Today was sunny hereabouts, and after voting (my next to last chance to vote for Barack Obama) I happened on some people in the Wildberries Marketplace parking lot, who had the proper eyewear to view the transit of Venus.  They kindly let me take a look, the barely visible dot of Venus at the edge of the Sun. (Though in this telescopic photo it's bigger.)

A tiny farmers' market was also in the parking lot (it will grow as more comes to fruition), and a little girl with purple angel's wings danced in front of the two-piece band.  Nice day.

Not so nice in Wisconsin, where the billionaire forces of darkness won what looks like a clean sweep.  More evidence that the plutocracy could well crush what's left of democracy if the electorate doesn't wake up, or the stars align.  (The view below is from a NASA satellite, a filtered image as Venus approaches the sun's corona.)

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Without Imagination we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but we are scarcely ever conscious [of this.]"

Kant

above: "Call of Peaks" by Rene Magritte

The Other Fateful Number--and the Green Energy Advantage

There are two numbers that the climate science and climate crisis communities use as the primary indicators of the climate future.  The first is the 2 degrees C discussed in a prior post, the maximum temperature rise it's thought we can cope with, which is almost certain to be exceeded, probably by mid-century.  Even a degree higher could well have catastrophic effects affecting everyone.

The other number is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measured as parts per million, or ppm.  As this AP story puts it, "Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395."  The goal of many climate activists is to get below that 350 ppm mark to limit future damage.  But the latest evidence is that the number is still rising, and faster than ever, according to scientists studying atmosphere in the Arctic at labs like the one pictured here.  This same story:

"The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere...So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon."

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said. The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist."This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."

"It's been at least 800,000 years — probably more — since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said. Until now...It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."

"Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and most of it lasts about 100 years in the air, but some of it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million. For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say."

Though the climate fate of the earth for the next century as it is affected or determined by CO2 is set for the next century (whatever that fate may be), to eventually get that number below 350 ppm is still a goal--to get at the cause of future heating, and give the far future a chance.

Green energy is the most obvious place to start, and despite the continuing failure to deal directly with causes, this is the one area of real positive activity.  Part of the reason is its coherence with the present state of the world economy (as the world measures economy), that is in profitable industries and jobs.  The UN figures that green jobs could add as many as 60 million jobs globally.

Another piece of this puzzle is the visionary and conscientious entrepreneur who applies the technology, like this one:

"When the developer, Voltaic Solaire, finishes a $1 million rehabilitation of a 19th-century brownstone at 367 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope next year, the facade will be covered with a solar skin and a solar awning will sit on the roof. The panels will generate 18,000 kilowatt hours of energy throughout the year, enough to power all six units in the 7,000-square-foot building. Voltaic Solaire is so confident in its ability to create a “net-zero” building that utilities will be bundled into the rent."       

We are also learning (or re-learning) a host of simple measures that add crucial increments to the puzzle of using energy with minimum damage to the climate.  One example is simply buildings having white roofs, which reflect rather than absorb heat.

 In February, researchers at Concordia University estimated that painting one percent of the world’s urban surfaces white (rooftops and pavement) could reduce CO2 emissions by 130 gigatons over the next 50-100 years. In 2011, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion reached 31.5 gigatons."

One activist estimates:"painting 5% of the world’s rooftops white per year by 2030 could save enough emissions to equal the world’s carbon output in 2010.“That would essentially turn off the entire world for an entire year,” he says.

Reducing energy used for air conditioning by 20% is significant for this one change, which is deep in folk knowledge anyway, in hot countries.  Besides scientific innovation, economic opportunity and particular visionary acts of conscience, there is the willingness and eagerness of ordinary people to make changes to save energy and money, which recent polls (and my anecdotal knowledge) confirm is widespread--perhaps the most universal positive possibility, requiring only information and leadership.

Such changes can conceivably make the near future better than it would otherwise be, and they can contribute to getting these fateful numbers going in the right direction, possibly helping the far future. (Though these numbers inevitably will go back down, if or when human civilization breaks apart.)  Such incremental changes are not in themselves sufficient.  Nothing now will reverse the changes already underway.  The time lag in the events of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, their active lifetimes which stretch from months to centuries, and the unknown feedback loops, tipping points and cumulative effects are the very definition of fate, though we cannot know precisely what that fate will be.  But we must do what we can.

Can Money Buy You Your Own Reality?

The Romney campaign is shaping up to be the weirdest presidential campaign ever.  Like so much about this election, it is the ultimate of something.  That something in this case would be the GOPer campaigns since 1988, the Atwater/Rove era.  They are all about creating and selling an alternate reality, very much what advertising tries to do much of the time, but on a much larger, more complete scale.  Not just part of reality, but all of reality that might determine a presidential election.

They do it by lying.  By creating lies, putting a lot of energy and power and money behind them until a lot of people are convinced they are not lies but the hidden truth.  They start with the power of right wing talk radio and their very own television network, Fox.  These outlets spend much of their time convincing their listeners and viewers that only they are telling the truth, and the rest of the media lies.

They use their power with the rest of the media, too, to always get time to tell their lies.  They are GOPers and their supporters are the owners of the corporations that own the media, and the corporations that support the media through advertising. 

By buying a controlling interest in the Supreme Court, they got the go-ahead to use virtually unlimited amounts of money to finance their lies.  This past week, a group of their billionaires committed to spend a total of a billion dollars on crafting and telling their lies.

A billion dollars.  What I wonder is the combined budget of the news divisions of the television networks, plus the news coverage of the major newspapers and magazines?  Over the six months until the election?  I'm pretty sure it's considerably less.

The superpacs will carve out their own target electorates.  The gutter sleazoids, the overt racists, will concentrate on nailing down the racist base.  The others will support the alternate reality that candidate Romney is going out and saying: that President Obama's stimulus and other policies created no jobs at all, that he's vastly increased federal spending and federal regulation and the size of government, that he is vastly contributing to the deficit with no plan to control it,  that he has no foreign policy successes, that he goes around apologizing for America, etc. etc.  Not one of which is factually true.

But if these are generalizations that are untrue, Romney is adding specific lies of a kind that are truly scary.  He did so on Thursday when he stated as a fact that "an independent Inspector General" has investigated the Obama administration investment in the Solyndra firm and "concluded" that money had gone to "friends and family, and campaign contributors."  This is an absolute and complete lie on a verifiable matter of fact, as Rachel Maddow pointed out.

So a presidential candidate is saying that the President of the United States was found to have used public money in an act of corruption to defraud the government and commit other crimes by distributing government funds to "friends and family" (which it seems would be nepotism) and to campaign contributors, which is a more nebulous charge, but nevertheless, an important one if a federal investigation had so concluded.  And none of this is true.  No investigation, no conclusion. But it is repeated in campaign ads which lots of dollars will make sure that lots of people see and hear. It is a short step to saying that the President was found guilty of murder, and then spending millions of dollars to make that the accepted truth.

The charge in itself is somewhat laughable coming from Romney, whose friends and family are in the kind of businesses he would be able to funnel millions of dollars to. (As Governor of Mass., he also spent millions on public money on tech startups that failed. Update: including a solar power company that just went bankrupt.)  Who is President Obama going to funnel money to?  His brother-in-law the basketball coach?  Malia?

But it is not laughable coming from the nominee of the other party in a presidential election, the one with a billion dollars to throw around just on media.  It is not a laughable charge as it plays into unspoken prejudices, that President Obama favors blacks, his "friends and family." 

But something else happened Thursday, something as weird but as potentially dark and unsettling as a bland candidate blandly lying.   The Romney campaign did two weird but connected things.  They rounded up reporters and put them on a bus to go to the Solyndra event, because they didn't want to give the Obama campaign the opportunity to disrupt the event.  And the Romney campaign deliberately disrupted an Obama campaign event in Chicago, preventing David Axlerod from holding a press conference by shouting him down, playing loud instruments and so on.

And the Romney campaign--and Romney himself--said both of these were deliberate, and related.  The Maddow blog reported:

  Romney apparently kept the Solyndra press conference a secret because of paranoid fears about White House sabotage.

"We knew, if word got out, that Solyndra would do everything in their power, and the Obama administration would do everything in their power, to stop us from having this news conference, "an unnamed adviser told reporters, per CNN.
Reporters raised the question of how this devious plot to derail the event would work given that the freedom to hold a press conference in public is a fairly basic right.
"Well, he's only the president of the United States," the adviser replied.... Romney alluded to similar concerns personally in his press conference.
"I think there are people who don't want to see this event occur, don't want to have questions asked about this particular investment," Romney told reporters when asked about the secrecy behind the event, according to the New York Times.

And Romney admitted his campaign organized and sent the people who prevented David Axlerod from speaking: "If the president is going to have his people come in to my rallies and heckle, why, we'll show them we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does."

Unless the Romney campaign has actual evidence that the Obama campaign has officially sent hecklers to his events, and that they planned to disrupt his Solyndra event, he's lying.  But as laughable as these antics seemed to political reporters, they are way too reminicient of 20th century fascist tactics, striking at the heart of the public democratic process.  This is close to being right out of the Hitler electoral playbook.

Why isn't all this laughable?  Because people aren't laughing.  They are taking Romney seriously--if the polls are to be believed, a lot of women are forgetting why they would be voting against themselves if they support Romney, a lot of veterans are really deluded about who is looking out for them, etc.  And the GOPer stranglehold on the federal government makes it impossible for President Obama to do what he knows needs to be done to create jobs and improve the economy.  Unemployment is still high, and if this month's report out this morning isn't significantly better--and it isn't expected to be, though the economy (particularly housing) has shown signs of growth-- then people are going to be in the mood to listen to an alternate reality where everything is Obama's fault and there is an easy and simple solution that will make it all better.  And they are going to get a lot of opportunity to be bathed in that phony reality, especially in the swing states.

Not So Fast

 The U.S. Justice Department has demanded that the GOPer state government of Florida stop its latest effort to destroy voting rights--by purging voters from the rolls.  It's a technical decision in a way--Florida must clear such changes to voting procedure with the Federal Courts and Justice Department under provisions of the Voting Rights Act, so that the Justice Department can determine whether such a change threatens minority voting rights.  The TPM story adds:

DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.
Five of Florida’s counties are subject to the Voting Rights Act, but the state never sought permission from either the Justice Department or a federal court to implement its voter roll maintenance program. Florida officials said they were trying to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, but a flawed process led to several U.S. citizens being asked to prove their citizenship status or be kicked off the rolls.

According to the Miami Herald's study of the voters being purged, most were Democrats and/or Latinos.

A second victory for voting rights on Thursday was a Federal Court judge's injunction against elements of the new registration rules in Florida:

"Judge Robert Hinkle said the law imposes "a harsh and impractical" metric for voter registration organizations, referring to record-keeping requirements and a 48-hour deadline to turn registrations in to the state. Failing to adhere to the "prompt" deadline could result in fines for organization.

The suit was brought by three third-party voter registration organizations: League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida Public Interest Research Group and Rock the Vote."

These were not the only actions taken by Florida to deny voting rights,  and a scandalous number of other states have similarly outrageous anti-American laws.  There is little question that these efforts are designed to suppress Democratic votes for the 2012 election.  Those efforts go on in most of the states, and even in Florida, they have already been successful in suppressing new registrations, and some citizens have already been denied their right to vote.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party and allies are aware of what's going on, and devoting resources to overcoming the obstacles and getting people registered.  There's online tools and information at the new website, gottavote.org.

Other tools and links are here at the Nation magazine.

Behind the Apocalyptic Fog

There is something that might be called the apocalyptic fog.  It may be generated by a societal unconscious (an aggregation of different responses but equally obscuring), our high-distraction speed freak culture, both, and more.  In any case, even science is susceptible.  It obscures what may be ahead.

There's a story that the National Resource Defense Council is pushing, with their study of the likely increase in heat-related deaths in selected American cities due to the climate crisis.  It's a user friendly format with a U.S. map.  You click on the city you want to know about, and up pops a figure, over a button that you hit to "take action" against the climate crisis. 

If you go to the actual report to get the complete figures, it estimate deaths due to summer heat by mid century and by the end of the century.  For example, Pittsburgh now has 5 days of "excessive heat" each summer.  By around 2050, the estimate is for 52 days.  By the end of the century, 59.  While there are an average of 19 heat related deaths each summer now, by mid-century it will be 38.  By the end of the century, about 1200 additional heat related deaths in total are predicted.  Taken together, these 40 U.S. cities add about an additional 150,000 deaths. The report emphasizes that it is a conservative estimate, and based on present trends continuing.

As alarming as these figures might be--and the idea of 52 days of excessive heat in Pittsburgh every summer is pretty alarming to me--they are so "conservative" when compared to more global estimates of 2050 that they seem almost surreal.

This past week the International Energy Agency released figures on global C02 emissions for 2011.  They showed an increase of 1 gigaton over the previous year, bringing the yearly output to 31.6 gigatons.  Despite all the talk, carbon emissions outpaced the growth in GDP.  Much of the growth (45% coal) came from China, which partly explains why China has resisted carbon treaty controls, although is some ways it is doing more to recognize the reality of the climate crisis than the U.S. 

So there's a different set of numbers, and here's what they may mean.  The generally accepted figure for the maximum increase in global temperature from pre-industrial times that civilization can cope with is 2 degrees centigrade.  In order for the planet to stay within the 2C limit, carbon output has to level off at 32.6 gigatons no later than 2017, according to this report.  But right now the industrial world is about one year's increase away from that, with no plan to decrease it.

From a news report on these figures: "When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet," Fatih Birol, IEA's chief economist told Reuters."  Correction: Reuter's corrected this quote to the effect that the 6 degree Celsius would be reached by the end of the century, not 2050.  That affects the numbers in my comment, but not the outcome.  And it does not affect the numbers in Blakemore's quote or the slightly higher estimate by Dr. Carter.  Note that the effects threatening human civilization may begin at 3C and 4C.  

Six degrees C is three times the estimated safe level.  It is 11 degrees F.  This is by 2050 [2100] or so--less than 40 years away.  And it doesn't happen suddenly--it may come in fits and starts, but it will be felt and consequential along the way.  And if present trends continue, it doesn't end there.  The effects, once begun, will continue for thousands of years.  But if the temperature continues this rise, it's not clear that human civilization as we know, life on Earth as we know it, makes it to 2100. 

We've heard all this in outline, but always with vague timelines.  This is a more defined perspective.

Here's what Bill Blakemore at ABC wrote this week:

“Estimates heard in private conversations with scientists and economists reach even into the billions of people who could perish well within this century if the warming is not somehow controlled.

This reporter has heard figures in measured conversations, for example, such as this: If humanity does not now manage somehow to drastically cut carbon emissions so that the global temperature levels off at around 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial times, but reaches instead 4 degrees centigrade, it could mean some 4 billion people dying within this century because the world couldn’t grow enough food in such heat and the drought it will bring—rice harvests, for one, would be decimated.”

Four degrees C, four billion people.  Quite a difference from the thousands of deaths from excessive heat.  And we're heading rapidly for 6 degrees C at mid-century[by the end of the century.]  (Of  course, some of this could be accounted for by the geographically specific U.S. study, for it is likely the first mass deaths would be in already poor countries.  On the other hand, everybody has to eat. So heat-related deaths may not be the major problem.)

Climate Progress posted on this IEA report, and the comments make it one of those threads that is like a snapshot of what people are thinking and feeling right now.  The comments begin with a cry of despair from a 17 year old, and a number of people trying to be helpful to him or her, with the gamut of suggestions.  Especially interesting to me are the references to apocalyptic movies, like Doctor Strangelove and On the Beach.  I do think these stories are how we feel our way into this unthinkable future prospect.

But one response, from a Dr. Peter Carter, also spells out the implications more specifically (he's using an estimate of 7C by 2100):

"We are ending almost all life and yet only a handful of people are calling for the acknowledgement of the dire planetary emergency we are all in. Make no mistake this 7C by 2100, due to current investment in more of the very worst polluting fossil fuels, is a real commitment being made today and its much worse than 7C. It is a full long term commitment of about 12C due to the ocean heat lag. At 3C all crops in all regions have declined below baseline yields (IPCC NRC UK Met Office). At 4C 75% of species are committed to extinction (IPCC). At 7C the planet is uninhabitable if there are any humans left."

Again, these are not dates on which things happen.  They will happen over years.  I will soon be 66 years old.  2050 is less than 40 years away, less than 2/3 the years of my life so far.   I was born just after World War II, the last major event of widespread disaster and death.  It killed some 66 million people, to lead history in "multicide," according to a book that is the actual subject of Blakemore's post, linked above.  Most of the global population is younger than me, and while many places in the world have experienced horrors in the past generation or two, the vast majority here in America especially has no experience dealing with anything like that.  World War II itself didn't affect the U.S. so directly as most of the rest of the world, but the homefront got a taste of emergency, preceded by the Great Depression.

Even Europe has had about a half century of relative peace and prosperity.  There is little in people's experience to prepare them for what may be ahead.  Drowned coastal cities, devastating economically and culturally perhaps, are the least of it.  Dire shortages of food and water, and overwhelming heat in places, in a world awash in lethal weapons.

There are other very worrisome aspects in coping with the difficulties of even the near future.  The fragile nature of what keeps this huge global economy going, dependent on electrical grids and satellites, cheap and fast transport.  The strange blind march towards the new Dark Ages is more than symbolized by libraries destroying books in favor of digitizing and encoding them, making access of knowledge dependent on frail technologies.

Another difference of this extended crisis is the other species that will likely precede us in extinction, starting with other primates but also including others that are deep in our genetic experience on this planet. Nobody knows what this will do to us, or indeed, what it is slowly doing to us already.

Meanwhile in North America we seem to be marching resolutely towards the abyss.  Our upcoming election pits a man who represents those economic and political interests intent on absolute denial about the real dangers ahead, against a man who isn't talking about them.  And the political pundits are now unanimous in predicting a close election, because significant elements of the electorate are lining up behind the candidate who speaks nothing but lies and denial.

So in the end this post is about cognitive dissonance, even among those who see the climate crisis as a mortal threat.  It suggests a crisis that is acknowledged by few, and yet may be driving our response to everything.  And it is about getting the possibilities straight in your mind, right down to the time frame.  The future is never certain until it is the present.  And these possible or probable futures are part of our present, but not all of it.  It may well be that doing a lot of relatively little things adds up to changing this future.  It may be that there are factors not known or not correctly figured.  We can only do what we can do.  But absorbing these possibilities into us now is part of the soulmaking of the future. The stories we tell ourselves is a part of that process, for each of us, and for us to share.

Soul is about depth, and it includes sadness and all those emotions we would rather not have.  Humanity had a challenge--to anticipate and prevent a mortal danger, one that it largely caused.  So far it is failing that test.  Losing civilization as we know it may well be the penalty.  But between here and there, now and 2050 or 2100, the challenge of life gets more profound.  It includes wrapping our heads around the worst of the real possibilities.  And hoping our hearts will guide us.

top photo: fog by bikephotomusic. Painting by Andree Tracey.

Dark Ages as Elective

"According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all."

Ben Adler at the Nation

When breezing through Fox on the way to ESPN, as careless of brain cells as that might be, I've noticed one innovation of recent years: lots of comely young women, mostly blond, showing lots of leg.  Something that CNN seems to be copying.  The obviousness of the poses that we're not supposed to acknowledge pretty much says it all.

My Money Trumps Your Life

As per results of the Texas primary, Richie Richney is more or less officially the nominee for President of the Grand Old Racists Party, the Rabid Right and More for Me billionaires' choice, eager to bring their special mixture of plutocratic lazy fare and 21st century fascism to an eager America.

He chose today to kiss up to Donald Trump and his ever shriller charges that President Obama is not legally the President of the United States, and to emphasize his nod nod wink wink by releasing his own birth certificate.  So America--or at least that preselected portion of it who will be permitted to vote this time--can endorse the most craven candidate imaginable, a world class coward who seems incapable of uttering a sentence that does not depend on a lie.   Leading the charge of the billionaires who will be spending millions spreading those lies from now until November.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Only imagination can see a small distance beyond the walls of mortality."

Patrick Kavanagh

painting: Vincent Van Gogh

Political Climate Crisis

The reality is undeniable.  According to the World Meteorological Organization of the UN, last decade (2001-2010) was the warmest globally since records began in 1850.  Nine of the 10 past years are among the 10 warmest all-time.  Global land and sea surface temperatures are 0.46 C above the longterm average. That 10 year period was "marked by extreme levels of rain or snowfall, leading to significant flooding on all continents, while droughts affected parts of East Africa and North America."

All of this was predicted by the models based on global heating.  The science based on research of thousands of years of physical evidence (ice cores, etc.), and the basic physics of what happens when greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, they all agree. 

But there are still those who deny the undeniable.  Why?  Apart from other explanations (including psychological factors explored here in the "climate inside" series) that he doesn't contradict, Chris Mooney offers his perceptions.

First, he suggests that denial is shrinking--and getting more specific.  "The denial of global warming is no longer mainstream within corporate America or the fossil fuel industry, then—and that can only be considered a major achievement. And yet at the same time, it is stronger than ever among Tea Partiers and the Republican Party itself. And this fact—that these traditional industry allies have themselves diverged with industry on the matter—surely demonstrates that this is not really a live scientific issue any longer. It is a political issue."

But why?  Corporatist GOPers, not hard to figure out.  But the Rabid Religious Right?  The Tea Partisans? Mooney's answer:   "To understand how to ultimately defeat climate denial, you first have to understand what it is: motivated reasoning on behalf of individualist values. What this means is that libertarian types—often white and male—who have decided that the climate issue is something that environmentalists concocted to impose global socialism will come up with any reason to attack the science that their minds can create. And the human mind can create an awful lot of reasons. Especially among the intelligent."

This is at least a rationale that is of a piece with a lot of other related rhetoric.  It relates to a suspicion of anything big, government or corporations.  And the most important part of it is the suspicion that the cost of efforts to end greenhouse gas pollution will fall on the individual, not corporations or government.  It will be individuals (and families) who will have to do without, and pay more for getting less.

This is an analysis that absolutely has to be kept in mind in crafting specific solutions. There is no doubt that the deck is stacked against the 99%, and it is stacked at least partly by corporate power through government.  That it gets confused and conflated with socialism, totalitarian world government, oppression of white people, etc. does not completely invalidate this perception.

Mooney goes on to suggest that the way the Rabid Right denialism will lose its political potency is when something like Cap & Trade becomes a reality, becomes the new normal.  He suggests that even as early as this summer, if it is as hot and ripped with violent weather as previous months suggest it might be, the political will to do so may start coming together.

We'll see about summer and how it plays into this Big and possibly Fatal Choice election, but I have my doubts about his analysis of how denialism will dwindle.  I think immediately of the Affordable Care Act, and how denialism of a different kind, and virulent political opposition, has not abated much since it was passed, and has begun to become part of the new normal.

As big a political factor as denialism is in the United States, it is not the only factor in the failure to confront the Climate Crisis.  This detailed report based on tapes made in meetings of world leaders during the Copenhagen climate summit provides a pretty clear picture of the geopolitical barriers:  besides the U.S. political lacunae, there is the desire of developing countries (China and India especially) to keep on developing unfettered by carbon limits (at least until they've cornered markets on green technologies.)  Only Europe had the political will to set limits, and who knows if even European nations would be so unified today. 

Update: On precisely this topic, nations again fail to agree on action, with pretty much the same dynamic.

Another bit of perspective is gained by Joshua Green, who points out that without the GOPers rampant misuse of the filibuster over the past three plus years, we would be living in a different America, the first part of which is especially relevant to this theme: "Had the filibuster not applied, the United States would have a market-based system to control carbon emissions, which would limit the damage from global warming, vitalize the clean technology sector, and challenge other large polluters like China and India to do the same. The new health care law would have a public option. Children of undocumented immigrants who served two years in the military or went to college could become US citizens. Women paid less than their male colleagues because of their gender would have broader legal recourse against their employers. Billionaires would not be able to manipulate the political system from behind a veil of anonymity. 

Dozens of vacant judgeships would have been filled. The Federal Reserve would have operated with a full slate of governors, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond. Elizabeth Warren would be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not a candidate for the Senate. And Mitt Romney would be paying a higher tax rate than the 13.9 percent he shelled out in 2010, since a provision to end the carried-interest tax break wouldn’t have died in the Senate. (By my math, that filibuster saved Romney $1,480,000 in 2010 alone, the difference between the 15 percent he paid on $7.4 million earned in carried interest and the top marginal rate of 35 percent.)"

                  I still believe in global warming.  Do You?

Lives of Quiet Inspiration

We may think about what would happen in our lives if a sudden disaster strikes.  Much of the dread associated with apocalyptic scenarios assumes the worst, not only in what happens, but in how people respond.  But real situations don't always turn out that way.  In fact, they usually don't.  In this speech to the Joplin High School Class of 2012, a year after the catastrophic tornado there, President Obama describes the values that help get a community through, both in general terms but most tellingly in the specific case of Joplin.  He returns often to the theme of how these values are imprinted on these students because of what they've experienced there in the past year. 

"As you begin the next stage in your journey, wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing, it’s safe to say you will encounter greed and selfishness, and ignorance and cruelty, sometimes just bad luck. You’ll meet people who try to build themselves up by tearing others down. You’ll meet people who believe that looking after others is only for suckers. But you’re from Joplin. So you will remember, you will know, just how many people there are who see life differently; those who are guided by kindness and generosity and quiet service."

" And so, my deepest hope for all of you is that as you begin this new chapter in your life, you’ll bring that spirit of Joplin to every place you travel, to everything you do. You can serve as a reminder that we’re not meant to walk this road alone, that we’re not expected to face down adversity by ourselves."

"Yes, you will encounter obstacles along the way," President Obama concluded.  "I guarantee you will face setbacks and you will face disappointments. But you’re from Joplin and you’re from America. And no matter how tough times get, you’ll always be tougher. And no matter what life throws at you, you will be ready. You will not be defined by the difficulties you face, but by how you respond -- with grace and strength and a commitment to others."

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.”

Northrup Frye

Photo: by Jason Major in Texas--one of many of the annular eclipse of the sun on Sunday.  It would have been visible here except for our customary North Coast cloud cover.  There was some eerie light at dusk, though.  I imagine this is what it would have looked like, on the top of the hill leading down to the Arcata downtown, as the sun set over the bay.

Whither the Weather?

With some of the hottest winter and spring months on record in the U.S. just behind us,  these forecasters say we're in for a hot summer.  Their methodology and predictions are a lot more limited than the headline suggests, but the dryness of soil bumping up the temps by a degree suggests how many "small" effects combine to create a cycle that feeds on itself.

Here on the North Coast, by the way, the pollen is so heavy that people who care about such things can't keep their cars clean of it.  More to the point for me, there are more and more severe spring colds that are exacerbated by hay fever.  I'm just coming out of one myself, and I hardly ever get colds.

In Climate Crisis news,  a new study concludes "A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change."  This is about the ability of mammals (large and small) to migrate when conditions threaten them.  Apart from the specific animal species ability--which is usually greater than human animals would predict--the barriers are the cities and highways in the way.

One of the fears about Arctic melting is the possible release of methane gas, a very potent greenhouse gas which could accelerate the Climate Crisis beyond current predictions.  A new study shows evidence of methane release in various Arctic locations.

Another study looks at an area where Climate Crisis models predict changes, and those changes are happening: the salinity in the oceans.  The effects of these changes are what the models predict: dry areas getting drier, wet areas getting wetter, which in addition to longterm effects translates into longer and more severe droughts, and more floods.

Meanwhile, fire season in the West started early--for example, in Arizona (above photo.)

Any good news?  Yes. Power generation from carbon-spewing coal in the U.S. has fallen 19% in one year.  But the Obama initiatives to replace coal with green energy may founder as GOPer Congress threatens federal tax breaks for green industry.  Although not of course subsidies to oil and coal.

Good News from Gee, Ate

Good news from the Gee, Ate meeting at Camp David.  Seriously.  President Obama announced that the European emphasis is shifting from austerity to jobs and economic expansion.  He noted that the path of encouraging growth while working on reducing longterm deficits has been his own policy, and left the conclusion to observers who might note that the U.S. economy is growing while Europe mostly isn't.  Unemployment in some countries is 20%--for young men, 50%. 

We'll see if policy follows but if it does, it is a test that European democracies pass--the ability to change to avert disaster, which doesn't seem within the capabilities of the U.S. political system at the moment.

Paul Krugman is among those who warned of such disaster if Europe--especially Germany--remains stubbornly committed to austerity, though in recent days he seemed fairly confident that they would be able to contain the Greece situation.  I expect he'll see this as an unexpectedly good sign, provided there is something more than rhetoric behind it.

If Europe averts crisis and the brightening prospects of defusing the Iran situation move towards fruition, then the major drag on the American economy comes from the GOPers and their wealthy supporters who want the U.S. economy to be as bad as possible.

President Obama also announced progress on combined plans to confront the Climate Crisis.

A little media note.  When the President made his statement today, the networks didn't carry it; MSNBC was in prison, CNN started it late and cut it off abruptly, apparently afraid of their viewers attention span--they had to get back to rerunning segments from Friday.  Only FOX news carried the statement from beginning to end, and did a fair summary afterwards.

Update: Here's a more detailed story from the NY Times.

Coming Soon? Computer Generated Hate

When the Times broke the story of the Ricketts Rev. Wright project, and it was repudiated by Ricketts and Romney hours later, it seemed like it could be a one day story.  But it was still alive on Friday and is to be a topic for the Sunday mostly Republican white guy talk shows.  It's being kept alive primarily by FOX News, which I should have realized would happen, because I happened to catch a reference to it the evening before the Times story broke--so the plan to bring it up as a campaign issue was obviously coordinated.

One part of the Ricketts proposal that caught my eye and I haven't seen commented on: the centerpiece of the project was to be a five minute "unusually unique" film (their words), which would not use mostly old footage like most political ads but new footage shot in high definition which would utilize "face replacement technology" to place President Obama's "computer-generated face on the body of a similarly sized actor."

In other words, the film would not just tell lies, it would lie with the images used to tell them in an unusually unique way.

For example, the sample script makes the point that instead of helping the economy, President Obama devoted his time to starting expensive unnecessary socialistic Obamacare. So in one scene, a "proud struggling family" would be shown in front of their house, as "BO" strides by, pushing a gurney, and smiles at the camera.  The family looks on in disgust. (It's on pages 21 and 22.)

As far as I know, this level of deceit hasn't yet graced a political ad, but its potential is clear.  Shots of tornado and hurricane victims, and there striding through the devastation laughing and singing an Al Green song is "BO."   And look--who is that in the first row as Reverend Wright shouts about goddamning America? And smiling too!

Of course, as the proposal notes, face replacement technology is expensive.  Good thing these guys have unlimited funds to go with their complete lack of ethics.

A Cautionary Tale

The revelation on Thursday of the plan to cause the "demise" of President Obama with a $10 million smear campaign has obvious racial elements, and I do think the media is a bit naive thinking it wouldn't work.  It wouldn't work with everyone, but older white male voters who fancy themselves Independents are more than susceptible, with older men in general and older white women in the mix.  As I've pointed out before, racism is already coded into the GOPer campaign.

But even if this line of attack has been blunted by the Times story, the actual document the Times links to online shows the dangers ahead in detail: the kind of thorough, managed blitz in various forms through all the relevant media that ten million dollars can buy.  The purveyors were especially hot on using Twitter to start a firestorm, and the irony for the moment is that a Twitter firestorm is what got the whole thing collapsing within hours of the Times story hitting the wires and the streets.  But the danger remains---there are billionaires willing to pour millions into these efforts, and p.r. whores as well as ideologues ready and willing to put them into play, regardless of how lying, crazy and mutually assured destructive they are.

We can be grateful to whoever leaked this, and to the NY Times for breaking the story.  There's some hope in that.  But the money has just started to talk--or swear. 

The Bully in the Bully Pulpit?

The Dreaming Up Daily Quotes

"So don’t accept somebody else’s construction of the way things ought to be. It’s up to you to right wrongs. It’s up to you to point out injustice. It’s up to you to hold the system accountable and sometimes upend it entirely. It’s up to you to stand up and to be heard, to write and to lobby, to march, to organize, to vote. Don’t be content to just sit back and watch.

Those who oppose change, those who benefit from an unjust status quo, have always bet on the public’s cynicism or the public's complacency. Throughout American history, though, they have lost that bet, and I believe they will this time as well. (Applause.) But ultimately, Class of 2012, that will depend on you. Don’t wait for the person next to you to be the first to speak up for what’s right. Because maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting on you."

"My last piece of advice -- this is simple, but perhaps most important: Persevere. Persevere. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Noone of achievement has avoided failure -- sometimes catastrophic failures. But they keep at it. They learn from mistakes. They don’t quit."

President Barack Obama
Barnard College graduation
May 14, 2012

And congratulations to the Class of 2012 everywhere

The Monster in the Room

Another way of looking at the reaction to change (see previous post)  is in terms of the principal emotions it engenders.  For some, change represents opportunity, or simply the wonder of the new.  For others it represents danger, a threat.  The emotion it stirs is fear.

Fear is immediate and can be overpowering.  It is meant to motivate--to escape the danger, or to fight off the threat, with little time for thought.  But it can have other effects, especially if the fear is not responding to a threat that is seen and heard.  To a threat that is anticipated, imagined.  Then the reality of the threat is questionable, its imminence and proportions open to being minimized or greatly exaggerated.  Sometimes the response is denial, sometimes paralysis.   If the threat is abstract enough and far enough off in time and space, then denial and paralysis can become rationalized.

ABC News science reporter Bill Blakemore posted a commentary he titled "Hug the Monster’ for Realistic Hope in Global Warming (or How to Transform Your Fearful Inner Climate)"   I've written several posts about "the climate within" on some conceptual tools for understanding responses to the Climate Crisis.  But Blakemore is writing about a specific response to the Climate Crisis, not by denialists or the polled public but by climate scientists and officials.  He reveals:

"Global warming’s “risk to the collective civilization” (meaning global civilization) has been continually spoken of in secret or unofficial or private conversations among engaged climate scientists and government and policy leaders around the world.  Such terms — catastrophe, threat to civilization itself — have been commonplace in carefully worded private discussions among peer-reviewed experts that this reporter and other journalists have often experienced and sometimes engaged in."

But this isn't how many of these people have talked in public about the Climate Crisis.  Blakemore says why:  "Careful not to prompt destructive panic, nor to lose credibility, responsible experts have been careful to temper their public depictions of what the world’s climate science has been revealing about the worst effects — if humanity does not handle the problem immediately — of the rapid climatic and oceanic changes already under way."

Or more specifically:  "A few years ago, this reporter heard a prominent climate and environment scientist speaking at a large but off-the-record conference of experts and policy makers from around the world.... He told us that he and most other climate scientists often simply didn’t want to speak openly about what they were learning about how disruptive and frightening the changes of manmade global warming were clearly going to be for “fear of paralyzing the public.”

But Blakemore is writing about this now because he sees a change.  "References in some media to looming catastrophic consequences of climate change seem to this reporter to be more frequent."  My presumption was that recent research, particularly in the polar regions, has made this clearer and more urgent, but Blakemore suggests there is another reason, which he explains with the metaphor of hugging the monster:

“Hug the monster” is a metaphor taught by U.S. Air Force trainers to those headed into harm’s way.
The monster is your fear in a sudden crisis — as when you find yourself trapped in a downed plane or a burning house. If you freeze or panic — if you go into merely reactive “brainlock” — you’re lost. But if your mind has been prepared in advance to recognize the psychological grip of fear, focus on it, and then transform its intense energy into action — sometimes even by changing it into anger — and by also engaging the thinking part of your brain to work the problem, your chances of survival go way up.

Blakemore suggests that while scientists and officials have been getting used to hugging the monster in their discussions with each other, they are now going public because it's necessary for society as a whole to hug the monster or perish.

Besides officials and scientists, Blakemore also include journalists among those who have been reluctant to talk about the extent of the threat.  He points to a recent article in the New York Times about the possible consequences of the Climate Crisis as one of the indications that reporters as well are ready to hug the monster in public.  "As a growing number of professional journalists around the world are finding, the story of manmade global warming (and the other evil twin of excess carbon emissions, the rapid acidification of the oceans) is unprecedented in its scale, almost “too big to cover,” and frightening. But there are now signs that, little by little, voices and personalities are beginning to emerge around the world who are starting to hug this monster, manage the fear, and turning the emotions it causes into action."

Blakemore quotes a book on the psychology of survivors in life-threatening circumstances: " Survivors aren’t fearless. They use fear: They turn it into anger and focus.’ The good news is that you can learn to subdue the monster and extinguish some of the clanging bells. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Indeed, with enough hugs, you can even tame the beast and turn him into your best friend and most dependable ally.”

Blakemore's article is an important one, and certainly worth reading in its entirety.  It calls for more courageous reporting, and it ends with a "to be continued."  But even in these excerpts, its revelations are huge.  So are its challenges: applying the lessons of survivors of immediate situations to this different order of threat--another way of saying what's always been the challenge here: humanity's opportunity to take a leap forward by anticipating and dealing with a threat to civilization before it becomes simultaneously obvious and unstoppable.

But to circle back to this issue in the context of fast and pervasive change: for people who fear (with some degree of justification) that their way of life is being destroyed by change, there could not be a bigger change than this.  Gay marriage won't mean much in this world.  Plus the dogmas they cling to either discount the possibility of the Climate Crisis, or see it as God's will, as the Final Judgment, as the Apocalypse that will end all this change, forever and ever.   

USA 2012, An Explanation

What can explain this country today?   Issac Newton + Alvin Toffler.

Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock in 1970.  Future Shock is "too much change in too short a time."   It leads to disorientation and dismay.  Remember, that was 1970.  Things were changing--in some ways, we haven't had a more intense period than 1968-1973 since.  But in general, things are changing more and faster--and future shock is a permanent condition, which I experience as moments of anxiety in a vast sea of numbness.  As fast as technological change was in those days, it seems to be much faster now.  And if not a lot faster, social change in a country with roughly twice the population is probably more intense for a lot of people. 

I first encountered Newton as a cartoon figure in a Disneyland episode on space travel.  He intoned the principle used in rocketry: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Put them together, and you've got the USA 2012.   This theory of cultural physics explains the force of reaction by--well, they aren't called reactionaries for nothing.  By the measures of 1970, change is faster, more pervasive and complete, and to this action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  So by the measures of 1970, political and cultural conservatives are more extreme, and religious conservatives are back at least in the 19th century and heading back fast towards, well, Newton. 

So in 2012 we have politicians who are to the right of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Christian churches without a trace of the 20th century.  But the reaction is not exactly along the timeline--it's towards certainties, which are almost always divorced from complex realities.  Certainties in a time of change.

This doesn't mean that the opposing forces are Progress versus Regression.  Yes, a lot of progress has been lost and the forward momentum in some areas has been slowed, stunted, maybe stopped. But essentially this is a reaction to change--change with no identifiable direction to it, except to threaten the status quo.

Another sense of the status quo is homeostasis, the means by which an organism regulates itself and its environment as far as possible, to stay the same.  A threat to that is a threat to life, at least until the change can be assessed, absorbed, accommodated.  Which takes time.

There isn't enough time in this twitterverse.  Technology is assaulting every aspect of our lives at almost every instant, on the scale of tiny devices and global corporations than can eat us alive in the blink of an eye.  In fact, we have every reason to be afraid.   Not that clinging to dogmas and guns will help.  But it does help to explain things.

Toffler + Newton= USA 2012.          

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.