: insufficiently investigated threats to water and land, for instance.

But now the other American heavyweight on the issue has added his even more prominent voice.  In an oped in the New York Times, "Game Over for the Climate,"  NASA scientist James Hansen wrote:

 "If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."    

Hansen reinterates the Climate Crisis facts, noting that we are experiencing the weather he predicted we would at this time--a prediction he made in 1981.  He calls for leadership, and calls out President Obama.

The power of this statement must not be lost in the ozone of the twittercycle.  Hansen has focused the argument and others must repeat it--not with cute images or generalized slogans but with precision, power and repetition.  So far there has been nothing that has focused attention on this issue for very long.  This is another opportunity.  Now that President Obama has led on marriage equality, this must be the next issue to assume its rightful prominence, its urgency.

And not just in the United States.  This is also a Canadian responsibility--and a global responsibility. 

Vicious

The Washington Post report on Mitt Romney orchestrating a bullying assault on a younger student in high school, and the subsequent ABC report, reveal a character flaw that is shocking but frankly not surprising.  It showed the callousness one could sense behind his apparent cluelessness, and is further evidence of his assumed rich boy/rich guy entitlement.

   His leadership in a cruel and (in the word of one of the others involved) "vicious" attack when he was 18 is bad enough.  But his response to it when it was revealed on Thursday was even more telling.  He didn't repudiate it, expressed no shame, expressed no sense of having learned anything, and (as Jonathan Capehart pointed out on Lawrence O'Donnell) didn't use it to condemn bullying now--which is a much-discussed epidemic, particularly victimizing gay and lesbian teens.  It is no wonder that the incident and his response sickened Matthew Shepard's mother.

Romney led a group of bullies, including a wrestler who helped hold down the crying boy--who remembered his fear for years--while Romney himself cut the boy's offending hair with scissors.
That Romney claimed not to remember the incident, and that he classifies it as possibly a prank that went too far, is in itself enough evidence.  It was an assault that everyone else involved remembers clearly.  It apparently was a memory that the victim took to the end of his troubled life.

Romney tried to defend himself Thursday by saying he did not think at the time that the boy involved was gay, partly because in the 60s, there was little such awareness.  Talk about missing the point.  I was in high school then, and I had no concept at all of what homosexuality was, or who might or might not be one.  But I knew about a gang of stronger preying on a single weaker victim.  Every boy knows this, and has had multiple opportunities to sort out a response by the age of 18.  In my high school I saw it happen when a group of football players were "teasing" a terrified classmate, who was what would today be described as a geek.  And I intervened.  But if I hadn't, I would know today that I should have.

Perhaps Romney is so comfortable in today's GOP because it has become a party of bullies, whose House representatives spent their Thursday voting to cut food stamps, Medicaid and other programs essential for survival of those not smart or hardworking enough to be born a Romney.  Because the United States is too poor a country to share with the most vulnerable those resources that are needed to give tax breaks to the richest corporations and the richest people in the history of the world.

  Taken together, Thursday's revelations are to my mind disqualifying. Mitt Romney is not simply the lesser choice between two presidential candidates, or even a castastrophic political choice. Mitt Romney is not fit to be President of the United States.  And the GOP is a gang of thugs, supervised by gangsters in suits, and funded by criminal billionaires.

It Bends Towards Justice

Hours after the super-swing state of North Carolina voted for a state constitutional amendment that stripped all legal rights from same sex relationships, President Barack Obama became the first President of the United States to state his support for marriage equality. 

He did so in an interview with ABC reporter Robin Roberts (photo.)Contrary to the Fox drone, he had previously stated his belief that the North Carolina proposition should be defeated, his administration had stopped legally defending the anti-same sex marriage federal law, and he had from the beginning of his term set in motion the procedures that culminated in the end of discrimination in the military against gay and Lesbian participants.  So there was no clear political need to state his support for same sex marriage.  He framed it in the context of conscience.

In an email sent to his supporters later on Wednesday, he said:  "I've always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.  But over the course of several years I've talked to friends and family about this. I've thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I've gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.

What I've come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens. Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn't dawn on them that their friends' parents should be treated differently.  So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry."
He added: "I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them."  This 'states rights' aspect of his position on a matter of civil rights remains troublesome, but it is for now a practical compromise.  For as many commentators pointed out, this position is on the right side of history. The arc of the moral universe is bending. Younger generations support it overwhelmingly.  It's going to happen.

But it has an effect now.  Its effect on the gay community I leave to Andrew Sullivan and others to describe.  But empathy suggests the good it will do.

Its political effect on this year's election is more ambiguous at present.  Remember--President Obama did this in an election year, without clear indication that it will be to his political benefit.  It could energize the Rabid Right, not terribly in love with Romney.  Rachel Maddow showed just how extreme GOPers have become in trying to deny rights and oppress gay people, especially on the state level.  

 It may have consequences in swing states like Ohio, Virginia and particularly North Carolina, where the Democratic convention will be held.  It is not supported by many in the African American and Latino communities. 

But this is not the first time that Barack Obama has defied conventional wisdom. There were those who said candidate Obama should not touch the subject of race in his campaign, before he gave the speech on race in Philadelphia that elevated his candidacy.  He was urged to repudiate his Chicago pastor and he didn't do it, he only repudiated some of his pastor's statements.  Then when his pastor continued down that road, he did cut off all ties, and the issue disappeared.  When John McCain said he was suspending his campaign because of the financial crisis and Obama's advisors wanted him to do the same, he refused, saying a President has to do more than one thing at a time (you know, like tell jokes at the Correspondents Dinner while going after bin Laden.)

Now he has done this, and we'll see if the doomsayers are right about the political costs.  Right now the effect is electric.  A huge surge of energy is moving through the Obama campaign.  One of the first statements in praise of his stand came from independent New York Mayor Bloomberg, who had previously said he didn't yet know which candidate he would endorse. Other Democrats who had been circumspect on the issue were free to speak their mind.  Even some non-Democrats, including the Romney foreign policy advisor who became former because he's gay. Even a Fox commentator. 

For those who fear the response from the black community, I'd like to think this is a moment of moral leadership that the black community will follow.  For those who were afraid that the enthusiasm and idealism of 2008 wasn't going to be repeated, well--don't be so sure.  Sometimes it takes a lightning bolt to start a fire.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"His thoughts sleep not.  Yet thought that wakes
In sleep may never meet another thought
Or thing...Now day-break comes."

Wallace Stevens

painting: Vincent Van Gogh

Dark Thoughts

After reading a little of Bernard Shaw on the years leading up to the Great War (and later, some of Don DeLillo's least popular novel, Ratner's Star, which posits--not for the first time--that the humanity we know now de-evolved from an earlier state of development)  I had these dark thoughts, these ugly analogies, to that arc of time...

Germany was an imperial power in the late 19th century, ruled by a plutocracy.  After a long and costly and futile war that everyone saw coming and everyone knew was going to be ruinous, there was a brief period of democracy and progressive government, bedeviled by economic Depression, an angry public looking for scapegoats.  There was a simultaneous atmosphere of giddy excess, modern civilization and political extremism, particularly on what we would now identify as the right.  The Nazi Party kept chipping away at the republic's legitimacy, with a set of ideas that might well be described as fundamentalist, racist and reactionary but promising moral certainty, and restoration of national glory--i.e. getting our country back.

Many Germans could not believe that their country would ever take the primitive Hitler seriously, until he was elected.  And then they couldn't believe the Nazis would actually do what they had claimed they would do, and a lot they had said of course they wouldn't ever do.  Then they did it all.

The dark thoughts were of course that after our plutocratic empire had its futile wars and crashed the economy, this might be our American Weimar.  That the Rabid Right likes to throw around the Hitler and fascism labels doesn't inoculate them from those analogies.  Whoever said "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross" (it apparently wasn't Sinclair Lewis) may have had it right.

Probably the most unsettling question about how the American public will respond in this election is how important the factual turns out to be.  On Tuesday, a number of new Etch-a-Sketch moments emerged.  In addition to claiming he would have gotten bin Laden too, Romney claimed credit for saving the U.S. auto industry.  On the economy, President Obama pointed out that in previous recessions--including those under GOPer Presidents Reagan, Bush I & II--government employment grew.  Only during his presidency has government employment fallen--because the GOP Congress won't allow this government to employ this now-traditional remedy to ending high unemployment. 

Will that fact matter?  Will it matter that under President Obama, the U.S. economy has recovered ALL the private sector jobs lost since he took office?   Or even that nearly 2/3 of the private sector job growth since 1960 has happened under Democratic Presidents?

Several pundits opined that the calculation of making false claims, obvious and not --along with the aggressive lies that those millions of dollars in unmarked bills can pay to repeat endlessly--is that just enough people will believe them (or one or two of them) in the swing states like Ohio to throw the election to the GOP.  Which as Tuesday's election results in Indiana and North Carolina show is emboldened in its increasingly extreme agenda, detached from reality in ways that will only cause pain, tragedy and chaos. 

Which was bad enough in the bloodbath called the 20th century.  But in this crowded and dangerous world, with this civilization apparently unaware of the fragility of its current existence,  and particularly with the Climate Crisis on the doorstep,  there does not appear to be time for another lost decade.    

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“Psychology, so dedicated to awakening human consciousness, needs to wake itself up to one of the most ancient human truths: we cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet.”

James Hillman

photo: one of many of this weekend's "supermoon"photos, focusing the optical illusion of a rising moon magnified by the moon's unusual proximity to Earth.

That's Baseball

Sunday I watched a little of the San Francisco Giants baseball game on TV.  Maybe it was the first actual game action I watched this year rather than just highlights but it suddenly became more than this game.  It was every game.  I felt how deep baseball and I go together.  I've seen major league games in several ball parks in several cities.  I've seen minor league and amateur baseball.  I've seen the game from the field, wearing a uniform, on the pitcher's mound.  I've seen some of my best-remembered games in my head, listening to voices on the radio.  My experience with no other sport matches this extent or this depth.

After the San Francisco Giants World Series win, Margaret gave me a 2011 Giants calendar for Christmas--the kind with the pages you tear off.  It had some baseball fact or question on each page, and though the calendar is gone, I happened on a small pile of pages I'd kept because something about the fact on it struck me.

I wrote about one of them before, almost exactly a year ago-- about the guy who hit two grand slams in the same inning, off the same pitcher.  Here's a few more...

One of the characteristics of major league baseball is that it's been around so long, and clearly the game has changed, several times.  So the year that this happened isn't too surprising: Who was the last player to lead a league in home runs without reaching the double-digit mark?  Gavvy Cravath of the Philadelphia Phillies, who hit 8 homers in 1918.   But what about this record--who was the last player to lead a league in RBI without reaching 100?  It was another one of the Phillies, who had 91.  But it was Mike Schmidt in 1981.

The Phillies have another one: In 1971, pitcher Rick Wise not only threw a no-hitter against the Reds, but he hit two home runs and battled in three of his teams four runs.  How did I miss noticing this game?   Or this one--Tony Cloninger was the only pitcher to ever hit two grand slam homers in one game, for the Atlanta Braves in 1966. 

Maybe it's not connected to the number of bizarre records they hold, but the Phillies themselves have the record for the oldest team in any pro sport to be continuously in the same city under the same name.

I got two correct answers on questions about fairly amazing stuff--the last 30 game winner among pitchers (Denny McClain) and the brothers who won all four World Series games for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1934 (Dizzy Dean, and his brother Paul "Daffy" Dean.)

Winning 20 games in a season has long been a benchmark for top pitchers.  But who was the last pitcher to win 20 games on a team that lost 100?  Ned Garver was 20-12 for the 1951 St. Louis Browns (52-102), which means that one pitcher won nearly half their games.  The Browns were an American League team (the Cardinals were and still are in the National) that moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

Here's one that piqued my curiosity: Red Barrett of the Boston Braves holds the record for pitching a complete game with the fewest pitches: 58.  So how did that work out?  It was in 1944, and Barrett got that total and still gave up two hits, but apparently those baserunners were erased.  The key is that he had no strikeouts and no walks.  He faced the minimum 27 batters, and--to keep it from being too bizarre--he won the game, 2-0.

There is a game I well remember that was tragically bizarre, and I'm surprised it didn't make it onto this calendar.  In May 1959 Pittsburgh Pirates left-handed pitcher Harvey Haddix threw twelve perfect innings in one game, something no one had done before or since, and no one will likely ever do.  But in the scoreless game, a fielding error in the 13th ended his perfect game, and he gave up a home run and all he got out of it was a loss.  Especially since it was against the NL champion Milwaukee Braves (with Hank Aaron in the lineup) it is considered the best pitching performance in Major League history.  But Haddix didn't even get credit for the perfect game he pitched for nine innings. (I started to listen to this game on the radio but fell asleep before Bob Prince or Jim Woods noted that a perfect game was underway.  I wonder when they did--even announcers in those days were somewhat superstititious about mentioning a no-hitter or perfect game while it was going on.)

But on the calendar was a story about another perfect game that technically wasn't recorded as such.  And it involves Babe Ruth--in  his early days as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.  On June 23, 1917, Babe Ruth walked the first Washington Senator's batter he faced, and became so angry about the call that he was ejected from the game.  So Ernie Shore took the mound--and retired all 26 batters he faced.  He pitched a perfect game, except for that first batter, who was caught stealing anyway.  It wasn't as bad as the Haddix game, but he also didn't even get credit for a no-hitter. 

The calendar also didn't mention the 2010 game in which Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was robbed of his perfect game on what should have been the last out of the game by a blown call at first base--which even the umpire later admitted.

I guess part of the fascination is trying to figure out how these guys feel, especially after one extraordinary game: the perfect game you lost, or the no-hitter you threw while hitting two home runs?  At least Harvey Haddix had nowhere to go but up, and he did become the winning pitcher of the 1960 World Series 7th game (although only Maz's homer is remembered.)  But Rick Wise?

He had nowhere to go but down  But for awhile it wasn't very far down.  His no-hitter with his 2 homers was on June 23, 1971.  That August, he again hit two home runs in the same game.  And that September, after a rocky start giving up three runs, he retired 32 batters in a row (4 fewer than Haddix did)--and he hit a homer that won the game in the 12th inning.   He also eventually duplicated Haddix in a World Series--he was the relief pitcher of record for the deciding game of a World Series won by a home run, this time by the Red Sox in the 12th inning.  On the other hand, he had two other no-hitters going that he lost in the late innings.

And now, as I check ESPN online, it turns out that Sunday was a bizarre record-setter: for the first time since 1925, teams playing each other had a position player pitching in the final inning, because they'd used up their available pitchers.   Chris Davis, the DH for the Baltimore Orioles, who went 0-8 as a hitter, was the winning pitcher when he struck out Boston Red Sox All-Star Adrian Gonzalez and got the next batter to hit into a double play---in the 17th inning.

Well, that's baseball.

It's On

President Obama officially began his reelection campaign with speeches before 14,000 in Ohio and  8,000 in Virginia.  With a slightly new color scheme, a new play-off song (The Boss singing "We Take Care of Our Own") and a new slogan, he wrapped the speech with the assurance that the campaign this time is also about hope and change--the change that he started, but needs to be completed.

He warned the crowds of the millions that would be spent on negative ads, and his opponent asking the question of whether you are better off now than before the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression (kind of a trick question.)  He said the question should be, will we be better off in the future?  His speech made the case that his policies, his achievements and his proposals for a second term would move the country towards a better future for all, not just the super-rich. 

Here's that part of the text:

"Over and over again, they will tell you that America is down and out, and they'll tell you who to blame, and ask if you're better off than you were before the worst crisis in our lifetime," Obama said. "The real question - the question that will actually make a difference in your life and in the lives of your children - is not just about how we're doing today. It's about how we'll be doing tomorrow."

Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/05/05/2056162/in-launching-2012-bid-obama-targets.html#storylink=cpy

He said that the Romney campaign is about turning back to the failed policies of the past (sometimes, as in the case of affordable contraceptives and equal opportunity for women, to the distant past), in the belief that in their dissatisfaction Americans won't remember the consequences of those policies from the Bush years.  But he asserted "We were there, we remember, and we're not going back."   In one of his strongest lines, President Obama linked this with the bloody battles he fought in his presidency to make progress, as well as the legacy of such struggles in the past that he called upon in 2008:  "We've gone through too much to turn back now."

The crowd in Ohio was larger because the venue held more people.  The Virginia crowd seemed livelier, responding more quickly and more loudly.  Among the lines that got the most applause in both places--but especially in Ohio--was about the clean energy future not only for an economic future but "for the safety of our planet."

The rallies also revealed that if President Obama is the best politician in America, Michelle Obama is a close second.  Her opening speeches were tremendously affecting and effective.  Once Bill Clinton gets out there, and with Joe Biden doing what he does best, this is a formidable team.

Then there's the Obama campaign, and for all the noise about it, the early indications are that it's just as smart and dedicated, and even stronger.  TPM drew a number of contrasts between Obama and Romney campaign events (including Romney's crowds being in the hundreds, and the Obama crowds being way more diverse), and here's a striking one:

Supporters at Obama’s rally in Virginia were given homework – the campaign and the speakers on stage (including Obama) urged them to sign up with the campaign and register voters. First Lady Michelle Obama even reminded the college kids in the audience to change their registrations if they’re moving over the summer. Everywhere you turned, supporters were being asked to hand the Obama campaign a phone number, address or social media account handle.

This is not the scene at a Romney rally, generally. While campaign staff often sign up supporters with clipboards, voter registration booths and social media stations (both fixtures of Obama’s Virginia rally) are nowhere to be found. And Ann and Mitt Romney rarely, if ever, talk about voter registration."

I keep thinking of that Times story about organized and funded  Obama campaign efforts to register voters even in states that have made this more difficult.  Even the League of Women Voters is too intimidated to register in Florida.  But not the Obama campaign.  That says a lot.

I've also been thinking that I want to enjoy this.  There is something to the "happy warrior" idea.  Hubert Humphrey got that nickname when he fought for civil rights and progressive causes, win or lose, he kept fighting.  With President Obama, there's not so much frustration with the message or the way it is articulated as I've sometimes felt in past campaigns.  I know who's side I'm on, and I'm all for taking in all the emotion of fighting the good fight.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last presidential campaign I'll follow closely.  So I'm going to embrace this one for every moment I can.    

                                     I still believe in global warming.  Do you?

The latest Rabid Right madness manifested as a billboard showing Ted Kacziynski (The Unabomber) with those words under it, "I still believe in global warming.  Do you?" It was sponsored by the increasingly notorious Heartland Institute.  It immediately drew more attention than any effort of say 350.org to publicize their Climate Impacts Day of action, which is today (Saturday May 5.)

What is actually newsworthy about this is that a firestorm of criticism--including from GOPers--forced the Institute to take it down.   And presumably to scuttle their announced plan to add to the series the faces of Fidel Castro, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden.  I wish I could say this story is from the Onion, but it's from a Bangor, Maine newspaper.

But good marketing ideas never die.  I'm starting my own series right here, with the image above.

 Meanwhile, NASA has been studying the changes in Arctic ice:  "And it now appears that changes in Arctic sea ice affect everything from weather in Europe to the amount of sunlight the Earth absorbs. "The once seemingly insignificant and remote Arctic region is now understood to be intimately connected to the rest of the planet," noted Goddard Space Flight Center's Nathan Kurtz in a post from the field in late March."

A study of Greenland ice says that while melting is not at a worst-case-scenario speed, it has speeded up to a faster rate than UN projections from 2008, and threatens the world's coastal cities with a 3 ft. rise (together with other factors) by the end of the century. “’Glacial pace’ is not slow anymore,” said study author Twila Moon, a glacier researcher at the University of Washington.

As for Connect the Dots day, I wish I could say that I even understand what they're doing, but I am clearly not their demographic.  Best of luck to them anyway.  For the record, here is what Bill McKibben says is happening:

"We desperately need to put real human faces on climate change — to make sure that people understand it’s not an abstraction and a future threat, but a very present and very real crisis. And a crisis with solutions — in many places people are putting up green dots of hope, at their solar panels and windmills. (At my mom’s retirement home the residents are heading out to dig a big new community garden!)

So please: if you can spare an hour or two for the planet on 5/5, make sure you go to climatedots.org to find out where the nearest action is, and make sure you call a few friends and get them to come with you. We won’t solve climate change in a single day — but if we don’t manage to show our fellow citizens that it’s a problem, we’ll never solve it.

And here’s the thing — you’ll have a good time. On too many occasions we ask you to do really hard things, like get arrested. This action is crucial but simple — just lend your body for a little while to make the most important point we can make right now.

We’re asking everyone, at every local event, to take a photo of their “climate dot” and upload it to our website — and we’ll assemble those images into a global mosaic that puts a real human face on climate change. Our crew at 350.org will do everything we can to deliver your photos and stories to the media and decision-makers the world over. We can't let our elected officials pretend that this crisis is still in the future, and we’ll make sure our actions on 5/5 are a crucial first step to get global leaders to connect the dots on climate change."

The Depression They Believe In

Paul Krugman has a new book with a very provocative and timely title: End This Depression Now!  I haven't yet read it but here are the major points he's making in interviews:

We may no longer be in an economic recession, but we are functionally in a depression, though not as great as the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Krugman points out that within the Great Depression period were years when the U.S. economy grew, just not enough to rebalance the economy and in particular, not enough to re-employ enough people and otherwise end the misery.  This is the state of things now.

The stock market crash precipitated the Great Depression, and the financial crash of 2008 precipitated this one, though in both cases there was a long period of preparation.  One of the factors was the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, with a commensurate rise in real poverty at the other end. 

While figuring out all the right moves to make in 2009 in order to get the U.S. economy back on track was complicated, the way to pull the U.S. out of its current depression now (Krugman says) is relatively simple.  Government spending to stimulate the economy is what works, and smart government spending works better.  It might have been difficult in 2009 to identify what this money should be spent on, but now the situation makes it pretty clear.

State and local governments have been savaged during the Great Recession, and have shed about 600,000 jobs, most of them serving a public good, if not utterly essential to civic well-being and to both the short and long term economic future.  In this period, the natural growth in government jobs (responding to population growth etc.) would be an additional 700,000 jobs.

That adds up to 1.3 million jobs, and if the federal government would simply sign those paychecks for awhile, it would in itself generate enough economic activity to lower the unemployment rate to under 7% in 18 months.  This might well be enough to start the "virtuous circle" of people spending, and business responding to new demand by employing more people, who will spend that money, etc.  This would End This Depression Now!

What makes this especially possible now, Krugman said, is that some of the other weaknesses in the economy are healing.  Household debt was a huge problem, and it is down substantially.  The housing market is poised to come back because of pent-up demand.  Those additional paychecks and the economic activity they generate would likely to go spending (rather than paying down debt) and the pent-up demand for housing would be a natural place for some of that spending to go.  Since the housing market is a particular drag on the economy, that would be good.

What we cannot do, he says, is follow the European example and go for austerity.  Those governments that have cut back spending substantially have further weakened their economies.  The U.S. debt is manageable, and although federal spending on "entitlements" is an issue that may well need to be addressed, it doesn't require that spending be cut now or in the near future. 

Here's the Reuters report on Krugman's book that gives some of the economic background concerning Europe.

I'm sure Krugman makes fact-based arguments in favor of this thesis, but even without reading his book (and unfortunately not reading his column as much as I used to), all of this makes a lot of sense to me.

With high unemployment over the past three plus years and dropping slowly, the income of the very rich growing fast, and the incomes of the 99% stagnating or dropping, and especially with the extent of poverty in America--the highest percentage the Census Bureau has measured in 52 years--it's not much of a stretch to conceptualize this as a depression.

As for the solution, I've been noting the drag on the employment figures each month by continuing job losses in state and local governments.  Here in California, austerity in state government is crippling education, and ruining the state university system, a process over years that I've watched up close and personally.  Unemployment and insecurity for teachers, police, fire, EMTs, etc. is truly depressing to communities in all senses of the word.  And clearly these are overwhelmingly jobs that are necessary to the public good, and necessary to the short and long term economy.

I'm not sure if Krugman goes into the politics of this, but that's what's driving this.  Our current political polarization tracks neatly with the growing income inequality (as graph-happy Rachel showed on Tuesday.)  GOPers promoting federal austerity and trying to panic people about the deficit (which they by the way created entirely in the Bush years) are not just serving a high-sounding ideology.  Nor are they only trying to keep taxes low for the very wealthy (since that's where voters would want the government to look for the money necessary to pay for 1.3 million government workers), although that is certainly a mighty motivation.

No, there's very clear and present party- political motivation.  It should be remembered a day after May Day, the international workers day, that the once powerful economic and political force of labor unions have faded to almost nothing in the private sector.  The strongest unions represent workers in the public sector, especially state and local government employees.  Rabid Right GOPer legislatures and governors have been busy trying to end union rights for public sector unions quite directly in several states.  But the indirect method--or maybe it's the more direct method--is just as effective: get rid of the employees altogether, at least until you can get rid of the unions.

And in fact, that's where the biggest drops in government employment have been--in these very red states (doing nothing for their economies except weakening them, or or their state budgets, since they typically lower taxes for corporations and rich people.)  Unions of course are the largest financial backers of Democratic candidates, and their members provide a lot of political organizing.  It's another partisan political attack without conscience, without regard for other consequences, like the laws to make voting and registering harder for certain people.

Krugman's book comes at a fascinating moment--just as the Obama campaign is gearing up, and as President Obama is providing the rationale for the government's role.  It will be interesting to see if proposals like Krugman's become an explicit part of the President's agenda this summer.    

One more point.  Krugman mentioned that he hoped the entitlement problem (Medicare & Medicaid) can be addressed in the long run largely by bringing down health care costs themselves.  This was a major intention of the Affordable Care Act.  Even before the Act takes full effect, there are signs that health care costs are stabilizing, as cost containment mechanisms begin to take hold, and thousands of seniors are seeing billions in savings on their medicines.  

Where the Wars Will End

Tonight President Obama addressed the nation from Afghanistan, where he signed the agreement that leads to the end of the war, on the first anniversary of the action he ordered that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

Pundits swarmed afterwards to say how complicated and fraught the situation still is, and how many ways it could all collapse.  I don't think the American people actually care anymore what happens to Afghanistan.  They want the war to be over.

President Obama refocused Afghanistan as much as he could on dismantling al Qeda, and in his address he made it clear that this is the objective, and continuing a large U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is no longer necessary to that end.  That's also what the American people wanted: the terrorist threat to be crippled.  Osama bin Laden's death or capture was probably necessary to allow a U.S. president to get us out of Afghanistan, and so this address was more than symbolic on this anniversary.

As I listened, I could feel the accumulated weariness of so much war.  Vietnam exhausted my generation to a point that has still not been fully reckoned.  Then El Salvador--does anybody remember the proxy war in El Salvador, the Contras?--further poisoned the poisonous 80s.  And the horrible Iraq aggression further sucked the life out of this country in so many ways. 

The military-industrial complex has been the most direct way the 1% has used government to enrich itself.  That as much as anything explains these awful years, and all the lives lost and ruined and diverted over these decades. 

It's still possible that this carefully geopolitical policy will yield some pleasant surprises, like an actual coalition government in Afghanistan.  But who really cares anymore?  Just so it is over.  For most Americans, it is over.  President Obama made sure to mention the country's obligations to the veterans who executed this policy, and paid for it in some very sad ways.  We must make sure they are not casualities of our exhaustion.  Otherwise, we're probably too tired and sick at heart to celebrate.  But it will be over.  And we have at least a chance--financially , politically and morally--to address our real problems, the real threats to our country and the world.   

The Dog's Tale

As effective a political video the "Forward" video is (see the post below), the fake campaign ad President Obama unveiled during his White House Press Association Dinner stand-up comedy is more subtle (and of course funnier) in registering the political differences.  It starts at 12:14 of this video of his entire speech, and it is ostensibly from a Romney-supporting independent group ( the Woofpac) criticizing Obama for how he treats his dog Bo and praising Romney for allowing his dog to ride on top of the car where he has the freedom to feel the wind in his fur.  Beneath the jokes, and with a pitch perfect imitation of actual GOPer attack ads--including footage they haven't yet used taking out of context President Obama's gestures while telling a children's story on the White House lawn-- the political metaphors are almost perfect.

 The ad criticizes Obama for coddling his dog, for government mandates, socialism, etc., while Romney supports a dog's freedom.  The last image shows what that freedom means--the dog in a pet carrier strapped to the top of Air Force One.  It is exactly the difference between the phony catch-all image of "freedom" as Romney uses it (freedom from taxes for the wealthy, freedom from government, its benefits and protections for everyone else, plus the freedom to pay the price for the consequences of what the greedy 1% does to steal wealth from everyone else.) It's the difference in the result for the 1% (the freedom to ride in luxury) versus what this brand of "freedom" means for the 99%--confined inside a kennel and strapped to the fast-moving vehicle, where--as everyone knows by now--Romney's actual dog got sick.  Get sick with Romney and you're on your own in your spacious kennel.  Don't bother the Romneys--they're going places, on a schedule, and everything else be damned.

 Not only does the fake ad draw this contrast--it brings out a little of why this story of Romney and his dog resonates on its own.  There's the clueless selfish disregard and lack of compassion for dependent companions, first of all. But there's also that feeling of separation, between the wealth winners (by any means necessary) and everybody else, the people that John Boener characterized Monday as "the losers."  That's a Romney word--a Richie Richney word--for the 99%.

The Past As Prologue

This seven minute video unveils the new Obama campaign slogan, but more impressively, it states the Obama record in a compelling way.  I watched it with an eye to the accuracy of its claims, and the only one that I could recall credible dissent on would be the claims on the extent of Wall Street reform legislation.  For some environmentalists, record oil and gas production might not be a big positive, and there's no direct claims on progress towards meeting the Climate Crisis challenge, although the factual claims on increased emphasis on green energy are substantive.  Otherwise the list of accomplishments and promises kept is kind of amazing.

 And if--as some pundits say--this isn't the political grounds for President Obama's reelection, then what's the point?  If there is no reward for keeping promises and effecting positive change--even if it isn't all you wanted--where's the motivation to risk anything to accomplish anything?  You can do what GOPers are trying to do--use the same putatively attractive phrases that were used to devastating effect when acted upon, and trust that the heaven they conjure in people's heads will blot out the hell they caused, which we're still experiencing?

     

Get Ready

The upcoming 2012 election is like none in my lifetime, and very possibly none in a lot longer than that.  It comes closest to 1964, when the ideological right wing of the Republican party captured the presidential nomination from its establishment centrists and nominated Barry Goldwater to challenge incumbent (though unelected) President Lyndon Johnson.

Now suddenly in the past 4 years, the Republican party has destroyed its centrist segment and has become the most ideologically driven party in a century or more.  This election looks more like a European parliamentary election (though the winner won't necessarily have the power to govern, as the European government would have to) or even more like an attempted elective coup.  But calling it an ideology is too generous.  It's a Dark Ages cult.  It is a party incapable of governing or participating in a democratic government.

It's not just me noticing this, of course.  Here's exactly what T. Goddard's Political Wire grabbed from Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein's analysis in the Washington Post: "We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party." "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." "When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges."  

The entire analysis, which is worth reading, supports this excerpt. 

Not content with screwing with the filibuster and other undemocratic tactics, not content with relentless systematic lying as a strategy to seize power, the GOPer zealots in the states have actually changed the law to limit the ability of citizens--especially of certain citizens--to be part of this democracy through the most essential and sacred method there is: voting. 

These laws are being challenged but that takes time.  The purpose was to win the White House in 2012, so it may not matter if the challenges succeed later.  However the Obama campaign is not ignoring this, nor is it sitting around moaning about it.  According to this report, the campaign is aggressively pursuing a "vote anyway" strategy, to obey the letter of these onerous laws to register new voters, and to educate voters on what they will need to do (like get and bring a photo ID) in order to vote. 

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  Stick that up your legislatures, GOPer tyrants. 

Name That Majority

Rachel Maddow spotted and spotlit this paragraph in a Washington Post profile of two Rabid Right pols whose claim to fame is helping to create Rabid Right tyranny by scaring people about illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico: Kris Kobach and Michael Hethmon.  The graph quotes Hethmon:

Immigration is “on track to change the demographic makeup of the entire country. You know, what they call ‘minority-majority,’ ” said Hethmon, who is general counsel at the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute. “How many countries have gone through a transition like that — peacefully, carefully? It’s theoretically possible, but we don’t have any examples.”

So if you were wondering why illegal immigration is such a big deal to these folks, apart from the usual cynical lying GOPer politics, you (as usual) won't find it in the facts.  Immigration from Mexico for instance is severely down from its peak, and because of demographics (fewer young Mexican men in the current and future generations) is unlikely to ever increase much. Border enforcement and other federal enforcement of illegal immigration is stronger. And (according to the new Pew study) at least as many Mexican families are leaving the U.S. to return to Mexico as are coming from Mexico to the U.S.  But the real "issue" is a certain political fear: a perceived threat to certain whites who are afraid of losing the "white" majority.

The economic impacts, good and bad, are highly debatable. So let's parse the racial issues.  Part of the impact of immigrants in a given town or city or region is cultural, if they are from unfamiliar places.  That's real, and it is also not new. Before the relatively recent waves of immigrants from southeast Asia and now from Mexico, there were the huge waves of poor people from Ireland, eastern Europe and Italy.

 Countries in Europe experiencing waves of immigration now, even greater in some respect than the U.S., are coping with the often difficult changes, especially when immigrants become the face of all the other change.  All this can inspire a panic turned into a principle of racial and national purity, which has its own ideologies or "pragmatic" fears (for Hethmon wants to sound pragmatic), along with lots of ugly history.  In its most obviously warped expression, it's behind the massacres that killed 77 people in Norway, most of them teenagers, by a man (now on trial) upset by the racial tolerance represented by broadcast of Roots and a popular children's song based on a Pete Seeger ditty about multiculturalism (which some 40,000 people sang to the murderer in Oslo on Thursday.)

But it's more than a racial rainbow that scares Hethmon, it's the end of the white majority, and therefore of white privilege and supremacy.  He is afraid of a "minority majority" in the U.S. caused by immigration.  First of all, he doesn't need to be afraid of new immigration--even without it, the minority majority is in the demographic cards.  The 2010 Census made it clear that we'll achieve this by the middle of this century.  There are already fewer white infants than non-whites.

To get a little personal, those of us of a certain age are watching the world we knew slip away, and it does cause anxiety.  We understand a world dominated by English-speaking white people, English/American institutions and culture.  Even those of us who welcome the wisdoms and liveliness of other cultures into the common culture, are nervous about being overwhelmed by intrusions, and by what we cannot understand.  But let's face it--that applies as least as much to the world of a thousand aps and computer viruses as it does to an influx of other languages and behaviors from other countries.    

But that's very minor stuff compared to the fears of people like Hethmon. What really scares Hethmon? I don't think it's what he says (societal stability, more or less), at least not directly.  What threatens Hethmon and GOPers is finally out in the open--it is the loss of their political control.  That's why this virulent anti-immigration scare stuff is of a piece with voter suppression and other efforts to maintain their control, to keep minorities out of democracy, and (in Michigan for instance) democracy out of minority communities.  That they are likely Democratic voters is of course the proximate reason but probably not the entire one.  White supremacy--their supremacy--is the motive, and he all but announces it.

  Hethmon refers to the lack of any precedent of a peaceful, careful transition.  Well, "careful" is about control, and we don't control who has children, at least not yet, although we can carefully manage any sort of transition--that's what governments are supposed to do, by matching support and solution  to need, with housing, community support, employment policies as well as law enforcement.  But peaceful?  No such transition is possible without violence?  There is no precedent for this?

In a way he's correct.  There was violence and people died--mostly black people--in the struggle for equal rights for African Americans.  On the other hand, you could hardly call African Americans "immigrants." There was also violence involved in the 20th century union movement, mostly by police and agents of the 1%.   For the union movement was largely representing prior waves of immigrants, who were the workers in American industries--in the textile mills, the mines, the steel mills. 

But these were white immigrants, weren't they?  Not always by the definitions of the times.  Even in the 1920s, Italians--with dark skin, hair and eyes (like those in the top photo, or to the right)--were considered black.  Polish and other eastern Europeans may have been pale, but they were--in an expression that survived in Pennsylvania well into the second half of the 20th century--Not Quite White.  For Hitler, these folks weren't "white" or Aryan at all--they were racially inferior and planned for eradication.  The extermination of the Jews was to be just the first act, partly to test the equipment.

If you go by early 20th century definitions, the U.S. is already a minority majority country and has been for at least half a century--not entirely without trouble, but successfully.  Of course, many of the participants don't choose to see it that way.  Some of the most rabid oppressors of new minorities have been and are from these nationalities, previously scorned as Not Quite White.  This entire concept of "race" is fraught.  There's no more scientific justification for it.  It's all about other things now.  And one of those things is power-and-wealth.

But Hethmon and the white supremacist police state that the GOPers support is also congruent with their anti-Obama racism.  This is yet another test of the strength of the American constitutional system and the American culture in creating common ground as a civil culture, as a self-governing society.  In the end, all the issues about economic fairness, equal opportunity, tax equity, equality before the law, rights of women and members of all other groups--they all come down to this: the basis for self-government.  Because without these, we're seeing the future in Michigan (where state appointed dictators negate elected officials) and in the laws passed by GOPer legislatures and signed by GOPer governors that dictate to doctors how to treat their patients, that take away rights of individuals to govern their own bodies and lives, that substitute the rule of the few--including the wealthy 1%--for self-government.  That's the minority we really need to be worried about.

Oh Yeah

The Big Pivot

Leaving the other GOPer clowns weeping, Richie Richney cleaned up in Tuesday's primaries and made a speech billed as the beginning of his general election campaign.  It was the Big Pivot, to a generalized, positive, and severely poll-tested campaign.

Gone was the podium with "Obama Isn't Working" on it (among other things, another dog whistle for old white guys who remember the stereotype of the lazy Negro)--Tuesday it was "A Better America" begins today, presumably chosen after focus groups indicated that "A Worse America" wouldn't really sell.

MSNBC showed most of it, and afterwards their resident GOPer Steve Schmidt was psyched.  If Richney can keep to this, he can win, said Steve.  Rachel thought not--but Rachel's been paying attention, and Richney has already started contradicting his previously stated positions. 

For all the noise to be endured (or ignored) for the next several months, one basic question might well be: are people making up their minds now (there's some historical evidence that this happens in the spring before the election, and then people just turn the campaign off, or else just follow their candidate) or is the decisive slice of the electorate going to start paying attention in October and make up their minds the weekend before the election?

There's no way to answer this unfortunately.  Throw in variables like early voting (and the new limitations on early voting--or voting at all--in Florida and elsewhere) and the new data-rich Internet toys, and it's all pretty unpredictable.  But Schmidt could be right--if the economy is below a lot of expectations, and Richney can sell himself as a viable alternative, low-info voters may throw up their hands and vote for him as the Other Guy (not to mention The White Guy.) 

Right now the numbers are really against him.  President Obama may have a lock on Latino majorities, and they are a big factor in 7 of the 9 swingiest of the swing states.  Still, the movement towards Obama particularly among women was fast, and if those issues fade, who knows what will happen. 

If you're out of scary thoughts, though, here's one: for Richney to win, figures Ezra Klein,  it would take a GOPer surge that would mean a GOPer controlled Congress--and so Richney could actually enact big chunks of the far right agenda.  It could be like Wisconsin, or Florida, or PA, but for the whole U.S.!  Yippee!  On the other hand, Klein writes, if Obama wins he might well still be stuck with a GOPer House, and not enough Dems to deal with filibusters in the Senate.  Same old same old.

Yup, scary.  But once again I heretically suggest, a big Obama/Dem victory could mean returning control of the House to the Dems and retaining the Senate. No one knows what the political landscape would look like then, depending on how this election plays out.  And this campaign.  There's a lot at stake.  And President Obama knows it.  Despite the GOPer noise machine that the establishment media echoes religiously (Pew once again noting that the only candidate in the past few months to get more negative than positive coverage was President Obama), and all the monied mudslides ahead, President Obama is still the best campaigner out there.  This could even be fun.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“The task of astrology, as that of any helping or healing profession, is to teach us how to carry each moment elegantly, with dignity, for it is the manner in which we receive ourselves that determines whether we grieve or sing, whether what we hear in ourselves is a cacaphony or a melody, whether in that moment we stumble or we dance.”

Charles Ponce’

Addenda

  In my Earth Day post, I was less than optimistic about the news that Americans are increasingly believing that the Climate Crisis is real, and is intensifying the recent insane weather in many parts of the country.  But I don't dismiss the possibility that this could be the pivot point, when this country really begins to move in the direction of openly and directly confronting the causes and effects of the Climate Crisis.

It's also possible that this may happen more or less by itself, but it seems to me that it will take some expert moves by leaders who must do a much better job of talking about the Climate Crisis and the urgent need to confront it.  I'm not in position to talk about the effectiveness of twittering our way to that end, as my skepticism is obvious.  I don't get the political advantage to be gained by claiming credit where it is not due, as in the perhaps temporary defeat of the tar sands pipeline.  I've noticed that the Climate Crisis demonstrators around the White House have taken credit effectively enough to be given it in the media.  But as I've noted before, the pipeline failed to win approval for reasons other than the tar sands contribution to the Climate Crisis, and if that is not clear to them yet, it will make the politics of achieving a permanent solution all the more difficult, as well as becoming bewildering and painful for those protesters.

In an earlier post I awarded the white male vote to Romney, and suggested that pandering to this sector is a prime cause of the increasingly racist subtext of the Romney campaign.  This needs some elaboration. Romney has a slight lead among white males--largely because of his very large lead among older white males.  And as an older white male I am all too aware of real bias against older people (anyone over 50 is virtually unemployable in any new job or capacity) and the real suffering among older white men in particular.  The fact that the face of the 1% is old and white and male (though there are plenty of female members) doesn't justify stereotyping the rest of us in the 99%, even in the lower depths of it.  Nor does being white and male and older mean we are all racists and sexists and so on.  And don't get me started on the academic idiocies concerning Dead White Male writers... 

So I am not at all saying that white males can't delude themselves into believing Romney will make things better for them, without themselves being racists.  But the R campaign's attempt to encourage and inflame scapegoating is clear, and I still believe it's going to increase, perhaps to a very ugly and dangerously out of control level.

Finally, an addendum to several political posts in the past.  Months ago, the pundit priesthood was declaring that there were but three reasonable possibilities for the 2012 presidential election outcome: a close election with President Obama or the Republican nominee winning, or a GOPer landslide.  I had a different opinion: I saw a very reasonable possibility being an Obama landslide.  Well, it seems the priestly opinion has moved in my direction.

It's Take Your Planet to Lunch Day!

Earth Day--what does it mean anymore?  If Christmas is the day you eat too much and celebrate and maybe think a little about sharing etc. then Earth Day is a day to party in the outdoors while making Earth Day resolutions and maybe considering the planet as a priority.  For a little while.

That won't do.  But it is worth concentrating for a moment on what gets swept away in the swiftly shifting and inflated obsession of the moment, or even in the sustained effort (or sustained emotion) required to address some worthy and for the moment all-important goal.  But then there's the Earth perspective.  Which has a definite impact on the human civilization perspective.  So from that perspective, when there's not enough fresh water to drink and food to eat, it'll be nice knowing that you can be married to the person you're dying with, even if you're gay.  And when it's too hot to breathe or think, won't it be great if you've got  a middle class house that's powerless now because the system has melted and/or been eaten by rodents and cockroaches, or universal  health insurance for a health system in complete chaos due to rampant epidemics.

When it started, Earth Day was political first, personal second, in the sense that personal behavior, spirituality etc. was part of it but not the part that got people into the streets.  In recent years, it's the personal--all the ways you can save the Earth by recycling your plastic bottles (but heaven forbid anybody suggests you try holding onto your cell phone one minute after there's a new version--into the waste stream with that!)

The facts seem to be that both are necessary and neither can be neglected.  A lot of CO2 need not poison the atmosphere of the future if we'd insulate houses and build them in better ways.  On the other hand, more than 90% of the water that humans use is used by agriculture and industry (as Derrick Jensen pointed out recently.)  Residential consumption of energy is less than a quarter of the total.  And so on.  The consumption of energy, water, land, and the chemicals that are poisoning the planet as well as the production of waste is almost all by industry, including industrial farming.  How their buildings are built is far more destructive than residences, although the land use issues of how we organize where we live is itself a fairly big factor. 

So all of that requires political control, which of course is why we're told again and again--by these corporations and the politicians they've purchased--that government is bad, it stifles "freedom" and it wastes taxpayer's money.  (Whose money do you think the corporations are wasting, by the way? Or are you getting all your stuff for free?  Do you think it would cost less if you weren't paying for lobbyists, political donations and "issue" advertising? )

We could accentuate the positive.  A new poll shows that thanks to the unignorable extreme weather, more Americans believe that global heating is real and is making the weather more extreme.  On the other hand, I expect most Americans agree that massive oil spills, say in the Gulf of Mexico, that go on for months--those are bad.  But since the last one two years ago (as Rachel Maddow demonstrated on Friday), absolutely nothing has been done to prevent the next one, or to be better prepared for another such spill.

Meanwhile, the effects on the Gulf's ecology, on the fish, the habitat, etc. are still accumulating.  There are dire effects on human health as well.  The effects are expected to continue for decades, though the cumulative effects can't be predicted.  So--not great evidence for an adequate practical response to a catastrophe everybody saw unfold on their screens over months.  If the causes and effects of this oil spill haven't been addressed, what hope is there for the attention and will necessary to deal with the substantially by orders of magnitude greater Climate Crisis cause and effects? 

There's even practical good news: a study that says that carbon capture from power stations is feasible--but it will require longterm government commitment.  And that of course is the problem.  There's a lot of good news in fact---clean energy is becoming cheaper and more efficient and more powerful. (And no, those wind farms aren't killing off the birds.) With more research money almost unimaginable breakthroughs are possible.  But gearing up takes large scale, long term commitment--the kind that government is best suited to provide, and which in some cases it is the only entity that can handle it.  But we can't even really talk about this--we're engaged in some hopelessly primitive debate in which one side's philosophy has been a catastrophic failure, and they are doubling down on it.  And we're not debating what it is essential to debate.  However, if this election is lost to Romney and the Republicans, it's pretty much game over.  So we have no alternative but to engage in it.

Earth Day began in the U.S.  We're arguing now over what "American" means.  When you look at the U.S. in comparison with the rest of the world, it seems a self-contradiction.  But I don't think that all the strange reversals are inconsistent.  The U.S. now has comparatively bad public education, lower literacy, higher poverty, higher infant mortality. Our rich are richer and everybody else is poorer, and we're near the bottom in upward economic mobility, into the middle class. The U.S. is virtually alone among democratic nations or even industrial-age nations in having no universal health care, a death penalty, and a very high proportion of its citizenry in prison.  We also lead the planet in guns, and in the circumstances where concealed firearms are legal. 

These are not bizarre coincidences.  This is a pattern.  The United States is a plutocracy with a democratic Constitution.  It has been for a long time, perhaps for its entire existence.  But it started really going bad in the late 19th century, when Mark Twain was making a political analysis in the 1870s that could describe the 1920s and the 21st century so far.  There were some important changes, wrought by leaders we revere, though not all of us for the same reasons.  But those changes have largely been eroded or reversed, and the rest are under sustained attack in 2012.  It's a defensive battle when it needs to be a time of shared vision and positive change.

Now it's no longer just North America that's affected, nor even the West, nor just the global economy.  It's the Earth.  The tension between a ruling plutocracy and the democratic Constitution--of the values and vision of Lincoln, the Roosevelts, JFK and now President Obama--versus the power of the plutocracy and the darkness of ignorance it stirs up, is a battle for the planet.  Although sadly the Earth is not the stated primary issue.  But the Earth as we know it is the ground of any future. 

But we live now, and not for long.  We live in as much harmony with the planet as we can not only for the future but for ourselves, in all our dimensions.  We make the future the work of the present, as we allow ourselves to be what we are, part of the life of this living Earth.