If Specter's gonna flip, he needs to be encouraged to flip now

There's a good deal of speculation around that Arlen Specter, who is only popular among PA Republicans to the tune of about 26%, has an incentive to switch parties in order to avoid defeat in the Republican primary in 2010.

From the point of view of Democrats nationally, I think pressure should be applied to induce him to switch now, and to vote with Democrats on fiscal issues in particular, if he wants to gain support to keep his seat as a Democrat in 2010. We need his vote, but he needs Democratic support, including campaign and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee support, if he is to keep his seat. There's a good chance, and he knows it, that if he remains a Republican, he will be defeated in a primary challenge from Pat Toomey.

But if he just bides his time and waits to see what way the wind blows, meanwhile voting with the Obstructionist Republicans most of the time, I say, we should let him know he will not get help from Democrats in 2010. Let Toomey beat him, put up someone else, and win in the general election in 2010. And if he tries to switch right before the primary season, put up a well qualified Democrat and beat him in our primary. The nitty gritty message from Democrats to Specter right now needs to be: You need to get on board if you expect cooperation to help you out in 2010.

Dodged the Constitutional Bullet, for real

If you still don't believe that the policies the Bush administration put in place after 9/11 amounted to abrogation of significant elements of the Constitution, consider this, as reported in Newsweek. It seems that Bush neoNazi lawyers actually wrote memos to justify a considered supension of the First Amendment by Presidential fiat. Could El Presidente Bush por Vida have been far behind? We dodged a bullet in 2001-2006, when our government was actively considering instituting fascism.

If you think that's too strong a term, then ask yourself, what has to happen before you'd call it that? Isn't the seizure of constitutional power without legal authority, rule by decree, and enforcement of political power by implicit military threat, a pretty good definition? We didn't go all the way there, but it's now a historical fact that the Bush legal folks, pushed by the political operatives, were figuring out how to create intentenionally sham legal justifications, very reminiscent of the kinds dictators have used to topple constitutional governments in Third World countries time and time again. It's a testament to the robustness of our political institutions that, even though the will and the willingness to ignore checks and balances was there, they couldn't quite pull it off; or, to give the benefit of the doubt, ultimately stopped short of destroying our system of government out of some last shred of human decency.

Even with a Democrat in the White House, we have a long way to go to fully restore America's constitutional system and, even moreso, to restore its reputation in the world for fairness and rule of law.

Idiot Rich and Income Taxes

This ABC news piece, as reported on by The New Republic, just goes to show that just because you're well off doesn't mean you're not an idiot.

Sure, lots of folks don't really pay attention to the tax codes, but you don't go doing stuff to reduce your income without checking on the facts. Unless you're an idiot, that is.

1964 all over for GOP? Or, maybe a flip or two gets you 60+?

I think this weird retrenchment into obstructionism is pretty likely to lead the Republicans to an electoral debacle worse (for them) than 1964, if they don't change their strategy.

Also, the way that moron Steele is almost openly threatening Arlen Specter and the Maine women! What are the chances that Specter, in particular (or maybe Snowe), both of whom are retaining their Senate seats at this point despite rather than because they're Republicans, just might realize that if they want to keep their seats, they need to flip and become Democrats? It's happened before. We may get 60 yet.

Obama splendid, Obstructionists' Response... well...

President Obama's speech was splendid, although I confess to some fear that the policies that ensue, especially with regard to the banking crisis (where I think he's getting really rotten advice), will not live up to the speech.

What can one say about the G.O.P. (Great Obstructionist Party) response? Rachel Maddow commented that a party that put up a spokesman to tout the Katrina response as an appropriate example of government action in a crisis left her unable to do her job (talk)... in other words, it left her literally speechless. Krugman did a good little summation:

So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party's governance as proof that government can't work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let's just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

David Brooks, on PBS's coverage, was clearly embarassed by Jindal's performance. More importantly, he thought the message of do nothing and just call for tax cuts is "insane" as a strategy for his party.

Allow me to make a bold prediction: Bobby Jindal will fade into the background. Actually, I hope he's tremendously successful and wins the 2012 Obstructionist nomination. We could see a margin larger than 1964. (OK, I know a lot can happen in four years, but wow, what a turkey).

George Lakoff on Obama's speech

Please read George Lakoff's interesting piece on what we can expect from President Obama's first speech to a Joint Session of Congress this evening. He focuses more on the heart than the head of what the speech will contain, which most pundits pretty much ignore. (A guest submission to Nate Silver's www.fivethirtyeight.com, reproduced in full below).

·The Obama Code
By George Lakoff
Berkeley, CA. February 24, 2009.

As President Obama prepares to address a joint session of Congress, what can we expect to hear?

The pundits will stress the nuts-and-bolts policy issues: the banking system, education, energy, health care. But beyond policy, there will be a vision of America—a moral vision and a view of unity that the pundits often miss.

What they miss is the Obama Code. For the sake of unity, the President tends to express his moral vision indirectly. Like other self-aware and highly articulate speakers, he connects with his audience using what cognitive scientists call the “cognitive unconscious.”

Speaking naturally, he lets his deepest ideas simply structure what he is saying. If you follow him, the deep ideas are communicated unconsciously and automatically. The Code is his most effective way to bring the country together around fundamental American values.

For supporters of the President, it is crucial to understand the Code in order to talk overtly about the old values our new president is communicating. It is necessary because tens of millions of Americans—both conservatives and progressives—don’t yet perceive the vital sea change that Obama is bringing about.

The word “code” can refer to a system of either communication or morality. President Obama has integrated the two. The Obama Code is both moral and linguistic at once. The President is using his enormous skills as a communicator to express a moral system. As he has said, budgets are moral documents. His economic program is tied to his moral system and is discussed in the Code, as are just about all of his other policies.

Behind the Obama Code are seven crucial intellectual moves that I believe are historically, practically, and cognitively appropriate, as well as politically astute. They are not all obvious, and jointly they may seem mysterious. That is why it is worth sorting them out one-by-one.

1. Values Over Programs
The first move is to distinguish programs from the value systems they represent. Every policy has a material aspect—the nuts and bolts of how it works— plus a typically implicit cognitive aspect that represents the values and ideas behind the nuts and bolts. The President knows the difference. He understands that those who see themselves as “progressive” or “conservative” all too often define those words in terms of programs rather than values. Even the programs championed by progressives may not fit what the President sees as the fundamental values of the country. He is seeking to align the programs of his administration with those values.

The potential pushback will come not just from conservatives who do not share his values, but just as much from progressives who make the mistake of thinking that programs are values and that progressivism is defined by a list of programs. When some of those programs are cut as economically secondary or as unessential, their defenders will inevitably see this as a conservative move rather than a move within an overall moral vision they share with the President.

This separation between values and programs lies behind the president’s pledge to cut programs that don’t serve those values and support those that do — no matter whether they are proposed by Republicans or Democrats. The President’s idealistic question is, what policies serve what values? — not what political interests?

2. Progressive Values are American Values
President Obama’s second intellectual move concerns what the fundamental American values are. In Moral Politics, I described what I found to be the implicit, often unconscious, value systems behind progressive and conservative thought. Progressive thought rests, first, on the value of empathy —- putting oneself in other people’s shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, and therefore caring about them. The second principle is acting on that care, taking responsibility both for oneself and others, social as well as individual responsibility. The third is acting to make oneself, the country, and the world better—what Obama has called an “ethic of excellence” toward creating “a more perfect union” politically.

Historian Lynn Hunt, in Inventing Human Rights, has shown that those values, beginning with empathy, lie historically behind the human rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Obama, in various interviews and speeches, has provided the logical link. Empathy is not mere sympathy. Putting oneself in the shoes of others brings with it the responsibility to act on that empathy—to be “our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper”—and to act to improve ourselves, our country, and the world.

The logic is simple: Empathy is why we have the values of freedom, fairness, and equality — for everyone, not just for certain individuals. If we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we will want them to be free and treated fairly. Empathy with all leads to equality: no one should be treated worse than anyone else. Empathy leads us to democracy: to avoid being subject indefinitely to the whims of an oppressive and unfair ruler, we need to be able to choose who governs us and we need a government of laws.

Obama has consistently maintained that what I, in my writings, have called “progressive” values are fundamental American values. From his perspective, he is not a progressive; he is just an American. That is a crucial intellectual move.

Those empathy-based moral values are the opposite of the conservative focus on individual responsibility without social responsibility. They make it intolerable to tolerate a president who is The Decider—who gets to decide without caring about or listening to anybody. Empathy-based values are opposed to the pure self-interest of a laissez-faire “free market,” which assumes that greed is good and that seeking self-interest will magically maximize everyone’s interests. They oppose a purely self-interested view of America in foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy is empathy-based, concerned with people as well as states—with poverty, education, disease, water, the rights of women and children, ethnic cleansing, and so on around the world.

How are such values expressed? Take a look at the inaugural speech. Empathy: “the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child…” Responsibility to ourselves and others: “We have duties to ourselves, the nation, and the world.” The ethic of excellence: “there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of character, than giving our all to a difficult task.” They define our democracy: “This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed.”

The same values apply to foreign policy: “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and make clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” And to religion as well: By quoting language like “our brother’s keeper,” he is communicating that mere individual responsibility will not get you into Heaven, that social responsibility and making the world better is required.

3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship
The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or Independents, share those fundamental American values -- at least on certain issues. Most “conservatives” are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called “partial progressives” sharing Obama’s American values on many issues. Where such folks agree with him on values, Obama tries, and will continue to try, to work with them on those issues if not others. And, he assumes, correctly believe, that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

Biconceptualism lay behind his invitation to Rick Warren to speak at the inaugural. Warren is a biconceptual, like many younger evangelicals. He shares Obama’s views of the environment, poverty, health, and social responsibility, though he is otherwise a conservative. Biconceptualism is behind his “courting” of Republican members of Congress. The idea is not to accept conservative moral views, but to find those issues where individual Republicans already share what he sees as fundamentally American values. He has “reached across the aisle” to Richard Luger on nuclear proliferation, but not on economics.

Biconceptualism is central to Obama’s attempts to achieve unity —a unity based on his understanding of American values. The current economic failure gives him an opening to speak about the economy in terms of those ideals: caring about all, prosperity for all, responsibility for all by all, and good jobs for all who want to work.

I think Obama is correct about biconceptualism of this sort — at least where the overwhelming proportion of Americans is concerned. When the President spoke at the Lincoln Day dinner recently about sensible Midwestern Republicans, he meant biconceptual Republicans, who are progressive and/or pragmatic on many issues.

But hardcore movement conservatives tend to be more ideological and less biconceptual than their constituents. In the recent stimulus vote, the hardcore movement conservatives kept party discipline (except for three Senate votes) by threatening to run opposition candidates against anyone who broke ranks. They were able to enforce this because the conservative message machine is strong in their districts and there is no nationwide progressive message machine operating in those districts. The effectiveness of the conservative message machine led to Obama making a rare mistake in communication, the mistake of saying out loud in Florida not to think of Rush Limbaugh, thus violating the first rule of framing and giving Rush Limbaugh even greater power.

Biconceptual, partly progressive, Republicans do exist in Congress, and the president is not going to give up on them. But as long as the conservative message machine can activate its values virtually unopposed in conservative districts, movement conservatives can continue to pressure biconceptual Republicans and keep them from voting their conscience on many issues. This is why a nationwide progressive message machine needs to be organized if the president is to achieve unity through biconceptualism.

4. Protection and Empowerment
The fourth idea behind the Obama Code is the President’s understanding of government—“not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” This depends on what “works” means. The word sounds purely pragmatic, but it is moral in operation.
The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protection and empowerment. Protection includes not just military and police protection, but protections for the environment, consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors.

Empowerment is what his stimulus package is about: it includes education and other forms of infrastructure—roads, bridges, communications, energy supply, the banking system and stock market. The moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government. The stimulus package is basically an empowerment package. Taxes are what you pay for living in America, rather than in Congo or Bangladesh. And the more money you make from government protection and empowerment, the more you owe in return. Progressive taxation is a matter of moral accounting. Tax cuts for the middle class mean that the middle class hasn’t been getting as much as it has been contributing to the nation’s productivity for many years.

This view of government meshes with our national ideal of equality. There needs to be moral equality: equal protection and equal empowerment. We all deserve health care protection, retirement protection, worker protection, employment protection, protection of our civil liberties, and investment protection. Protection and empowerment. That’s what “works” means—“whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”

5. Morality and Economics Fit Together
Crises are times of opportunity. Budgets are moral statements. President Obama has put these ideas together. His economic program is a moral program and conversely. Why the quartet of leading economic issues—education, energy, health, banking? Because they are at the heart of government’s moral mission of protection and empowerment, and correspondingly, they are what is needed to act on empathy, social and personal responsibility, and making the future better. The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires him to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.

6. Systemic Causation and Systemic Risk
Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. The overwhelming moral value of individual, not social, responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences. If systemic causation is real, then the most fundamental of conservative moral—and economic—values is fallacious.

Global ecology and global economics are prime examples of systemic causation. Global warming is fundamentally a system phenomenon. That is why the very idea threatens conservative thinking. And the global economic collapse is also systemic in nature. That is at the heart of the death of the conservative principle of the laissez-faire free market, where individual short-term self-interest was supposed to be natural, moral, and the best for everybody. The reality of systemic causation has left conservatism without any real ideas to address global warming and the global economic crisis.

With systemic causation goes systemic risk. The old rational actor model taught in economics and political science ignored systemic risk. Risk was seen as local and governed by direct causation, that is, buy short-term individual decisions. The investment banks acted on their own short-term risk, based on short-term assumptions, for example, that housing prices would continue to rise or that bundles of mortgages once secure for the short term would continue to be “secure” and could be traded as “securities.”

The systemic nature of ecological and economic causation and risk have resulted in the twin disasters of global warming and global economic breakdown. Both must be dealt with on a systematic, global, long-term basis. Regulating risk is global and long-term, and so what are required are world-wide institutions that carry out that regulation in systematic way and that monitor causation and risk systemically, not just locally.

President Obama understands this, though much of the country does not. Part of his challenge will be to formulate policies that carry out these ideas and to communicate these ideas as well as possible to the public.

7. Contested Concepts and Patriotic Language
As President, Barack Obama must speak in patriotic language. But all patriot language in this country is “contested.” Every major patriotic term has a core meaning that we all understand the same way. But that common core meaning is very limited in its application. Most uses of patriotic language are extended from the core on the basis of either conservative or progressive values to produce meanings that are often opposite from each other.

I’ve written a whole book, Whose Freedom?, on the word “freedom” as used by conservatives and progressives. In his second inaugural, George W. Bush used “freedom,” “free,” and “liberty” over and over—first, with its common meaning, then shifting to its conservative meaning: defending “freedom” as including domestic spying, torture and rendition, denial of habeus corpus, invading a country that posed no threat to us, a “free market” based on greed and short-term profits for the wealthy, denying sex education and access to women’s health facilities, denying health care to the poor, and leading to the killing and maiming of innocent civilians in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands, all in the name of “freedom.” It was anything but a progressive’s view of freedom—and anything but the view intended in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

For forty years, from the late 1960’s through 2008, conservatives managed, through their extensive message machine, to reframe much of our political discourse to fit their worldview. President Obama is reclaiming our patriotic language after decades of conservative dominance, to fit what he has correctly seen as the ideals behind the founding of our country.

“Freedom” will no longer mean what George W. Bush meant by it. Guantanamo will be closed, torture outlawed, the market regulated. Obama’s inaugural address was filled with framings of patriotic concepts to fit those ideals. Not just the concept of freedom, but also equality, prosperity, unity, security, interests, challenges, courage, purpose, loyalty, patriotism, virtue, character, and grace. Look at these words in his inaugural address and you will see how Obama has situated their meaning within his view of fundamental American values: empathy, social and well as personal responsibility, improving yourself and your country. We can expect further reclaiming of patriotic language throughout his administration.

All this is what “change” means. In his policy proposals the President is trying to align his administration’s policies with the fundamental values of the Framers of our Constitution. In seeking “bipartisan” support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic policy, he is realigning our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.

It’s Us, Not Just Him
The president is the best political communicator of our age. He has the bully pulpit. He gets media attention from the press. His website is running a permanent campaign, Organizing for Obama, run by his campaign manager David Plouffe. It seeks issue-by-issue support from his huge mailing list. There are plenty of progressive blogs.

MoveOn.org now has over five million members. And yet that is nowhere near enough.
The conservative message machine is huge and still going. There are dozens of conservative think tanks, many with very large communications budgets. The conservative leadership institutes are continuing to turn out thousands of trained conservative spokespeople every year. The conservative apparatus for language creation is still functioning. Conservative talking points are still going out to their network of spokespeople, who still being booked on tv and radio around the country. About 80% of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are as strong as ever. There are now progressive voices on MSNBC, Comedy Central, and Air America, but they are still overwhelmed by Right’s enormous megaphone. Republicans in Congress can count on overwhelming message support in their home districts and homes states. That is one reason why they were able to stonewall on the President’s stimulus package. They had no serious media competition at home pounding out the Obama vision day after day.

Such national, day-by-day media competition is necessary. Democrats need to build it. Democratic think tanks are strong on policy and programs, but weak on values and vision. Without the moral arguments based on the Obama values and vision, the policymakers most likely be unable to regularly address both independent voters and the Limbaugh-FoxNews audiences in conservative Republican strongholds.

The president and his administration cannot build such a communication system, nor can the Democrats in Congress. The DNC does not have the resources. It will be up to supporters of the Obama values, not just supporters on the issues, to put such a system in place. Despite all the organizing strength of Obama supporters, no such organizing effort is now going on. If none is put together, the movement conservatives will face few challenges of fundamental values in their home constituencies and will be able to go on stonewalling with impunity. That will make the president’s vision that much harder to carry out.

Summary
The Obama Code is based on seven deep, insightful, and subtle intellectual moves. What President Obama has been attempting in his speeches is a return to the original frames of the Framers, reconstituting what it means to be an American, to be patriotic, to be a citizen and to share in both the sacrifices and the glories of our country. In seeking “bipartisan” support, he is looking beyond political affiliations to those who share those values on particular issues. In his economic plan, he is attempting to realign our economy with the moral missions of government: protection and empowerment for all.

The president hasn’t fooled the radical ideological conservatives in Congress. They know progressive values when they see them — and they see them in their own colleagues and constituents too often for comfort. The radical conservatives are aware that this economic crisis threatens not only their political support, but the very underpinnings of conservative ideology itself. Nonetheless, their brains have not been changed by facts. Movement conservatives are not fading away. They think their conservative values are the real American values. They still have their message machine and they are going to make the most of it. The ratings for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are rising. Without a countervailing communications system on the Democratic side, they can create a lot of trouble, not just for the president, not just for the nation, but on a global scale, for the environmental and economic future of the world.

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George Lakoff is Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Political Mind and Don’t Think of an Elephant!

Rove No-Show cannot stand

Rove's no-show before the judiciary committee today may be no surprise. But it seems to me no exaggeration whatever to say that if the Congress does not enforce, with or without the cooperation of the Obama justice department, its right to compel administration witnesses to testify about matters of legitimate investigative interest, the investigative power of the Congress will have effectively been brought to an end. If that happens, it will be yet another key element of our constitution which the Bush administration will be recorded by future historians as having destroyed. Whether these incidences of constitutional destruction turn out to be temporary or permanent, it seems to me, will depend very largely on the actions of Attorney General Holder's Justice Department.

Scott Horton must read on why 'moving on' is a really bad option

Please see Scott Horton's indispensable piece in his online No Comment column (Harper's).

Taking by Means of Compassion: a beautiful meditation anyone can do

The following is considered an advanced spiritual practice in Mahayana Buddhism, called Taking by Means of Compassion, but it is actually quite practical and easily accomplished, on a basic level, by anyone who cares to give it a try. You don't have to be a Buddhist, or believe anything; if you just sincerely follow the instructions, it works.

Sit quietly, eyes mostly closed, completely relaxed. Don't worry about sitting cross-legged on a cushion; just sit comfortably however you can, but it's important to sit upright and keep your back straight. Take your time. Let your body really relax. For a few moments, just watch with your mind's eye the inhalation and exhalation of your breath. If your mind wanders, just gently drop the thought and return to the breath. Don't worry about it; this is natural. You may have to return again and again, but it can be relaxing, if you don't fight it. After a bit, you will begin to feel a mental peace arise. Think to yourself, I will imagine sincerely that my meditation is real, and that what I do in my meditation actually helps others. This is important; it gives your mental practice authenticity. It doesn't matter whether you intellectually believe in the power of meditation, just think this, and stick with it for the short time it takes to do this meditation.

Now, imagine some particular person, some group of people, or, if you can, all living beings, and develop compassion for them. Try to actually see them in your mind's eye. Think "how wonderful it would be if all their suffering were to end permanently." Seeing them in your mind suffering, you feel their suffering and develop a strong wish for it to end. Keep thinking this, while focusing your inner attention on them. Actually see them, and think how wonderful if they did not suffer.

Now imagine all their suffering, or maybe some particular suffering, even something as simple as a headache, and imagine that it takes the form of a dark cloud of black smoke.

Now imagine that this cloud of smoke forms a jet of dark smoke that pierces your body and fills your heart. It destroys all your negativity, selfishness, and obsessive concern with your own life, which we all have. In its place arises purity. Your body transforms into light. Feel your body is light, and that your heart is like a jewel. Imagine that the person or beings whose suffering you have taken away in the form of dark smoke are now relieved, free from suffering. They are happy. Take a moment to actually see them as happy, as not suffering. From this, a feeling of joy arises in your heart. Keep your mind focused on this feeling of joy as long as possible. This feeling of joy is the actual object, or main focus, of your meditation.

When you arise from the meditation, think, may may practice actually benefit all living beings.

This simple meditation is extremely powerful, and creates a very pure state of mind, which indirectly benefits others, and also benefits you. For example, if you yourself are suffering, this meditation will make you feel better, by refocusing your mind on others' suffering. It also creates causes for future successful spiritual practice.

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Based on the practice described in Eight Steps to Happiness, by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche (a commentary on Lojong Tsig Gyema ("Training the Mind in Eight Verses") by Bodhisattva Langri Tangpa (1054-1123)). This practice is also one of the meditations of lam rim, ("stages of the path"), taught by the great Buddhist masters Atisha (Dipankara Srijnana, called Atisha (982-1054)), and Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419); described in very practical form in Kelsang Gyatso's A New Meditation Handbook.

Re: Al Franken: Can't help but think. . .

I personally have no doubt that Al Franken is perfectly qualified to be Senator from Minnersota, and, in fact, he's probably smarter and better informed, both technically and philosophically, than the majority of people who have become Senators over the years in our country. But I can't help but wonder, if it were not for his public persona as a goofy comedian, whether (a) whoever the Democratic candidate had been in his place wouldn't have won easily (given the Obama coattails); and (b) the Minnesota court, if faced with the situation it's now faced with, wouldn't have acted with dispatch to get the winner of the election certified.

All of which is to say, in this still-deeply partisan political climate, and with the level of frankly unfair scrutiny that has now become routine in politics, Democrats need to put forward candidates who are solidly Democratic but also conventional enough that their personal lives or past careers do not become distractions. We Democrats NEED Franken's vote, and we need every single vote we can get. At least partly due to the incomprehensible (to me) unwillingness of the leadership to call the Republican Obstructionist Party's bluff and actually force them to filibuster when they threaten to, we do not have an effective majority in the Senate.

Don't "fix" social security

New post to Open Letter to President Obama

Bipartisanship: a crock

Again, the House passed the stimulus bill without a single Republican vote. I sure hope the Obama people get it now: bipartisanship is a crock.

Gregg's out; good riddance

First, Judd Gregg (R-NH) reaches out to Obama and offers himself for Commerce after Richardson bows out. He promises support for administration, and the Obama people bend over backwards to accommodate him, working out a deal with NH Gov. Lynch, a Democrat, to appoint a Republican staffer to replace Gregg, keeping the Republicans at 41, just enough to prevent cloture.

Now the jerk cites differences with the Adminstration and backs out.

I said and continue to say he was a poor choice to begin with and the deal to keep the Senate seat Republican made no sense whatsoever. To which I now add, "Good Riddance, and choose a Democrat this time."

Leahy on Cheney credibility

HuffPo's newly exalted Sam Stein (the guy who got to ask Obama about Sen. Leahy's proposal for a Truth Commission during the news conference earlier this week) also got a chance to ask Sen. Leahy about former V.P. Dick Cheney's recent asinine comment that the Obama administration was making it easier for terrorists to successfully attack the United States. Leahy's answer was virtuosic:

"I just want to say here Bush and Cheney were in charge when the last attack happened," Leahy said. "They were warned about the last attack before it happened. On September 10th their proposal was to cut our counter-terrorism budget substantially. I don't need any lectures from him. They screwed up badly.

"They are also the same people who said the war in Iraq would be over in a couple weeks, shock and awe and we would find the weapons of mass destruction. Their policy was to let Osama bin Laden get away when we had him cornered and send the troops into a useless war in Iraq. No, no, I don't think he has a great deal of credibility."

200th Birthday: Lincoln and Darwin

By remarkable coincidence, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of two intellectual titans of the 19th Century, one in the field of political affairs and the other a truly exemplary scientific mind: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Amidst all the turmoil of the relatively short-term economic crisis and the longer-term climate crisis facing us, we should stop a moment and draw a bit of inspiration from these two.

Lincoln was courageous enough to stand up for the proposition that human beings can change their wrong or immoral behavior; his success shows that leaders can make it happen.

Darwin was a visionary, but a practical one, who discerned truth from observation, thought it through, and explicated it. We need this kind of clear-headedness, that faces the realities presenting themselves, and accepts them, even when they contradict longheld beliefs.

Obama can sway public opinion to get it done

I believe the Gallup poll numbers today showing that Obama is "way ahead" of the FROs* in Congress on the stimulus bill is proof that he has tremendous potential to influence the American people through the bully pulpit. I'm constantly harping: Obama needs to sway the public, so the public will make policy makers make the policy we need. Finally, in the wake of what I consider the abject failure of his bipartisanship initiative (for which I blame the aforementioned Republicans for basically giving him the middle finger)... he seems to be doing just this.

*(F--king Republican Obstructionists... sorry, I get exercised and I refuse to call these louts the GOP. They're a disgrace even to the likes of wrongheaded people like Barry Goldwater and even Ronald Reagan).

CLARIFICATION: I didn't mean to imply that all the Rebublicans in Congress are obstructionist. Only 38, possibly 39 of the 41 Senators and essentially all of the House members.

No comparison

· It amazes me that people on the Right (e.g. John Thune) are so very, very upset about spending borrowed money in America to benefit Americans, but they thought it was a great idea to commit our nation to $3 trillion in spending and (essentially entirely) debt in prosecuting an optional war in Iraq. (John Stewart made this very point surprisingly straigtforwardly (with clips) on The Daily Show last night). To spell it out, it's all but beyond dispute now that the Iraq policy was originally predicated on knowing untruth, carried out with spectacular dishonesty, illegality, and incompetence, and never plausibly in the country's interests in the first place. I know this is no valid argument for current spending. But it amazes me nonetheless. It's like equating, with a straight face, an international gun running racket with people who fiddle their expense accounts to make a few bucks while basically doing the job they're paid to do. Both are worthy of criticism and penalty, but there's just no comparison.

Republicans as Flat Earthers

Josh Marshall reports:

There were 36 out of 41 Republican senators who voted to scrap all spending in the Stimulus Bill. All of it.

This approaches flat earth territory in terms of where the economy is right now and what conventional macroeconomics suggests about how to combat the problem.

This is why I've come to regard the Republican Party as increasingly out of step with reality, or anything even close to the policies needed to move our country out of Depression. Not to mention how out of step they are with the realities that must be faced to take us towards a footing necessary to solve the coming even more serious crises of (non-fossil) energy independence and Global Climatic Disruption.

Judd Gregg expecting Republican replacement ? Huh?

I wrote this to talkingpointsmemo's comment address:

I heard a report on NPR this morning to the effect that Judd Gregg had said that he would only consider the Commerce post if there were some kind of guarantee that his replacement would be "aligned with the Republican caucus." What gives? How is that even possible? I can't imaginge NH's governor would agree to such a thing. I know as an "involved Democrat" I would find that totally unacceptable, and I'm sure it would be extremely unpopular among Democrats generally.

Frankly, the prospect of a Dem. Senator is the only reason Judd Gregg should even be considered for this post. I'm not buying the utility of "bipartisanship" generally, since the Repubs are mostly obstructionist, not "bipartisan." But this would be utterly beyond the pale.

To which I add, if Gregg doesn't want the post, no strings attached, he can turn it down. The Republicans need to wake up and realize they aren't in power anymore. And if they can't do that, then they shouldn't whine about it. Gregg can either get on board and support the President, or get out of the way so someone else can take the post. A Democrat, for instance.

UPDATE 03.02.09: OK, so now this reported "deal" has actually happened. One word: disgusting. Feingold is right, we do need a constitutional amendment to take away the power of governors to appoint to fill Senate vacancies. More to the point, in the current climate, I can't imagine what anyone was thinking in agreeing to this. Gregg isn't worth it.

Senior military leaders tried to convince Obama to go back on Iraq withdrawal campaign pledge

It's being reported that General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, and Secretary Gates all tried (unsuccessfully) to convince President Obama to back off his 16-mo. Iraq withdrawal campaign pledge.

OK, there's nothing wrong with military leaders giving the president advice, even advice they know will not be welcome. In fact, I acknowledge that this, in and of itself, is admirable, and exactly what you want from senior people: their independent assessments. But given the intense politicization of the Bush administration vis-a-vis the Iraq war, using retired brass to secretly sell their war agenda, etc., I think it would be appropriate for Pres. Obama to pass over these individuals and select new senior leaders, who share his vision for the future. Including Gates. Keep him a while, till things are settled, then ask for his resignation. We need a totally new aproach, and these guys aren't it.

Just say no‼ to Bush

Bush WH counsel Fielding wrote to Rove's attorney, Luskin, saying even after Bush left office Rove should not appear before the Judiciary Committee.

This is just too much. There is absolutely no precedent for a white house assistant to flat out refuse to even appear before Congress. (Except for Bolten and Meiers, but that's really just the same instance). I'd call that contempt per se. I certainly hope the Obama administration makes clear to Luskin that when the contempt citations are issued, the new Main Justice will comply with the law and present them to the grand jury. Whereupon, Karl, Josh and Harriett will be arrested and jailed. Unless they wise up and appear, that is.

Two articles worth reading on Economic Prospects (and a hopefully farfetched analogy with Climate Change)

This article (published on Seeking Alpha) on global economic prosepcts, actually prepared Senate testimony, is very pessimistic, but nonetheless very informative and probing. (I would have thought that in preparing remarks for the Senate they would have minimized the jargon a bit better, but don't let that get in the way: the article is very intelligent and well-informed. Not to mention scary.)

This article (from NYT Magazine) is on a more journalistic level, and not (quite) as pessimistic, but also worth the read. (More focused on U.S.)

Note that even the pessimistic view seems to acknowledge that at least in broad outlines what the Obama Administration is trying to do is more or less the right thing to do. Obviously, they think that the starkness of our situation hasn't really sunk in yet, but personally I have more confidence in the people on Obama's team, and the president himself, to recognize reality and do what needs to be done than I ever had under any of the last four previous administrations, at least.

This may seem wildly tangential, but what went through my mind when reading the Seeking Alpha piece was how analogous this global economic crisis is to the likely coming global climate crisis and the planetary energy economy. Effects cascade, and multiply, in a feedback spiral. The credit collapse was a tipping point, comparable to the looming loss of Arctic sea ice, which panicked climate scientists now fear could happen as soon as 2015-2020. When (OK, if) that happens, the almost immediate consequences will be extremely unpleasant. Severe disruption of the entire northern hemisphere climate, as the Arctic Ocean goes from 90% reflective shield to 90% absorber of the Sun's heat energy. (One likely consequence: the release of a trillion tonnes of methane from Arctic permafrost. Methane is 20x as efficient as a greenhouse gas as CO2, and, what's more, when it does degrade, it degrades into: CO2 [‼] (and water)).

The consensus today is that we need to avoid a global temperature rise of anything over 2ºC over 1990 levels, at almost any cost. This scenario could mean a rise of well over that, and in less than fifteen years. Pray that doesn't happen. Energy may seem a minor problem when we're figthing wars over the drastically reduced food and water supplies, then just plain insufficient to feed a population of 6+ billion.

We are definitely living in the Chinese Curse of interesting times.
.................
H/T SGH (1) and RHB (2).

Karl Rove's advice

Karl Rove is presuming, writing in the one-notch above Rush Limbaugh WSJ editorial pages, to advise Barack Obama: work less and cut staff. See HuffPo for commentary.

Rove is a devious, deceitful, and immoral person, who is likely facing prosecution for his conduct in the Siegelman case. He is virtually singlehandedly resonsible for the most shameless politicization of the former administration's executive functions imaginable. How he has the sheer gall to advise the Obama administration on any subject whatsoever is just beyond amazing.

I get that there's a need to set a high bar to avoid the tendency to criminalize politics, and to set the stage for recrimination and counter-recrimination each time power shifts peacefully in the playing out of the democratic process under the Constitution. But the conduct of some members of the just-exited administration, thought by many to be the very worst example in our nation's history, goes beyond the pale: some people belong in jail. And Karl Rove is one of them.

Emily Dickinson had it just right

Here's a spiritual thought for today:

· Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.
~Emily Dickinson

Climate Wars on CBC

There's a new series on CBC Radio's Best of Ideas, called Climate Wars. I listen via podcast, and only started to listen to the three part series (two parts already released). Right off the bat host Gwynne Dyer (and he is dire) says that most climate scientists just in the last few years have gone from serious concern to "a controlled state of panic."

From blurb for part II:

Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters - the United States, China and India - were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades. At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered—all of them controversial.

I will post more on this subject later.

TPM: Nationalization of Banks vs. half measures

Josh Marshall doesn't claim to be an economist, nor a financial expert. But this is a pretty pertinent post, asking a very pertinent question, it seems to me. I quote in full, because it's important (from talkingpointsmemo.com):

Free Fall

The Times has a story in tomorrow's paper gaming out where the administration seems to be going on a comprehensive bank rescue plan. The gist seems to be that we're heading toward some version of the 'bad bank' plan; but they're moving cautiously so as to avoid the ridiculousness of the Paulson days, coming up with a new plan every week or so.

The message they're clearly sending is: we're not going to 'nationalize' the banks.

What I wonder, though, is whether or not we're running into a semantic dead end that is obscuring some more pertinent questions.

The core problem is that many, perhaps most of our major financial institutions are insolvent. They have more liabilities than assets. A functioning financial system requires solvent banks. And only the government has the resources to manage the massive recapitalization to get the key institutions back on their feet. At that level of generality, the issue assumes a degree of clarity.

All the different fix permutations are just different ways of accounting for the transfer of cash. You can take the banks over and assume their debts. Or just give them tons of money to make them whole. Or you can buy their bad investments at the price the banks wish they were worth and thus get the banks out of under the consequences of the financial collapse they helped create.

It's not clear to me why the dollar amounts spent would really be different in the various permutations. It's all a question of who owns what when it's all said and done and who runs the institutions. According to a brief aside in yesterday's article in the Post, both Geithner and Summers are against having the government run the banks for a transitional period and against wiping out the shareholders of the banks that are in fact insolvent.

What that sounds like is that we'll nationalize most of the banks because we have no choice. But we'll allow the current management to run the nationalized banks and the current shareholders to own the nationalized banks.

What am I missing?

What I'm hoping Josh is missing is that Pres. Obama has promised the American people that we won't incur huge debt (let's face it, the government is insolvent too, so that's what we're talking about, public debt), and not get anything in return for it. So, in effect, we will nationalize the banks, mostly wiping out the shareholders, because the government will end up with equity. But the mistake that's apparently going to be made is that the management that created this mess will be kept in place. I think the condition for rescue should be, out with top management, and in with bank examiner-appointed new management. But I'm reasonably sure that isn't going to happen.

Bond says Holder promised no torture prosecutions

TPM reports that Sen. Kit Bond told the right-wing rag The Washington Times that AG designate Holder had promised there would be no torture prosecutions (although the actual quote of what Bond said is a bit more ambiguous than that).

Look, folks. Jonathan Turley is absolutely right. Former President Bush and Former V.P. Cheney both acknowledged that they explicitly authorized, among other things, waterboarding. Holder has stated waterboarding is torture. This is undeniably the only possible interpretation of international law to which the U.S. is signatory. Therefore, Cheney and Bush themselves, by their own admissions, are war criminals, because authorizing torture is a war crime. (So, too, no doubt, are quite a few others in the former administration). Authorizing or conducting torture is also a felony under U.S. statutes, according to Prof. Turley.

This isn't subtle. There's just no way around it. Prosecutions are necessary and should be seen as inevitable, although I don't imagine they will be the highest priority of the new administration. But, ultimately, ignoring major violations of law makes a mockery of the concept that our government adheres to the rule of law.

UPDATE: (29·1) Later reports clarify that Holder, through aides, denies he gave Bond any such assurances. Which I don't doubt; Bond is a prevaricator, like most politicians.

Al Gore: Moment of Decision

It's become rather de rigueur to label Al Gore as an alarmist, and to therefore pay little or no attention to what he has to say. This is just plain stupid, because Gore has done his homework, and the dangers of continuing our headlong rush to destruction are very real.

2 Quips from his current article in HuffPo:

As long as we continue to allow our economy to remain shackled to the OPEC rollercoaster of rising and falling oil prices, our jobs and our way of life will remain at risk.

[...]

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.

Recovery Bonds

I want to promote the idea of Recovery Bonds, which would be denominated in $50 to $5000 amounts, to encourage ordinary folks to invest, and which would pay roughly CD interest rates but would have to be held for at least 7 years or some period calculated to be optimal. These would be used to lend money directly to consumers and businesses, with emphasis on preventing foreclosures (with assistance from Housing Officials to negotiate refinance) and investing in green energy, U.S. jobs, bringing jobs back from overseas operations, etc. Pitched like WWII war bonds, as our patriotic duty. When the need for them disappeared, they could be phased out, just as War Bonds were.

Perennial Debate

I recommended the links posted below to Michael Lind's articles in Salon to a friend who is, I think it's fair to say, an economic conservative, with the caveat that he'd probably disagree with most, if not almost all, of it.

He replied that sure enough, he disagreed with virtually all of it:

i typically cringe when some believe that somehow public policy is the solution to our ills...obviously, most of the time it's the cause. we have plenty of laws against crime, yet crime is a part of our society and more laws create more criminals (bad analogy i know)

for the past several months i have been watching c-span during the day while i am trading. listening to our elected officials, one can only come away believing that they are total ignorant of the fundamentals that govern our economic system. while listening to them "question" Geithner it became quite clear to me that NONE of these people have a clue about the complexities of modern economics. they spent most of the time during the hearing making speeches, prepared by their staffs for the benefit of prime time newsbytes, and had absolutely nothing relevant to ask or say. you could see it in Geithner's face as he prepared to "answer" their questions. and these are the people that we expect to be able to understand the policy implications of their "solutions"? how would you ever believe that, as a group, they are SMART ENOUGH to propose or analyze the effects of the economic legislation before them.

the problems we are facing now have simple solutions. sure, we need to modify existing regulations BUT WE DO NOT NEED AN
OVERHAUL at this point in time.

i could go on.

To which I replied:

... just because elected officials are clueless about how financial systems work (which they certainly are, no argument there), doesn't mean we don't need to overhaul those systems. That's a logical disconnect. I look at it from the point of view that Adam Smith used as a subtitle: A Moral Philosophy.

18th Century moral philosophy was primitive in some of the same ways that 18th century understanding of the evolution and physiochemical principles of life was primitive. A moral philosophy informed by modern history compels the view that a proper role of government is very much to ensure that economic activity is regulated toward the common good, with checks and balances to allow reasonable freedom of (and reward for) enterprise, while ensuring production is favored over speculation, and promoting fairness in taxation, some degree of coherence and social benefit in development, and minimization of impact on the environment, together with a social contract to ensure that everyone in society is afforded an opportunity to achieve a reasonable share in the fruits of production and receives basic services like medical care and protection from extreme poverty. We already have all these things, with cracks, lacunae, and failings, but they are disjointed, weak and ineffective. Major reforms are needed to make them work much better.

I gather you think that amounts to socialism, which we're now virtually conditioned to condemn as wrongheaded per se. To an extent, of course, you're right: some of the principles of 19th century socialists like William Morris [...] are indeed still alive and well in progressive thought. I don't believe in unregulated laissez-faire, and never have, but what's at stake here isn't socialism, but rather a mixed system that recognizes that free enterprise, while indispensable, cannot be the sole engine of control and direction of economic activity if we are to have the kind of society we want.

My main point is that there is and always has been an undercurrent, or better, countercurrent, of thought, which has it that economic policy must be part of the social contract. Whether you agree with this thinking or not, it is just possible with as many people pissed off and disillusioned by what's happened in the last year, the time may be ripe for some relatively fundamental changes in public policy. Those who basically agree with Ronald Reagan's "government off our backs" thinking have had their day, and the majority public impression right now is that that political philosophy failed, and it's time to try something different. Since I never agreed with that thinking in the first place, of course I'm glad to see this potential develop.

The reason I say "may" not "is likely to be" is that I do agree with you that the caliber of most (fortunately, not quite all) of the (especially congressional) elected officials in Washington is pretty dreadful, and expecting these people to do anything that makes any sense is probably futile.

Sorry, but cringe away. Because the only hope for a just and equitable society is major public policy change. If justice and equity are not your goals, OK: they should be; that's what's meant by moral philosophy; but that's your right. For myself, I am totally on board with these purposes and that simple premise.

Good Riddance, Bill Kristol • Now, Fire Rush Limbaugh

Bill Kristol is an embarassment to the Times, now thankfully coming to an end with the announcement today that his current column will be the last. His columns were consistently facile, incoherent, and ridiculously ideological. The decision to dump him, whatever its rationale may have been, must be welcomed by anyone who values intellectual standards, including ordinary coherence and organization of thought, regardless of their politics.

Turning to another incoherent and fatuous right-winger, I rarely comment on Rush Limbaugh, because he is so ridiculous that it's not worth the breath. But his raving that he wants President Obama to fail, criticized even by the likes of Bill Bennett, is so out and out evil that somebody in La-la Conservative Land needs to point out that by their own lights, this kind of comment is downright unpatriotic. It amounts to wishing our country ill. We have a First Amendment: such comments are legal, but that doesn't mean they aren't despicable.

I would love to see a groundswell of protest, demanding that this guy be fired.

Michael Lind's REALLY new contract for America (Salon)

Please read Michael Lind's 3-part series in Salon, on a really new Contract with America.

1. January 20: The Next American System
2. January 21: An Economic Bill of Rights for Americans
3. January 22: No More Wars of Choice

A new day for America

I don't care how jaded or cynical we may have become: we need a new beginning, and here's my hope and prayer for America: may Barack Obama be guided by his better angels and may our country recover its bearings, fulfill its potential, and flourish anew.

This Land is Your Land

I don't have HBO, but Amy Goodman this morning rebroadcast Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen leading 300,000 people singing This Land is Your Land on Sunday. Tears streamed down my cheeks to see the hope of the people expressed.

Pete Seeger included the rarely heard verses:

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there askin'
Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
A sign was painted, it said 'private property;'
But on the back side it didn't say nothin';
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody livin' can ever stop me,
As I go walkin' that freedom highway;
Nobody livin' can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Youtube.

44 Presidents morphing

This is kind of neat. H/T Jim H.

Cheney justifies torture, blames Iraq war on Iraqis

In interview with Jim Lehrer. Really pretty much more of the same there. I will be so glad to see these people finally gone. Only a few more days.

Cheney:

I can tell you what the policy was; I can tell you that we had all the legal authorization to do it, including the sign-off of the Justice Department. I can tell you it produced phenomenal results for us, and that a great many Americans are alive today because we did all that. And I think those are the important considerations.

This is total crap, as anyone knows who's read anything about what the interrogators themselves (such as Matthew Alexander [pseud.]), or reliable investigative journalists such as Jane Mayer (The Dark Side), have said and shown. For example, it is now established beyond any reasonable dispute that virtually everything obtained from torturing the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was totally useless and false. (That's what you always get from torture, as any reasonable human being with a smattering of historical education knows). And just this week we learn that many if not almost all of the trials of actual terrorists held at Guantanamo are so compromised that convictions will likely be impossible; these people will have to be released eventually. And why? Because the Bush administration fucked it up so badly. That's why. There's no other reason.

The self-justification of these incompetent fools is literally sickening.

The end is nigh

I liked the way Hendrik Hertzberg ended his "Comment" piece in the current New Yorker.
[Bush]... feckless to the end. And the end, at long last, is nigh.

Bill Moyers on the war in Gaza

BILL MOYERS (as quoted by M. J. Rosenberg):

For too much of the world at large the names of the dead and wounded in Gaza might as well be John Doe too. They are the casualties and victims of Israel's decision to silence the rockets from Hamas terrorists by waging war on an entire population. Yes, every nation has the right to defend its people. Israel is no exception, all the more so because Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead.

But brute force can turn self-defense into state terrorism. It's what the U.S. did in Vietnam, with B-52s and napalm, and again in Iraq, with shock and awe. By killing indiscriminately - the elderly, kids, entire families by destroying schools and hospitals -- Israel did exactly what terrorists do and exactly what Hamas wanted. It spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution.

Hardly had Israeli tank fire killed and injured scores at a UN school in Gaza than a senior Hamas leader went on television to announce, "The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children." Already attacks on Jews in Europe are escalating -- a burning car crashes into a synagogue in Southern France, a fiery object is hurled through a window in Sweden, venomous anti-Semitic graffiti appears across the continent, and arsonists strike in London.

What we are seeing in Gaza is the latest battle in the oldest family quarrel on record. Open your Bible: the sons of the patriarch Abraham become Arab and Jew. Go to the Book of Deuteronomy. When the ancient Israelites entered Canaan their leaders urged violence against its inhabitants. The very Moses who had brought down the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" now proclaimed, "You must destroy completely all the places where the nations have served their gods. You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place."

So God-soaked violence became genetically coded. A radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. Israel misses no opportunity to humiliate the Palestinians with checkpoints, concrete walls, routine insults, and the onslaught in Gaza. As if boasting of their might, Israel defense forces even put up video of the explosions on YouTube for all the world to see. A Norwegian doctor there tells CBS, "It's like Dante's Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage."

America has officially chosen sides. We supply Israel with money, F-16s, winks and tacit signals. Our Christian right links arms with the religious extremists there who claim divine sanctions for Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Our political elites show neither independence nor courage by challenging the consensus that Israel can do no wrong. Although one recent poll found Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive by a 24-point margin, Democratic Party leaders in Congress nonetheless march in lockstep to the hardliners in Israel and the White House. Rarely does our mainstream media depart from the monotonous monologue of the party line. Many American Jews know, as Aaron David Miller writes in the current "Newsweek", that the destruction in Gaza won't do much to address Israel's longer-term needs.

But those who raise questions are accused by a prominent reform rabbi of being "morally deficient." One Jewish American activist told me this week that never in 30 years has he seen such blind and binding conformity in his community. "You'd never know," he said, "that it is the Gazans who are doing most of the suffering."

We are in a terrible bind -- Israel, the Palestinians, the United States. Each greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression. Is it possible to turn this mindless tragedy toward peace? For starters, read Aaron David Miller's article in the current "Newsweek". Get his book, "The Much Too Promised Land". And pay no attention to those Washington pundits cheering the fighting in Gaza as they did the bloodletting in Iraq. Killing is cheap and war is a sport in a city where life and death become abstractions of policy. Here are the people who pay the price.

Egoism reflected in language?

No doubt we live in an obsessively self-concerned culture, but in the Gutenberg Project's list of the 40,000+ most common words in the English language in order of frequency of occurrence in their literature database, you is 1st. True, I is second, and me is tenth.

FTL, Causation, and Travel to Remote Timespace Locales

I've been kicking around a sort of sci-fi idea. Conventional scientific thought has it that travel faster than light (FTL) is inherently impossible because it violates causation. (If you don't know why, you can read about it any number of places). Also because the energy necessary for any mass to travel at the speed of light is infinite, and asymptotically approaches infinity as you get closer and closer to that velocity. Nature abhors infinities, just as it abhors vacuum.

However, since the universe (as opposed to the observable universe) is, while not infinite, very very large, it stands to reason that there are many, many worlds, some perhaps a lot like Earth, all over the place, that are outside the time horizon of our current location in space and time. In other words, they are not and can never be causally connected to anything happening here.

If this isn't clear, think about this. The universe is no more than 13-14 billion years old, but there are regions of space much further than 13 billion light years distant, due to the expansion of space. A star in such regions isn't even theoretically visible from here, and it never will be. In fact, no form of communication whatsoever with such regions, which are by far most of the universe, will ever be possible. Unless...

If space is, as some believe, all twisted and interconnected with trapdoors and wormholes, maybe there are ways to connect more or less instantly, say across some kind of 'gateway', with places (timespace locations) which are vastly far away from here; so vastly that they cannot see us and we cannot see them, effectively, ever, in normal space and time.

Might it be at least conceivable that there could be a permanent or at least stable connection between two locales, vastly separated in normal spacetime but immediately proximate in twisty spacetime, so that you could routinely travel between them with no concern for violating either the energy considerations of FTL travel or the problems of timetravel paradoxes which normally arise when FTL is being considered? Travel of signals between such places in normal spacetime is impossible, so there's no way either could causally effect the other in normal spacetime. So the issue of timetravel paradoxes which would otherwise arise from any travel from one such location to another will never arise.

Anyway, an odd consequence of this is that it might be possible to immediately, or at least relatively quickly, travel to extremely remote locations in the universe, while it remains effectively impossible to travel quickly to even the very nearest stars, or anywhere in our own Galaxy, for example.

UPDATE (Nov. 2011):
Here is a more recent exposition of this same speculation. One problem that came to my attention after this, is created by relativity, whereby simultaneity is effectively nonexistent. The spacetime angle created by even small relative motion between very widely separated points in "normal space" might make synchonous travel through such points of contact effectively impossible even if they did exist. But it remains an intriguing idea, at least to me:

This is my idea, and it's how I think it's just possible that the universe actually is.

Accept, if you will, the following premise (I can explain why this is almost certainly so, if you like, but for now please just take it as a premise):

Faster than light travel by massive particles (and anything made out of them, including us and our spaceships, now and in the future, as well as those of any other creatures and their spaceships, now, and in the past and the future)....is impossible. For reasons of General Relativity, and because FTL is actually the mathematical equivalent of backwards time travel, which creates the possibility of violation of causality. For FTL to be possible, the many-worlds hypothesis of Quantum reality is necessarily true, and branching would have to occur both forwards and backwards; once you travel faster than light, you effectively break the connection with the universe you came from and you can never get back to it, although you could seemingly return to a world that resembled the one you left. Anyway, for purposes of my idea, please assume that this is not the case, that FTL is not now and never will be possible.

Now, accept, if you will, just as a thought experiment, the following:

The universe is so structured that places that are too far apart to be causally connected to each other (because light could never reach from one point to the other in the entire history since the Big Bang; rest assured that most locales in the universe are separated from almost all other locales in the universe in just this way)... nevertheless can be immediately adjacent to each other in the additional dimensions through which the normal space we live in is curved and re-curved. Picture three dimensional space projected like a map onto twisted spaghetti: locations distant along the threads might touch each other from one thread to another, or even one thread to another part of the same thread.

Then accept the following additional thought experiments:

There are points of contact, where it is possible to cross over from one part of space to another. The distance from A to B through this transit contact point is negligible, even though the distance between the same two points in normal space would typically be tens of billions of light years.

Such points of contact are relatively common (say, several, but not a huge number, accessible from any given place), and are possible, albeit technologically difficult, to detect.

Such points of contact are gravitationally associated with largish masses, like stars, but are typically found well outside the main mass of star systems, where planets and such are found, so that travel to them from such planetary systems is feasible, but not trivially easy. This makes them stable over time, and associated for long periods of time with particular stars and their planets.

A technological civilization arising anywhere in the universe could use these points of trans-spatial contact to create a whole network of accessible worlds, which were located some few tens to hundreds of billions of kilometers through normal space and a limited number of "link jumps" through the extra dimensions, without ever traveling faster than light and without violating causality. None of these linked worlds would be even theoretically visible from any of the others, and would be located literally all over the universe in "real space." (Yes, incidentally, the universe really is plenty large enough for this to be actually possible). Thus, a Trans-Galactic "Empire," even while travel to even the nearest stars remains effectively impracticable.

Case for giving the new pres every benefit of the doubt

A TPM reader wrote in with a good case for giving Pres.Elect Obama every benefit of the doubt.

Bush's last press conference

I haven't actually watched or listened to a Bush press conference all the way through for some time, but I did catch almost all of his last one this morning.

James Fallows, quoted by David Kurtz in TPM, wrote of it:

I think even people who oppose the Bush Administration's policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years.

Kurtz said he didn't agree with this, and I don't entirely either, but there was something valedictory, or perhaps better to say elegiac, in Bush's last gasp. Like Cheney, he was more clueless and incapable of comprehension of the whole picture than truly malicious, perhaps. And, as Fallows said just before this concluding remark, he does seem to grasp on some level that he has been a failure. (Not that he says so in so many words, but there are signs). Hatred towards Bush has always been just wasted energy, but now even righteous anger seems spent: it's more a sense of very deep disappointment and resignation at the damage he's done.

And with the news that the Bush administration last year did deflect an Israeli request for refueling planes and bunker buster bombs so they could launch an attack on Iran, we can breathe a small sigh of relief, and give some slight credit, that it could indeed have been worse.

Of course, all this is also colored by the hope for, and sense that we simply must give the benefit of all doubt to, the incoming administration. Our country's problems, internal and external, are so serious that any feeling of anger towards Bush seems irrelevant and inappropriate. Personally, I wish him well in retirement. I don't really care if in reflection he comes to see his role in history differently; it's unlikely he will. I am very, very glad to see him go, but I also take him at his word that he wishes Obama well, because we do need to pull together as a nation and try our very hardest to deal positively with the challenges that face us. It appears to me that even George Bush appreciates this.

Update: Both Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow had very much more negative takes on Bush's presser than I did. I think this may be because I was listening to, not watching, most of it. When I saw all those smirks and moues in the clips, it was pretty annoying.

Cheney callous and CLUELESS

It's really true, what Hannah Arendt said about the banality of evil. Simply put, the evil wrought by Dick Cheney, with all of its truly horrible consequences for our country, was, to all appearances, genuinely mostly not malicious. Just thoroughly callous and ignorant... and utterly, completely, and terribly clueless.

From AP News (Deb Reichmann) [via TPM Media]:

Vice President Dick Cheney says he sees no reason for President George W. Bush to pre-emptively pardon anyone who authorized or was involved in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists.

Cheney also said during an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that he has no qualms about the reliability of intelligence obtained from terrorism suspects through waterboarding, a technique simulating drowning. The vice president said waterboarding has been used with "great discrimination by people who know what they're doing" and produced much valuable information.

He also said he doesn't think anyone at the CIA did anything illegal during interrogations. He says they followed the administration's legal opinions.

Inaugural invitation

Not sure whether to be honored to have received a fancy looking invitation to the Inaugural (yesterday), or to think little of it and simply note that I was obviously very far down the list, since it didn't arrive until long after it would have been too late for me to make any arrangements to attend. Since I had no intention of attending anyway, es machs nichts, as the oldtime German immigrants usta say.

I'm sure I got it because I contributed more than some minimum amount to the campaign.

Hesse had it right.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. Whatever isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. --Hermann Hesse

Gran Torino: masterpiece

Already picking up huge word of mouth, I affirm that Gran Torino is unquestionably a masterpiece, must-see, period.

Pelosi right to demand early repeal of Bush tax cuts

Particularly in view of the fact that stimulus package apparently will include substantial middle class tax cuts (all along part of Obama's program), I think Nancy Pelosi is absolutely right to insist on early repeal of the Bush tax cuts. These cuts were heavily weighted towards the wealthiest Americans, and are very destructive to our economy.

I've not been a fan of Pelosi, for a variety of reasons, but in this she's clearly right.

Deep Thought

If at any time from at least 12 million years ago until no more than 350,000 years ago, an extraterrestrial civilization had sent an expedition to Earth to seek out and communicate with the most intelligent and cultured living beings on this world, they would have skipped over all terrestrial life, including our skittering hominid ancestors, and sought out the Cetaceans... dolphins and whales... without any hesitation. According to Paul Kennedy's CBC Ideas program, recent research has confirmed longtime surmise that these animals communicate culture, i.e., actual knowledge, from generation to generation, and that they have the most complex communication of any non-human animals. (At least: since we don't really know what the content of their communications may be, so we have no idea how much information it may contain; but it is clear that it is quite complex and that their behavior changes in response to it). Also, they have been doing this for a long, long time by our standards.

538 on WSJ editorial on Minnesota Senate Race

538 has an interesting article about the Wall Street Journal's ridiculously biased and mostly wrong editorial about the Minnesota Senate race, which also gives a lot of fascinating detail about the intricacies of this disputed election. Mainly, though, it illustrates what a dishonorable and dishonest rag the editorial portion of the WSJ has become; on a par with Bill O'Reilly and Britt Hume.

Feinstein: Burris should be seated

Having just thoroughly dissed Dianne Feinstein over the "Panetta peeve," I reluctantly agree with Josh Marshall: she's right in concluding that Blagojevich's appointment of Burris is legal and there's no really good reason not to seat him. I've changed my mind on this issue. Burris is a fool to have accepted this nomination, because he will never be free of the taint of Blagojevich. And Blagojevich is a sociopath and a thoroughly destructive agent in the whole affair, who obviously made this appointment out of spite. But the fact remains that he is governor, he had the right to do it, the secretary of state has no valid reason to withold certification, and the Senate has, never mind the right, no good reason not to seat him.

Contribute a few bucks to keep Tim DeChristopher out of jail / help pay for his leases

If you don't know the story of Bush-punker environmentalist Tim DeChristopher, google it. Here's a chance to help support his civil disobedience by contributing to help keep him out of jail, and also, incidentally, to pay the bond down payment to actually buy the leases he bid on. Maybe we the people can buy our own land to keep it wilderness. Sort of a bailout in reverse. Follow the link in the story to the donation website.

More on Feinstein's peeve over Panetta

TPM reports that Pat Roberts (R-KS), of all people, is OK with Panetta, but Bush-enablers Feinstein and Rockefeller (supposedly Democrats) remain rankled if not outright in opposition. Read Elana Schor's piece (follow link in "DIFI SPEAKS" post) for just how arrogant, self-serving and all-around insufferable Dianne Feinstein is. Quote:

«Feinstein seemed to acknowledge the Obama team's desire to find a CIA director who would signal an end to the abusive interrogation tactics of the Bush years. "We all want a break with the past," she told the reporters milling around her in the Senate. "I was the one who went into the conference committee" ...between the House and the Senate last year... "with an amendment that would use the Army Field Manual as the universal standard for detainee interrogations," she added.

«"I understand the administration's desire to cut clean and open a new chapter and I support that. Whether those changes can be made" with Panetta at the helm, she added, "remains to be seen.»

I loved one of the commenters' remark:

«No, it remains to be seen whether those changes can be made with the likes of YOU as Intelligence chair, Senator.

«God, that woman makes me want to hurl.»

Me, too, although I might have put it a bit more delicately.

Or, another commenter:

«Yeah, we are all so impressed that you dug up a copy of the Army Field Manual and did some grandstanding with it....how'd that stunt end up? Oh yeah, it changed NOTHING.»

Frankly, if the Obama team really did snub Dianne Feinstein, I say, good. She very, very richly deserves it and needs to find out that things have changed in Washington.

Rick Warren is REALLY bad news

The indefatigable Max Blumenthal has been looking into what a hypocrite and force for ill in the world Obama's Innaugural invocater, «Pastor» Rick Warren, actually is.

Links: alternet ; maxblumenthal.com

Max also talked with Ian Masters on Live from the Left Coast [kpfk.org, (audio archives)--scroll down and download Background Briefing for Sunday, 4 January, mp3 format]. He mentioned that Warren supports the most hideous policies in places like Uganda and Rwanda, such as prison sentences for homosexuality, repression of condom and birth control programs which have resulted in increased AIDs incidence, etc.

Earth to President-elect Obama: this guy's bad news and you're betraying your base, that worked their butts off for you, letting him crash your party. (Especially after he set you up, lied to you about the infamous "coin toss" and "cone of silence", and handed John McCain an early propaganda victory last Summer in the so-called debate at his megachurch--didn't that piss you off just a bit?) Anyway, maybe you should've looked a little closer at just what purpose he's driving his life towards.

If Feintstein and Rockefeller don't like him, he's fine by me

Apropos the selection of Leon Panetta for CIA chief, I completely agree with Glenn Greenwald's pithy comment:

"Few things could reflect better on Panetta's selection than the fact that [Dianne] Feinstein [D-CA] and [Jay] Rockefeller [D-WV] -- two of the most Bush-enabling Senators -- are unhappy with it."

Dawn Johnsen a breath of fresh air at OLC

Glenn Greenwald (Salon) is very complimentary of Obama's pick for Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, and makes a strong argument for why this is a critically important position. Read this blog piece from March by Johnsen for a flavor of her passion for the rule of law.

It was from OLC that the outrageous perversion of law to justify torture and illegal wiretapping emerged in the Bush years. Johnsen makes clear that she clearly understands that it is OLC's job to avoid secret law, to tell the president no when his chosen policies are illegal, and to preserve and protect the constitution, not the president's agenda. How incredibly refreshing.

Car 2.0? DeBord's ideas ain't it

I found this article in Slate by Matthew DeBord, about "Car 2.0," remarkably unimaginative and unfocused. We need some good, original thinking about what personal transportation should evolve into, and the need is indeed urgent, but this article doesn't reflect such thinking at all. Back to the drawing board.

Worth taking a look at Better Place, which he mentions. Their idea of a swappable battery solves the range problem of electric vehicles quite neatly, it would seem.

Schütz and Bach

Following up on my recent commentary on Heinrich Schütz's Geistliche Chormusik 1648, wherein I touched on the relative lack of influence of Schütz on Bach, I came across these two links to Youtube performances by the Calmus Ensemble of Leipzig which illustrate this point nicely. One is of a (very lovely) short motet (really a strophic part-song) by Bach, Dir, dir Jehova, and the other is of Schütz's Also Hat Gott die Welt Geliebt, from the aforementioned GCM 1648. Bach's vocal style is much more "instrumental;" Schütz's owes much of its texture and compositional technique to "Renaissance" composers such as Palestrina, Victoria, and, especially, his teacher Giovanni Gabrieli.

Of course, a good deal of this is just due to the passage of time. Schütz was a hundred years older than Bach. But this isn't the entire explanation. Bach was definitely familiar with, and influenced by, Michael Praetorius, who was born even earlier than Schütz. On the other hand, Schütz's influence on Johann Theile and Matthias Weckmann is very clear, whereas it's not noticeable in the music of their contemporaries Pachelbel or Buxtehude, both of whom left their imprints on Bach's style.

Burriss should step aside

I have no particular animus towards Roland Burriss. I think he was a fool to accept a nomination from Blagojevich, since it (predictably) probably will effectively end his political career instead of propelling him into the Senate, but that doesn't reflect on him much beyond that he was a bit blinded by ambition; hardly unusual in a politician.

To add to that, however, I have to say that this story, showing his gigantic pre-need memorial monument, is indicative of a genuinely narcissitic personality. We've got enough of those types in the Senate already.

As I understand it, it's an open question whether the Senate's constitutional power to determine the "qualifications" of its members, and the validity of their election (as opposed to appointment), gives the body the power to do anything other than seat Mr. Burriss. But since there is pretty solid opposition to accepting any appointment made by Blagojevich, I join Democrats all over the nation in calling on him to step aside for the good of the Republic, to allow an orderly process of selection (no doubt of someone else)-- free of the taint of Gov. Blagojevich.