Cold Flute

Excellent Reading! PHYSICS ON THE FRINGE by Margaret Wertheim

2011-11-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Remember when you were a junior in High School and the senior kid who was a science and math whiz and a bit smarmy would announce that we were nothing but bags of bouncing atoms and molecules? You knew the guy was smart but deep down you knew he didn't have all the answers. Things have gotten a lot more complicated since the days of that smarmy kid.

When I first saw Margaret Wertheim's book at the library, I thought it was another book on some of the latest breakthroughs in Physics that don't always make their way into magazines like Scientific American. To be honest, I've been enjoying watching physicists scratch their heads a lot more frequently in the last twenty years. Dark energy, dark matter, and a universe expanding faster than anyone expected have rattled the certainty wagon of the physics world. Look, the accomplishments of physics and other areas of science are quite real. And I love science, I love reading about the latest hunt to understand things, but I freely admit that I find myself rooting for faster than light neutrinos to be confirmed (I know, they probably won't, but.... Ah, the but is everything).

As it turned out, Wertheim's book, Physics on the Fringe, is about another fringe in physics: the outsiders who dabble in physics and who sometimes say very interesting things while constructing their own version of the universe....or just something about ordinary physics, as they see it. Briefly, I considered putting the book down, but it got interesting fast. Among other characters, the main outsider Wertheim chronicles is a guy named Jim Carter, who has thought up several theories of physics by actually doing experiments and modeling. The guy is never far off. He has a Periodic Table of the elements that's done his way and it actually makes a bit of sense.

Wertheim isn't necessarily buying Jim Carter's theories but she's clearly sympathetic. He's a bright man, self-taught, with lots of ideas and experiences. His books, experiments, and illustrations are works of art. By the end, thanks to Wertheim's careful attention to what Carter is doing is doing and saying, you actually learn a few things from the man: there really is more than one way to look at the universe.

To drive home the point, Wertheim notes that 'legitmate' string theorists in high level research institutes are actually, one could argue, getting even more theoretical and speculative than science outsiders like Carter (hey at least Carter does experiments and has a useful invention or two under his belt). I've heard about this aspect of string theory but haven't encountered a detail that Wertheim provides: that string theorists are contemplating a very, very large number of possible universes that may exist according to the hyperflexible and complex math of string theory. The number of possible universes that string theory apparently says could exist is something like 10 to the 500th power, more possible theories of everything, in one sense, than there are atoms in our entire universe.

Wertheim's obserservations are consistent with some observations I've had. For one thing, some older physicists who have doubts about the enthusiasm of the string theorists grudgingly admit that things are getting more complicated, but they find themselves wondering if philosophers—real hard-nosed philosophers of science perhaps—are now needed to help clarify what it is physics should be trying to accomplish going forward. The issues are becoming increasingly philosophical or, at least if I'm reading Wertheim correctly, aesthetic.

But I would add another possibility. Perhaps mathematics is becoming so flexible that it can 'explain' anything without actually, at a certain point, being testable or even practical beyond much of the physics that is already established. By all means, the physics we know explains a great deal, but perhaps it's a delusion that it can explain everything. Or, perhaps as Wertheim seems to suggest, we need more explanations than what the theorists can provide.

I highly recommend Wertheim's smart and readable book. She respects both mainstream physicists and the outsider natural philosophers. She also reminds us of that sense of curiosity and wonder that led us all to science in the first place.

Friday Night Poetry: Pushkin

2011-01-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

Aleksandr Pushkin was a Russian poet from the early 19th century. In Russia, even in the time of the Tsars, a poet always had to be a little careful. But in this poem, Puskin was young.

Seclusion

Blessed is he who in secluded leisure,
Far from an idiot's brazen ways,
Between hard work and lazy pleasure—
old thoughts and new hopes—divides his days—
And whose friends by gentle fate were chosen
So as to rescue him, lucky pup,
Both from that character who sends you dozing,
And from that character who wakes you up.

—Aleksandr Pushkin

The Republican Party and the Beast It Serves

2010-10-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

Big business owns the Republican Party. The people on Wall Street who caused the economic meltdown are donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party. For many years, Republicans have been good at changing the subject and stirring up anger. They have not been good at taking an honest look at the world that now exists and what we need to do about it.

In truth, the leadership of the Republican Party has little idea of what it's doing and how to solve any of America's problems. No one exemplifies this more than Rep. Michele Bachmann. Here's a few words concerning an interview with the astonishing Bachmann from by a site that closely watches Republican right wingers:

Despite the fact that she generally has no idea what she is talking about, Rep. Michele Bachmann is planning on holding weekly classes on the Constitution for new members in the next Congress.

(snip)
Q. If, with a snap of your fingers, you could change anything about America, what would it be?

A. Reduce the federal government to its original size and constitutional limitations and to restore the 9th and 10th amendments.

Of course, the population of the United States back when the government was at its "original size" was just under 4 million - it is now over 310 million.

Forget for a moment what an ignoramus Bachmann is. Like many right wingers, she simply puts together a hodge podge of conservative talking points, random articles, email propaganda (usually in the form of jokes or screaming from the rooftops histrionics about the end of the world for things like fair and honest healthcare reform) and hallucinations by people like Rush Limbaugh. Now and then, these conservatives pick up a smattering of honest facts but have no idea what to do with them or how to put them into context.

So, just what would be the consequences of smaller government? Three things. Bigger businesses with much more clout over our lives. Smaller wages. And the wealth of all Americans concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer super-wealthy individuals. It is always what happens when the rich and powerful do not have the counterbalance of democratic government. Dear Michele, the rich and powerful men back in old England is what the colonists were fighting against.

Here's another post, this one concerning an observation about business that more and more people have been noticing in the last thirty years of what has been a very conservative era:

...my basic grievance against big companies is that when they screw up they take 6-8 weeks to fix it, usually after multiple phone calls and whatnot, but if I screw up a penalty is immediately levied. This happens on every scale, from billing snafus with $7 fees, to cases of people being foreclosed on even though they had never missed a payment and spent money on lawyers to prove this...

A good example of this type of thing is trying to get medical approval from the bureaucracy that has been created by big business. I'm old enough to remember when a single nurse or maybe a nurse and receptionist were all that was needed to handle prepping, appointments, billing and insurance for a doctor. It's not the government creating all the restrictions, requirements, catch-22s and other nonsense that screws millions of Americans in the health sector alone. It's big business. More important, it's insurance monopolies dedicated to the principle of making themselves filthy rich rather than serving the American people. There was a time when insurance people were proud to serve their clients.

What's changed? It's not that hard to explain. Today, whether it's healthcare, your phone company, the TV cable company, your gas and power company, the various gas stations where you fill up your car, or the many stores and many businesses where you get the things you need, business executives who run these companies have one thing in common: they think of Americans as fat cows to be milked, bled and carved. That is the reality that exists in 2010, and that is the system Republican politicians wholeheartedly do their best to support. Why? Because partly it satisfies their conservative bent, but largely because it's financially lucrative.

Let's be honest about Republican politicians in Washington. Here's a few problems the Republicans refuse to solve.

1. The mortgage crisis is out of control. Republicans make noise but refuse to actually do anything.

2. Healthcare costs are out of sight, but many Republicans are funded by insurance companies who don't want the monopoly in their state disturbed.

3. Most scientists consider global warming to be one of the biggest threats facing civilization. The Republican solution is to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

4. The world is growing faster than our energy resources. The Republican solution is to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

5. We are having to buy more and more oil from foreign countries as our own production slowly continues to decline. The Republican solution is to pretend we can make up for lost production by drilling for oil. In the meantime, major Republican donors are making a fortune buying that foreign oil from others and passing on the oil to the American consumer for a nice fat profit. This perpetual game of buying foreign oil does not create jobs for Americans. Pursuing renewable energy at home as a way to avoid sending our money overseas would create thousands of jobs for every billionaire making a fat profit buying oil from OPEC. That ladies and gentlemen is a fact. Not a single oil job in America that already exists need be affected. It will take two or three decades simply to ramp up alternative energy while doing nothing more than largely replacing foreign oil.

6. More and more jobs are being sent overseas to China or other countries who offer cheap labor. Keep in mind that Republicans despise American workers. The philosophy of wealthy and upper middle class Republicans is to overvalue what they do for the average American and undervalue what the average American does for them. This too is a fact. Republicans are big on national security but more and more things that we need for our defense are being built outside the United States. It is a foolish policy and is asking for trouble down the road. But major Republican donors don't want their China connections disturbed.

The list goes on. And yet, Americans are seriously thinking of sending a majority of Republicans to the House and Senate. All that will do is weaken the United States and make almost everyone poorer, except the rich Republicans who are paying the campaigns bills to get what they want. We are in danger of getting right back to where we were just before the economic meltdown.

The way forward is solving our problems, not playing word games. It is what a majority of Democrats are trying to do, but they're not getting much help.

Karl Rove Once Again Backed by the Super-Wealthy

2010-09-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

He's back. Karl Rove, who helped elect one of our nation's worst presidents not once but twice is back to his old tricks. This is the guy who scared the nation with those phony aluminum tubes back in 2002 and helped throw our nation into a war we did not need, while President Bush let Osama bin Laden get away.

Let's be clear about this. George W. Bush is responsible for the economic meltdown. He did nothing to stop the wild real estate speculation. He did nothing to help homeowners once the mortgage debacle began to unfold. He did nothing to enforce the law when it comes to bank and Wall Street. In 2002, he signed a business reform bill and stuck the legislation in his desk without any intention of enforcing the law. Who got Bush elected? Karl Rove. Who got Bush elected a second time? Karl Rove. Who's allied to the most conservative and incompetent elements of the Republican Party? Karl Rove.

Here's an article I found in the Los Angeles Times about one of the slipperiest political operators the Republicans have working for them:

The office is marked only by a sign reading "American Crossroads" and "American Action Network." But behind the nondescript entrance is the headquarters of a new political power: a fundraising operation that has pulled in more than $32 million this year, as well as sophisticated marketing, research and advertising operations — all aimed at getting Republicans elected to the House and Senate.

(snip)

American Crossroads and its affiliates are the offspring of George W. Bush administration strategist Karl Rove and other senior GOP leaders who once worked within the regular party structure, especially the Republican National Committee and its tradition-encrusted headquarters near the Capitol.

(snip)

Many of the new groups were formed after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year, which made it easier for corporations and unions to spend directly on political causes. New groups formed on the left and right, but the dramatic growth has been on the right.

There's a lot more money going to Karl than that $32 million. He's a slick coordinator who know how to hide money from contributors. Karl Rove and his friends are taking a ton of money from right-wing billionaires, exactly the same clowns who supported George W. Bush, and exactly the same clowns who supported the legislation and policies of Republicans that sent our economy into the tank. If you're out of work, if you're worried about your home, or you're wondering when the economy will recover, Karl Rove and his friends are responsible. Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich have been telling Republicans to block every effort by President Obama to get the economy moving. Obama has moved in the right direction, but if it had not be for the Republicans, the economy would be in much better shape today. And yet the Republicans have the gall to ask for your vote.

The New York Times has details on some of the planning by Karl Rove and other Republicans who were part of the Bush Administration or closely associated to it:

...the Republican fund-raiser Fred Malek, the onetime lobbyist and Bush White House counselor Ed Gillespie, and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary Cheney, among others — agreed on plans for an ambitious new political machine that would marshal the resources of disparate business, nonprofit and interest groups to bring Republicans back to power this fall.

(snip)

[Karl Rove] has had a major hand in helping to summon the old coalition of millionaires and billionaires who supported Mr. Bush and have huge financial stakes in regulatory and tax policy...

Folks, this is what you call business as usual politics. Karl Rove and his friends are not smart enough or honest enough to keep the economy from going into the ditch, but they're smart enough to help their wealthy friends, exactly the kind of people who created the economic mess in the first place. Think of all the money they fed to friends like Halliburton. Think of all the money they fed to their rich cronies during Hurricane Katrina without actually accomplishing anything. This is a slick crowd: they know how to talk and how to raise money from conservative billionaires, but they're a danger to every working American, retired seniors and the future of every child. These are guys who live for today with no regard for the jobs being sent overseas and no regard for millions of Americans looking for a decent way forward in tough times.

Now Rove and his friends are a bit smarter, however, than the Tea Party Mad Hatters, but nevertheless, they are willing to work with them (or roll them?) in order to win the election. There should be no mistake about who's going to be in charge if the Republicans take the House and Senate: the old Bush crowd. The Democrats still have work to do but if Republicans are back in power, watch out. With Republicans controlling the agenda, it won't take much time for the economy to go right back into the ditch, right where George W. Bush and Karl Rove put us in the first place.

Friday Night Poetry: A Basho Haiku

2010-08-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

Shambhala, a not so small press, put out The Essential Basho in 1999. Basho's poems are translated by Sam Hamill, founder of the Copper Canyon Press and a fine poet in his own right.

For those who don't know, Basho was a Buddhist poet who lived from 1644 to 1694.

Lord Yoshitomo's
heart must closely resemble
this cold autumn wind.

—Basho

Hmm, even Buddhist priests can't help thinking about politicians from time to time. We seem to have a few Lord Yoshitomos in our time too. Across centuries and oceans, things often remain the same.

Social Security and the Relabeling of George W. Bush

2010-08-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

Republicans have a bad product but they can't sell it. They believe the product is just a matter of labeling and that labeling for eight years was George W. Bush. Without a doubt, George W. Bush is one of the worst presidents in our nation's history. Bush is responsible for two wars, the fiasco at Katrina and the economic meltdown that began in 2007 and became increasingly dramatic in the late summer of 2008. Republicans, seeing disaster in the 2008 elections, did their best to distance themselves from George W. Bush. Never mind that they voted for everything Bush wanted and blocked every effort by Democrats for more responsible legislation. They think they can sell the same bad product simply by removing "George W. Bush" from the label.

It should be understood that the economic meltdown of 2008 was the proof that Republicans don't know much these days about economics. They think cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, hiring crooked corporations like Halliburton to build things in Iraq, privatizing the military and FEMA, giving their friends sweetheart no-bid contracts, killing corporate reform (while pretending to pass reform), sending jobs overseas, buying fossil fuels from OPEC and fueling an essentially crooked real estate boom as far as the eye could see was somehow going to be good for America.

When it all came crashing down, the Republicans in Congress denied they had anything to do with the mess. In fact, they're now selling the same garbage that got us into trouble by pretending that because George W. Bush is no longer president, that changes everything. Except that the Republicans are still peddling the same nonsense. It just no longer has George W. Bush's name attached to the same agenda.

An example is Social Security. Republicans are still pushing the privatization of Social Security, just as George W. Bush pushed the same nonsense. Oh, they like to change the name in one breath, deny it's privatization in the next breath, and sweet talk conservative brokers into making huge campaign contributions so they can dig into all that potential privatization money in the final breath.

I can't put it more plainly than this: privatization is privatization is privatization, no matter what you call it. If you like privatization, you must think crooked corporations like Halliburton are the best thing that's ever happened to America.

What gives the Republicans away is that instead of saying that Social Security will go bankrupt in twenty years (which it won't), they now claim Social Security will be broke in 2010, 2012, or 2016 (which is ludicruous). Everything, so Republicans say, has to be fixed in a hurry and by golly they got just the deal for you. So you hear scary language followed by the same scam that George W. Bush tried to peddle. Republican politicians aren't talking about Social Security because they care about the American people—they're talking about Social Security so they can reap all those campaign contributions (and potential sweetheart deals) from the stock brokers (many of whom are the same folks who almost brought down the economy in 2008).

Here's what President Obama had to say on Saturday (via The Washington Monthly):

After noting the privatization debate of 2005, the president said, "I'd have thought that debate would've been put to rest once and for all by the financial crisis we've just experienced. I'd have thought, after being reminded how quickly the stock market can tumble, after seeing the wealth people worked a lifetime to earn wiped out in a matter of days, that no one would want to place bets with Social Security on Wall Street; that everyone would understand why we need to be prudent about investing the retirement money of tens of millions of Americans.

"But some Republican leaders in Congress don't seem to have learned any lessons from the past few years. They're pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall. It's right up there on their to-do list with repealing some of the Medicare benefits and reforms that are adding at least a dozen years to the fiscal health of Medicare -- the single longest extension in history.

"That agenda is wrong for seniors, it's wrong for America, and I won't let it happen. Not while I'm President. I'll fight with everything I've got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street."

Let's hope Obama comes out fighting in the next week or two, and fights all the way to November. For eight years, Republicans were a disaster for America. We're still paying the price, particularly homeowners and laid-off workers from coast to coast, from Corpus Christi to Portland, Maine. Ever since pragmatism went awol in the Republican Party, a large majority of Americans have been paying the price. Until the Republicans reform their party and shed themselves of the lunatic fringe, what makes anyone think they'll do better the next time?

Friday Night Poetry: Classical Poetry

2010-05-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a poem from classical times. I can't find decent information on Lucilius but he lived at least a couple of thousand years ago. His poem sounds like Falstaff or modern slapstick.

The Timid Veteran

Calpurnius, our favorite miles gloriosus,
Strayed into an art gallery, and there
Ran into a mural of the Trojan War.

He goggled, swooned, crying I yield

O comrade Trojans, belov'd of the War-God!

We brought him to.
He asked where he was wounded,
And insisted on paying ransom to the wall.

—Lucilius

Friday NIght Poetry - Du Fu

2010-03-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

Du Fu, a classical Chinese poet known forty years ago as Tu Fu, lived from 712 to 770. Like many classical Chinese poets, he spent years far from home.

Spring

1.

Rivers and low mountains
in the broad light of noon.

Cool fragrant winds flowing
through flowers and spice plants.

Swallows building their nests
with pecks of wet mud.

Ducks hunkered down
in the warm sand.

2.

White egrets reflected
in the blue river.

Red flowers flaring
on the green slopes.

I watch
this parade of wealth

thinking, even so,
that it's time to go home.

—Du Fu

The Pathetic Howard Kurtz

2010-03-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

Poor Howie, he's tired. The House has passed one of the most important pieces of legislation in years and all Howard Kurtz can do is whine about how hard it is to be a journalist. Millions of Americans are chained to a job for fear that they will lose health insurance for a loved one and all Howie can think about is being chained to one of the most important stories in a generation. No doubt, he at least has good health insurance. Here's his first paragraph, which seems to pass for great journalism in the pages of The Washington Post these days:

As House members spent Sunday droning on while heading toward final approval of President Obama's health-care bill, the end was in sight for journalists who have been chained to this complicated, arcane, often tedious story for 14 long months.

A lot of us without health insurance are tired too. With the passage of health care, just maybe, just maybe, we'll start seeing more legislation to make us proud after eight years of a failed presidency and thirty years of mediocre politics. I am tired of right wing politicians trying to drag us back to the 19th century. To my mind, we need more Democrats elected to Congress this fall so that we can move forward with the reforms our country so desperately needs.

By the way, with one stroke, Nancy Pelosi has done more for millions of Americans than any Republican in a generation.

Friday Night Poetry: A Communist Revolts

2010-02-18T18:08:00.000-08:00

One of the amazing stories of the last 60 years are the writers and artists behind the Iron Curtain who fought for a middle way between communism and right wing ideologies. I don't know much of Laszlo Benjamin's history (1915-??) except that in 1955 he was a communist party member who revolted against the system. After the Russians put down the Hungarians in 1956, it's unlikely Benjamin would have gotten far without recanting or burrowing deep into the system somewhere. But there were many writers and artists all over Eastern Europe who saw the walls come down in 1989, some 33 years later. Was Benjamin one of them? I don't know.

The poem below was translated by Edwin Morgan. I only offer the first four stanzas. The rest can be found in Modern Hungarian Poetry, edited by Miklos Vajda. Many libraries still carry copies.

Poem By an Unknown Poet from the Mid-Twentieth Century

They ranged themselves in facing lines
—switches would soon be thrust in their hands—
and we were braced to run the gauntlet
down through that pure and heartless band.

It is to induce salvation in us
that ethics swishes from both sides;
and if not by fear and humiliation,
we're bent by chronic belly-gripes.

Endless vigilance, the very virtues
thumped into my long-hunted spine
cheated me of my power to act,
that many-splendored only-mine.

Between four-dimensional hell and
two-dimensional heaven, intention
is no more than a scurrying shadow,
reality a fading apparition.

******

—Laszlo Benjamin

Friday Night Poetry - Tao Chien

2010-02-05T23:04:00.000-08:00

Like the Romans and other builders of empire, the ancient Chinese would send their soldiers to conquer faraway places. Not a few died along the way. This poem takes place in autumn but it seems as cold as our own winter has been at times.

A reluctant soldier, Tao Chien was more a bureaucrat stuck with a stretch of military duty. Actually, like many others, he was happiest when he was deep in contemplation or taking long walks, writing poetry or drinking wine with friends.

Like many soldiers, he wasn't sure he was coming back home.

Death in the Far Lands

Here, the grass goes on and on.
Below, white poplars go shoo, shoo,
the frost biting in the late fall.
You have sent me off as a bearer
where all around no man lives.
Tall crags close in like ghosts,
horses rear, neighing at the night sky.
From the ravine, the wind comes alone—
death has walked here before.
I will never again see the dawn.
I will never again see the dawn.
Here, the wise can do nothing.
All mourners who have come before
surely return to their home.
Surely faraway relatives will grieve
and others will return to their songs.
But where will the dead go?
This one nestles in a mountain niche.

—Tao Chien (365-427)

Supreme Court Decision Invites More Corruption

2010-01-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

I believe the government of the United States, as well as its courts, have allowed corporations to become more important than the people of the United States. The evidence? The number of American jobs that have been outsourced overseas. For years, some corporations have been violating their original charter according to American law: to act in the public interest.

So I'm not happy with the Supreme Court decision. In fact, I'm disturbed by the Republicans wildly cheering the decision and I'm disturbed by some of the justifications for the decision. Kevin Drum writes:

There's also the nature of corporations vs. individuals. Corporations do have First Amendment rights, but to call corporations mere "organized groups of people," as Glenn [Greenwald] does, seriously obscures some genuine distinctions. Modern corporations are far more than that, and long precedent recognizes this by allowing them fewer speech rights than individuals. ...it's perfectly defensible to suggest that corporations might also have more restricted rights when it comes to campaign speech.

On the other hand, there's no question that political speech is at the core of the First Amendment. Restricting commercial speech is one thing, but restricting political speech, no matter who's doing it, ought to raise much louder alarm bells.

I respect Kevin for trying to give a nuanced perspective but there are too many major problems. Corporations, far more than our government, dominate our society and there is very little the average citizen can do about it. Even without the Supreme Court decision, corporations have little trouble funding lobbyists, think tanks, friendly university research, sizable honorariums to sympathetic journalists for a one hour speech, and various other gimmicks that reflect the power not of an ''association of individuals," but very powerful people, usually small in number, who control corporations. That is a fact.

I have always despised the argument that the power of corporations is offset by the power of unions. The reality is that the people who control a corporation rarely number more than a hundred to two hundred people. Generally speaking, there might be a hundred thousand shareholders who own 30%, a thousand who own 15% and the rest is owned and controlled by a small number of wealthy people. In no meaningful sense is there democracy in most corporations. In contrast, a union might have 200,000 members, all of whom get one vote.

I don't mind people who have more money than I do. But I do resent when a wealthy person can grab a megaphone and drown out not only my voice but the voice of thousands. I don't really have a problem limiting wealthy people to $23,000 a year for political contributions and $2300 per candidate. Despite the fact that I have to think twice about a $50 contribution or two, I know ways to get my voice heard with the help of others who think along similar lines. If corporate contributions are unlimited, however, we could very easily lose our democracy.

Right wing leaders of the Republican Party love having more power than the rest of us. That's why they cheered the Supreme Court decision so loud. They have a cozy and corrupt relationship with the dark side of American business.

One of the possible outcomes of the Supreme Court decision is that it may open the door to foreign influence by investment in American corporations. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo points out that:

...the recent Supreme Court decision gives foreigners basically an unfettered right to spend money on US elections -- China, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, take your pick. The majority tried to paper over this. But now foreign corporations, foreign individuals and even foreign governments can use corporations as pass-throughs to spend millions or tens of millions of dollars supporting their candidate of choice in a US election.

In fact, why bother with normal corporations? Whether it's foreigners or a bunch of corrupt politicians, corporations law can be used for anything. Even if foreign corporations and foreign investors are forbidden from being involved in American campaigns, there would be nothing to stop them from buying a few American board members glad to take a few bucks and create a corporation whose only purpose is to influence politics. Of course there are wealthy right wingers like Rupert Murdoch who love power and money games far too much. Murdoch already has too much power even without the Supreme Court decision.

For a long time, too many Americans have been more worried about big government than big business. But it's big business that is dismantling the American way of life. The majority on the Supreme Court has just aggravated the problem.

Chevron and Its Claim of Energy Efficiency

2010-01-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

First, two caveats.

1. Just about every oil company in the world, including Chevron, is under attack for one reason or another. Sometimes the attacks have legitimate reasons behind them and sometimes the attacks are rhetorical overkill. My post is more in the category of simple reality check.

2. Chevron doesn't have the aggressive anti-environmental record of Exxon and it doesn't have the aggressively hypocritical reputation of British Petroleum (BP) which for some years touted its environmental record while not being so green behind the scenes. Chevron isn't as bad as some oil companies but it's still an oil company. And oil companies need good public relations these days no matter who they are.

I noticed an ad the other day in Technology Review, February 2010. The ad is on page 2 and part of it reads:

At Chevron, we've focused on energy efficiency for decades. Since 1992, we've improved the energy efficiency of our own global operations by 28%. And with Chevron Energy Solutions we help other businesses and governments do the same—from Colorado where we're upgrading municipal buildings to reduce energy costs by 24% to 30%—to Pennsylvania where we're helping schools reduce their energy bills by more than a million dollars a year.

I don't argue the basic honesty of what's being said except to say that it's incomplete and therefore misleading. Energy efficiency is real as well as important if you're installing LEDs or weather-proofing buildings. But such things are not the only energy efficiency games in town.

The truth is that it's getting harder and harder to drill for oil. It takes more money, people, equipment and, yes, energy to create energy. That's efficiency going in the wrong direction.

Also, as oil companies find less and less light sweet crude, they have to turn to heavy oil which is clearly less efficient to refine. To turn heavy oil into gasoline requires high heat and high pressure, both of which take more energy.

Finally, most of what an oil company produces is used to provide fossil fuels for transportation. But cars based on diesel and gasoline are not as efficient as cars that use—or mostly use—electricity from power companies. Fueling a battery by plugging into the power grid is far more efficient than fueling a car with gasoline.

Even when power grids get their energy from plants that burn fossil fuels, electric cars are still more efficient. In the long run, however, power plants are going to have to switch to sustainable forms of energy such as solar and wind.

The Chevron ad begin with the sentence: "Every dollar invested in energy efficiency today could return two dollars in energy savings." Again, energy efficiency of the kind Chevron is promoting happens to be important. But eighty years ago a dollar's worth of energy invested in an oil field produced a hundred dollars worth of energy.

Today, in Texas, some oil wells now use more energy than they produce. Why? Because arcane laws, subsidies and tax rules make it profitable. On the other hand, there are wind turbines that return 30-60 dollars of energy for every dollar of energy invested. Something needs to change.

Although there are plenty of oil wells in the world that return excellent net energy, the reality is that worldwide the net energy per barrel of oil drops yearly as more energy is required to produce that barrel. Oil is refined into many different products and we as consumers can't easily see how energy is used to make energy but let me offer a rough metaphor of sorts: for every 100 gallons of gasoline we put in our cars, we used to give the oil companies a gallon back to go out and find more oil, pump it, refine it and transport it to our gas tank. Now for every 100 gallons we put in our cars, we have to give back anywhere from 3 to 10 gallons depending on who's providing our oil (if you get your gas exclusively from those handful of inefficient Texas wells, you might as well get a horse!).

Oil companies are going to be in business for many years to come simply because it's going to take at least twenty years to build a truly efficient energy infrastructure that is sustainable and sensible, but the oil companies, Chevron included, are going to have to change.

Health Care Reform Perspective

2009-12-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

First, Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year. And if you celebrate other holidays, I offer my wishes for a fine holiday wherever you may be.

I remember when I was a kid my older brothers and some neighborhood kids were always wishing for more than they got. My oldest brother, for example, wished for a surfboard and got less expensive gifts instead. He grumbled but other kids in the neighborhood would have been delighted with what he got.

We need a better health care bill than the one that was passed in the Senate but at least we got one and that is more than we could have said a year ago. It's amazing that a combination of Republicans and a handful of Democrats can't see their way into the future. Too much emotion in politics I guess. That applies to both sides at times and I worry that Obama is focused more on the tensions than he is on explaining where we are and what needs to be done. One thing for sure is that shrillness from the left doesn't always help.

Over at Americablog, John Aravois and his blogging partners always seem to believe that more emotion is better than no emotion and a little spinning is acceptable since the other guys does it even more (or something like that).

Joe Sudbay on Thursday got sarcastic when he wrote about the health care bill:

Sounds good, some of those "special interest lobbyists" earned their money on this bill -- and they were aided and abetted by Obama's staff (e.g. that multi-billion dollar sweetheart deal for drug makers. And, insurance company lobbyists aren't unhappy these days either. But, apparently, we're supposed to overlook that now.)

I agree Obama should have helped more but the House and Senate are fully capable of passing a first-rate health care bill. The problem is that while Republicans have been drifting to the far right over the last thirty years, Democrats have drifted a little to the right themselves.

During the Nixon and Ford era Democrats passed some first-rate legislation despite the threat of veto. But then they sometimes had the help of a few moderate Republicans. The real problem, though, is twofold: First, Americans still do not understand how much big business pushes our government around these days and they do not understand how much Republicans give them everything they want. Second, Democrats have gone so long without dominating Washington they have lost some of their skills and some of their best legislators.

After all is said and done, we still have a health care bill that hopefully will reach Obama's desk.

Anyone who thinks Obama and a Democratic majority can turn Washington around in two years hasn't really been paying attention to how much our society has changed and how much work it now takes to bring about change.

I don't want to defend Obama too much on the health care bill. On the other hand, any number of bloggers have let their emotions override their judgment. John Aravois, the main blogger at Americablog, quoted a Washington Post article:

Obama said the public option "has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right." But, he added, "I didn't campaign on the public option."

Aravois then tried to give examples that aren't particularly convincing:

Sure you didn't. That's why there's video, and countless news stories with you talking about it over and over again.

(snip)

Obama to the Washington Post in 2008:
Every American has the right to affordable, comprehensive and portable health coverage. My plan will ensure that all Americans have health care coverage through their employers, private health plans, the federal government, or the states. My plan builds on and improves our current insurance system, which most Americans continue to rely upon, and creates a new public health plan for those currently without coverage. Under my plan, Americans will be able to choose to maintain their current coverage if they choose to. For those without health insurance I will establish a new public insurance program, and provide subsides to afford care for those who need them.

Aravois would be more convincing if there were better examples. The word "public" is not the same thing as the public option that has been discussed for eight months. What I remember is that Obama's health plan was always less ambitious than the one put forward by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. There are times when Obama said he would accept the public option plan being discussed in the House but I never had the impression he was initiating such discussions or pushing hard for it. Fine. Shame on Obama for not working harder for healthcare reform. But the real shame falls on the Senate for not getting the job done.

Aravois has gotten shrill at times and emotional to the point of being off-putting. Yeah, fight for what you believe. But leave the spinning to the politicians.

The real fight is not whether Obama is progressive enough. The real fight is expanding the progressive movement and doing it in a smart way that pulls people in rather than expressing strong anger, resentment and outrage.

Researchers have now taught us a few things about emotion. We know it's part of politics. But Aravois needs to understand how it works. Strong emotion always appeals to the base, whether on the left or right. Well, strong emotions are important but they don't win arguments and in this age they don't necessarily win people over.

Aravois and others need a strategy that helps people see what's going on without all the emotional tripe that shuts down the ability of people to listen. Obviously the Republicans in Congress aren't interested in listening or accomplishing anything beyond obstructing Obama and progressives in Congress. Who will listen, however, are people who feel something is wrong but they aren't sure what. Screaming at them and telling half-truths is not the way to go.

People are turning away from politics. It's exhausting and Republicans are gleeful because their strategy works for their style of politics which ultimately is destructive rather than constructive as these guys continue to join big business lobbying firms after a few years in Congress.

Democrats need a more patient and intelligent tack that includes a passionate rhetorical style that draws people in rather than putting them off. In this season of fellowship and good will, it's something to think about.

Friday Night Poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke

2009-12-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

Evening

Slowly, the dusk wraps itself in the cloak
held for it at the dark edge of old trees;
you watch: the surrounding lands part from you,
one heavenward, one absorbed by the fall;

and leave you, belonging to neither realm,
not quite so dim as the empty stone house,
not quite at all invoking the eternal
as the flight of stars that sweep through the night;

and leave you—so unable to give speech—
your life—fearing, so large, ripening—
becomes now bearable, comprehending,
by turns the stone and star present in you.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Friday Night Poetry: Pablo Neruda

2009-12-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

It seems most of the poems I post are from the U.S., Europe, China or Japan. Below is a translation of Pablo Neruda, the famous poet from Chile who died in 1971. Neruda's books can be found at Amazon.com; also, here's a bio on Wikipedia and more information from POETS.org.

XII (from Twenty Love Poems)

Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.

In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horion with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.

I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul.

The above poem was translated by W. S. Merwin, one of the finest American poets and winner this year of the Pulitzer Prize for his book of poems, The Shadow of Sirius. Merwin is also a first-rate translator.

What People Actually Do

2009-12-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

I do a lot of political commentary but I don't want to make to0 much of the photo above. I found it on Mother Jones and started laughing when I realized no one was precisely following the abrupt turns of the blue line. Of course not. The people at the Copenhagen conference were walking casually in a straight line. Let's hope they can cobble together a global warming policy that's as sensible as the way they walk.

Actually, just to add a 'footnote,' planners who design big college campuses have in recent years refrained from putting in too many walkways. Why? Because it's easier to see where people start walking and pour the cement later. That's a kind of pragmatism one can admire.

Friday NIght Poetry: Li Po

2009-12-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

I don't know the history behind the following Chinese poem but the image it conjures is extraordinarily evocative. It was translated by Burton Watson. The poem can be found in The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry.

Autumn Cove

At Autumn Cove, so many white monkeys,
bounding, leaping up like snowflakes in flight!
They coax and pull their young ones down from the branches
to drink and frolic with the water-borne moon.

—Li Po (701-762)

Why I Don't Read Murdoch's New York Post

2009-12-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when you read Google News a headline catches your eye and you feel compelled to check it out. Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw was in an accident Friday afternoon. I didn't like the sensationalistic turn on some of the headlines but the Post surprised me by having what seemed a reasonable headline, "Tom Brokaw OK after Car Crash on Bruckner Expressway." So I thought I would check it out.

The Post writer, Kirsten Fleming, was doing fine until near the end of the story:

"Tom and Meredith are greatly saddened by this loss of life," said a flak for the newsman and his wife in a statement issued this afternoon.

Flak? I can see that in catty political commentary I suppose, but in a straight news story, particularly one that involved a tragedy? Somebody died in an accident immediately in front of the Brokaws and its lucky nothing happened to them too. No wonder the Post has a low reputation.

Actually, in retrospect I have other problems with the story but I'll let others who know the Post cover that. In this holiday season I hope drivers and writers slow down and think a bit—and please tie down those Christmas trees and loose cables.

Sarah Palin Wants Second Chance, Third Chance, Fourth Chance....

2009-11-27T17:04:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin wants to be a celebrity and she wants to be filthy rich. Given her temperament there are several paths she might have chosen. I'm surprised she didn't pick religion but maybe there weren't enough people in Alaska to go that route. So she picked politics.

Ever since Sony decided to pay Ronald Reagan to come to Japan and accept a check for two million dollars, the lucrative haul of politics seems to have become a presidential option for those who have followed since. The thing with Palin is that she wants to haul it in even if she doesn't get elected.

Of course there's that issue of actually having some ability and at least knowing what you're talking about (that didn't seem to stop Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush but both served longer terms as governor than the you betcha novice from Alaska). Actually given the mess that the junior President Bush left behind, I'm surprised anyone on the political spectrum wants to encourage anyone with so little ability and experience as Sarah Palin but right wingers seem to be gluttons for punishment.

There was an article in The Huffington Post the other day that Sarah Palin's handlers had to cancel an interview during the campaign last year because she didn't know enough about Hispanic issues. Palin is not exactly what you would call a quick study despite repeated efforts to bring her up to date. But what caught my attention was this particular part of the article:

Jason Recher, a senior campaign adviser to Palin now working on her book tour, dismissed the story and took a shot at Navarro for dwelling on last year's news.

So, according to this kind of thinking, we'll be out of line next year if we point out that Sarah Palin is a quitter, that she quit being governor after only two and half years, that part of her reason for quitting was that she wanted to make money and couldn't figure out a way around those pesky ethics rules. We'll be out of line, according to the fantasy that persists in her camp, to note how much money she is making from her speeches and books. We'll be out of line to talk about her record or her inability to talk truthfully and accurately about what is going on in the world and what the consequences will be of legislation before Congress. The only thing that will count is that Sarah Palin is a darling of the right and that her fantasies are somehow relevant to the future of the United States.

If the voters are smarter than Sarah Palin, which they usually have been throughout our history, we can rest easy and she will not be the next president of the United States. But these are strange times.

Last year Palin tapped into that canard of Drill, Baby, Drill. Oil production in the United States has been falling since the 1970s. It will continue to fall and we will continue to make huge payments to foreign oil producers. Drill, Baby, Drill feeds the illusion that we have lots of time to switch from depleting supplies of oil to an economy based on sustainable energy.

We just wasted eight years with George W. Bush. We cannot afford to waste any more time on empty slogans that fill the pockets of the very rich. Ah, but being very rich is exactly what Palin wants.

The Age of "Cheap" Oil Is Over

2009-11-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

In the United States, the production of oil in the lower 48 reached its maximum in the early 1970s. A few years later, there was a small upward bounce when production began on the North Slope of Alaska. Sometimes politicians play games with the extra oil we received from Alaska but the reality is that at no time did the production in the lower 48 plus production from the North Slope ever surpass the oil production of the early 1970s. We've been in decline ever since.

That means any additional oil for U.S. consumption has had to come from elsewhere, hence the huge payments we make to foreign countries who sell us oil. I've known since the 1970s that we have a problem. In retrospect, the oil from Alaska was a gift that was misunderstood and misused. Despite what any number of self-serving politicians have claimed, Alaska did not "solve" our energy crisis, but it might have given us time to build a proper energy infrastructure for the 21st century.

I'm very concerned about oil depletion but I'm not much of a Peak Oil buff, or at least as it is described sometimes in the media. I have no idea if world oil production has peaked for good or whether we might once again in the near future break the production record. I don't really care about the date of Peak Oil and given the manipulations of various politicians and oil companies, it easily morphs into vague redefinitions. Having said that, however, I'm very concerned about the politics of oil and the failure to start moving toward the actions we need to take if we are to have a reasonably bearable transition from an age of oil to something that is more sustainable.

On The Oil Drum today, which is one of the best sources for understanding energy depletion, there is a post by Nate Hagens that carries a letter by Colin Campbell, one of the first oil experts to raise alarms about oil production. The letter is a response to an article in The Guardian about experts who work for the IEA who believe not enough attention is being given by the agency to the precarious energy situation the world now faces. Campbell writes:

I was most impressed that you should give such prominence in your issue of 10th November to the role of the International Energy Agency in assessing the status of oil depletion. It is one of the most important issues facing the modern world, given the current dependence on cheap oil-based energy.

Campbell's whole letter fills in some gaps in my own knowledge about Peak Oil. In some ways, the precise date of peak oil is far less important to me than the simple fact that "cheap" oil is no longer cheap. Oil that is easy to drill is pretty much gone. Developing other sources of oil is expensive, difficult and also dirty. Light sweet crude, the easiest to use oil and the basis of the world economy for almost a hundred years, is no longer found in sufficient supply to sustain the world's needs. We are keeping our heads above water by using difficult to process heavy oil, difficult to develop offshore and arctic oil, and expensive, tedious and dirty tar sands to make up the deficit. Other methods are also being used. All the new methods are not only expensive but require a great expenditure of energy to acquire. The net energy picture is poor and if we continue to rely on the oil paradigm, it will only get worse.

Campbell's letter is excellent, though I disagree with a couple of points. First, he argues that the high energy prices of 2008 were the cause of the economic meltdown. I would say they were a major contributing factor and that oil politics will play a major role in making economic recovery difficult. The main culprit, in my view, has been 30 years of deregulation, a reckless banking sector and a lack of political and economic vision that has increasingly hampered the United States.

The other point that Campbell makes is that nuclear energy and coal will have to fill the gap until more sustainable forms of energy come online. First, environmental and safety issues aside, nuclear energy is extremely expensive.

The bigger issue, though, is coal. The problem with coal is that it's the dirtiest form of energy out there and that's before we talk about the huge amount of carbon dioxide that burning coal gives off. I'm concerned that another problem is that coal, just like oil, is addictive. If there is to be a transitional form of energy, it should be natural gas. If the natural gas found in shale is economically feasible, what would actually make sense is to ramp up natural gas power plants while actually ramping down coal burning plants. None of this of course will make any sense unless we are aggressively converting to sustainable forms of energy.

Even before global warming entered public awareness in a big way, it was obvious for many reasons that we needed to switch to alternative energy sources that do not pollute on the scale of fossil fuels. Today, I have to take Global Warming seriously in addition to the other problems of fossil fuels.

Every year even more evidence accumulates on Global Warming. And every year we see more of the effects (see these National Geographic photos; they are only a fraction of the photos being taken all over the world that show evidence of warming). It's astounding that more than two decades ago it was fairly easy to get people to take the destruction of the ozone seriously. A cause and effect was established, a solution found and effective action was implemented. What is so different about Global Warming? And what is so different about oil depletion?

Friday Night Poetry: Haiku

2009-11-13T22:58:00.000-08:00

Overhanging pine—
adding light load of needles
to the waterfall.

_____________—Basho

Despite Myself, I Have Healthy Instincts!

2009-11-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

I tend to avoid TV. There's a variety of reasons: I don't hear as well as I used to, TV has far too many boring programs and the news pundits either take forever to make a point or hammer a point until you're bored to tears. So I surf the internet. I check on what's going on in China, India, Russia, Africa, Europe and sometimes my backyard. I look at business reports and articles on new technology. And I love anything really new on astronomy, alternative energy or biology.

Now it appears I'm saving my aging brain. Or so says Dr. Gary Small in an article by Amada Gardner.

Wasn't it yesterday that TV was supposed to be bad for kids? Ah, but the key to the internet is that it's interactive—you're not just sitting there passively watching the world go by. Makes sense.

Friday Night Poetry: Wang Wei

2009-10-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

Chinese poet, Wang Wei, lived a long time ago. His poetry apparently had a Taoist bent.

Bamboo Grove

Sitting alone in the dark bamboo,
I play a lute, hum loudly to the world.
No one hears I am so deep in the forest.
A bright moon shines, my face shines back.

—Wang Wei

Good News and Sobering News on Wind Energy

2009-10-28T00:14:00.001-07:00

The good news over the last three or four years is that wind generation is being taken seriously in the United States. A number of European countries are way ahead of us in terms of total percentage of electricity produced by wind. And it will still be true for some time to come that Europe as a whole still generates more power from wind than we do. But Americans are finally making progress. Here's the story by AWEA: the American Wind Energy Association:

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reported today in its third quarter (Q3) market report that the U.S. wind energy industry installed 1,649 megawatts (MW) of new power generating capacity in the third quarter—an amount higher than either the 2nd quarter of 2009 or the 3rd quarter of 2008—bringing the total capacity added this year to date to over 5,800 MW. AWEA also reported that wind turbine manufacturing still lags below 2008 levels, in both production and new announcements.

(snip)

The total wind power capacity now operating in the U.S. is over 31,000 MW, generating enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 9 million homes, avoiding the emissions of 57 million tons of carbon annually and reducing expected carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2.5%.

Like I said, this is good news. But we need to put it into perspective. For one thing, 31,000 MW is only a small percentage of our total generating capacity. In addition, as Americans over the next ten years turn more and more to hybrids, electric cars and plug-ins, we will need more electricity produced by wind and solar.

According to the EIA (part of the Department of Energy), the United States in 2007 had a maximum generating capacity from all sources of 994,888 MW. That's a lot of electricity. Unfortunately, some 75% of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels. We have a long ways to go to retire fossil fuels just for producing electricity.

We also will have to create a larger capacity to electrify our transportation. Luckily, cars need less energy in the form of electrical power than they do from gasoline and diesel, largely because so much of the energy from fossils fuels is lost in the form of heat.

Let's hope we can double the production of wind turbines in the next two or three years.

It's Alternative Energy, Not Alternative Fuels (sigh)

2009-10-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

If it burns, it's a fuel. If it's ethanol, it's not new.

So I had a problem when BusinessWeek had this headline a few days ago: ENERGY SECRETARY TELLS CEOS NEW FUELS COMING.

Well, I'm not sure that's precisely what Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or Energy Secretary Steven Chu said at a meeting in North Carolina. I hope not. Actually, BusinessWeek isn't totally at fault. They simply ran an AP story whose headline seems to have been used elsewhere as well. But a periodical is responsible for its stories. If someone has truly discovered a 'new fuel' out there and it's truly clean, that would be major news. If I were a reporter and or an editor at BusinessWeek, I would have jumped all over that story. Google News would have given me at least a hundred hits and the Dow would have jumped 200 points.

At the very least the editors at BusinessWeek should have read the article which spoke only of wind and solar energy. The last time I looked, we don't burn wind, and solar farms catch sunlight rather than burn it.

Here's a more complete story from Kendall Jones of NBC17:

"North Carolina has the potential as a state to be the Saudi Arabia of alternative fuels," District 2 Congressman Bob Etheridge said.

From offshore renewable energy to solar panels, Washington leaders said North Carolina can manufacture green energy products and harvest the clean fuel.

Secretary Salazar said his agency has cleared out bureaucratic confusion holding up potential offshore renewable energy projects.

Saudi Arabia? Okay, somebody used the word 'fuel' at the meeting. Ouch. Etheridge may not have been the only one to use the word. I expect today's Republican politicians to be ignorant because their party has been overrun with right wingers. But Democrats too have an obligation to be careful with their vocabulary. Maybe Etheridge was using 'fuel' as a metaphor. If Salazar or Chu used the word 'fuel,' shame on them. The last thing business CEOs need to hear is more about dreamosol, the magic fuel that will mysteriously appear out of the laboratory and solve all our problems.

During the Bush years, there was talk of a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is a true clean fuel. But only after it's put in your car. It has two major problems: you have to strip carbon from fossil fuels or you have use energy to make it from water. It's a solution that isn't a solution.

By the way, here's part of a press release on U.S. Department of Energy website:

“This is a company whose mission is to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change and to build a sustainable, triple-bottom-line that values people, the planet and profit,” Salazar said during his visit. “Its employees have installed more than 11,000 solar panels, producing about 2.8 million kilowatt hours of clean energy.

Their work in 2008 offset more than 74 million pounds of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of planting 5.7 million trees. These folks believe they can help change the world for the better and we couldn’t agree more.”

"Solar power produced by SAS here in Cary is a great example of the emerging energy economy, and a model for forward-thinking policies driving innovation in our state,” Sen. Hagan said. “North Carolina is well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities in this new economy. I am committed to investing in sustainable, American-made energy that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create new manufacturing jobs in North Carolina and throughout the nation."

The story may be covering a different event on the same trip but at least the writer of the article didn't use the word 'fuel.' There's hope. Maybe the writer of the article should hold seminars for members of Congress.

Friday Night Poetry: Lines from Dante

2009-10-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

There are hundreds of translations around the world of Dante's Divine Comedy. If one can read it, the original version is best. The Divine Comedy, of course, begins with the Inferno. Here are the opening lines of one of the world's great poems.

Inferno

I was midway through our journey of life
and woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered far from the true path.

It is not easy to say what it was,
this thick wood of gnarled trees, stubborn and grim
(the memory of it stirs my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could hardly be worse.
But to show the good that took long to come
I must talk of things other than the good.

How I entered there I cannot recall,
so sleepy had I become when I first strayed
from my course in life, leaving the true path;

but when I found myself nearing the bottom,
at the edge of the wilderness, in the valley,
where a shadow plunged my heart deep in fear,

I raised my head and saw on the hilltop
a golden silhouette of the morning light
that heartens men forward on every road...

The Oil Accordion

2009-10-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

Since at least 2005, the price of oil has been rolling up and down at least two or three times a year. Although summer seems to be a major period of rising prices for crude and winter sees the price for a barrel of oil falling to lower levels, other factors increasingly lead to uncertainty during other parts of the year. We are in an of energy turbulence and most of that turbulence is connected to oil.

In the comments section of The Oil Drum:Europe, Nate Hagens speaks of the "oil accordion." It's an apt image and here's what he says:

The bigger issue is the oil accordion.

Now the economy can afford $100, yet oil companies require $60.
In the future the economy will be able to afford $90 and oil companies will require $70.

Then, $85 vs $80 etc.

Someone suggested it be called the Oil Price Accordion but that's not entirely descriptive. As oil demand goes up, prices go up and make it possible to support expensive oil projects such as drilling in deep water, drilling in the arctic and drilling very deep. But as more oil comes online, the price begins to drop. Or the high price of oil—usually in addition to other problems—begins to have a dampening effect on the economy. This affects oil production which begins to drop. Oil projects cannot be turned on and off without serious costs being incurred (as hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico have shown, oil can be turned off fairly quickly but starting the oil back up again is expensive and that has to be included in the cost of shutting down).

It's true that for twenty-five years, we assumed that occasional high oil prices didn't hurt the economy that much since the percentage of oil that affects the economy has dropped in that period. But the real cost of producing oil has been rising for some time. And the United States is finally paying additional economic costs for buying so much of its oil on the international market.

We're finding that market forces are not always efficient. It's disruptive when such things as oil prices or real estate prices dramatically rise or fall. The oil accordion is a descriptive name in this time of worldwide economic turbulence.

Resilience in the 21st Century

2009-10-05T22:58:00.001-07:00

I don't honestly know what's going to happen for the next 100 years but we're having trouble producing enough energy to keep the world running at its current economic level. It's doubtful the world can support 7 billion people let alone the 10 billion people that forecasters were predicting just a few years ago.

In the 1950s, we dreamed of abundant energy, but over the years we made many blunders and allowed ourselves to be overly dependent on oil. In truth, too many people in business and government seemed to be waiting for the major breakthroughs that were supposed to supply endless energy with a minimum of problems. Nuclear energy turned out to be difficult to manage and fusion of course never happened.

It is likel that much tragedy and sorrow lies ahead. How much no one can say. Maybe we'll luck out. Maybe somebody at the last minute will invent dreamosol and our energy problems will be solved. Or maybe people in places like the U.S. will recognize that we have a problem and get serious and launch a massive program for the next ten years to diversify our energy, simplify our lives and find more efficient ways to get things done. If not, the U.S. and the world are going to need lots of resilience in the years ahead.

There's still lots of energy but the core problem is that it's not likely to be enough for 7 billion people, let alone billions more. Still, maybe we can squeeze through the hard times with ten million little solutions But to get through the hard times, we're going to need resilience, the ability to deal with a bad situation and somehow manage to turn it around, even if it takes time, lots of time.

Resilience can be found in unlikely places. Here's a story from CNN (via Leanan of The Oil Drum) about a teenage boy in Malawi who took the future into his own hands:

...amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant.

Wind.

(snip)

[William] Kamkwamba... ...spent his days at the library, where a book with photographs of windmills caught his eye.

"I thought, this thing exists in this book, it means someone else managed to build this machine," he said.

(snip)

Armed with the book, the then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items, including bicycle parts, plastic pipes, tractor fans and car batteries. For the tower, he collected wood from blue-gum trees.

(snip)

Three months later, his first windmill churned to life as relief swept over him. As the blades whirled, a bulb attached to the windmill flickered on.

Keep in mind that the young man got better and better at building windmills and he's still at it, while teaching others how to do more. Read the full story and check out the two pictures. Better yet, drop CNN a line and let them know we need more stories like this. If there's a future in the year 2200, it will be because of kids like William Kamkwamba, whether they are found in Africa, the United States or anywhere else in the world.

Return to Friday Night Poetry

2009-09-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a Friday night poetry posting in some time. I found a poem on the Internet by a Nigerian poet name Ekene Atusiubah. His poem is called "Hercule's Evolution — The Return to the Sacred." It's a long poem so I'm only going to quote the first few lines:

—Home sickness
my present pain
how ill I have become
how home sick
itching for your sea-blue smiles
I remember the silky texture of your flaming white cloak
I thirst now for your fresh milk dear Mother.
I see you now in my inner eye,
peeling melon seeds, boiling yams, chopping
vegetables, slicing meats, mixing spices, painting the moon...

For the full poem, go to Lucis Trust or In the Tracks of Hercules. I'm slowly becoming aware that the Internet makes poetry possible in many areas of the world. Readers and poets seem to be finding one another.

Note: Nigeria has some 511 languages but English is considered the official language, particularly in government, most schools and business. I couldn't find the specific information, but I get the impression most educated people in Nigeria know at least two languages.

Good Politicians Are Fishermen at Heart

2009-09-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a biography of FDR by H. W. Brands called Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I'm not sure I like the title but it's an excellent book. Brands tries to explain how FDR became an effective president. He makes clear that Roosevelt was very much his own man with his own ideas with years to learn about his country and with his own thoughts about where it ought to go. I have to spell it out like that because there are biographies that try to minimize Roosevelt's knowledge and abilities. For the record, Roosevelt also had a very fine sense of humor.

In the 1920s, Roosevelt had a houseboat in Florida. He loved to fish and he had a logbook. Brand quotes from it:

This Logbook must be entirely accurate and truth. In putting down weights and numbers of fish, however, the following tables may be used:
2 oz. make 1 logbook pound.
5 logbook pounds make "a large fish."
2 inches make 1 logbook foot.
2 logbook feet make "big as a whale."
Anything above "whale" size may be described as an "icthyosaurus."
(Note: In describing fish that got away, all these measures may be doubled. It is also permitted, when over 30 seconds are required to pull in a fish, to say, "After half an hour's hard fighting...")

The above is from page 167 of Brand's book but he says he got it from An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park by Elliot Roosevelt and James Brough.

I've been around fishermen and boat people. They know how to tell a great story but they're usually good people at heart. No one should underestimate how tough Roosevelt could be but he was a decent man.

British Petroleum and Solar Roadways

2009-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

These days it's not easy to know when an oil company is on the level and when they're just engaging in good public relations to keep those oil prices nice and high. The funny thing is I sort of believe in high oil prices. High prices keep everyone a little more honest. And high prices encourages alternative energy.

Look, it's a fact that oil is a finite resource. It is fact established long before global warming that oil is a major source of pollution. It is also a fact that natural gas pollutes less than light sweet crude which pollutes less than heavy crude which pollutes less than tar sands and coal. In the 1970s, long before the evidence for global warming became overwhelming, it was already a good policy to start thinking about alternative energy. That during the 1980s the United States chose to party on as if everything is fine has a great deal to do with our current economic difficulties and the continuing decline of American wages and the loss of jobs overseas. An economy as large as that of the United States cannot be sustained while paying a higher and higher premium for foreign oil.

Now the irony is that I cheer when large oil deposits are found. Why? Because the transition to alternative fuels is going to take time and it's going to require major investment of the energy that now exists.

So it's actually encouraging news that British Petroleum has found a good-size reserve of oil as reported by the Associated Press:

Nearly seven miles below the Gulf of Mexico, oil company BP has tapped into a vast pool of crude after digging the deepest oil well in the world. The Tiber Prospect is expected to rank among the largest petroleum discoveries in the United States, potentially producing half as much crude in a day as Alaska's famous North Slope oil field.

The company's chief of exploration on Wednesday estimated that the Tiber deposit holds between 4 billion and 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which includes natural gas. That would be enough to satisfy U.S. demand for crude for nearly one year.

But notice the caveat. It would satisfy U.S. needs for almost a year. Back in the 1930s, geological experts were talking about oil deposits that would last for a few hundred years. Natural gas, alone, was expected to last 500 years.

Those optimistic numbers of long ago have long since faded, partly because the population grew, partly because the uses of oil and natural gas expanded, and partly because the rate of discovery was never sustained over the decades. A year's worth of oil does not mean our oil problems have been exaggerated and that our refineries will soon be awash in oil for decades to come. It means we are acquiring expensive oil off our coasts that will hopefully help with our transition to new energy sources. The new find is in 4,000 feet of water and then down another 35,000 feet through rock. One good hurricane can undo a lot of hard work or at least shut things down for weeks at a time. It's good news but it requires hard-headed thinking to understand what it all means.

The thing people need to understand is that our transition was always going to come. What the early engineers were hoping is that we would use the oil age to find the next generation of energy sources. For a long time we thought fission-based nuclear energy or perhaps fusion energy would be our next big energy source. But that has not come to pass. We know now that there will be no single source of virtually inexhaustible energy. We will need multiple solutions and we will need time to figure what works and time to put various infrastructures in place. Discovering more oil gives us that time.

So it's a bit irritating to read silly articles like this (in the Guardian of all places):

BP has reopened the debate on when the "peak oil" supply will be reached by announcing a big new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico which some believe could be as large as the Forties, the biggest field ever found in the North Sea.

What the people of the industrialized world need to understand is this: if we had not been discovering new oil in the last thirty years, oil production would be dropping like a rock. At the same time, the disturbing trend for decades has been smaller and smaller oil discoveries around the world. The two exceptions, which were not easily accessible forty years ago, have been deep offshore oil rigs and exploration in the arctic. Both areas are hard to get to and expensive to develop. Depending on them is not good economic policy or good social policy. While I celebrate the extra time such discoveries give us, it is time that should not be wasted on profoundly dysfunctional public relations games.

Of course alternative energy is sometimes responsible for hype that goes in the other direction. An outfit in San Diego promises a home based contraption that can produce ethanol if you'll pluck down a nice $10,000 and take delivery of winery and brewery wastes, etc., etc. Robert Rapier of The Oil Drum has written a skeptical article.

Here's another idea that technically is feasible. The real question is whether solar roadways makes economic sense:

The Solar Roadway™ is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels™ that collect and store solar energy to be used by our homes and businesses. This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half.

I have no idea if a road system made of tough and rigorous solar panels makes any sense. The price tag is a little sobering: $48/sq. foot. The idea of making our highways serve a second function as solar panels has been around at least since the 1970s. But these guys are either really good con artists, delusional or brilliant. But I hope they at least get some seed money to show us what they really are or what they really can do.

Now I can visualize all kinds of problems with alternative energy. We've already seen the U.S. government blunder by underwriting too much corn ethanol which almost takes as much energy to produce as it gives us. We don't really have the right cars yet to use ethanol and we saw a sharp spike in food prices around the world. Clearly we have to think about these things. And clearly, if we are being honest with ourselves, we're going to hit dead ends at the research level.

But we've been doing research for almost 300 years, since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Research is fairly cheap. If things begin to work, you move forward. If too many problems develop, you look for alternatives. So I hope someone pays for a few parking lots made of the solar roadways material. Let's see if it works.

Intelligence and Education: Richard Nisbett Says the Evironment Matters

2009-09-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

If you're a parent and wonder if you can do something to help your child succeed in the world, the answer is: you usually can. Richard E. Nisbett has written a book called Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. Nisbett admits that he once leaned more towards the hereditarian view of intelligence but changed his mind as an increasing body of research shows that while some intelligence is inherited, the dominant influence is the environment.

Here's an excerpt from a book review by Jim Holt in The New York Times:

...Nisbett bridles at the hereditarian claim that I.Q. is 75 to 85 percent heritable; the real figure, he thinks, is less than 50 percent. [Hereditarian] estimates come from comparing the I.Q.’s of blood relatives — identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings — growing up in different adoptive families. But there is a snare here. As Nisbett observes, “adoptive families, like Tolstoy’s happy families, are all alike.” Not only are they more affluent than average, they also tend to give children lots of cognitive stimulation. Thus data from them yield erroneously high estimates of I.Q. heritability. (Think: if we all grew up in exactly the same environment, I.Q. differences would appear to be 100 percent genetic.)

Holt gives a reasonably fair review though I wish he had mentioned that there is something of a revolution going on in biology. It seems living organisms, including ourselves, are much more influenced by the environment than we previously thought. Genes are very important but they are not the whole story.

I highly recommend Nisbett's book. Science has had a bias for a hundred years that probably stems from 19th century beliefs that were never properly examined and never properly laid to rest.

One of the results Nisbett talks about is how everyone's I.Q. has been rising for the past 70 years or so. That would hardly make sense unless the environment matters. There are many statistical observations like this that bring into question what I would call the hard hereditarian view. Another one is that the I.Q. gap between blacks and whites grows from kindergarten to the end of high school. And then shrinks over the next four years for those blacks who go to college. As the poets say, "something is obviously going on."

One thing to keep in mind is that attributing things to genes is easy, sometimes too easy. The reality—as we are learning more and more all the time—is always more complex. People do vary but they are far more malleable than many people are willing to admit. All of this is consistent with the latest brain research which shows that the brain is highly adaptable and far more intricate than we realized. Our brain doesn't even finish developing until our late twenties. Even then, our brains keep changing for the rest of our lives. And whether we are six years old or sixty years old we're discovering that the old adage: use or lose it applies to the brain as well. I like that Nisbett takes the trouble to explore some of that complexity.

A preview of Nisbett's book can be found on Google books for those who can't afford it. But it's a book worth buying.

A Re-educated German Reminds America of Its History

2009-08-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

Philosopher and social critic Jurgen Habermas was born in Germany in 1929. His father was a Nazi sympathizer. Under those conditions, and given Hitler's internal propaganda machine from the early 1930s to the end of the war in 1945, it would have been difficult for a 16-year-old to be immune to the conventional thinking of his surroundings. When the Americans arrived, they fostered a re-education program, particularly among the young. Habermas, in retrospect, was grateful for the ideals that Americans brought to Germany.

In the bizarre post-9/11 world, Bush and many members of Congress tossed out a good many of those ideals. Here's an interview of Jurgen Habermas by Eduardo Mendieta from sometime in 2003 that was published in Logos Journal in August 2004:

What I take to be false is Kagan’s [neoconservative] stylization of US policy over the course of the last century. The conflict between “realism” and “idealism” in foreign and defense policy occurred, not between the continents, but, rather, within American policy itself. Certainly, the bi-polar power structure of the world between 1945 and 1989, compelled a policy of balance of terror. The competition between the two nuclear-armed systems during the Cold War created the background for the towering influence which the “realist” school of international relations in Washington was able wield. But we must not forget the impetus which President Wilson gave to the founding of the League of Nations after the First World War, nor the influence which American jurists and politicians themselves exercised in Paris after the US retreated from the League. Without the US, there would have been no Kellogg-Briand Pact, nor the first international legal proscription of wars of aggression. But what fits least in the militant picture of the role of the US that Kagan paints, is the policy of the victors in 1945, initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. What Roosevelt called for in his undelivered Jefferson Day Address of April 11, 1945, was for the world to seek not only an “end to war,” but an “end to the beginning of all wars.”

In that period, the US was at the peak of the new internationalism, and spearheaded the initiative for the creation of the United Nations, in San Francisco. The US was the driving force behind the UN, which (no accident) has its headquarters in New York. The US set in motion the first international human rights convention, campaigned for the global monitoring of, as well as the juridical and military prosecution of, human rights violations, pressed upon the Europeans the idea of a political unification of Europe—initially, against the opposition of the French. This period of unexampled internationalism, loosed, in the ensuing decades, a wave of innovations in the field of human rights, blocked, indeed, during the Cold War, but implemented, in part, after 1989. As of that point in time, it was yet to be decided if the one remaining superpower would turn away from its leading role in the march toward a cosmopolitan legal order, and fall back into the imperial role of a good hegemon above international law.

(snip)

For a European observer and a twice-shy child such as I, the systematic intimidation and indoctrination of the population and the restrictions on the scope of permitted opinion in the months of October and November of 2002, (when I was in Chicago), were unnerving. This was not “my” America. From my 16th year onward, my political thinking, thanks to the sensible re-education policy of the Occupation, has been nourished by the American ideals of the late 18th century.

Under Bush, Americans lost their way for the better part of five years. Visitors like Habermas were startled by what they saw. When the history of our era is written by those who have twenty years from now the facts of what happened from 1989 to 2009 (many of those facts actually available in 2002), Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and Rumsfeld will be skewered for being so profoundly wrong about the problems the United States has been facing since the end of the Cold War (Actually, our current problems started with the election of Ronald Reagan but that's another chapter in the broader story). Some day a significant number of Americans are going to have to do a little re-education of their own if the qualities that have made our country successful are to be remembered as well as updated. For our first 200 years, Americans had brains but also a good amount of luck. Since 1980 we have made far too many mistakes and most of those mistakes can be attributed to a Hobbesian conservatism that has proven to be a failure. In the next ten years, we'll see whether the Hobbesians still have life or whether Americans are finally ready to move forward.

Chronicles of Mindless SF Plots

2009-07-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

My wife and I couldn't help it the other night. We watched that disaster called The Mutant Chronicles. Wow, that was like those books in the thrift shops that even used book dealers won't take. It was like Geraldo opening the Al Capone vault and finding...nada. It was like John McCain promising that he had a strategy to save the economy. It was like Bill Clinton at the 1988 Democratic Convention giving us three hours of economic policy wonk. It was like going to the dentist and having not one but two root canals. Oh what fun! Well excruciating actually.

The thing is my wife and I enjoy watching silly movies like Godzilla and The Bride of Frankenstein. They're ridiculous, with low production values but fun as in get out the popcorn and kick off the shoes. We loved 10.5 and Deep Impact. Okay, the United States is not going to split down the middle. And it's going to take more than a nuclear blast a few hundred miles from the earth to stop an asteroid. Yes, both those movies were preposterous... but... they weren't boring. The Mutant Chronicles was boring. Worse, if you're going ask viewers to suspend disbelief, then have a story that makes sense. Somehow some Hollywood writers think that finding new ways to mutilate human beings, repeating footage from World War I, jumping from scene to scene and laying it on thick with lame distasteful images are recipes for good stories, TV shows or movies.

I've been watching the ads for Transformers. The ads smell like a bad movie. Ah, but apparently a number of people are catching on who are older than 13. A bizarre site called Topless Robot reviews, demolishes and deconstructs the latest Transformer movie. If half of what is said there is true, Hollywood needs to revamp and start telling real stories. I know, a good movie trailer can rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit despite a bad movie—unfortunately, that's one of the absurdities of our era. But maybe, just maybe, people are catching on.

By Resigning, Sarah Palin Free to Indulge Greed

2009-07-03T16:54:00.000-07:00

Saran Palin may have been the know-nothing vice presidential candidate for John McCain but she's not totally dumb. Many newspapers are speculating about the reason for her resignation. Here's the Los Angeles Times:

She spoke in that cryptic fashion throughout her appearance Friday, saying her decision to step down had been some time in the making, although she never clearly spelled out why.

"Many just accept that lame-duck status and they hit that road. They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I'm not going to put Alaskans through that," Palin said.

I can't say exactly why Palin is stepping down. I know it's entirely possible another scandal is on the way. But my first reaction after reading her comment about milking the lame-duck status is BINGO! Why? Because, like many contemporary Republican politicians, Palin has a way of squirming out from under by attributing to others her own motivations. There is money out there waiting to fill her pockets: if she can just get out from being obliged by various ethics laws that apply to remaining governor.

If I were a betting man, I would say she's resigning in order to cash in. If it leads to the presidency, that will in her mind be a bonus. But at the very least she will become a wealthy lady by hitting the speaking circuit, etc., etc., etc. It certainly has worked for other politicians, mostly Republicans but certainly some Democrats. If anything motivates Palin, it's all those goodies she'd like to get her hands on. More than likely, Todd Palin is on aboard. Ironically, I doubt that Alaska will miss her.

Reenergizing the American Economy

2009-06-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

Wealthy Republicans these days talk a lot about free enterprise and competition but don't particularly believe what they're saying. They don't want competition. They want a free hand in acquiring a sweetheart deal from the government. They don't particularly care which government it is: ours or maybe the Chinese. These wealthy Republicans wave the American flags while shipping American jobs overseas. And they do lots of business with governments deeply involved in the business of their countries. Ironic, isn't it?

If one looks at the history of the last 120 years, what many wealthy Republicans want are monopolies and guaranteed profits. For years, the best sweetheart deals over the long haul were found in South America. Then Eastern Europe was the next best venue for such deals. Now with the rape of American industry in full swing, the best deals are with the Chinese, Indians and a number of third world countries willing to pay big bucks up front. For a time, average Americans seemed to gain some benefit from the low prices that were the result of such wheeling and dealing. But it was only for a time. Seen any low prices lately? Wealthy Republicans have discovered low wages and fat profit margins. Welcome to the new economy.

Actually the new economy has been around for more than thirty years. The truth is that people noticed but didn't notice. It began with hostile takeovers that took American companies with lots of American jobs and turned them into lean operations that didn't have the R & D to keep their place in the world economy. Too much money was going into the pockets of people who were already rich but who couldn't seem to get enough. This kind of stuff still goes on. In recent years, many newspapers have been destroyed by such corporate raiders who fail to notice that newspapers need all the resources they can muster to survive the arrival of the Internet Age.

There's actually a myth that American ideas are what's keeping the American economy afloat. Like all myths, there's a grain of truth to it but the current myth is tied to a business superstition that you can't make a profit unless you set up a factory in Vietnam or Malaysia or whatever country is currently paying the lowest wages. It's part of a canard that big corporations throw around: We are in the business of ideas! Sure. Big corporations often buy their ideas from small corporations who get their ideas from university researchers looking for venture capital. Eventually the big corporation gets its big hands on the equipment of the small corporation, unscrews the stuff from the factory floor and ships it overseas for someone else to make. With an unemployment rate of 9.4%, America's empty factories now extend from Los Angeles to Jersey City. In the long run, selling generations of American know-how cannot keep the economy afloat.

The weird thing is that Ronald Reagan seemed to get that Americans not only need to lead in the best ideas but they need to lead in at least a few key areas of manufacturing. That is, after all, how we became great in the first place. Now, like most Republicans, Reagan seemed to have the idea that what the United States needed was a lot of poor workers with no bargaining power and no safety net. But unlike the Republicans of today, he actually felt the government sometimes needs to get involved in business. Reagan in particular stimulated the computer sector. In the 1980s, the United States was behind Japan in certain areas of computer technology. But Reagan felt technology was a national priority and even a national defense issue. And some years later Al Gore and Bill Clinton got it when they helped the Internet boom any number of times (No, Gore didn't invent the Internet as Republicans pretend that he claimed, but he did help it with a number of issues; actually Republican politicians and pundits of this era aren't good at inventing anything useful but they are admittedly fairly good at inventing nonsense).

For eight years, George W. Bush sat on his hands as it became obvious we had an energy problem. In the last year of his presidency, oil rose to $147 a barrel. Oil rose so high that oil prices were a factor in the economic meltdown of last September. Very quickly, oil started going the other way as America stopped going places and as the rest of the world fell into a steep recession. Nobody was buying oil and a barrel of oil dropped to the low 30s. Unfortunately, conservative lunkheads who have trouble paying attention started traveling again and buying big cars. The Los Angeles Times have noticed the climb in prices:

At some stations in the state, $3 gasoline was old news. A Mobil station in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, was charging $3.69 a gallon; a Chevron in Shoshone, near Death Valley National Park, was posting $3.66; and a 76 on the Westside was posting $3.59...

Death Valley? Now there's a metaphor. Look, the energy crisis is here. It's not going anywhere soon. During a recession, the use of oil drops. So does the price. But that doesn't mean the problem has gone away. So far, it's not clear that a significant majority of Americans get it. Maybe a small majority get it. But for things to change a majority of business people need to get it as well.

Here and there, one sees some glimmer of hope in the business community. There are people out there who get it, who have ideas, who have the know-how or who are close to getting the know-how if—and this is a big if—they can get help bringing their ideas to the market. This requires money. The problem is that if we wait around for big business to do something, the ideas and initiative and jobs will simply go overseas. The smart thing to do is to do what Reagan did in one of his few truly smart moves: get the government involved in stimulating new technology, this time in the alternative energy field. Here's an article from CNNMoney that offers a glimmer of hope:

Thousands of jobs are riding on Ener1's efforts to build the best car battery in the world.

The start-up firm is the only U.S. company able to mass produce batteries on American soil for an automobile industry poised to make a monumental shift from gasoline to electric power.

(snip)

The company has applied for a $480 million government loan to expand its facility and hopefully allow it to land a big contract. If that happens, Ener1 says it will go on a hiring spree.

Maybe Ener1 deserves the loan and maybe not. But I know there are hundreds of small American companies that deserves such loans and that will be the backbone of a new energy sector that will power American jobs. This is the future. Not the business as usual we've seen for thirty years. Americans jobs depend on companies that develop and use American talent. Let's hope Barack Obama gets it. Let's hope obstructionist Republican fossils get out of the way. It's time for the future to arrive in America.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush

2009-06-06T15:23:00.000-07:00

I have respect for Bill Clinton. He managed to accomplish a few things during his eight years despite a very difficult political climate. I even like the guy despite his bouts of pseudo-Republicanism and episodes of rope-a-dope. But he puzzles me. I don't mind his efforts to build bridges across party lines with people like Bob Dole and the senior George Bush. There has to be some of that in our society despite the efforts of the Republican right-wing leaders who believe they cannot lead unless they divide the country. But if ever there was a dangerous and reckless right-wing president, it was George W. Bush. So I'm puzzled that Clinton seems anxious to make nice with him as well. Here's the Reuter's story that describes a joint event of the former presidents:

Former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton traded jokes about life after the Oval Office and took turns defending each other as they shared a stage in Toronto on Friday to discuss global affairs.

I've read other accounts besides this one. What gives? Yes, I know, being president is a tough job, etc., etc. But the junior Bush stubbornly pursued policies in world affairs and economics that makes it clear that he's the most failed president in American history. Okay, given Bill's vanity, maybe he wanted to be the good president next to the bad president. But that's pathetic. Bill knows what a disaster Bush has been. Doesn't he? Do we really need to remind Bill what a failure junior was?

I recently wanted to check something about the Bush years so I went to the library and took out The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn. Here are some of the lies that Corn mentions:

"I have been very candid about my past."

"I'm a uniter, not a divider."

"[The votes] have not only been counted, they've been counted twice."

"We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th."

"No one could have conceivably imagined suicide bombers burrowing into our society."

"The bottom end of the economic ladder receives the biggest percentage [tax] cuts."

"We must usher in a new era of integrity in corporate America."

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

"The president has made no decision about the use of force."

"The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it."

"We will prove that someone who is conservative and compassionate can win without sacrificing principle. We will show that politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better. We will give our country a fresh start after a season of cynicism."

"We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations."

That last quote is probably the most painful lie of all.

There were many more lies about Iraq, Abu Ghraib, torture, Gitmo, the 2004 election, Hurricane Katrina, the economy, the U.S. Attorney scandal and much more that are not found in the book. The reason? Corn's book was published in 2003. The lies were already going strong.

It should be noted that Bush made many comments against Bill Clinton in the 2000 election. I know, I know. Bill wants to be statesmanlike and likeable as well. With Hillary Clinton at State, he also has to keep a low profile and be on his good behavior. I just hope he doesn't work too hard at rehabilitating George W. Bush. There are better things he could do.

Military Contractor Blackwater, AKA Xe, in Trouble Again

2009-05-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

The private contracting firm of Blackwater, now known as Xe, has had a number of problems since the Bush administration began the practice of hiring mercenaries under the rubric of private contractors. Having been ejected from Iraq, Blackwater's problems this time are in Afghanistan. As usual, stories involving Blackwater seem to involve contradictions. Here's CNN's version of the Blackwater shooting incident:

One of three Afghan civilians wounded when U.S. contractors shot at them in an incident in early May died of his wounds Sunday, according to U.S. military officials in Afghanistan.

A second Afghan civilian remains in serious condition, and the third person wounded was treated and released from a Kabul hospital, according to the U.S. military in Kabul.

(snip)

After the shooting, the men claimed they were being held against their will by their former employer, Paravant, in Kabul. Paravant's parent company, Xe, said the men were not being held against their will. It said the U.S. military told the company to instruct the men to stay as the investigation progressed.

The U.S. military denied the men were being asked to stay because of the investigation...

The controversy continues over the shooting incident and who authorized what. Here's the AP story:

Two men who worked for the security firm formerly known as Blackwater say the company issued weapons to their employees in Afghanistan despite the military prohibiting workers from carrying guns.

The employees were military trainers apparently allowed to use weapons during training but not otherwise because of restrictions placed on Blackwater by the military. The restrictions are a clear response to repeated incidents by private contractors, Blackwater included.

At the management level, Blackwater's reputation for integrity is not good. It was Blackwater whose contractors were killed by insurgents in an ugly 2004 incident in Fallujah after being warned by the military to use a different route. Like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, Blackwater's executives have a knack for revising history. Here's part of a 2007 story from Bloomberg:

In a 10-page report delivered yesterday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Blackwater said its security guards couldn't have prevented the deaths of four Americans in an attack in Fallujah at an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps checkpoint. The videotaped brutality of the incident sparked a U.S. military offensive.

However, in the same news story, we find a different version after investigations by others:

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman has criticized the company in a series of reports, including a Sept. 27 review that said the company ignored warnings, failed to properly equip its employees and cut essential personnel before the ambush.

Waxman has accused the company of initiating violence in a series of incidents in Iraq, quietly paying off one victim's family and avoiding U.S. taxes. He also highlighted ties between its top executives and the Bush administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday ordered added training and revised rules for use of force by security contractors in Iraq, following a Sept. 16 incident involving Blackwater that left at least 11 people dead.

The head of Blackwater, now know as Xe, is a well-connected Republican, Erik D. Prince. The New York Times did a profile on him during congressional investigations in 2007:

Republican political connections ran deep in his family long before Mr. Prince founded Blackwater in 1997. When he was a teenager, religious conservative leaders like Gary Bauer, now the president of American Values, were house guests. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, gave the eulogy at his father’s funeral in 1995. “Dr. and Mrs. Dobson are friends with Erik Prince and his mother, Elsa Broekhuizen,” Focus on the Family said in a statement.

Mr. Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, married into one of the most politically active conservative families in the Midwest. She has served as the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Michigan, and last year, her husband, Richard DeVos Jr., ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan as the Republican candidate. Mr. Prince and his family have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and other conservative and religious causes, records show.

Various excuses are made for Blackwater just as excuses have been made for Cheney, Rumseld, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and yes, George W. Bush. Hopefully, the era of private military contractors is drawing to a close. It cannot happen soon enough.

Ecological Intelligence and Other News

2009-05-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

When I was young and went camping with my father, he had a simple rule: leave the campsite cleaner than you found it. There were always bottle caps and wrappers and other things not to mention our own mess. Given the mess humans have been leaving for the past few centuries, leaving the earth cleaner than we found it would be a great principle to follow. The problem is that the world has become more complicated. I'm amazed at how much work and knowledge it takes to be green and I freely confess my ignorance on a wide range of ecological matters.

Luckily, Mary of The Left Coaster mentions Bill Moyers who talked with Daniel Goleman who has a book out called Ecological Intelligence (hey, isn't the Internet great!). Let's see: Ecological intelligence. Okay that's what I need more of. Here's a bit from Mary's post:

Life cycle assessment is being used by companies to change the way they do business. But even more important, the data is now available to us via websites like GoodGuide which help you correlate data from different studies to pick safe, healthy and green products by providing insight into the Ecological Impact of products.

Goleman says that by making this information accessible to everyone, a climate of Radical Transparency becomes possible and this means consumers will finally have the ability to make corporations and governments sensitive and responsive to people without people having to become experts or knowing who to trust or just because they feel it is morally the right thing to do. This technique makes it easy to do the right thing for ourselves and our planet. Plus it provides a powerful incentive to companies to improve their products and their processes. This technology makes it possible for anyone to make a difference just by understanding their choice and communicating that choice.

In other news, Think Progress has a story on Hardin, Montana and what they would like to do with their prison:

A frequent attack on the closure of Guantanamo is the claim that no one in the U.S. wants detainees housed in their backyard. ...Rob Reynolds reports that the town of Hardin, MT [is] requesting that 100 detainees be sent to its empty prison...

The story is dated May 18th. I checked Google News to see who else was carrying the story. Ah, it turns out the story has been around for at least three weeks. See this NPR story (It seems a good story still takes time to get around). Here's a thought. The federal government is unlikely to put terrorists in such a prison. On the other hand, the federal government has a fair number of low level prisoners who could be moved to Hardin while freeing up room in a secure federal facility. Maybe Hardin is on to something after all.

Here's the last story. The right wing chest beaters have been beating up on Pelosi in one of the more dishonest smear campaigns of the year. The point to keep in mind is that the CIA has a lot of professionals but one gets the impression that the Bush administration was notorious for not using professionals to do its dirty work. If Bush or Cheney needed a liar, they had little trouble finding one since they hired liars by the bushful for every department in the government. Here's another article pointing out that the CIA Records on Briefings Were Not Accurate.

Okay, I'm off to the library to see if I can find a book on ecological intelligence. What a phrase!

Religion Versus Spirituality

2009-05-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Although religion and spirituality can go hand in hand, it's surprising how often the two are divorced. Can one be religious in a real sense without being spiritual? Possibly, though I suppose it's not as easy as it might seem.

Perhaps if one has doubts and works at understanding the issues and honestly observes the forms without distorting the forms, one could be called religious without having spirituality. Literature is full of priests who never quite felt the spiritual dimension but who still felt strongly connected to their religion. But more common are preachers and priests who may or may not have being moved initially by their religion but who eventually abuse their office while observing the forms of religion, at least in the eyes of officialdom. I recently read The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hugo has no patience for church figures as well as the king. The book opens with a play with religious observances being interrupted by the pomp and ceremony of the top religious officials entering the building. The mob finds the pomp and ceremony more entertaining. Though not necessarily religious in the typical sense, the two most spiritual figures in Hugo's book are Quasimodo and La Esmeralda. In the end, one is hanged for capricious reasons and the other dies of despair.

New studies show that religion in the United States, or at least formal observance of religion, is on the decline. Even the fundamentalists are declining in numbers. To be honest, I'm not sure I understand the latest developments. Maybe everyone is tired of meaningfulness and just want a castle with three rooms, central heating and a dishwasher. That would be a sad development but not the first or last time people have turned away from religion. Barbara O'Brien in her regular column on Buddhism has observed this:

You can find no end of speculation about why the mainline Protestant churches went into such a steep decline. My take on it, for what it's worth -- first, as I remember it, in the 1950s and 1960s "going to church" was sold to us as one more thing we "should" do, like eating vegetables. But with the mainline Protestants especially, for many there seemed to be no compelling reason why, and younger people lost interest. I understand something like this is going on with Japanese Buddhism now. I suspect the fault is not in the religion but in a kind of institutional inertia. It can happen to any organization.

Anyway, evangelicals had less of a problem with exiting boomers because they had a more assertive message, reaching out to people who were troubled, telling them Jesus was the answer to their personal pain. In comparison, mainline Protestantism seemed something like spiritual dental floss.

The 1950s, as I recall them, was an age of excessive materialism. It was understandable given the Great Depression of the 1930s and the global conflicts of the 1940s. It was a time of rebuilding without much desire to think about anything except the mortgage and how to get a raise.

In the 1960s, young people wanted to turn away from materialism but didn't quite succeed and before they knew it they were settling in larger and larger homes by the 1980s. Where are we now? Are we again turning away from materialism? If so, it's not necessarily towards formal religion or even an informal spirituality. People are turning towards the inanity of the Internet and information technology. But that's not quite fair. There are a growing number of people genuinely concerned about the environment, nature and sustainability.

You can't interface with nature the same way you interface with programmed technology. Nature offers its surprises—and a richness computers are still far from reaching. If religion is losing some of its appeal, spirituality could possibly be on the rise, at least where people are not addicted to tribal gossip, computer games and technological gadgets. Beliefnet has a poll taken by Newsweek in 2005 that suggests spirituality, or at least the desire for spirituality in one's life is on the rise.

But I was struck by one result in the Newsweek poll. The first question was, "Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation, or not?" It turns out that 91% of Catholics, who belong to a particularly formal religious organization, with lots of hierarchy and structures, believe good people of other faiths can go to heaven or attain salvation. That's a surprising degree of tolerance not found in other groups. Actually, only 22% of evangelical protestants said no to the question. I remember that 22% by way of people who approached me in my teens and twenties: they were hardcore and used hardcore sales techniques that put their beliefs in a poor light.

Over time, Americans appear to be getting more tolerant. That might be a factor in why Barack Obama was able to win and why McCain's vice presidential choice and his other proxies seemed so unappealing. We're in a time when the answers are not so clear. Perhaps those who claim to have all the answers are appearing more and more ridiculous to the young. Perhaps we're in a age where people need to find their own answers. That would be a step forward I believe. As long as the searching by the self is reasonably honest.

Smart Progressive Politics and Not Smart Progressive Politics

2009-05-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

I often read Americablog and find many of the posts timely, useful and well-informed. Most of the time, it's a great progressive blog. But it seems John Aravosis can't help shooting himself in the foot from time to time. Today the Pope was in Israel to do some fence-mending and Aravosis couldn't resist a little Pope bashing. Dumb politics. John doesn't understand that the more you emphasize the differences between groups and the more dumb things you say that encourage average conservatives to close ranks, the more you play into the hands of right wing authoritarian leader types. Here's what John wrote:

... Oh, and the BBC also conveniently forgot to mention the little fact that the Vatican has historically been accused of turning a blind eye to the plight of Europe's Jews during WWII. ...

Is Barack Obama responsible for George W. Bush starting the war in Iraq? Was FDR responsible for slavery before 1865? There's a way to put such things in context without generalizing and without blaming a current figure and certainly without getting snarky. Nor is it necessary to mention historical context in every single story.

In a story about David Duke last month, Aravosis made clear his obsession with the Pope:

...David Duke, was arrested in Prague for denying the Holocaust. It's a crime punishable by three years in prison. Too bad he didn't go to the Vatican instead. They'd have made him a Bishop.

I'm not a fan of Pope Benedict XVI but I have many friends and relatives, both conservative and liberal, who are catholics. Aravosis seems to be going out of the way to rankle those who are not even his enemy. The Pope and the Catholic Church are not above criticism but there's a right way to do these things and a dumb way to do it.

I keep thinking about the sea change about gay marriage. What changed? What happened is that millions of Americans saw ordinary people lining up at city hall in San Francisco to get married. While my wife and I enjoyed seeing on TV the characters in San Francisco's Castro district who some years ago dressed up like nuns with ridiculous makeup, I had to check myself now and then. It was clear that the media was partly defining gays as guys who dress up like nuns: it didn't play well in most of America. What changed is when Americans saw people getting married who looked like their neighbors, coworkers and relatives. This is something that Barack Obama clearly understands: we the people of our country may have differences but our similarities are far more important than those differences.

When Aravosis launches broad attacks against Mormons or the Pope, he is posing a normative threat that is guaranteed to crank up the authoritarian dynamic. Pure and simple, it's dumb politics.

Economy Continues to Sink While Republicans Play Games

2009-02-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

As usual, Washington Republicans and their friends in the media are sitting on their well-financed posteriors playing games and otherwise doing nothing as the economy continues to tank. Some experts say another 2 million jobs may be lost this year thanks to the Bush economic meltdown.

Here's just one example courtesy of Think Progress:

Scarborough, Brzezinski, and other regular Morning Joe contributors have made similarly flawed arguments in recent days:
Brzezinski: “I’m confused as to why we’re being tricked into thinking this is a stimulus bill, when it’s packed with welfare programs.”

Pat Buchanan: “This is just a big Democratic bill with all this pork and slop.”

Jim Cramer: “I have it maybe that there’s 142 people really will get a job.”

Dylan Ratigan: “[T]he Democrats would do themselves a tremendous favor to not put spending programs in when we’re dealing with a stimulus bill.”

Scarborough: “This is a streaming pile of garbage.”

This group of do nothing Republicans suggests more tax cuts. Brilliant. Being rich Republicans themselves, they will benefit from their own suggestion. Like other rich Republicans, they'll buy their clothes from Asia, their yachts and luxury cars from Europe and their diamonds from Africa and that will do nothing for the American economy. Years of economic neglect by Republicans has done enormous damage to the American economy. One might almost call them right wing anarchists since they are more interested in mayhem than they are in the future of the United States as a people.

Last Season for American Idol?

2009-01-30T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've done a variety of things on Cold Flute, though mostly politics. Today's post is a bit different for me. My wife and I have been enjoying American Idol since the beginning of the second season (we heard about it the first season but it interfered with one of our few favorite shows).

Last season American Idol felt like it was going downhill. The auditions were annoying, the contestants weren't that outstanding and the judges were getting overly cynical and annoying. I used to like Randy Jackson but he's gotten more sarcastic. Simon's ego is no longer as charming as it once was. Paula Abdul forgot how many times a contestant sang one night. For my wife and I, the show was never about the judges. The new judge is okay but the judges are not why we watch the show.

When I heard the show was going to make some changes this year (other than a new judge), I thought good, they're going to give us more of Hollywood week instead of the same tired old auditions and the same tiring insults. It doesn't feel that way so far. How many times can one listen to Simon Cowell snidely asking, "Yes or no? Paula, yes or no?" Governor Blagojevich was being interviewed on another station; the man's an idiot but he was more entertaining! So we kept switching back and forth, particularly during commercials (advertisers should be paying attention).

Last season, about the only ones who interested my wife and I were Brooke White and Michael Johns (we thought a promising person during Hollywood week, though he didn't make the cut, was Josiah Leming). In the second season, there were at least six contestants who interested us. Of course there were earlier disappointments. For example, in season three, we couldn't believe Jennifer Hudson didn't make the final two or three (we figured Fantasia would win but we thought Hudson might be the runner-up).

Anyway, the American Idol people who run the show seem to forget a large part of their audience and focus on the bubblegum crowd. Boring. So You Think You Can Dance doesn't have the same ratings but it appeals to a broader audience. I would rather at this point watch that show a few more weeks. So far this season, American Idol is not hooking me. It will be interesting to see what happens to the ratings.

Vote for a Good Man: Vote for Barack Obama

2008-11-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama ran a clean campaign. There are many sensible reasons to vote for him but it's feels good to vote for someone who doesn't think fear and smear are the only way to influence the voters.

So vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats. And let's get this country moving again.

This Election Is about Who We Want to Be

2008-10-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

I hope Barack Obama wins. There is no question in my mind that John McCain will simply continue the policies of President Bush. The fact that Bush is trying to help McCain win is all the evidence any of us should need that McCain will continue business as usual. McCain is for more tax cuts for the rich and for more deregulation; those are the two policies that have created the financial mess we're in.

The polls appear to be tightening but I'm encouraged by the huge turnouts that Barack Obama is getting when he campaigns around the country (every state, every region, every city and town in the U.S. is pro-American and Sarah Palin should be ashamed of herself).

But here's the real point I want to make: the polls don't matter. But voting does. Americans need to make a statement about our future. There's not a doubt in my mind that our country needs two political parties but one of those parties, the GOP, is broken; Republicans are stuck in the middle of the 20th century with a mean philosophy and an economic theory that makes no sense. These days, Republicans can't even win without playing games (see here and here). Until the Republican Party rebuilds itself and turns into a party with real ideas and real respect for average Americans, it is time to send the right wingers home. It is time for the Democrats and a change of course. This election is a referendum on George W. Bush and the failed policies of the Republican Party over the last eight years. There will be no change unless the Democrats have a mandate. If Barack Obama wins by a point or two with little change in Congress, our nation will continue to drift and people like David Broder will continue to make dumb assessments of where we are.

If you're young, vote like your future depends on it. If you're much older, vote for the sake of your children and grandchildren. Take ownership of the future. Vote. Vote for the party that has always cared about average Americans far more than protecting the privileges of the wealthy and well-connected. Vote for real change.

McCain Can Only Offer More of the Same

2008-10-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, John McCain served his country honorably. If he is to maintain his reputation, he should think clearly about what he is offering the American people. If all he can offer is more of the same, such as more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, that is not what Americans need. If all he can offer is fear and smear, that too is not what Americans need. If all he can offer is a short temper and erratic behavior, that too is not what America needs. If all he can offer are distortions of the truth and misleading statements and all of the above, Americans have not only grown weary of that since that's exactly what we've gotten from Bush for eight long years but McCain's honor will become a whisper of the past.

After all is said and done, McCain should keep his honor intact and not go down a dishonorable road.

There's a sad truth. McCain does not measure up to the problems we are facing. Think of it: if McCain gets elected and runs the White House the way he has run his campaign, our nation will be in for four more years of failure. It's time to move on this November 4th. Our nation has work to do.

McCain's Fearmongering Sure Sounds Like George W. Bush

2008-10-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

McCain's desperation is sad to see. First, Sarah Palin is not a reassuring pick. She's John Bircher material. If you don't remember the John Birchers, they were big fans of Joseph McCarthy and had radical right-wing ideas about how the country should be run. Palin may not be an official member of the John Birchers but if it walks like a duck and talks like duck, it must be a right wing quack.

Second, John McCain has an anger problem. You could see it in the first debate. You could see it when he was talking to the folks at the Des Moines Register, a paper about as Main Street as you can get. Like Bush, McCain thinks he knows all the answers and doesn't have to ask questions and doesn't like to be asked questions either. Bush's credibility is already shot, and McCain's credibility is fast sinking.

McCain calls himself a maverick, someone who can reach across the aisle. Remember when George W. Bush claimed he would do that? But Bush turned out to be more of a friend to Wall Street than Main Street. Six weeks before the election, McCain suddenly discovered Main Street after thirty years being a buddy of Wall Street. I've lost count of how many lobbyists are currently working for McCain.

We need change in Washington. The nation took the first step in 2006 by electing Democrats to Congress. But with Bush threatening to veto no-brainer bills like extending unemployment benefits, and Republicans refusing to help override Bush's vetoes, it's difficult getting work done that will help the economy and help average Americans. McCain says he gives Americans straight talk but he can't even acknowledge his role in the current economic crisis. McCain is a deregulator, just like George W. Bush. Deregulation means not minding the store. It means looking the other way as crooks destroy the economy while grabbing millions for themselves. That's not presidential behavior.

It's time to send McCain and his fellow Republicans home. Change can't come soon enough.

McCain: "It's All About Me!"

2008-09-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

The erratic Senator John McCain, who is losing in the polls, panicked as he realized just how unprepared to be president his vice presidential choice is. So he lies to David Letterman about rushing to Washington so he can talk about the bailout (er, the campaign) on the networks while claiming he has suspended his campaign.

Here's the bottom line:

1) McCain voted with Bush about 95% of the time.

2) His Republicans friends voted with Bush 95% of the time.

3) Bush's popularity is around 19-30%. His poll numbers stink.

4) Bush has zero credibility. Bernanke and Paulson have slightly more credibility and claim the country is in financial hot water that requires a bailout.

5) Democrats are skeptical but the stock markets are dropping so they tell Bush to send a bill.

6) Bush sends 2.5 pages of crap.

7) Democrats say no deal unless certain provisions and protections are put in.

8) The White House balks, then suddenly starts compromising and lets the Democrats write the bill.

9) McCain, who hasn't worked on a bill in months and doesn't know much about the economy, suddenly decides he's Queen of the Ball, and says stop everything and rushes to Washington. Sort of. Except the bill is just about done when McCain shows up for a photo op.

10) Meanwhile, other Republicans throw in a bunch of proposals that are bullshit and obviously intended to gum up the works.

11) The Republicans, after eight years of licking Bush's boots suddenly reject him just weeks before an election when their numbers are not so hot. (McCain has been licking Bush's boots for four years; he campaigned for him in 2004, supported the war in 2002, etc., etc.)

12) Washington Mutual fails and is taken over. The Democrats are pissed. They're trying to act responsibly by protecting Main Street even if this means a distasteful bailout of Wall Street and the Republican leadership has been taken over by crooks and con men and Governor Palin and these useless people are trying to play games.

Suggestion: The Republicans caused the current crisis through too much deregulation and too much looking the other way while Wall Street and lobbyists like Jack Abramoff have been ripping off the taxpayers. Send the Republicans home so they can stop obstructing the Democrats. The Democrats aren't perfect but they didn't strut like fools and create the mess in the first place.

Campaign Reality 2008: McCain Is Clueless

2008-08-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

That's McCain walking down his "Hall of Fame" at one of his large residences. He seems to have left a little room for future mementos from the White House which just might be about the only reason he's running: another trophy. That hall smacks of a big ego. It smacks of a man who has little in common with ordinary Americans. And little understanding. At a campaign event, McCain said immigrants were necessary because they were willing to pick lettuce for $50 a hour. Most Americans, he said, wouldn't work for that. McCain has no clue about prevailing wages. The man, needless to say, is clueless.

There are rich people who know what ordinary Americans go through and there are rich people who don't. McCain is one of the rich ones who doesn't get it; not long ago, McCain had to ask a staffer what kind of car he owns which once more says he's a man who's out of touch. He wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years but this year the Iraqis have made it clear that they want a timetable and Bush is going along with it. Like I said, McCain is clueless and barely notices that the world is changing.

These days when McCain makes blunders he has a new excuse: he was a POW. Howard Fineman explains the problem (via Crooks and Liars):

“I think they are going to it way too many times. It’s the original story that defined John McCain, that still when you read it in his book ‘Faith of my Fathers,’ when you read about it in ‘The Nightingale’s Song,’ you can’t help but have admiration and respect for the guy. And I think he wisely for many years stayed away from it as a political tool, he really did. But now it not only defines him, it’s become a crutch in the campaign..."

A year ago, John McCain was sinking in the polls. He was overtaken by people like Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mick Huckabee who themselves eventually tanked while McCain picked up the pieces because he was simply a familiar name. But he was sinking for a reason. In Baghdad, he said it was safe to walk through a market but neglected to mention that he was surround by over a hundred soldiers and helicopters in the sky. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest. It was a very Bush-like photo op: phony to the core. McCain has had a long series of blunders for the last year and despite the fact that such blunders can hardly be called presidential, most of the press keeps covering for him.

Randi Rhodes spent her whole show today listing and discussing the lobbyists and former lobbyists working for John McCain. These lobbyists don't work for average Americans; they work for millionaires and big biz. Some of McCain's people even work for foreign governments. But when the camera's on them, they wave the American flag. That's what crooks do: just wave the flag and hope no one notices. The worst of the bunch is Phil Gramm and his wife who have sneaked in laws and regulations making it easier for corporations to pull off scams. Their biggest scam led to the collapse of Enron. Phil Gramm is McCain's economic adviser.

We all want heros and, in his day, John McCain really was one. But that was a long time ago and McCain is still fighting battles from thirty to forty years ago. We need someone in the White House who knows what century we're in and how to move forward, and not backward.

Torture, Berkeley and John Yoo

2008-05-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

I know people who are very good at word games. I also know people who shudder when they realize that they are capable of arguing any point and they have to stop and think about what that means and what the implications are. Around the world, all kinds of behavior can be justified for the flimsiest of reasons. Sometimes those flimsy reasons can be dressed up in very fancy language. But there comes a point when basic human rights and human values are violated by legal arguments that are simply political rationalizations. That the Bush administration had to look around for a lawyer to rationalize torture says something about the values of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. John Yoo was one of those lawyers and he now teaches at UC Berkeley. Brad DeLong, an economics professor at Berkeley, has a no-nonsense post on the issue (hat tip to Steve Clemons of The Washington Note):

I cannot help but think that it is time for some appropriate arm of the university that is expert enough to have an informed view to consider the matter, and to advise me and the rest of the faculty (a) why John's memo of March 14, 2003 does not, despite appearances, rise to the level of participating in a conspiracy to torture goatherds from Afghanistan who have been sold to the military by clan enemies falsely claiming they are members of Al Qaeda; and (b) why John's memo of March 14, 2003, does not, despite appearances, constitute a breach of the duty of a lawyer to his clients (in this case, the majors and colonels of the U.S. army who did the torturing) of a level equivalent to that of the falsification of evidence in a scholarly work--or to say (c) that in spite of substantial evidence of participation in a conspiracy to torture innocent goatherds and to deceive the majors and colonels who were his clients and acted in reliance on his advice, the Kantorowicz freedom-of-academic-speech position still applies.

Read the comments. Many of them are just as informed as DeLong's post. We need to be careful that we don't keep kicking ball down the road instead of dealing with some of the most critical issues of our time.

John Edwards Endorsing Barack Obama

2008-05-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

I was a big John Edwards fan before I became a Barack Obama supporter. So for me it's good news that Edwards is endorsing Barack Obama. ABC News has the story:

Former Sen. John Edwards is endorsing Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy Wednesday evening, in a dramatic attempt by the Obama campaign to answer concerns regarding Obama's appeal to working-class voters, several senior Democratic sources tell ABC News.

There is also more information from Daily Kos. David Bonoir, of course, was Edwards top man for his campaign and the real thing when it comes to the new progressivism of the Democratic Party.

The story about West Virginia is interesting but it is a part of larger story. Something to keep in mind is that Franklin Roosevelt did well in Appalachia and he did more for the region than any other president up that time. The truth is that Barack Obama is not doing all that well in Appalachia and Hillary Clinton is. If Barack Obama can find a way to reach the people of Appalachia, that would translate into better performance throughout the country. What close observers of Obama are learning is that he's a thoughtful man and a quick learner. I have no doubt that he's thinking about the issue. There are many issues for the Obama team to think about in the next few weeks. Can Obama broaden his appeal? Can he keep John McCain at bay? And people will have to ask themselves if Hillary Clinton or someone with similar credentials (such as Jim Webb) might help the kid from the state of Lincoln in the fall election by running with Obama as vice president.

No one should underestimate Barack Obama's abilities and hard work. Last fall, the senator with the funny name was the underdog while Senator Clinton was raking in the big money and was virtually the presumptive nominee. But Senator Obama and his team were organized and very successful at raising funds from small donors from all over the country from people with all kinds of background. The vast majority of Obama's donors read like Main Street, America. If Barack Obama wins the nominee and the election, it will be an extraordinary story of ordinary people putting a new face and new ideas in the White House. Obama is no radical. He is a pragmatist. Only a pragmatist could have run such an amazing campaign to overtake the favorite.

There's an outside chance that Hillary Clinton might pull off some last minute magic to take the nomination, but it's increasingly unlikely. Think of it. Hillary had the name, the experience, the smarts, the help of an ex-president, a large political machine and she had been running for president for almost eight years, ever since Bill Clinton left office. I can only say it again: something extraordinary is happening. Maybe, just maybe, our country is ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century.

100 Years? 50 Years? The Price We Are Paying

2008-05-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

The war in Afghanistan is now in its seventh year. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 have a name, al Qaida, and they came from Osama bin Laden's organization in Afghanistan. The Afghan government refused to turn over the terrorists and it made sense to go after this specific group for the specific action they had taken.

But Afghanistan was a winnable war that got put on the back burner so Bush and the neocons could give our nation a war we did not need. And now we don't quite have the resources to finish either war and we have a president and a Republican candidate who wish to turn both wars into political footballs instead of giving our nation a sensible exit strategy. John McCain and George W. Bush find it convenient to see terrorists everywhere. The term 'terrorist' is in danger of meaning whatever these two characters want it to mean.

John McCain has gone a step further by calling anybody who supposedly is a terrorist a member of al Qaida. It's gibberish of course (when McCain speaks of the 'League of Nations' and a '100 years of war,' we know he isn't the sharp man that he once was). The reality is that the neocons and right wing Republicans are still fighting the Vietnam War, the Cold War and, maybe for John McCain, the Korean War and World War II.

Soldiers are dying for the delusions of right wing Republicans. Soldiers are dying because many otherwise decent Americans have stopped paying attention to how often they have been lied to by George W. Bush and John McCain. The McCain/Bush wars are dragging our nation down. You can't spend $100 billion a year and keep letting our soldiers get killed because powerful people don't want to admit they made a horrible mistake.

Icasualties.org has been keeping track of the number of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan for some time now. Their statistics go back to the beginning of the war and those statistics are grim. Our soldiers are doing their best to serve honorably but they have been misled by the Bush Administration and many members of Congress.

Fifty-Two Americans died in Iraq last month. That's lower than the number killed in April of last year; in fact, the deaths for last month are half of what they were a year ago. But Bush's war in Iraq—or the occupation as some now call it—has been going on for over five years. Last month was better than most months since we invaded Iraq. But there are no good months for the families of those who have been killed. And there are no good months for the Iraqis whether they are pro-American, anti-American or just want everybody to go home and leave them be.

Click on icasualties.org and look at the numbers. The numbers are painful to look at but they are nothing compared to the loss of losing a son or a husband or a father. But look at the numbers. We have the full numbers for sixty-two months. Forty-one of those months have been worse or right at 52 deaths. Forty-one months is almost three and a half years. Twenty-one of the sixty-two months have had fewer fatalities than we had in April. Twenty-one months is almost two years. Almost. By the time a new president sits in the White House, we will have been in Iraq almost six years with no end in sight. Wars are not supposed to go on this long.

Call it a war. Call it an occupation. Call it the Bush empire or colony project. Five years and there are still no honest answers from the White House. And John McCain promises more of the same. We have problems at home and the politicians aren't paying attention. We have problems abroad but we are so tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're getting nowhere. Bush and McCain have talked of attacking Iran. They have both lied about the reasons. They both have tried to repeat the false talking points that led us into war in Iraq in the first place. They lied. The war in Iraq was not necessary. More war is not good for America.

We need to change course. The American people have a choice. It's up to the American people to start thinking about the future. It's time to turn our backs on the Republican way of doing business and rediscover who we are as a people and as a democracy. It's time to bring our soldiers home, retrain them for the difficult years ahead and resume our real role as leaders of the free world and a people who want to leave the world a better place for our children and grandchildren.

Deregulation and Trickle Down Economics Is a Colossal Faillure

2008-03-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

The economic policies of the last twenty-five years or so have been a mistake based on illusions supported by lies and profitable for some through fraud. We forget too easily the problems of the 1970s and the fact that Americans did reasonably well in the 1980s because most households were earning two incomes out of economic necessity.

Paul Krugman has been watching the stumbling antics of the Bush administration for some years now. He made some predictions a few years back that weren't entirely accurate only because nearly everybody underestimated the desire of countries like China to find a place to park their new wealth. But Krugman was more right than wrong. The Republicans in Washington have done a poor job of minding the store. Largely through luck, we've been the beneficiary of a banking system that until recently was famous for its integrity. Because of a reckless level of deregulation and lack of oversight, that integrity is increasingly suspect.

Anyway, here's part of what Paul Krugman had to say today:

Contrary to popular belief, the stock market crash of 1929 wasn’t the defining moment of the Great Depression. What turned an ordinary recession into a civilization-threatening slump was the wave of bank runs that swept across America in 1930 and 1931.

This banking crisis of the 1930s showed that unregulated, unsupervised financial markets can all too easily suffer catastrophic failure.

As the decades passed, however, that lesson was forgotten — and now we’re relearning it, the hard way.

(snip)

[For the last number of years,] Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a “shadow banking system” that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.

It's unforgiveable that Wall Street allowed financial instruments to circulate that were given high credit ratings when those instruments were just as bad as the old junk bonds scams of the 1980s and certainly no better than the phony accounting audits and the high credit ratings that got Enron in trouble when its board of directors was a bit too pleased with 'creative' solutions to the company's extravagent spending and careless financial controls.

****I wish I had time to comment on the current political season. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination is clearly going to have to work to unite the party. As for McCain, maybe it's time for him to start thinking about a hobby to keep him occupied. He's no longer presidential material.

Bush's Dismal Approval Ratings in the 20s

2007-06-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

In a parliamentary government, President George W. Bush would be gone by now. But we're stuck with the most failed president in American history for another year and a half. Of course, the amazing thing is not Bush's low poll numbers, but the fact that so many Republicans in the House and Senate refuse to hold the president and vice president accountable. They insist on standing by a failed vision that is damaging the United States. Both men in the White House are impeachable. I suspect if Cheney alone were impeached, that action would go a long ways to forcing President Bush to clean up his act.

According to Newsweek, 26% percent of Americans still stand by a man who has done almost nothing for Americans in the last six years:

In 19 months, George W. Bush will leave the White House for the last time. The latest NEWSWEEK Poll suggests that he faces a steep climb if he hopes to coax the country back to his side before he goes. In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.

In case anyone thinks that's a fluke, here's another poll from the American Research Group:

Over two out-of-three Americans say they disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 27% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 67% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 29% approve and 64% disapprove.

Among Americans registered to vote, 28% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 66% disapprove. When it comes to the way Bush is handling the economy, 30% of registered voters approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 63% disapprove.

And yet, when you watch TV or pick up the paper, Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, David Broder and the Washington Post editorial staff still seem to think that Bush is doing a good job. Even Hillary Clinton seems to complain that only if Bush had been competent he might have been all right. Conventional wisdom in Washington and the media towers of New York are still behind reality.

I notice that a third of Republicans now disapprove of Bush. But one has to be careful. Most Republicans who disapprove of Bush disapprove of him for the same reasons as the rest of us. But a significant number of right wing conservatives disapprove of Bush for a strange array of reasons involving various reasons such as Bush's immigration policy, Iran, and the economy. Some right wing conservatives are whining that Bush isn't conservative enough. Some clowns are saying that Bush is actually a liberal since he's for big government, big spending, etc. Sorry, but Bush is no liberal. He's a radical conservative with a strong authoritarian streak (and there are Republicans who want to see more of that authoritarian nonsense; they get plenty of it in presidential candidates like Giuliani).

But what of the two thirds of Republicans who still approve of Bush? How can they approve of a man who went to war in Iraq without a legitimate reason for that war, without a plan, without enough troops, without allies and without an exit strategy? How can they support a president who refused to do anything before 9/11 despite clear warnings of a terrorist attack? How can they cheer a president who let Osama bin Laden get away so he could pursue his bizarre war in Iraq? How can they stand by him? How can Republicans stand by Bush's lawbreaking on a wide range of issues? Why are Republicans silent every time the president ignores the US Constitution for petty political reasons? How can Bush's remaining supporters approve of his behavior after Hurricane Katrina? Katrina, by the way, was simply an indicator of Bush's failure and indifference on a wide range of issues.

I know, I know, human nature is human nature and part of our nature is stubbornness even when we know we're probably not being led well by our politicians. But if Republicans who approve of Bush care about their children and the future of their children, they better think long and hard about continuing to support a man who has been wrong on so many issues and who has put politics of the presents well ahead of our future needs. The future is coming and it's coming faster than most of us realize.

John Edwards Marches On As Media Fails America

2007-05-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

The arrogance of empire lives on. The Russians had their useless imperial court. The French nobility had their wigs, salons and vicious gossip. America has the Washington press corps and their ridiculous 'conventional wisdom.' Whether it's making jokes about Gore's style of talking despite how often the former vice president has nailed the issues of the day, or talking about John Edwards haircut and whether his war on poverty is 'sincere' or not, or sniggering when Nancy Pelosi goes to Europe for a global warming conference, the Washington press corps continues to collect their high salaries while poorly serving Americans as Bush stumbles into crisis after crisis while having his staff write pretty reports.

But a number of Democrats march on, doing their best in these strange times. One of them is presidential hopeful John Edwards who notices the poor quality of the Republican presidential field, characters unwilling to admit what a failure Bush has been and unwilling to admit the fiasco that has become Iraq. Here's the AP story in the International Herald Tribune:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Thursday that President George W. Bush has made the United States less safe and that Republican candidates are trying to become "a bigger, badder George Bush."

Edwards' remarks came one day after he challenged the idea of a global fight against terrorism, calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained the U.S. military and emboldened terrorists.

Bush told reporters Thursday that Edwards' view was naive.

Edwards is naive? Bush is still reluctant to take off his training wheels after six years in office. How long should a president be given to get it right? Everything Bush has said about Iraq and why we're there has fallen apart. And if ever there was a naive politician, it was Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's number two man at the Pentagon and Bush's theorist for the war in Iraq. Wolfowitz had the arrogant and ultimately naive idea that if you apply just the right amount of force, not too much and not too little, you can get the exact result you want in the Middle East. Does anyone see anything like that happening?

Republicans should be held accountable for their foolish, uninformed comments about foreign policy. Puffing your chest out, fearmongering and otherwise not knowing what you're talking about is no way to run a foreign policy. Bush is an incompetent. Al Qaida is stronger today because their biggest recruiter is President Bush; because of Bush's inflammatory rhetoric, his incompetence and his unwillingness to make clear what we're trying to do in Iraq, we're worse off today than we were four years ago. The media shrugs and the war goes on, without purpose, without any real examination of the facts (particularly by the Republican presidential candidates who seem to vow to give us more of the same) and without the kind of leadership America deserves. Edwards may or may not win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, but he clearly is one of the few responsible voices speaking out.

John Edwards Gets Real on Foreign Policy

2007-05-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

Psst, the Fox TV show '24,' is a fantasy. It has nothing to do with reality. Please pass this along, particularly to the Republican presidential candidates who seem fond of flapping their arms and beating their chests. Oh, one other thing. Pass along the fact that we had a very effective bipartisan foreign policy for fifty years and the professionals to go with it before George W. Bush showed up; in fact, it worked so well, that it warned President Bush before 9/11 that we were in danger of an attack from al Qaida. Bush did nothing and stayed on vacation in Crawford, Texas. Posturing is worthless if you don't know what you're doing.

It was pathetic listening to the Republican candidates shoot off their sound bites during their debate. They haven't learned a thing in six years. They think everything Bush is doing is great which shows how far the Republican Party has drifted from its tradition of pragmatism.

Here's a fact the Republican Party needs to get its arms around: Bush has lost over 3,000 Americans lives and spent over $500 billion to buy America the albatross we call Iraq. That albatross ain't doing nothing for us. And it certainly has nothing to do with the so-called 'war on terror,' whatever the heck that's supposed to mean. Al Qaida attacked us on 9/11; it was based in Afghanistan, not Iraq. It was led by Osama bin Laden. Al Qaida, Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden are real, they are tangible, but 'terrorism' is an abstraction you can make anything out of it that you want; you can move the goal posts, you can name this group or that group terrorists depending all too often on politics. You can say dropping a bomb on a city is not terrorism but a much smaller bomb in a grocery store is terrorism. You can say these guys are freedom fighters while these guys are terrorists and they use exactly the same tactics. You can say this Iraqi group is bad and this Iraqi group is good depending on how much money is flowing and who says what. It is an wretched way to do foreign policy.

On The Huffington Post, foreign policy expert Lorelei Kelly talks about terrorism and the honest tack that John Edwards takes on the issue:

John Edwards is getting a track record for blazing the trail on national security. He was the only Democratic contender at the first debate to openly criticize the label "war on terror." His lonely stance was unusual and illustrates how fearful we've become as a nation as well as alienated from the fundamental principles of our own democracy. Military experts --many veterans among them-- have been broadcasting their dissatisfaction about this label since the war began. Terrorism is a tactic, not a long term strategy. And the Bush Administration has been getting a free ride on this moniker since the post 9/11 world began. But then, understanding the integrity and the substance of the military would explode the neo-conservative election strategy that revolves around distorted labels of strength and weakness, patriotism and "America hating." We will endure these talking points until a group of wise Republicans decide to take their party back.

The strongest country in the world shouldn't have to rely on politicians like Bush and Giuliani who like to grandstand and posture without having the smarts to come up with an effective foreign policy. Yes, we need a strong defense. No, we do not need to get into the business of regime changes that feel more like an attempt at over-bearing colonial rule. The only people who have benefited from Bush's reckless foreign policy are his Republican friends in the defense industry. That is not something to celebrate or brag about. It is something to investigate and prosecute.

The Continuing Uselessness of Sam Donaldson

2007-05-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

The news is that Barack Obama is drawing large crowds. The news is that Barack Obama has something to say. In fact, the news is that most of the Democratic candidates (though Edwards and Obama in particular as far I'm concerned) have something to say. The news is that there is a leadership vacuum in Washington. The news is that the Republicans have run out of ideas. The news is that there are growing problems that the United States is facing while the Bush Administration pretends they don't exist. The news is that Democrats are beginning to focus on these problems and talking about solutions.

According to Sam Donaldson, however, the news is that a couple of old gentlemen fell asleep during Barack Obama's speech in Missouri in front of a crowd of 3,000 people. Here's the story:

A potentially embarrassing moment was caught on tape during a speech by Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Saturday. Video taken of the event in Kansas City, Mo. appeared to show at least two audience members sleeping.

Approximately 3,000 people attended the fundraiser for Obama, who is challenging Hillary Clinton and a handful of others for the Democratic nomination in 2008. ...

(snip)

A video clip of the event that aired on ABC News showed two older gentlemen sitting in the crowd, with eyes closed.

During a roundtable discussion on Sunday morning, commentator Sam Donaldson even pointed out the potentially embarrassing screen capture...

On one level, what an extraordinary non-story! This is the best that Sam Donaldson can offer his viewers? This is journalism? This is the kind of analysis that Sam Donaldson is being paid some 7 figures for? It's embarrassing to American journalism.

On another level, there is a major story here. It's evidence once again of useless overpaid journalists who have been asleep for the last twenty years. Edward R. Murrow is turning over in his grave. This is what he fought for?

Does Sam Donaldson understand the problems facing the United States? Does he understand the enormity of Bush's failures? Does he understand the growing energy crisis which has been largely ignored for the last thirty years and is now coming home to roost? Does he understand global warming? Does he understand what a fiasco Bush has given us in Iraq? Does he understand the growing economic stress Americans are facing? Does he understand there is a connection between economic stress and the desire to fix healthcare? Does he understand the complete uselessness of the current president? Does he understand the growing vulnerability of America's economy and strength? Does Sam Donaldson understand that the growing imbalance between the wealthy and everybody else is not healthy for our democracy? Does he understand there are people who believe we can tackle some of these problems? Does he understand the need to find capable people? Does he understand how bereft of ideas the current Republican Party is these days? No, Sam Donaldson would rather talk about a couple of older gentlemen who fell asleep during a speech. And people wonder why bloggers are disgusted with so much of the mainstream media.

John Edwards Speaks on Poverty and Critics

2007-05-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

A Republican pundit who criticizes John Edwards for being rich is a ridiculous sight to behold given how much the Republican Party is the party of greed. To watch people in the media act as if a Republican talking point still has validity this late in the game after six years of corruption, incompetence and ideological indifference to the fate of millions of American is embarrassing to watch, particularly since so many of these mainstream media types are financially doing quite well and are themselves more interested in staying on top that acting in the public's interest.

There are plenty of exceptions in the media, of course; here and there are people who pay attention. Bob Herbert of The New York Times will surely be writing about the various presidential candidates but here's what he has to say on John Edwards:

The scene was immensely more appealing than the overly scripted televised "debates" that feature sleep-inducing nonanswers from an army of candidates browbeaten by moderators wielding stopwatches.

New Orleans has not been a hot topic at those upscale gatherings. Much of the city is still in ruins, still in "terrible shape," as Mr. Edwards noted. During a lengthy interview that followed his talk with the local residents, he told me that what had been allowed to happen to New Orleans was "an embarrassment for America" and that as president he would put the power of the federal government squarely behind its revival.

He said he would appoint a high-level official to take charge of the rebuilding, and he would have that person "report to me" every day. He said he would create 50,000 "steppingstone jobs," in parks, recreation facilities and a variety of community projects, for New Orleans residents who have been unable to find any other work. And he said, "We're also going to have to rebuild these levees."

(snip)

It's true that promises from politicians come at us like weeds on steroids. But the nation would get a clearer picture of the character, integrity and leadership qualities of individual candidates if the press would focus more intently on matters of substance.

As a rule, we're much more interested in gaffes than in the details of a candidate's position on a complex issue. We're much more interested in sound bites than in sound policy.

That should change. We should give the candidates time to speak. And we should listen.

Much of the media isn't really interested in the future of America; they're interested in circuses and media events and ingratiating themselves with powerful people and are more than happy to help someone like Bush put on meaningless photo op stunts like finding another group of bozos intent on attacking America with delusional schemes that even a movie producer would be embarrassed to use except in a lame comedy. Americans have the right to expect more from a powerful media.

Here's more on Edwards from AP writer Mike Glover:

Presidential candidate John Edwards said Monday it's silly to suggest that his wealth and expensive tastes have hurt his credibility as an advocate for the poor.

(snip)

"Would it have been better if I had done well and didn't care?" Edwards asked.

Edwards noted that some of the most acclaimed anti-poverty advocates came from privileged backgrounds, including Franklin Roosevelt and Bobby Kennedy.

"You could see and feel the empathy they had," said Edwards, speaking from his home in North Carolina during an interview on Iowa Public Radio.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, has made poverty a central issue of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and recently released a book on the subject, "Ending Poverty in America." He also has formed a center for the study of poverty issues at the University of North Carolina.

Edwards could easily have mention John Kennedy whose Peace Corps was very much an anti-poverty program, though in the third world; the Peace Corps also led to a domestic anti-poverty program called Vista. Teddy Roosevelt's reforms led to bringing the robber barons under control and strengthening the middle class and giving more poor Americans a chance. Let me add that Franklin Roosevelt was particularly good at fighting poverty and one of the things that made him a good fighter was that he knew there were wealthy people who were responsible and generous but he also understood the dark side of his economic class and he understood their games and their dishonest rationalizations for their behavior ('it's just business, you know?').

In contrast, we currently have a president who genuinely doesn't care about the poor: witness his response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush's first response is always to help his wealthy friends. He might listen to someone who is poor for the sake of photo ops but when it comes time to do something, nothing happens. That is the nature of most politicians in the Republican Party these days and this is despite the fact that may rank and file Republicans believe poverty issues should be addressed.

Bob Herbert is right; we need a media less interested in recording the ins and out of political games and more interested in finding out what the issues are, what candidates have to say and how America might address these issues. The last thing we need is a free press sticking its head in the sand like Republican ostriches.

Republicans Signing Up for Barack Obama

2007-05-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

It's not unusual for business people of any political affiliation to contribute to one party one year and the other the next and to sometimes donate to both parties if a clear winner isn't evident. One could argue that it's a form of covering your bets. But it's curious that some Republicans are choosing Barack Obama early on. Truthout caught this story by Sarah Baxter of The Sunday Times:

Disillusioned supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation.

(snip)

...last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama - that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was "pure John Kennedy", a neocon hero of the cold war.

(snip)

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

"I disagree with Obama on the war but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism," Martin says. "Obama has a message of hope for the country."

(snip)

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president's reelection, qualifying him as a "Bush ranger". He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton's expertise. "I know we're associated mainly with the Republicans but we've always gone for the individual," Mack said.

No doubt the motivations of Republicans and conservative independents supporting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or other Democrats can vary. Some may genuinely want to see a serious change. Some may be responding to Barack Obama's optimism and unity rhetoric. Some may want a Democrat who's Republican-lite. Some may be cynically supporting the candidate mostly likely to lose in the 2008 general election. Others may be just covering their bets. But it's worth watching in one of the oddest eras in American politics.

Republican Debate: The Good News and the Bad News

2007-05-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

Let's deal quickly with the good news: the Republicans provided Democrats with considerable footage demonstrating their sheer foolishness.

Here's the bad news: one of these idiots could be the next president of the United States.

Here's a quick summary of the top three:

McCain mangled his words on several occassions and was frequently incoherent; I'm sorry to say it but he's clearly slipping. On the occassions when he was understandable, it was usually meaningless boilerplate that could have answered dozens of questions without actually saying much. For one brief moment, we saw the old McCain when he said he believed in evolution but had no trouble seeing God's handiwork when he was at the Grand Canyon; but that McCain started disappearing in 2004 when he decided to jump aboard the Bush express.

Mitt Romney was the Stepford man. He makes Hillary Clinton's triangulations look human and natural. It was embarrassing to see him rush up to be the first candidate to shake Nancy Reagan's hand after the debate. A slick man. Very slick.

Rudy Giuliani was probably the most dangerous man on the stage. In many ways, he presents himself effectively and can probably get away with campaigning as a sort of conservative moderate. But recent appearances suggests that the unitary executive nonsense that Cheney and Bush have been pursuing the last six years would continue unabated under Giuliani. There's not a doubt in my mind that Guiliani is a bully at heart. That Bernard Kerik was his police chief speaks volumes. If Giuliani continues to do well in the polls, I'll have more to say about the ugly qualities he shares with Bush and Cheney.

I enjoyed watching my wife while we listened to the debate. She has a wonderful way of rolling her eyes when the Republican candidates say stupid or dishonest things. It was appalling that several of the candidates thought Scooter Libby should be pardoned. It was embarrassing how unwilling these guys were to criticize the most failed president in our nation's history. The list goes on. I think the reader has the general idea.

If the reader will pardon an imperfect analogy, these candidates are like fools running for mayor while the current mayor has delegated the job of repairing a dam upstream from the town to his cronies and some corrupt campaign donors. The engineers with integrity say the dam is cracking, largely because of cheap construction materials; it's also been raining for twenty days and these Republican fools are telling the townfolk the best way to solve the town's problem is to fill in more potholes. A lot of good filling those potholes will be when the dam breaks.

The dead giveaway was the attempt to ride on Reagan's coattails. Reagan's presidency was finished nearly twenty years ago. The world has changed a lot since then. Reagan spent his presidency ignoring a number of problems that are beginning to have a significant impact. Reagan ignored the environment, he ignored the need for a real energy policy and he had a lousy eye for honest government officials. The nostalgia for Reagan perfectly reflects the fantasies that seem to drive the right wingers who control the Republican Party these days. We need people in the White House who don't live in a bubble, who have a chance—at least a chance—of connecting to reality.

Transcript of the MSNBC Democratic Debate

2007-04-28T01:10:00.000-07:00

The commentary on the Democratic debate by most TV and some print pundits earning seven figures continues to be irrelevant and embarrassing. The solution is to read what the candidates said themselves. If the reader hunts around, there are videos available of the debate. Here's a transcript of what the candidates actually said which is more interesting than all those pundits who gave George W. Bush a free pass for six years.

If young people want a future, it's time to pay attention. If parents and grandparents want a future for their children and grandchildren, it's time to be politically active. Our nation is in bad need of political reform.

Democratic Debate on MSNBC

2007-04-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

I listened to the debate and read some commentary on various blogs. I don't know what people were expecting, but, given the format and number of candidates, I thought it was a reasonably good debate. Given their performance Thursday night, I have no doubt whatsoever that John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd can handle the presidency.

The same is true of Bill Richardson but he seemed a little underprepared for the debate style; I excuse him because he is, after all, a working governor. Joe Biden is brilliant but one can see how he would need a full team of damage control specialists who would have to explain away his verbal gaffes; Biden won't change, he's used to letting it all hang out, warts and all, this late in his life, but he's still brilliant and gave some of the best answers of the night. Kucinich surprised me by being more articulate and thoughtful than I remember him being in 2004—I just have trouble taking him seriously as a presidential candidate. The next time a senate seat opens up in Ohio, though, it may be time for Kucinich to move up—the country needs more of him, not less, though I'm not sure Ohio voters can quite cross that bridge.

Actually, all the candidates save one, would be a considerable improvement over the current occupant of the White House and his paranoid vice president. The exception is the former senator from Alaska. The last time I saw Mike Gravel, he seemed less cranky and eccentric than he did tonight; it was one of the worst performances I've seen by a candidate but I have to say it also seems the moderators were giving him short shrift. I'd like to see the minutes for the debate because it seemed Hillary Clinton was given more opportunities to speak than anyone else but that may have been the rebuttal option that was offered.

I thought Hillary Clinton was probably the most prepared and probably gave the best performance of the candidates; I'm not sure she had the best answers. And I'm still puzzled by the funny way she handles her vote on Iraq. Dodd and Edwards simply say the vote was a mistake. Biden came close to taking what may be Hillary Clinton's position which seems to be nothing more than that Bush turned out to do an incompetent job. The Iraq debacle is about far more than just Bush's incompetence; there were willful lies and sheer arrogance in the way that Bush conceived and continues to conceive foreign policy. I want to hear Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden disavow the preemptive strike principle (at least they seem to be against unilateralism).

John Edwards gave the best answers of anyone in terms of details and what he's driving at but I found him to be somewhat subdued; it wouldn't hurt him for his answers to be a little more emphatic with some fresh material thrown in. I forget the exact wording but near the end of the debate, Edwards was asked who he looked to for moral guidance. The question seemed to surprise him, but he thought about it for a few seconds and gave a brilliant answer and pointed out that there really couldn't be just one source for moral guidance. I have to add something further here. A couple of blogs criticized him for taking so long to answer. But I remember when George W. Bush was asked a similar question about whether there was a philosopher he knew that gave him guidance and he quickly and glibly answered: Jesus Christ. It wasn't a bad answer, but there was a smugness and lack of thoughtfulness to the answer that seems so George W. Bush. Give me a president who actually thinks about things instead of simply shooting from the hip and not really understanding what it means to provide real leadership and not just some right wing Hollywood version suitable for photo ops.

The person who may have helped himself the most was Barack Obama. Although I didn't like his answers on Iran and on health care which I believe are issues he still catching up to, he did very well on most issues. I was impressed at how quickly Barack Obama could think on his feet. He's not just a lot of prepared statements and talking points with a literary flair; there's presidential material there and he'll do fine if he wins the nomination (still, think what a better candidate he would be in eight years!).

I've listened to Bill Richardson in interviews and they interviewed him after the debate; he always does well in interviews; so I was surprised that he didn't seem to be on his game during the debate (it's possible he just doesn't handle the clock very well). He even came across as mildly eccentric on some issues. If one of the leading candidates stumbles, Richardson is in a position to move up but he needs to give a more solid performance in his next debate. He sounded like a candidate who walked in without preparing himself.

Christopher Dodd isn't a flashy presidential candidate but he has a very sharp mind and he gave some of the wittiest lines in the debate. He needs to shed his senatorial style a bit and get into the presidential mode and the simplest way to do that is to start off with some of his wittiest lines or end with them. And his staffers should go back through his statements and highlight Dodd's gems and make sure they work their way into speeches here and there. I like how his mind works; he sometimes does a very good job of getting to the heart of a matter.

What can one say about Biden? He's amazing, and like Dodd, he gets to the heart of matters but with far more bluntness. Biden has probably the biggest ego of the whole bunch and you feel like he's doing a highwire act and doing it very well except you suspect he'll get too cocky and do something that occassionally sends him verbally off the wire hanging by one hand with a sheepish grin on his face. As brilliant as he is, I don't think he can win and he needs to be careful that he doesn't diminish the possibility of becoming the next secretary of state. We need him more than his verbal fireworks. Nevertheless, if this nation needs a cocky and arrogant president, it ought to be Joe Biden and certainly not another George W. Bush (that Giuliani leads in some polls makes my skin crawl; he's not presidential material).

I found Kucinich more likeable than usual and more thoughtful. I just don't think he has the pragmatism to be president. But Kucinich is no longer the fringe candidate. That honor now belongs to Mike Gravel.

I didn't find the debate boring. There are differences among the Democratic candidates but they're more united on progressive issues and the need for real change than the media seems willing to acknowledge. The mainstream media still acts like right wing Republicans still have something to offer our country. They've got to be kidding. No one should forget that in 2000 the media helped perpetuate the myth that there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush except character. Bush lied to the American people about his real values and real political beliefs (I don't mean the dog and pony show the media drools over but the Bush as his terrible policies and reckless actions define him as). The reality is that we've got a good group of Democrats. Let's hope the voters agree in 2008.

Nation in Crisis: Media Focuses on Edwards' Haircut

2007-04-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's enough to make you cry. Bush is a failing president. He's bungled two wars, one we absolutely did not need. He threatens at times to start a third. He was handed a blueprint by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and our president, a proven incompetent, decides on more of the same with some new packaging. And people want to talk about a haircut that Edwards got. Too many people in our nation do not have their priorities straight.

McCain talks openly about bombing Iran, then calls it a joke. He hires a guy who has specialized lately in denying global warming. McCain is yet another conservative Republican who is bungling and, although he no longer is doing well in the polls, he's still the darling of the media.

In these times, Americans have to do their own homework. They will not get the facts from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and especially Alberto Gonzales. Here's a link to a quick ranking of various websites by the presidential candidates. Go take a read.

John Edwards on Don Imus

2007-04-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

Our nation is at a crossroads. We either start moving forward again or we descend into the politics of self-justification, mediocrity and smallness. I can't emphasize enough looking at the first three words of the US Contitution: We, the People... Some of our founding fathers, though certainly not all, understood the full implications of those words from the first moment they appeared. We continue to debate the full meaning of our constitution but some issues have been settled: we are all Americans. Part of our debate on the constitution is the recognition by all sides that we have to be honest about what we're talking about. But even at this late date, more than two hundred years later, there are any number of people who forget that we are, after all, a diverse democracy.

Radio host, Don Imus, crossed the line with his racist comments, though his initial excuse and the excuse of others was that it was just a joke. Something that shouldn't be lost in the discussion is that Imus has been a repeat offender. Long before the latest incident, columnist Clarence Page, at one time, even got Imus to raise his hand and promise an end to racially insensitive language. MSNBC has a post on what John Edwards has to say on the Don Imus controversy:

According to advance excerpts of his speech tonight at Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention, John Edwards takes the issues of Don Imus and racial intolerance head on. "I find it astonishing that there was even a debate over whether Don Imus' comments crossed the line. And I know I don't have to tell anybody here: Don Imus' comments didn't just cross the line. They defined the line that divides this country like the blade of a knife. There can be no debate over how much bigotry is too much bigotry. Any bigotry is too much."

He goes on to say, per the excerpts: "It's a shame we have to wait for the Don Imus' of the world to provoke a national conversation through bigotry - but we should jump at the chance to have this conversation, not just to look at whatever bigotry lies in our own hearts, but to finally engage on a problem that isn't going anywhere unless we do something about it."

We only rarely see leadership like this from President Bush and I can't recall a single case where Vice President Cheney has shown 'sensitivity' on civil rights issues. Leadership is calling a thing what it is: in this case, the language of racism on the public air waves. Imus is not the only one who does it and, frankly, there have been other radio hosts who have been slyer in the use of their language but with an intent more divisive and racist.

I noticed on the MSNBC site the first two comments reacting to Edwards. I know nothing about the commenters but the comments are common examples found on many message boards on the internet. Here's the first: "Tsk Tsk...is Johnny just upset that the I-Man didn't endorse him for president?"

Why would Edwards want the endorsement of someone who feels free to use racist language on the public airwaves? Racism is not a trivial subject and the snarkiness of the post suggests a lack of seriousness and interest on the part of the commenter. It contributes nothing to a real dialogue that needs to take place in our country.

Here's the second comment: "Nobody wants to talk about it because someone may have to explain why a white male is the only race or gender that can currently be considered a bigot, everyone else seems to have the right to say whatever they want." This is a common right wing mythology that has been surfacing more and more frequently in recent years. Generally, no group is free of bigotry and to claim others are bigoted does not excuse one's own bigotry. I might add that making excuses for one's own group has become a common dodge for far too many people across various groups.

I like the way that John Edwards talks about responsibility. When someone like George W. Bush talks about responsibility, it has a way of meaning that it's every man for himself. When Edwards talks about responsibility, it means that we're all in this together and that we have obligations to one another; it does not mean one set of rules for one group and another set of rules for other groups. I hope John Edwards continue the dialogue and that people start thinking more honestly about what they're saying and how they relate to other people no matter who they are.

Bill Richardson: Qualified Democrat

2007-04-16T01:36:00.000-07:00

Whether Bill Richardson wins the Democratic nomination or not, he belong in the next administration. This guy has what it takes to make things happen. Here's the latest catch from Raw Story:

Former US envoy Bill Richardson said on Sunday he was optimistic North Korea will begin taking steps to shut down its nuclear program despite failing to meet a promised deadline at the weekend.
Richardson, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations during former president Bill Clinton's administration, said he believed North Korea would allow in UN inspectors and move to shut down a nuclear reactor as part of an international agreement.

"My prediction ... is that early this week, they will invite the inspectors. They will start the process of shutting down the reactor," said Richardson, governor of the US state of New Mexico, in an interview with ABC television.

Richardson, a Democratic presidential hopeful who has conducted negotiations in the past with North Korea, said he had received positive assurances during a visit to North Korea last week as part of a US delegation.

"They committed to me on April 12, my last day in North Korea with a bipartisan delegation, that they would shut down the reactor shortly, that they would also invite international inspectors to monitor that, shut down their reprocessing facility," Richardson said.

Let's hope Bill Richardson continues to have successful negotiations with the North Koreans.

Hillary Clinton Calls for Government Reform

2007-04-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

I don't doubt the intentions and ability of Hillary Clinton. And I don't doubt that she would do a fine job if elected president. Her call for government reform is certainly in the right direction as Philip Elliott of the AP reports in the North County Times:

Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday assailed a "culture of cronyism" in government as she vowed to streamline the federal bureaucracy and improve accountability.

In a speech in this early primary state, Clinton called for slashing 500,000 government contractors, potentially saving up to $18 billion a year, and promised to cut back on no-bid government contracts.
"It's not exactly the subject matter that gets people marching in the street, but if we don't restore the confidence and the competence of our government, we will see the steady erosion of our government's capacity," the New York senator said.

(snip)

Her proposals echoed "Reinventing Government," or REGO, a program launched during her husband's administration and run by Vice President Al Gore. REGO was credited with saving taxpayers more than $136 billion over eight years by cutting the federal work force, trimming layers of management and cutting subsidies for items like mohair and wool.

Senator Clinton is in the ballpark but the mere mention of Al Gore and his successful leadership of the "Reinventing Government" program makes me wish he were in the running for the presidency in 2008. In 2000, the media thought it was cute to undercut Gore and they gave us George W. Bush. I wouldn't mind seeing what Gore can really do.

I'm all for government reform and George W. Bush's incompetence and cronyism makes the case for the need for reform better than any Democratic candidate. But there's another area of reform that's needed if government reform is to be meaningful. Bush's corruption goes hand in hand with corrupt businesses. The North County Times, for example, helped to break the story on Duke Cunningham and the cozy business relationship he had with businesses looking for favors. There are still honest corporations in America but they're under attack by the crooked types looking for favors and a wink from the government. Big Business also needs serious reform. No other candidate has done a better job in real life terms of taking on businesses unwilling to live up to their responsibilities than John Edwards. That was what his law business was about: holding business accountable.

Democrats need to be pro-business but that makes sense only if they are also pro-workers and in favor of real competition. The three can go hand in hand. Bill Clinton did a terrific job of creating jobs during his eight years. But he stumbled in the long run on globalization. He allowed businesses to define what globalization would mean and it has not gone well for many American workers. And Clinton's policies could not protect workers from the damage a right wing conservative like Bush could do to the wages of average Americans. This time around, we need deeper, long-lasting reforms that ensure workers the best economy for everyone and not just riches for a rapidly developing privileged class that is increasingly dominating our public life to the detriment of our democracy and the deteriment of a broad-based middle class. Hillary Clinton is definitely touching the right bases but I would like to see more before I'm convinced she understands just how much damage Bush and his fellow conservatives have done to our country and how much needs to change.

Wide Open Democratic Race

2007-04-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

Competition is good. An honest debate among reasonably capable people is a generally a good sign in a democracy (I said debate, not right wing Republican sophistry where a signing statement is sometimes considered more important than the U.S. Constitution or the opinion of a right wing comedian with a cigar is taken as fact). We have an open race on the Democratic side and it's not just about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. Even some of the other candidates benefit as well.

Here's a story that explains the benefit to both Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd:

Sen. Barack Obama scored big in fundraising this week but the two happiest candidates may be New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, two second-tier Democratic presidential hopefuls who now see an opening since Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has not run away with the nomination.

As the two candidates with arguably the longest official resumes, Mr. Richardson, in his second term as New Mexico's governor, and Mr. Dodd, in his fifth term as senator from Connecticut, say they can compete for the long haul. This week both spent time in New Hampshire, trying to persuade voters in the first-in-the-nation primary to choose deep experience over deep pockets.

"All I want is for you to keep your powder dry," Mr. Richardson told several hundred voters at a town hall meeting at New England College in Henniker, N.H., on Wednesday. "Wait until you see all the candidates, wait until we have debates. ... Don't get swayed by rock-star status or polls or how much money you raised."

(snip)

That's exactly what Mr. Dodd is banking on.

"People in this state don't want to be told by the national media the outcome of their primaries and caucuses 10 months out. In fact, they've had a history of trying to prove you wrong," Mr. Dodd told reporters this week. "So I'll take the news here on the ground, and I'll take the receptions I'm getting in these states as better evidence of how I'm doing than whether or not I've got a bank account equal to some of the other candidates."

No one should ever forget that our greatest president was a guy who wasn't even in the top three spots in the early running. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was running fourth but he had a knack of talking people into thinking of him as their second choice if their favorite candidate didn't make it.

We should all keep in mind that part of George W. Bush's failed presidency can be traced to his father's campaign contributors who guaranteed Bush $200 million before the first primary vote was cast. And Bush almost lost to McCain and he decisively lost the national popular vote to Gore. Despite what the Bush family may think, money can't buy everything. It certainly can't buy competence or a successful presidency this late in the day.

This election, let the candidates show their quality, not the fat cats and their purchase of public relations illusions where candidates talk a good game but don't really understand what they're doing and aren't pragmatic enough to learn. Show me a candidate who can learn in six weeks, not six years. In 2008, we need to elect a competent president.

In California, Bush Numbers Plummeting

2007-04-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

Despite Orange County, John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, just to name a few conservative icons in my state, California has been trending Democratic in recent years. But even California Republicans are beginning to turn away from Bush for various reasons. The San Jose Mercury News carries the story by Steven Harmon of Media News:

California Republicans, increasingly disenchanted with the war in Iraq, are beginning to abandon President Bush, a development that may threaten the GOP's chances in the 2008 presidential race.

California on the whole trends Democratic, and Bush's approval numbers have always been lower here than elsewhere, but for the first time in his presidency, less than half of Republicans in the state approve of Bush's job performance, according to two statewide polls, driving overall support to all-time lows.

The GOP disaffection comes at a time when Bush's former top campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd, criticized Bush for losing his bond with voters and failing to heed the public's concerns on the war.

In the Field Poll, 49 percent of Republicans support Bush - down from 61 percent in September, while, in the San Jose State University Survey and Policy Research Institute poll, 46 percent approve of his performance - down from 58 percent only two months ago.

I think all Americans are bewildered by Bush. Usually, Republican or Democrat, a president who makes blunders and sags in the polls tries to get his act together and turn things around. Not Bush. For George W. Bush, it's full steam ahead, straight toward the edge of the cliff. Not only is it painful to watch, The Decider's behavior is damaging every one of us and it's going to take time to undo the damage when Bush is gone.

I think John Edwards is right: we can't wait two years for the next president. Every American needs to think of ways of repairing the damage right now, whether, just to name a few, it's cutting down on energy, cleaning up rivers, educating people about the need to reform healthcare, talking about the kind of stupid prejudices that are putting our country at risk, and maybe learning to think again as a community rather than thinking as millions of individuals wondering, "What's in it for me?" We've got to start doing better now.

The Return of People Power

2007-04-07T00:38:00.001-07:00

People really are tired of the corruption in Washington. Not only did the Democrats outraise the Republican Party and its deep pockets (don't forget Republican supporter Sam Fox and the $50,000 he donated to the dishonest Swift Boat group that smeared John Kerry; Bush just appointed him ambassador to Belgium), but they brought back the concept of people power. The Democrats can't compete with Republican billionaires and hucksters like Ralph Reed who manipulate good honest religious folks into donating for phony causes, but as the traditional party of the people, the Democrats can bring out the crowds. People want to do something to fix the corruption in Washington and waiting until November of 2008 isn't enough. So people are digging into their pockets and contributing to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama and other Democrats.

Hillary Clinton, with her years of Washington experience and major fundraising experience raised the most of any Democrat but just barely. Progressive newcomer, Barack Obama, almost matched Hillary in dollar amounts but the real message of his campaign is that he's reaching people. Here's the story from Jeremy Pelofsky of Reuters:

Democratic presidential newcomer Barack Obama said on Wednesday he has raised $25 million this year, almost matching his higher profile opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton and solidifying his bid for the party nomination.

Obama, a fresh face on the national stage who has served just two years in the U.S. Senate, fell only $1 million short of the New York senator...

Obama, 45, reported receiving more than 100,000 donations totaling at least $25 million, $6.9 million generated through Internet donations.

Clinton, 59, who has led the early national polls for the Democratic nomination in 2008, reported tapping 50,000 donors to raise $26 million. She raised $4.2 million via the Internet and added $10 million more from her most recent Senate campaign.

Since Hillary Clinton considers herself the moderate Democratic candidate, one can argue that Barack Obama and John Edwards are the progressive candidates and their combined total of contributions and contributors far surpasses Hillary Clinton. A 100,000 for Barack Obama and 40,000 for Edwards comes to 140,000 contributors, almost three times the number of those contributing to Hillary Clinton. Clearly, we have a wide open race. Of course, campaigns wax and wane, but I suspect people are in the mood for real change, not modest bandaids.

John Edwards Surging in New Hampshire

2007-04-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are very fine presidential hopefuls but the media should remember that we have a wide open race. Clinton and Obama may be grabbing the headlines but Edwards has been working hard to build his numbers vote by vote. Here's the latest numbers from the Boston Globe:

A WMUR/CNN poll released this afternoon shows Edwards shooting into second place ahead of Illinois Senator Barack Obama, though within the margin of error.

The poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, showed support for New York Senator Hillary Clinton dropping eight percentage points from two months ago, to 27 percent. Edwards is at 21 percent and Obama at 20 percent. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is not a candidate, received 11 percent. All other Democrats running were in the single digits.

I would not be surprised if Edwards is getting a sympathy vote because of Elizabeth Edwards' recurrence of cancer but it would be a mistake to underestimate Edwards' nuts and bolts campaign that is geared to changing the business-as-usual way of doing politics in Washington.

The St. Petersburg Times carries an AP story on Elizabeth Edwards that does remind us, after all, of the quality of John and Elizabeth Edwards:

Elizabeth Edwards wants to be clear: She made the choice to stick with her husband's campaign for president after learning her cancer was back.

"I think that people who are critical like to think that John dragged me kicking and fighting the whole way, that I'm somehow disappointed in this. I'm not disappointed in this," she said.

Speaking to reporters after her husband's town hall meeting at Concord High School on Monday, she said that at decision time she went first.

"He let me make it first, I think, because he wanted to make certain it was mine and I wasn't just deferring to him," she said. "This is what I wanted to do."

As for criticism of their decision: "I don't worry for me because we've got tough skin. And, honestly, having been through the death of a child, it's just words. You want to hurt us, you're going to have to do a little better than that."

John Edwards may not win the nomination but he and his wife are showing us courage, strength and integrity. Given what we've seen for the last six years, those aren't bad qualities to have in a presidential candidate. John Edwards is clearly having an impact. I hope Edwards' numbers continue to climb: it would give the other candidates something to think about.

Hillary Clinton Has All-Star Rebuttal Team

2007-04-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination in 2008, each of the current candidates know they have to do a better job than Kerry of responding to the kind of bizarre right wing attacks that have become business as usual in the Republican Party, at least the party we keep seeing these days. Maybe if Hagel or even Huckabee win the Republican nomination, we'll see a clean race but no one is banking on that. Hillary Clinton has put together an all-star team to protect her back against right wing games and attack ads. Here's the story from Philip Sherwell of the British newspaper, the Telegraph:

The first woman to run on a US presidential ticket has promised her friend Hillary Clinton that she will help her fight Republican "dirty tricks" in the race for the White House.

"The only thing that can stop Hillary becoming the next president would be smears and dirty tricks," said Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats' losing 1984 vice-presidential candidate. "I've told her I'll go anywhere and speak any time to make sure that doesn't happen."

She outlined her plans for a display of female solidarity with the Democratic presidential frontrunner last week in an interview in her office overlooking Ground Zero, where the World Trade Centre once stood in lower Manhattan.

Miss Ferraro, 71, ... has joined the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Billie Jean King, the former tennis star, in a "rapid rebuttal force" of well-known women on standby to defend and promote Sen Clinton's candidacy.

That's a great team. Ferraro, of course, is being a team player by saying that the only thing that can stop Hillary Clinton are smears and dirty tricks of the kind we've seen of late from Republicans. But here are the facts: Hillary Clinton is in a wide open race with at least three other contenders for the Democratic nomination. She should not assume that she has either a lock on the campaign money needed or on the votes. The Republicans decided to give George W. Bush a coronation simply for raising the most money before the first vote was cast in the 2000 primaries. It's up to the Democrats to show that ideas matter and that the average American voter matters.

If Hillary Clinton shows us that she has the total package and that she understands that a president taking office in 2009 will be facing a very different set of problems than the president who took office in 1993, she may very well go all the way. In any case, there are parts of her team I like very much and it is a good sign.

Jesse Jackson Backs Barack Obama

2007-03-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

The Barack Obama bandwagon keeps rolling and keeps creating a buzz wherever the senator from Illinois goes. Although not entirely aboard the Barack Obama campaign, Rev. Jesse Jackson plans on voting for Barack Obama; the Saint Petersburg Times carries the story from The Washington Post:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson says he is supporting Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in his 2008 presidential bid, but Jackson is refraining from encouraging others to do the same.

"I will vote for him because he is from my state," Jackson, a civil rights leader who is influential in the African-American community, said in an interview Thursday. "He has the intelligence and the integrity and the strength of reasoning to make a tremendous impact. He has already inspired many people to get involved."

Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodman Clinton, D-N.Y., have been battling vigorously for the support of black voters. Jackson said he does not plan to join Obama's campaign yet.

For the record, Jesse Jackson's influence is not limited to the African-American community. Jackson is, after all, the founder of the Rainbow Coalition and has been active on a number of broad progressive issues for some years.

Barack Obama also visited Florida on Friday and was a hit; here's the story from S. V. Date of the Palm Beach Post:

Illinois Sen. and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama brought his campaign to the state capital Friday, eliciting star-struck responses from lawmakers and ordinary residents alike.

"On behalf of the Capitol and behalf of the Democratic Caucus from both the House and the Senate, I want to welcome Sen. Obama and 'Starship Obama.' There's a lot of excitement here," said House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber, who along with other Democratic legislators met with Obama behind closed doors where he signed a table full of copies of his book.

(snip)

"It's going to be a 50-state campaign. Oftentimes, over the last several years, there's been a tendency to just focus on one or two states," Obama said. "We also want to make sure that we're coming to states like Florida, not just to fund-raise, which has been the tradition, but also to provide community forums, access to ordinary folks, so that they get a chance to lift the hood and kick the tires."

He provided some brief access to those folks a short time later with a three-minute, impromptu speech to a crowd of 200 or so gathered outside the Challenger Learning Center, where several hundred supporters - including some Republican lobbyists - paid as much as $500 to listen to a speech in private.

I've noticed that Barack Obama has been giving a fair number of impromptu speeches outside various events where people show up hoping to catch a glimpse of him. He's clearly a political rock star and we'll know in a few months if he has what it takes to go all the way.

More on Elizabeth Edwards

2007-03-28T17:35:00.000-07:00

"Some say..." has become a cliche for journalists like Katie Couric who don't want to put questions directly in their own words. 60 Minutes is what it is and I wasn't particularly bothered by the screwy hardball questions. Certainly John and Elizabeth were not surprised by them. But I wish there had been more followup on their answers which were quite good and straightforward. The Huffington Post has a post by Melinda Henneberger on Elizabeth Edwards:

After you have cancer, people both do and do not want to know how you are. It isn't that they don't care, exactly. But often, it is hard for them to hear anything other than one word: Great! If you said the truer thing -- I hope I'm OK, but none of us really knows, do we? -- it would clear the room. That's how we are about death.

Which is why the single most important thing Elizabeth Edwards said on 60 Minutes the other night was "We're all going to die." And it's this unflinching acknowledgment of mortality that, paradoxically, makes her so fully available for swing-for-the-fences living.

(snip)

... There is no daylight between the personal and the political for Elizabeth Edwards, which is what people mean when they rave, rightly, about how "real" she is. ...

It's what we respond to in her...

(snip)

We'd amen anything she'd decided, of course, anything at all. But if that were me, we all agreed, we'd hope to be right where she is, saying, "Baby, don't you DARE drop out and put that on me."

She believes in her husband, with everything she's got. ...

This sounds about right. Elizabeth says onward! and onward it is.

Tom Vilsack Endorses Hillary Clinton

2007-03-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

I like Tom Vilsack. His speaking style is a bit dull but if you listen closely to what he's actually saying, he gets it. I'm to the left of him somewhat, but he's a principle moderate and we need more like him. I'm sorry he dropped out of the race.

Vilsack and his wife have had a friendship with the Clintons for some time so it's not surprising that Tom Vilsack is endorsing Hillary Clinton. Reuters has the story:

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who dropped his brief presidential bid last month, endorsed Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy for the White House on Monday.

"This is the person to be the next president of the United States," Vilsack said at a news conference with Clinton. "She is tried, she is tested and she is ready."

Vilsack said the endorsement was in part a result of the former first lady's fund-raising efforts on his behalf during his first campaign for governor in 1998.

"In politics, loyalty is a commodity that is rare," Vilsack said.

I appreciate what Vilsack is saying but given how dysfunctional loyalty in the Republican Party has become, I wish he had found a better way to talk about loyalty. There's also concern that Hillary Clinton can sometimes be more loyal to her campaign contributors than to her Democratic supporters. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I will work for her and work hard but I hope she doesn't take people like me for granted.

Actually, my loyalty is reasonably easy to buy. All a candidate has to do is put the American people first, work hard for the average American, take on the growing new problems of the 21st century and take on the issues that have been ignored for the last twenty-five years. In defense of Bill Clinton, he was obstructed on some issues by an obstinate Republican Congress but he had his weak areas. Bill Clinton didn't push very hard on the environment or on a decent energy policy. And in his first term, foreign policy at times was not on the front burner. Hillary Clinton needs to give us some strong assurances that she'll do better than her husband did on some of these critical issues.

The Remarkable Elizabeth Edwards

2007-03-23T22:55:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write the title of this post before we found out that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer had returned. Now it's more true than ever.

Here's a story on Elizabeth Edwards by Lynn Duke and Lois Romano of The Washington Post:

Not once did the shadow of fear cross her face. Elizabeth Edwards stood before the nation, a graceful fighter steeled for personal tragedy again. The cancer is back and in her bones, a lung and possibly elsewhere. The news seemed worse than bad. Yet Edwards conveyed no hint of being hobbled by an incurable cancer. Self-pity was nowhere on the scene.

"Is this a hardship for us? Yes, it's yet another hurdle," she said. "But I've seen people who are in real desperate shape who don't, first of all, have the wonderful support that I have and have no place to turn."

(snip)

In the hours before yesterday's noon news conference, there had been speculation that her husband might suspend some of his campaign activities. But friends says they are certain that his wife would have been dead-set against any change in his campaign.

The real question friends and political observers have is not whether she'll tough it out -- but whether he can stay connected and focused without her. Though Edwards said he expects his wife to be with him on the campaign trail when she can, he also added, "Any time any place that I need to be with Elizabeth, I will be there, period."

Friends say this turn of events, as distressing as it is, was handled in pure Elizabeth Edwards style: head on.

We need a president in 2008 who is who he says he is. Sometimes you can measure a candidate by the people who are around that candidate. John Edwards measures up. There are other good candidates so this is not an endorsement. Not yet. But I'm leaning, I'm leaning.....

Tomorrow, the Democratic candidates will be talking about healthcare. Now John Edwards has the money to take care of his wife's medical needs but he knows his roots and he knows that millions of Americans have concerns about whether they can afford to take care of their medical needs. Our country has the best medical research in the world but more and more Americans cannot afford the benefits of that research. As usual, Republicans, particularly right wing Republicans, do not have the answers. And bandaids are no longer going to fix our broken medical system. Whether it's John Edwards or one of the other Democratic candidates who might go all the way, we can hope that the time to reform healthcare has come and that Republicans and their wealthy campaign contributors will stop obstructing something a majority of Americans know needs to happen.

In the meantime, let's hope Elizabeth Edwards' cancer remains treatable and that she remains reasonably healthy and in the thick of things.

Elizabeth Edwards Has Cancer Recurrence

2007-03-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

I caught the story late last night that the Edwards campaign had an announcement and that it probably concerned Elizabeth Edwards. Here's the story from ABC News:

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., announced today that his wife's cancer has returned, but that his presidential campaign will go on.
Standing together at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they were married nearly 30 years ago, Edwards stood with his wife Elizabeth Edwards and announced at a news conference, "Her cancer is back."

"It's largely confined in bone, which is a good thing," he said.

Edwards said his wife's cancer isn't curable, though it could be managed with treatment. However, Edwards said "the campaign goes on, the campaign goes on strongly."

Let's hope Elizabeth Edwards' treatment goes well and that's she back in the thick of things. My wife and I wish her well. And our hearts go out to her and her family.

I suppose it's wise that the media and the Edwards campaign haven't said much about the relationship between John and Elizabeth but there's a love story here. Some unkind comments were made in 2004 about John and Elizabeth by Republican operatives; those operatives were unwilling to acknowledge a strong marriage and bond between the two. Not all men stand by their women when they're diagnosed with cancer (Newt Gingrich comes to mind) but John did. I've been watching Elizabeth Edwards because she truly is a strong part of the team. She wants John Edwards to go all the way, not because of ambition but because she believes in him. And she stands by John. There's a lot of strength and courage in those two.

Like I said, there's a love story here.

What Is Bush Hiding This Time?

2007-03-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

If the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys was straightforward and a nonstory as some administration figures and their defenders suggests, then why hasn't there been a straightforward and satisfactory explanation for what happened? Now one of the U.S. Attorneys that was fired was Carol Lam. Supposedly she wasn't aggressive enough on dealing with illegal immigration. One of the people who decided she wasn't doing enough about illegal immigration was none other than Duke Cunningham, the Congressman caught in a series of bribes and prosecuted by Carol Lam. I suppose even crooks have their priorities. Readers should keep in mind that Duke Cunningham was caught by reporters working for the San Diego Union-Tribune, a Republican newspaper if there ever was one but one still holding up a strong respect for the law.

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster repeats a simple observation that many critics of Bush's rope a dope on the U.S. Attorneys have observed:

The “executive privilege” defense already unravels: why assert a privilege for an executive you claim had nothing to do with the decision?

One suspects that George W. Bush and Karl Rove didn't plan on having a defense for the firings because they didn't believe anyone would particularly notice. Now once again the Bush Administration is issuing a series of statements that don't stand up to close examination for more than a few hours and so more statements are issued. I believe in some circles we would find statements of low credibility to be nothing other than lies. In six years, many statements of low credibility keep coming out of the White House. Admittedly, as columnist Cynthia Tucker asserted earlier this month when writing about Scooter Libby and Iraq, it's not always easy to know which Bush Administration statements are lies and which are delusions:

Not a week goes by without a Bush administration spokesperson uttering a sentence or two that stretch credibility to the breaking point. Clearly, though, the most outrageous fabrications and most scurrilous falsehoods of the past six years were told in defense of the decision to invade Iraq.

(snip)

The Bush team knew they could never have sold American voters on an invasion of Iraq just because Saddam had illicit weapons. So they decided to distort, dissemble and lie. The fabrications used to justify the invasion were those linking Iraq to al-Qaida, those claiming Saddam had unmanned drones that could be used to attack American cities, those declaring that Saddam was "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons," as Vice President Dick Cheney put it.

Perhaps that's unfair to the vice president. Cheney lies so regularly and spectacularly that he probably is delusional rather than dishonest.

(snip)

Among a dwindling group of voters, Bush is still revered as an upright and moral man, still credited with having the values and virtues that any decent person should respect. But morality encompasses more than sexual fidelity, more than sobriety after years of reckless drinking. It also encompasses honor, integrity and candor -- especially in an enterprise such as war.

Bush took the nation to war on a web of lies...

Yes, the word 'lie' is increasingly used in the description of White House behavior. It's unavoidable and a sign of how little credibility Bush and his advisers have these days. No one should expect Bush to clear the air on the firing of U.S. Attorneys anytime soon.

Cheney Must Be Happy: Halliburton Up $43

2007-03-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

Bush and Cheney's war in Iraq is a disaster that has done very little, if anything, for the United States. Back when the war started in 2003, I was posting on the AOL message boards and was treated like a traitor for pointing out any number of obvious contradictions. I was actually slow to oppose the war and was bothered by a number of people I respected who supported the war, but by February of 2003, I was against it. I despised any number of outright lies that were becoming increasingly obvious and being bandied about to justify the war and, at the same time, I was particularly bothered by how Afghanistan wasn't going as well as it should have been, partly because of the administration's obsession with Iraq but mainly because the administration didn't seem to take its job very seriously. Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan. That's where al Qaida was. I found it disturbing that the Bush administration didn't seem concerned about finishing the job in Afghanistan.

The issue of Iraq has now taken on a larger context and we now recognize that Bush's war was a strategic failure based on a poor understanding of foreign policy and the world. Yes, there was incompetence but the larger failure was the conception of grandiose scheme to remake the Middle East in ways that contradict who we are as a nation and in ways that have little to do with democracy. Bush's policy was riddled with hubris and ideology and nonsense.

In Truthout, Frank Rich of The New York Times can be found once again giving his perspective, this time four years after the start of Bush's folly in Iraq:

Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

(snip)

In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, "There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members."

[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, "Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war."]

(snip)

President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure."

Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50

[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]

That last one is my favorite, though Mr. Rich offers many other examples. No bid contracts indeed!

Too many Republicans in Congress, the White House and the media lie to our faces and then deny that they're lying to our faces. Our country, at minimum, needs a two-party system, but it's time to send the Republicans home until they start offering people with more integrity. Integrity or not, even the rubber stampers should be sent home for turning a blind eye to the most corrupt era in anyone's memory.

'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy' Is Back

2007-03-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

One moment Hillary Clinton is brilliant and the next moment she brings back a cliche from the 1990s. I never liked it when she coined the phrase, 'vast right wing conspiracy.' I knew what she meant but I thought, at the time, that it made her look petty when a more thoughtful explanation would have served her better. Here's the AP story in The Guardian:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday described past Republican political malfeasance in New Hampshire as evidence of a ``vast, right-wing conspiracy.''
Clinton's barbed comments revived a term she coined for the partisan plotting during her husband's presidential tenure and echoed remarks she made last weekend in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary.

(snip)

Clinton asserted on Tuesday that the conspiracy is alive and well, and cited as proof the Election Day 2002 case of phone jamming in New Hampshire, a case in which two Republican operatives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and a third was convicted.

Like I said, I didn't like the phrase the first time around and I don't think much of it now. For one thing, it makes it sound like someone or a small group is in charge of such a conspiracy. In reality, there have been multiple scandals in the last six years, some in the White House, some in the Senate, some among Republican fundraisers, and some in the House of Representatives. I know, I know, it seems every time we hear of one of these scandals, there's two or three characters in the scandal with a close connection to somebody like Karl Rove. But Hillary's phrase feels like one of those phrases tested on a focus group rather than worked through until its owned by the speaker.

The corruption in the Republican Party has been going on for some time now and it's gotten increasingly worse since the 1980s. One can argue that the Reagan presidency never fully addressed the issue, at least not in a way that was in the best interests of the public. The senior Bush called for more honest government and he gave pardons to members of the Reagan administration and changed any number of rules, legally, to make it easier for Republicans to pull nonsense. Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush simply threw out the rules and Kenneth Starr went off on a $70 million fishing expedition with the clear help of right wing friends in the media. But its not one vast conspiracy.

Certainly, Republicans in leadership positions have engaged in some conspiracies, Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay being the two best examples. But there have been multiple 'conspiracies' on the part of the big players in the Republican Party, if that's how one wants to look at it. Too many Republican leaders talk about values while looking for big money and what it is they have to do to get that money. That's a party that simply has lost its moral compass. Newt Gingrich compounded the problem by actively recruiting political candidates who 'share' his values. But the overwhelming majority of Republican rank and file are generally hardworking and honest people who frankly have not been looking very critically at the leaders of their own party and sometimes don't really want to take a look. I can understand when people want to fight for their 'heroes' but there aren't too many heroes in the Republican Party these days worth fighting for.

Now Hillary Clinton isn't too far from the truth. I'll give her that, but she needs to keep it real.

Although Republicans in power have become corrupt or prefer too often to look the other way, I think we're talking, to some extent, about a generational problem. To be honest, there are sometimes similar problems in the Democratic Party, particularly when it comes to big money donors. I would prefer Hillary Clinton to explain how she herself would be listening to average Americans rather than big money. We all know that a politician at the national level needs money and that's a fact of life but the fact that Hillary Clinton is fighting with Barack Obama for big money donors is not necessarily a good sign, even if both candidates are considerably cleaner than much of the Republican leadership these days.

Remembering the Strengths of John Edwards

2007-03-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

All the top Democratic candidates have definite strengths to bring to the job of being president. Adam C. Smith apparently is doing a series of article listing the strengths of the various candidates; alas, he's also doing Republicans as well. Fair enough. But Smith has a good list of some of Edwards strengths in the St. Petersburg Times:

- Edwards has been the only candidate to move beyond broad rhetoric to propose a sweeping plan requiring everyone in the country to have health insurance by 2012. So far, he is setting the pace for laying out a specific and ambitious agenda and casting himself as the candidate for "transformational change."
- Having unambiguously declared he was wrong voting to authorize invading Iraq, Edwards has staked out a sharper antiwar stance than Clinton or Obama.

- Along with creating the most sophisticated Internet operation of any campaign, Edwards spent the last two years building formidable grass-roots organizations in key early election states like Iowa.

- He has aggressively courted labor organizations, from rallying alongside janitors at the University of Miami to speaking across the country to assorted locals. His campaign manager, former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, has deep ties to labor.

- Edwards, 53, maintains the sunny charisma from his 2004 campaign, but he is no longer the same scripted sound-bite politician. At a time when voters supposedly crave authenticity, the new Edwards is blunt, relaxed and even prone to admit occasionally, "I don't know."

John Edwards has other strengths that ought to be mentioned. One of those strengths is that he knows Washington is broken and that bandaids are no longer enough to fix the systemic problems that have been accumulating for a generation. Edwards is open to ideas but it's time to stop pretending that today's Republican Party has the answers; actually, the leadership of the Republican Party is now part of the problem. Maybe I'll try my hand soon at listing some of the strengths of the candidates.

Quote of the Day: About Cheney Of Course

2007-03-10T00:06:00.000-08:00

Given how disastrous the Bush presidency has truly become, it's important to keep our sense of humor. The Lady Speaks offers this:

Has anyone ever so embodied the T-shirt phrase, “God doesn’t want me, and the devil’s afraid I’ll take over.” as much as Dick Cheney?

I mean, just how many close calls is this guy gonna get? ...

I don't know how the movies are ever going to play Dick Cheney and George W. in the years to come. Can movies do a straight drama about a president and vice president who insist on being caricatures of themselves?

Edwards Says We Need to Restore Our Credibility

2007-03-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

In years past, there was much that Ronald Reagan and the senior Bush did that I did not agree with, but both presidents had considerably more credibility than the current occupant of the White House. Around the world, our credibility, and therefore our ability to get things done, has been badly damaged by Bush and Cheney. John Edwards understands this and has talked about the issue several times now. Here's an AP story on a recent visit to San Antonio by Edwards:

Democrat John Edwards said Wednesday he's not worried about all the attention Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are getting more than a year and half out from the 2008 presidential elections.

In San Antonio for a private fundraiser, Edwards told reporters after a campaign rally that "I feel a long way from left out. I think it'll be clear that I'll get all the attention I need."

(snip)

The former senator also said America must regain its credibility and "deal with what is the bleeding sore of Iraq."

(snip)

Also Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, issued a letter endorsing Edwards for the Democratic nomination.

I'm convinced that the early poll numbers for the 2008 race don't mean much. Only a few months ago, McCain seeemed to be the clear front-runner among Republicans and now his numbers have fallen off. One of the clues that the race for 2008 is still in its early stages is that Rudy Giuliani is taken seriously as presidential material.

I'll write more about Giuliani later on but, getting back to Edwards, he's actually well-positioned to make his move when we start getting closer to the primaries and people start getting serious about where our country needs to go in the next few years. Obviously, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are fine candidates but I find it interesting that it's Edwards most Republican right wingers are attacking.

When I look for news stories for all the Democratic candidates, there's always nonsensical stories that pop up that have been written by Republicans trying hard to smear Democratic candidates in the early going. But the attacks on John Edwards, particularly the one recently by right wing hit artist Ann Coulter, are ridiculously over the top.

Rush Limbaugh has several hits on Edwards lately that suggest Limbaugh has some sort of fixation on Edwards. I'm amazed, at this late date, that Limbaugh still has any credibility given how wrong he has been on a number of issues in recent years, including his often blind support for Bush's judgment, but there he is when you try to find information on the Democrats.

Even if we take into consideration Limbaugh's poor judgment, what's consistent about right wingers is that the more they fear something, they more they attack. Limbaugh clearly fears John Edwards but I think it's more than that. If a Republican wins, Rush Limbaugh could still consider himself relevant though that's not quite as true as it was ten years ago when Limbaugh had a considerably bigger audience. If a Democrat wins, however, Limbaugh would lose his small stake in the Republican Party's right wing era of dominance. The radical revolution would be over for sure. Edwards may be the Democrat that Limbaugh feels could render him impotent and irrelevant.

Republican Chuck Hagel Getting Attention

2007-03-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

With one exception, none of the Republican candidates for president are the kind of men capable of repairing the damage that George W. Bush has done to our nation and particularly our foreign policy. McCain is increasingly out of touch, clueless and compromised. Giuliani is a public relations illusion whose flaws are considerable and largely kept out of the public eye for the moment. Newt Gingrich wants to start World War III. The rest of the field are lightweights, though one or two of the lesser knowns would be better than George W. Bush (but is that saying much?). The one exception, the only potential Republican candidate that worries me, is Senator Chuck Hagel. Why? Because he's qualified to be president and would be the only Republican candidate that would give the Democrats a serious challenge. He's also capable of steering the Republican Party away from its lunatic fringe back to a more authentic conservativism.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has an article from the Weekly Guardian about Hagel; here's a couple of excerpts but give it a read:

Anti-War Veteran May Rally the Republicans

by Ewen MacAskill, Washington Bureau Chief, The Guardian

Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, is one of the few senior figures in either Congress or the Bush administration to have been in combat. While many of them deferred their service, like the chief hawk, Vice-President Dick Cheney, or did a short spell on home soil in the National Guard, like George Bush, Hagel spent time in the mud of Vietnam as an infantry sergeant.

That experience explains why he is one of the leading opponents in Bush's own party of the Iraq war. When the president announced his decision in January to increase the number of US troops in Iraq by 21,500, Hagel's comment was one of the most widely quoted in the media. He called the troop surge "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."

(snip)

Hagel's anti-war views are not confined to Iraq. During the Israeli war against Hizbullah in Lebanon last year, he urged Bush to call an immediate ceasefire, something not only the president but Tony Blair refused to do.

He also calls for the closure of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where more than 300 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world have been detained without trial. He sees this as damaging America's reputation as a champion of human rights.

While Bush refuses to open dialogue with Iran, sent an extra aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and insists that all options remain on the table, including a military strike, Hagel spoke passionately at Nora's in favour of negotiating with Tehran. His opposition to escalation of the Iraq war and avoidance of one in Iran can be traced to his still strong memory of Vietnam, from which he returned in 1968 with shrapnel in his chest and two Purple Hearts. Like the former secretary of state, Colin Powell, another Vietnam vet and one of the few members of the administration who cautioned against the Iraq invasion, Hagel has seen at first hand what happens in war.

I suspect Chuck Hagel will enter the presidential race but I have doubts that the Republican Party, as it now exists, will be smart enough to make Chuck Hagel their nominee for president. For the moment, the right wingers are full of their own hubris and are likely to destroy the Republican Party by making all kinds of demands that most Americans oppose. I doubt the right wingers will go for Senator Hagel and they seem to control their party at the moment; and ordinary Republican conservatives seem unwilling to take back their party (or to turn off Fox News, for that matter). But Hagel will make the race considerably more interesting and he may very well surprise us.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Speak in Selma, Alabama

2007-03-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

Senator Obama and Senator Clinton gave good speeches in Selma, Alabama over the weekend. From what I hear, Barack Obama had the stronger reception but the truth is that both Democratic presidential candidates were well received. Here's the story from Richard Fausset and Jennie Jarvie of the Los Angeles Times:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama staked his claim to the African American experience Sunday, despite a personal background far from the bloodshed that was typified in this Deep South city during the struggle for civil rights.

Yes, the senator said, his grandfather was a Kenyan, but a racist system similar to America's limited him to work as a cook for whites. Yes, Obama said, his mother was a white woman from Kansas. But she learned colorblindness from the likes of Selma's 1965 freedom marchers, marrying the son of that cook in Hawaii.

All of that, Obama said, made him "the offspring of the movement" — and it made his first visit to Selma a sort of homecoming.

"Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama," the Illinois Democrat said.

(snip)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, was also here to celebrate the anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing, in which black protesters were beaten by white state troopers on March 7, 1965.

Clinton brought her husband, the former president, a beloved figure among many black voters who was inducted into the hall of fame of the National Voting Rights Museum. She too claimed to be a beneficiary of the civil rights era — because it eventually led to advances for women.

Despite some serious questions I've raised about the Clintons and the Iraq war, I continue to think well of them. It's clear Hillary Clinton is still trying to figure out how to incorporate Bill Clinton in her campaign—in fact, that may become her biggest challenge. Given Wesley Clark's assertion that the Bush administration had considerable ambitions in 2002 in terms of taking on more than just Iraq, I continue to have questions about how much Bill Clinton knew about these things. What kind of discussions did he have, for example, with Tony Blair? And what kind of discussions with Hillary? I hope Senator Clinton doesn't think she can avoid some of the questions around her vote and around Bill Clinton connection to the Iraq policy by simply piling up enough money to simply overwhelm her Democratic competition. The Republicans will not be so easy with her if she wins the nomination.

I continue to like Barack Obama but I admit to worrying about how much is there beyond his rhetorical brilliance. He would be a good president but our nation is in trouble and we need the best president we can get. Let's hope if the senator from Illinois is still hot a year from now and is winning the nomination that he is what we hope he is.

I'm still puzzled by how Barack Obama is covered. There are people who seem to accuse Senator Obama of not really experiencing what it's like to be black since his father was African and he was raised in Hawaii, far from Alabama. But that's ridiculous too. Those who are black Americans share the same experience in school, jobs and elsewhere. Barack Obama also worked for a number of years in community organizing on the south side of Chicago; that's a powerful experience in itself.

I guess Republicans are finally beginning to worry about Obama though. They have recently pointed out that Barack Obama's family on his mother's side (who's white) were slaveholders way back when. Actually, since most African Americans have some white blood in their background, it's very common to have ancestors who owned slaves, if you go back far enough. I suspect most Americans, including whites, who can trace their family tree to those who were here in the United States before 1800 would find relatives on the family tree who were slaveholders. That happens to be true of one side of my own family.

Slavery was the one big issue our founding fathers wrangled with and could not solve when they wrote the US Constitution but it should be noted that they ended the trade and that many men of the constitutional convention would have preferred to end slavery. We forget too easily how far we have come and how much work there is to do. When conservative or right wing Republicans play games with the history of the law, people should remember that, in fact, we inherited the laws of kings and cavaliers in 1776, and not the laws of free men (and later, women). Despite the serious problem of not dealing fully with slavery, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights moved clearly in the direction of real freedom. Now Republican movers and shakers talk about being free and etc. but when you scrutinize what they're doing, their objective is to protect the status of the wealthy and the privileged. It's 2007, and we are still creating the laws of a free nation and we still have a ways to go.

Wesley Clark Still Thinking about Running

2007-03-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

One thing I like about Wesley Clark is that you often get straight answers from him. Certainly more straight answers than we hear from other politicians such as Bush and Cheney.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now had an interview with Wesley Clark the other day; here's a couple of excerpts:

AMY GOODMAN: Will you announce for president?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I haven’t said I won’t.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you waiting for?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m waiting for several different preconditions, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. But I will tell you this: I think about it every single day.

(snip)

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Www.stopiranwar.com.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq -- the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” ... ... He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” -- meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office -- “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

It's a long interview but well worth reading. Any time General Clark is involved in a long interview or debate, you learn things you don't necessarily learn elsewhere. I hope Wesley Clark jumps all the way into the race but he's very much a straight shooter and I suspect his opponents and the media will use that against him and that would be a shame for America's future.

Poverty Increasing in America

2007-03-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

Statistics show that poverty is increasing in America. Given predatory credit cards, pay day cash sharks (including some just outside military bases), variable loans that can result in losing a home, a volatile job market where good pay is often followed by much lower pay, it's getting easier for Americans to get in trouble these days and trouble doesn't necessarily mean poverty but it can mean serious problems, difficulty and worry. We're keep hearing about record corporate profits but most Americans have to wonder where those profits are going.

Statistics are funny; we know they don't always tell the full picture. In California, rents are high and take a significant portion of income. But there are homeowners who can barely make ends meet who share their homes with others. I met a woman in her 60s a few years ago crippled with arthritis and heart trouble who had three adult sons, one with a wife, living at home along with a grandson by her daughter (who lived elsewhere and had lost custody of the boy); the small house had only two bedrooms, though the married son and his wife lived more or less in the small converted garage and the grandson slept in the living room. It was not an easy living arrangement for anyone. There are many stories out there and they don't always get told.

Tony Pugh of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has a long article on the increased number of Americans in severe poverty:

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

(snip)

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

(snip)

As more poor Americans sink into severe poverty, more individuals and families living within $8,000 above or below the poverty line also have seen their incomes decline. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University attributes this to what he calls a "sinkhole effect" on income.

"Just as a sinkhole causes everything above it to collapse downward, families and individuals in the middle and upper classes appear to be migrating to lower-income tiers that bring them closer to the poverty threshold," Woolf wrote in the study.

(snip)

One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the Washington University in St. Louis.

An estimated 58 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend at least a year in poverty, Rank said. Two of three will use a public assistance program between ages 20 and 65, and 40 percent will do so for five years or more.

These estimates apply only to non-immigrants. If illegal immigrants were factored in, the numbers would be worse, Rank said.

"It would appear that for most Americans the question is no longer if, but rather when, they will experience poverty. ...

The article includes stories about two people in poverty. Multiply that by millions and none of us can take it in. It's a disturbing article. For my money, it shows the failure of Republicanism over the last 26 years and the failure of American business for over thirty years to honor its long-standing agreement with American workers. If something isn't done, it's going to get worse.

Another Reason We Need Health Care Reform

2007-02-28T16:39:00.000-08:00

A year ago, I had some leftover from an old dental abscess cleaned out. Unfortunately, the x-ray didn't show a small side channel that the dentist missed and the abscess took off before I realized what was happening. When the abscess started getting into my tongue and going down my throat, I called my dentist group on the weekend and quickly got some antibiotics. I saw my dentist on Monday and he took one look at my throat and prescribed something stronger. In a couple of days, I was fine though there was some minor damage to the muscles in my tongue that took about three months to heal. Although I have some medical and dental insurance, it was actually fairly cheap medicine but there are people in our country who hesitate to spend twenty to eighty dollars when they have other expenses to deal with.

Susie of Suburban Guerilla points to a sad story on MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

The boy died when his tooth infection spread into his brain. Keep in mind that there are many times when children are not treated early enough, but they manage to survive, and are physically damaged by the results. These incidents of medical breakdowns are not that rare. For lack of insurance for a tooth extraction (and antibiotics?), Deamonte Driver required an expensive brain surgery that was unable to save him. This is evidence of a broken health care system and many children have no choice but to endure such a system.

It's time for our health care system to be fixed. Americans should stop pretending that the Republicans will ever do anything about it. At least not the Republican Party as it now exists, dominated my right wingers who seem bent on taking the country backwards. If we're the greatest country in the world, we need to act like it.

Does Experience Matter in 2008?

2007-02-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

Yeah, experience matters. And yet, I'm still skeptical when the issue is brought up in presidential campaigns. After all, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld came loaded with experience and they have given us one of the biggest foreign policy failures in our nation's history. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum is George W. Bush who never accomplished much in any field before becoming president. Without his father, George W. Bush would never have had a significant career in politics let alone business. He would have been a salesman selling overpriced bonds or real estate or, at best, he would have been a public relations man for some middle level baseball team.

Now the truth is that nearly every Democratic candidate running would be a good president and all of them would be a better president than Bush. The front four (yes, I'm making four instead of three) candidates, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton, would all do well. Barack Obama has the least experience at the national level but he could probably make a case that his experience at the state level qualifies him.

The Concord Monitor (N.H.) carries a story by Johanna Neuman of the Los Angeles Times:

Experience - and how to measure it - has become one of the first big debating points of the 2008 presidential race.
And so Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut (with 33 years in the House and Senate) has been trying to heighten the importance of Washington knowledge, making a constant refrain of his claim that President Bush proves the dangers of on-the-job training in the White House.

"I think people do care about experience," Dodd said.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico (15 years in the House, two years as U.N. ambassador, three years as energy secretary) touts his "unparalleled experience."

And Sen. Joseph Biden (35 years in the Senate) has said of his campaign rivals, "It's not so much whether I can compete with their money, but whether they can compete with my ideas and my experience."

Even former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who served a single term before opening a White House bid and becoming the vice presidential nominee in 2004, has brought his twist to the issue. Asked at an event last month how he differed from Obama, Edwards said, "Experience. I've been through a presidential campaign."

Advocates for Obama, as for other candidates who are positioning themselves as outsiders to Washington's political culture, like to say that the range of their life experiences makes them more fit for office than those who have spent their careers in government. In Obama's case, that resume includes stints as a community organizer, law professor, civil rights attorney and eight-year member of the Illinois state Senate.

Of course, the failures of Cheney and Rumsfeld remind us that there are other issues to be considered and they include judgment, vision and who the candidates consider their constituency. A case along these lines can be made for each of the top four Democratic candidates depending on what voters want and what they're looking for. There is one other quality that I personally look for and I'm not sure how much others think about it: who has the ability to close a deal on the serious issues of the day? All four candidates are good closers; they can persuade people, they can get a deal done. In 2008, they'll have to persuade the voters that they can clean up Bush's mess and start moving our country in a new direction. In 2008, more of the same is not going to sell well. In the end, it's why I believe the Republican candidate will probably lose. But that puts the responsibility on those voting in the primaries to find the best candidate we can.

Hillary Clinton Ambitious Campaign

2007-02-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

It's early. The general election is 20 months away. The primaries are a little more than 10 months away. I appreciate how hard Hillary Clinton is working for the nomination but she seems to making every effort to win the nomination by summer of this year which would be a record of sorts.

At least she is beginning to make Bill Clinton part of her campaign instead of oddly avoiding the issue. Here's one story from The Hotline:

The Hillary Clinton camp is rolling out the big names of the Clinton Administration in its “grassroots” effort to raise $1M in a week.
The “One Week One Million” campaign launched last week with high profile e-mail (and accompanying picture that still has us scratching our heads) from “Bill Clinton.”

(As of 9 am, they had raised $619,896.)

And here's another article from the Earth Times:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco, said that her husband may have a role as a U.S. diplomat if she becomes president.
She said that former President Bill Clinton is "the most popular person in the world right now,'' the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and promised to keep up with the tradition of using former presidents as roving diplomats.

Bill Clinton would make a very fine diplomat—there's no question of it—but sooner or later we need to talk more openly about the political relationship between Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton—particulary in relation to Iraq and Hillary's vote to support Bush's war. The clearest path is straightforward. Hillary needs to clear the air. And Bill Clinton can help by helping us to understand the role of his administration in our dealings with Iraq, the influence that both Republican and Democratic neoconservatives had on our approach to Iraq in the 1990s, and his personal role in facilitating the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, if indeed that is what happened. We knew in 2002 and we know even more certainly now that Bill Clinton's policy of containment was the right approach to Iraq but he still had a role that needs to be explained and understood.

Last week, Paul Krugman of The New York Times had a few thoughts on Hillary Clinton (via Truthout):

The experience of Bush-style governance, together with revulsion at the way Karl Rove turned refusal to admit error into a political principle, is the main reason those now-famous three words from Mr. Edwards - "I was wrong" - matter so much to the Democratic base.

The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn't sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn't suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them.

And there's another reason the admission by Mr. Edwards that he was wrong is important. If we want to avoid future quagmires, we need a president who is willing to fight the inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom on foreign policy, which still - in spite of all that has happened - equates hawkishness with seriousness about national security, and treats those who got Iraq right as somehow unsound. By admitting his own error, Mr. Edwards makes it more credible that he would listen to a wider range of views.

In truth, it's the second issue, not the first, that worries me about Mrs. Clinton. Although she's smart and sensible, she's very much the candidate of the Beltway establishment - an establishment that has yet to come to terms with its own failure of nerve and judgment over Iraq.

The problem with the Beltway establishment is that it's so cocksure it has the answers that it's been falling on its face for some years now, though most of the falling has been done by those connected to Bush and his fellow Republicans. One cannot ignore, however, those giving Bush and his crew a free pass for so long. Does Hillary Clinton now oppose Bush because of the incompetence of his administration, which of course is now evident to all, or does she understand how fundamentally flawed Bush's foreign policy vision was from the beginning? If all she is saying is that she would be more competent than Bush, that suggests that she has a poor understanding of what it will take to repair our foreign policy. We need a strong defense and a vigorous State Department with all the tools it can use—and I, for one, would welcome Bill Clinton as a roving ambassador—but what we do not need is a Democratic version of neoconservativism. Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Afghanistan is a good sign that she understands the importance of finishing the war there. Nevertheless, Senator Clinton needs to clear up some of these issues instead of simply steamrolling her way to the nomination.

Mother Jones Notices John Edwards

2007-02-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe the real campaign news in the last few days is simply the strong straightforward way that John Edwards is making his case to be the next president of the United States while the other two frontrunners battle it out. Here's the story from Sasha Abramsky of Mother Jones:

Carson City, Nevada, might seem an unlikely placge for the starter-gun to be fired in a presidential race, but that's what happened yesterday. The small state capital, surrounded by the snow-dusted mountains of the eastern Sierra Nevada, the huge western sky specked with gentle white clouds, played host to the first Democratic Party candidates' forum. Eight of the declared runners were there: Senators Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and Hillary Clinton, Representative Dennis Kucinich, Iowa's ex-governor Tom Vilsack, Governor Bill Richardson, and ex-Senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel. The only big name missing was Barack Obama.

(snip)

To my mind, there were two things of particular interest about the event. The first was the unabashed liberalism-cum-populism of the candidates. These weren't Democratic Leadership Committee-type speeches. They were fiery speeches, in their economic timbre redolent of New Deal era oratory, full of references to economic injustice, to America's squandered reputation in the world, to the historical urgency of the current moment. "We need to reestablish America as the great moral leader on the planet," Edwards declared. "The world needs to see us as a force for good again. The world needs to see us as the shining light we used to be." Richardson, who arguably has a broader array of experiences in the world of government and diplomacy than any candidate in the field, averred that the country "should not be known for Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and eavesdropping and violating international conventions."

The second revelation was the Bobby Kennedy-esque presence of Edwards. Clinton's body language is supremely confident—but it comes off as somehow forced, almost overacted. John Edwards, by contrast, is a natural performer. In 2004, Edwards seemed charismatic, yet somehow not fully formed. This time around, there is nothing raw or inexperienced in his presentation: he establishes an instant rapport with his audience, his answers are passionate, and he exudes a command of his subject. When he fields questions from the press, his eye contact is almost hypnotic. When he talks about the issues he cares about most—poverty, Iraq, healthcare—he creates the same sincere-yet-not-pontificating aura that Bill Clinton mastered 15 years ago.

None of which is to say Edwards emerged from the forum as the front-runner in Nevada let alone nationwide. Clearly, Clinton and Obama have tremendous momentum behind their campaigns. Richardson, too, is a powerful, smart-as-hell candidate who will benefit from having early Western caucuses and primaries. But in Carson City, Edwards did put the rest of the candidates on notice: his voice this time around is stronger than in 2004, his policies better honed, and his anger at the state of the country today almost incandescent.

It's not something that most voters pay attention to but one thing that I have noticed about John Edwards is that he can handle a steep learning curve. Hillary Clinton is a brilliant politician and a tough campaigner but I don't believe she understands how much the times have changed since her husband ran for president. She doesn't understand how profoundly damaged America's foreign policy is at the moment. She doesn't understand how fundamentally bankrupt the neoconservatives are and she still seems to be listening to the Democratic version of neoconservatives. She doesn't understand how much corporate corruption, globalization, K Street and big money are distorting our politics to the point that the needs of tens of millions of Americans are not getting addressed. And she doesn't understand America's profound energy problem.

Barack Obama, on the other, seems to understand the times but I honestly don't feel that I know him yet; I like what I see but I don't know what he can do or will do. But I'm beginning to feel I know something about Edwards and I find my respect for him deepening. This isn't the same guy who ran in 2004; there's more to him and people are going to be finding that out in the months to come (by the way, an odd thing happened after Kerry lost: I kept encountering people who wish they had voted for Edwards in the primaries). Watch the polls. By early fall, if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have not closed the deal, Edwards' numbers may very well be moving up.

Dennis Kucinich on the Trail

2007-02-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) doesn't have much chance of winning the Democratic nomination but I like his spirit and his reminder of the Democratic Party's big tent. Keep in mind that a cynical media doesn't have much respect for any candidate not in the top three or four in campaign fundraising and that's wrong. In 1860, four or five candidates were ahead of a guy named Abraham Lincoln.

In 2000, the media should have exposed George W. Bush for the mediocrity that he is long before he wrapped up the big money. The other thing the media has forgotten is that the campaign for both parties is a chance to try out ideas even if those ideas don't catch on for that election cycle. Sometimes our best ideas have come from one or two earlier election cycles. Maybe Kucinich has some great ideas and maybe he doesn't but let's hear some different voices.

Bonnie Adler of the Westport Minuteman has a story on a recent visit by Kucinich; here's an excerpt:

Kucinich ... campaigned in Westport last weekend at the Westport library, where about 50 people gathered for a campaign stop that ran one hour late and lasted no more than 30 minutes.

Kucinich, elected as mayor of Cleveland in 1977 at the age of 31, said he was looking for a return to the values that he grew up with when he and his six siblings were raised in and around Cleveland in a family that always lived on the edge of poverty. Saying he lived in 21 places before the age of 17, Kucinich vowed he would never forget the struggles of the poor.
Kucinich said America should never have entered into a war in Iraq, that Congress has the ability to stop the funding for the war and that the United States must withdraw its troops immediately. ...

This time around Kucinich may have to work on creating a little more buzz. And he needs to show that he has some fresh ideas.

The Mahablog has a somewhat friendly critique of Kucinich and explains at length why he probably has no chance of winning and why he probably would not make the best president:

I want to say upfront that I’m happy there’s a Dennis Kucinich. I’m happy he’s in the Democratic Party. I’m happy he’s in the House of Representatives. I’d be happy if he ever got into the Senate. But he’s not a viable presidential candidate, and I am hugely skeptical he’d make a good president. I am skeptical not because he is a liberal, or a lefty, but for reasons specific to Dennis Kucinich, the individual.

(snip)

On the whole I agree with Kucinich’s ideas — not all of ‘em, but many of ‘em. But people can have good ideas and be bad presidents. (I have a lot of good ideas — I happen to think all of my ideas are good — and I will tell you frankly I’d make a terrible president. They’d probably ship me off to an asylum less than a week after the inauguration. Even so, I’d do a better job than Bush.)

Well, Kucinich would also make a better president than Bush. Now Kucinich has said that he is a 'practical idealist'; to pass the other Democrats, he needs to show how that characterization of himself is real, though undoubtedly it's more real than Bush's characterization of himself as a 'compassionate conservative' (though maybe all along Bush really meant to call himself a compassionate reactionary).

Kucinich is a good man but if he wants to have an impact in 2008, he needs to find a way to step it up.

Barack Obama Pokes Cheney's Self-Importance

2007-02-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

Why does the media still take Dick Cheney seriously? How many times has Cheney said something is true only to be contradicted by the facts? Why are right wingers with such a dark vision like Cheney even taken seriously? Has Dick Cheney gained us any friends in the last six years? No, but he has been the ugly face of America for six years; there is much that is good about America but Cheney is not to be counted among the best that America has to offer.

I haven't made up my mind who to support for the Democratic nomination but I like the way Barack Obama talks. The Washington Post has an Associated Press story by Kelley Shannon:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama ridiculed Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday for saying Britain's decision to pull troops from Iraq is a good sign that fits with the strategy for stabilizing the country.

Obama, speaking at a massive outdoor rally in Austin, Texas, said British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision this week to withdraw 1,600 troops is a recognition that Iraq's problems can't be solved militarily.

"Now if Tony Blair can understand that, then why can't George Bush and Dick Cheney understand that?" Obama asked thousands of supporters who gathered in the rain to hear him. "In fact, Dick Cheney said this is all part of the plan (and) it was a good thing that Tony Blair was withdrawing, even as the administration is preparing to put 20,000 more of our young men and women in.

"Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we'd be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we're in the last throes. I'm sure he forecast sun today," Obama said to laughter from supporters holding campaign signs over their heads to keep dry. ...

Cheney may know how to wield power behind the presidential curtain but he's been clumsy and paranoid when it comes to foreign policy. Somebody needs to tell Bush he hired the wrong man to be vice president and send him packing before he does more damage.

Now, to be honest, rhetoric isn't enough to qualify someone to be president, but I like Obama. He's a fighter.

Tom Vilsack Drops Out of Presidential Race

2007-02-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

Tom Vilsack may not have been the best speaker on the campaign trail, but he had serious credentials to bring to a presidential campaign. He's dropped out due to the difficulty of raising money. I know it's early but if Democrats want a wide open race, it's time to start contributing to the candidates and keeping them viable. Here's the story from Kay Henderson of Reuters in The Washington Post:

Democrat Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, dropped his longshot 2008 White House bid on Friday after he failed to keep pace with his big-name rivals in raising funds.

"It's really about money," Vilsack said at his Des Moines headquarters as he shut down his 3-month-old campaign operation.

(snip)

Vilsack is the second declared Democratic candidate to drop out of the 2008 race, following Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's withdrawal in December just weeks after entering.

"I came up against something for the first time in my life where hard work and effort couldn't overcome," Vilsack said. "I just couldn't work any harder, couldn't give any greater effort and it just wasn't enough."

I wish Vilsack had stayed in. The other day, I saw a brief glimpse of a speaking style that he used that might have served him well. Over the years, I've seen a number of candidates grow into a much better candidate over the course of a number of months. Even John Kerry didn't make a serious move in the polls until December of 2003.

In any case, I'm getting a little concerned. One of the reasons a mediocrity like George W. Bush became president is that through his father's connections he essentially wrapped up the 2000 nomination before the first vote; a number of better qualified candidates dropped out because they couldn't raise $200 million, an outrageous sum back in 2000. Bush seem well set in early 2000 but he ran into trouble with John McCain (when McCain when still interesting) but had the money, the muscle and the sleaze to push on through to the nomination. Money and mediocrity won.

Now there's nothing mediocre about the field of Democratic candidates, including Bayh and Vilsack who have dropped out. But we could wind up with a candidate who isn't the best choice for the times we are facing. Hillary Clinton is a well-qualified candidate but she shows signs that she's following the George W. Bush method of simply wrapping up the money and otherwise largely ignoring the real issues of the day and bypassing the Democratic rank and file. She also shows signs that she's more concerned about what her contributors want rather than what's best for our country. Notice that Bayh and Vilsack are moderate Democrats and the only moderates left now are Biden and Clinton. In the end, the voters may indeed prefer a moderate, but we need a serious debate before the voting begins. I hope the remaining candidates stay in the race until there have been a few debates. But they need support.

Wesley Clark Criticizes Bush's Iraq Policy

2007-02-22T18:25:00.000-08:00

Of the Democrats being discussed for a run in 2008, only Al Gore and Wesley Clark have not declared and Gore keeps saying he won't. That makes Wesley Clark the last candidate if he decides to run. I suspect Clark is biding his time and if he doesn't see a good opportunity to jump all the way in, he may stay active on the issues, particularly on foreign policy.

Stephanie Veale of the Utica Observer-Dispatch has a story on Clark's recent speech at Colgate College:

The Bush Administration's strategy in Iraq is wrong because it's short on dialogue and diplomacy and heavy on violence, Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday night at Colgate University.

"You cannot defeat al Qaida with military force alone," Clark said, adding that invasions, bombings and shoot-outs create terrorist-sympathizers and worsen the problem.

(snip)

"The United States must talk with nations it disagrees with," he said.

Having an ideological vice president who talks like a John Bircher and a public relations president who plays to the base is not doing the United States much good. I see no sign, with the exception of Chuck Hagel, that any of the Republican presidential hopefuls have a serious foreign policy. Newt Gingrich has moved himself so far to the right that he openly advocates World War III; yes, Newt, that should improve our lives, build a better future and enrich your cronies in the defense industry.

I like Wesley Clark, but sometimes, for a presidential candidate, he's a bit low key and yet clearly he is well informed and thoughtful. I would welcome that in a vice president or a cabinet member of a Democratic administration. Clark understands how foreign policy is supposed to work.

Wesley Clark is also associated with a veterans group that has a website called, Stop Iran War. I can see where Bush's very dangerous Iran policy may be the reason Wesley is focusing more on foreign policy issues than running for president—it's a dangerous situation and somebody like Wesley Clark has to show the way to a bit of foreign policy reality. Here's part of Wesley Clark's statement on the site:

All Americans want to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and interfering on the ground inside Iraq. Yet President Bush’s saber rattling gives the US little additional leverage to engage and dissuade Iran, and, more than likely, simply accelerates a dangerous slide into war. The United States can do better than this.

Whatever the pace of Iran’s nuclear efforts, in the give and take of the Administration’s rhetoric and accusations, we are approaching the last moments to head off looming conflict.

(snip)

... Military force against Iran is not the solution now, and if we adopt the right strategy, perhaps it need never be. ...

Too bad the Bush adminisration ignores competent people like Wesley Clark. But Republicans in Congress can't ignore thousands of Americans who write to them objecting to Bush's slow drift towards war with Iran.

Let's hope Wesley Clark speaks up more.

The Hillary Clinton Question

2007-02-21T18:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not ready to go negative on Hillary Clinton but she has some thinking and explaining to do whether she likes it or not. This is not 1992; we've had eight controversial years from the Clintons where the negativity came primarily from the far right but any number of things were not handled well by the Clintons; and we've had six years of a failed presidency under George W. Bush that have been like nothing any of us have ever seen. Things have changed in fourteen years and Hillary needs to understand it.

I looked on Hillary Clinton's news section on her site tonight and I'm not comfortable by what I see here, here and here. A lot of us have been cutting Hillary Clinton some slack since some negative news started appearing in the last six weeks about other Democrats and seemed the kind of thing that comes from the right but, posting some of these things on her campaign website give cause to be concerned. Hillary has the potential of being a fine president but not if she's keeps up some of the negativity and resistance to being upfront with voters.

I'm willing to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt because some of the things going on are outside the kind of things I usually follow and I feel I don't know all the details yet. Here's a post by Arianna Huffington to think about:

In his interview with Maureen Dowd, which is filling up email inboxes all around DC and Hollywood, David Geffen made this prediction about the Hillary Clinton campaign (which Dowd dubbed "Clinton Inc"): "That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective."

It didn't take long for Clinton Inc to prove him right. Not long after Dowd's column hit the streets, "that machine" whirred into high gear with Clinton Communications director Howard Wolfson firing off a press release condemning Geffen and urging Obama to denounce him:
While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.

If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.
The thing is, Geffen is not Obama's "finance chair" nor his "principal fundraiser" as Wolfson also claims.

Was the assertion that Mr. Geffen was Barack Obama's campaign finance chair a deliberate fib or just a mistake? Either way, it doesn't put Hillary in a good light.

Hillary Clinton's refusal to explain her vote is also troubling. In the background, hanging over her shoulder whether she likes it or not is Bill Clinton. Now I voted twice for Bill Clinton and was glad to do so. Among other things, Clinton did a terrific job with the economy and the creation of jobs after a number of years of stagnant job growth. And I appreciate what our former president did to Chris Wallace on Fox News and I appreciate what our former president is doing with his many worthwhile ventures these days. But.... While I have been concerned with the Bush administration's profound incompetence and lies and while I spent a lot of time examining how we got into Iraq, Clinton and some of his advisers have an odd way of popping up in the background.

I remember reading an article before the war in Iraq where Bill Clinton apparently urged Tony Blair to be patient with George W. Bush; nothing was stated explicitly about Bill Clinton's position but it seemed to suggest that perhaps our former president favored the invasion of Iraq, albeit by way of the UN and with multilateral support. Some of President Clinton's former advisers were also very hawkish about Iraq. None were more hawkish than James Woolsey, the CIA director under Clinton, and one of the few neoconservative Democrats. With all due respect to Hillary Clinton, she does have some explaining to do if only to put any number of her supporters at ease about her position on foreign policy and Iraq and how she arrives at her decisions. I don't insist on anything elaborate but I'm far from being satisfied by what she has said so far. And frankly, it feels like someone has something she's trying to avoid. I hope not.

One last thing. Hillary Clinton has been selling herself as a moderate Democrat and I say that's just fine, as long it's the kind of moderate Democrat we expect of Jack Murtha or Diane Feinstein or Mark Warner or Jim Webb or any number of others. What we do not need is a Democrat, or rather former Democrat, like Joe Lieberman. Lieberman represents business as usual in Washington. Our country needs something far better than that at the moment.

John Edwards Calls for Real Change

2007-02-20T16:55:00.000-08:00

One thing I like about John Edwards is that he understands bandaids are no longer enough to deal with our nation's problems. Our nation has been muddling through various crises for a long time, frequently kicking the can down the road for the next guy to figure out. Health care is one of the more obvious crises out there but the crisis that has been ignored the longest is the lack of a real long-term energy policy. Over thirty years have passed since we knew we had a problem. And there's education, jobs and our broken foreign policy. To protect our future, we're going to need more than bandaids. Even the Republican Party's habit of essentially going backwards after years of simply going slow has become a national disgrace.

Conservative magazine U.S. News & World Report has a reasonable profile this week on John Edwards:

... The Democratic vice presidential candidate from 2004 is well known in political circles and has the kind of charisma that attracts news coverage-and crowds-wherever he goes. The problem is whether his new message of dramatic change will catch on, and that will depend on whether fellow Democrats are in a take-no-prisoners mood when the presidential primaries and caucuses start next January. Certainly, the ongoing debate in Congress over the Iraq war adds resonance to Edwards's outrage about the conflict and, more broadly, fuels his newfound frustration with the status quo. "I am the candidate of big, fundamental change," he told U.S. News.

Obviously, Edwards himself has changed considerably from the happy-face centrist who refrained from attack politics in '04. His appeal today is based in large part on his sharp-edged antiwar stand, which is more urgent and emotional than the positions of Senators Clinton and Obama. Edwards, reflecting the growing impatience of many rank-and-file Democrats nationwide, derides the nonbinding resolution now before Congress, which opposes President Bush's "surge" of 21,500 additional troops into Iraq. "Nonbinding resolutions don't stop the escalation of this war," Edwards told U.S. News. "It's time for Congress to use its power [over spending] to stop the escalation of this war and to keep this president from making another huge ... ego-driven mistake." ...

Part of the problem that Edwards faces is whether he can convince an increasingly entrenched media that it's time to change, that it's time to yield to America's powerful impulse to renew itself from time to time. At the moment, John Edwards and Barack Obama are the two candidates who appeal to me the most though I'll support whoever wins the nomination, including Hillary Clinton who indeed seems to favor more bandaids. But Edwards has the clearest message, and perhaps understanding, of the profound need for change. The task is for him to explain what some of that change has to be and how it can be accomplished. Whoever wins the White House in 2008 is likely to be someone who has decided 'staying the course' is no longer an option in this era of American politics.

Barack Obama Generating News Stories

2007-02-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to even up the coverage on the Democrats running for president in 2008 but it's a little difficult to blog about the other candidates if the buzz is mostly about Barack Obama at the moment. I truly believe we have a wide open primary and if the media somewhat continues to ignore other candidates, I'll deal with that as it becomes more obvious. For now, here's a story about Senator Obama's visit to South Carolina by Aaron Gould Sheinin in The State:

He fought his way through the crowd, shaking hands and posing for pictures.
When he finally reached the square stage reserved for him, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took the crowd from jubilant to frenzied.

“How you doing South Carolina! Look at this! Look at this! Goodness gracious!” he called out.

(snip)

Finally, Obama called on the crowd to maintain enthusiasm and spirit through the long campaign ahead. He invoked the name of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who once remarked that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“So, South Carolina, let’s get busy. Let’s get to work. Let’s organize,” he said.

I like what I see and hear when Barack Obama gives speeches or interviews but I have to admit that he's so new on the scene, I hardly know quite what to make of him. Every presidential race ought to have its fresh faces and there was a time when people made an early run just to introduce themselves. Going from nowhere three years ago to the White House is still a big leap.

Elsewhere, the McClatchy Washington Bureau's Steven Thomma has a story on Obama:

Watching Barack Obama launch his presidential campaign, you'd never know he's from Chicago.

He staged the dramatic kickoff downstate in Springfield, far from his adopted hometown. He barely mentioned Chicago. And he didn't share the stage - or the spotlight - with any of the well-known Democratic politicians from Chicago. Not Gov. Rod Blagojevich, not Mayor Richard M. Daley. Not the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

His seeming slight of Chicago shouldn't be a surprise. For while Obama is from Chicago, he's not of it. At least not its politics.

The story is just a little odd since Senator Obama is getting considerable support from politicians in Illinois and that includes some from Chicago. But the point may be that Barack Obama is an appealing candidate who can easily run as an outsider. In 2008, outsiders may do well but only if they can show they understand the problems our nation is facing and can show at the same time that they can build a broad consensus. The Illinois senator who was born in Hawaii and went to law school in Massachussets and who has a mother from Kansas seems to cover the bill. Of course, the Clintons also have a reputation for consensus building and Hillary Clinton has thrived well in several places, but the senator from New York cannot run as an outsider. Will being something of an outsider make a difference in 2008? Within a year, we'll begin to get the answer.

Straw Poll Results at MyDD

2007-02-17T23:31:00.000-08:00

Internet straw polls don't mean a whole lot but who can resist taking a look? According, to the straw poll at MyDD, Barack Obama and John Edwards are doing well. Go take a gander. I liked that they asked for first and second choice and even what the last choice was. To be honest, I couldn't pick a last choice among Democrats but ask me about Giuliani or Duncan Hunter or Newt Gingrich or.... Well, you get the picture.

Senator Biden Wants to Rescind Iraq Authorization

2007-02-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

If you buy a house from someone and they neglect to tell you that the house is sitting on an old toxic dump that is still leaking into the soil, should the contract be declared null and void? One could argue that the authorization Congress gave Bush to deal with Iraq was the equivalent of a contract: Bush made his case, Congress provided the money and authorization, Bush signed the deal like the marketing executive that he is. It could be argued that the original deal was based on fraudelent claims knowingly made by the president and his advisers. I don't know if that's the case that Joe Biden is making but it's something to think about. Here's the story by AP writer Barry Schweid in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday he would move to repeal the authority Congress gave President Bush in 2002 to send U.S. troops into Iraq and replace it with a narrower mandate.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the legislation was based on the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was designed to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

(snip)

Congress should make clear the mission is to draw down U.S. forces in Iraq while continuing to combat terrorists, train Iraqis and respond to emergencies, he said.

I like the idea of somebody somewhere declaring loud and clear what it is we're trying to accomplish in Iraq at this late date. Most Republicans in Congress utterly refuse to deal with the issue. On the most important issue of the day, Senator McCain couldn't even be bothered to be in Washington.

Why are we in Iraq? What are we gaining from Bush's misadventure? Is Iraq now nothing more than an opportunity for Republicans to engage in fear mongering and posturing while they refuse the responsibility of dealing with Iraq and Bush's failures? Republicans may not want to deal with these issues but at least Democrats like Senator Joe Biden is attempting to do so. I'm looking forward to the first foreign policy debate among the 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls.