Open Thread

Making the extraordinary ordinary. In Portland Oregon, Habitat for Humanity homes are built to be Platium-LEED certified. So who says we can't make a difference on Global Warming because it will cost too much?

Stepping Up

For months, there had been speculation about what the administration was and wasn't doing, behind the scenes, on health care reform. Opacity ruled, which I thought was a bad strategy, on both the policy and the politics. Well, that's finally over with. It's crunch time, and the administration is stepping up.

Tuesday's Exit Polls: Voters Want Democratic Health Care Reform

Sometimes, political dynamics are so simple that even the simple can't figure them out. Much of the reporting has focused on the facts that independents went largely for the Republicans, in Tuesday's two gubernatorial races. That's supposed to tell us something about next year's Congressional races. That Democrats won Tuesday's two Congressional races somehow has been relegated to secondary importance. Which doesn't make much sense, given that Congressional races would seem to have more in common with Congressional races than with gubernatorial races. But we're talking corporate media reporting, not logic or common sense. And Tuesday's results are being spun, to create a narrative about the national mood on the issues. And as usual, when the corporate media attempts to concoct a political narrative, facts will have to be fudged, glossed over, or otherwise obfuscated.

From a host of supposedly different sources, we are being told that voters on Tuesday were rejecting President Obama's supposedly liberal agenda, including, and perhaps especially, on health care. And the rigorously researched proof of this assertion is that reporters and pundits and Blue Dogs say so! But let's do something the reporting hasn't been doing- let's take a look at the exit polls.

First, CNN, from Virginia:

And CBS:

And:

Note that the most important issue, by far, was the economy. The polls didn't get specific about what aspects of the economy most worry voters, but the strong numbers by the Republican do suggest that all the happy talk about an economic recovery isn't sinking in. Given that the bailout plan promoted by the president's Goldman Sachs economic team has resulted in huge profits for businesses such as Goldman Sachs, without reducing unemployment, one might conclude that the president's economic plan has been too conservative and business oriented, and not populist enough. If one bothered to think about it.

Open Thread

Al Gore offers solutions in his follow up to An Inconvenient Truth.

It's time to step it up.

Copenhagen Climate Talks Already In Trouble. Guess Why.

Not that there's any urgency, but the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will begin December 7, in Copenhagen, already is in deep trouble. Guess why...

According to The Guardian:

A global deal to fight climate change will take at least six months and possibly another year to finalise, according to negotiators at the heart of the UN talks.

In a series of briefings, senior British and EU diplomats said they had abandoned any hope of reaching a legally binding treaty at the Copenhagen summit next month and had now started to plan only for a meeting of world leaders. This final acknowledgement follows weeks of growing pessimism and represents a significant downgrading of the summit's original goal.

The best outcome in Copenhagen will now be a political agreement which rich countries hope will include targets and timetables for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by developed nations and major emitters like China, as well as commitments to provide money for poor countries to cope with climate change. But even that reduced goal is far from certain, with huge gaps remaining between nations on key issues such as emissions cuts and funding for poor nations.

The delay was said to be caused by a combination of time running out in the tortuous UN negotiations and Washington's inability to commit specifically to targets and timetables. The US made clear yesterday that it thought a legal treaty was impossible in Copenhagen.

And the Associated Press adds:

Open Thread

So, on All Things Considered tonight, the head of Club for Growth crowed about their impact on the NY-23 election. Radicalizing the GOP is their game and he is sure that the country continues to be center-right and receptive to their message.

Bahahaha!

It sure would have been nice if Robert Seigal had bothered to notice that the anti-tax message seems to be falling on deaf ears and challenge Mr. Chocola with some facts. Perhaps their victory in purging the moderate Republican isn't such good news after all.

The Snowless Kilimanjaro, The Glacierless National Park

To a lot of people, the issue of global warming and climate change seems too large and abstract to comprehend. Emissions levels and carbon trading and ocean acidification and methane and more methane and the humanitarian and political impacts of up to 200,000,000 people being displaced, and many people are too overwhelmed even to begin to know what to think. It's not only those susceptible to astroturf deniers, and it's not only the deliberately astonishingly irresponsible, it's also the many people who do know we have a problem, but who don't understand the depth of the crisis. When trying to explain global warming and climate change, sometimes, a simple image or concept will help. The science journal Nature just reported one:

The snows of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing and will be gone by 2033, predicts the most detailed analysis yet of the iconic glaciers gracing Africa's highest peak.

In addition to shrinking in area, Kilimanjaro's glaciers are thinning from the top down, says Ohio State University's Lonnie Thompson, lead author of the new study. "They're being decapitated," he says. "In fact, they're probably not really glaciers anymore. They're remnants of another climate."

Yes, in less than 25 years, the legendary snows of Kilimanjaro will be gone. Does that seem real enough? How about a Glacier National Park without any glaciers? National Geographic had this one, in March:

Open Thread

A very mixed message regarding civil rights, legalizing marijuana.

The Class Of Sally Quinn

Digby has the damage.

Open Thread

One resource problem our world is facing is the lack of fresh water. That's why I found this dKos diary so interesting - desalinating water on the cheap (using basically free energy). What a good idea.

What If?

Let me give you something to chew on tonight, a bit of alternate universe stuff. We know that after months of proposing nothing and claiming they have been ignored, House Republicans are trying to look like they're engaged in the health care debate. They are about to come out with their version of health care reform in the next several days:

Republicans are preparing to unveil their own health bill in the next few days. Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Monday that the plan wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance -- a key plank of the Democrats' legislation.

Instead, the bill would allow insurance firms to sell policies across state lines, permit small businesses to pool their risks to bring down costs, change medical-malpractice laws and give state governments more flexibility to pursue rule changes.

Yes, their precription does nothing to make health insurance more affordable or contain costs, but it sure would make it easier for insurance companies to only cover healthy people and drive up their profits even further. And there's nothing there that would provide coverage for millions of uninsured Americans, thereby continuing the GOP's war on the middle class. But supposing the Democrats and White House had drawn this out of the GOP earlier in the game and then browbeaten the crap out of them with this for months on end?

This got me to thinking about how things would be going for Obama right about now if he had pursued a different course coming out of the gate:

*How would things be right now if Obama had gone big with the stimulus, with more money directly targeted at states, small businesses, infrastructure, and less on pork and tax cuts?

*How much political capital would Obama have right now if he had stopped TARP and the planned bailouts of AIG and the banks for Goldman Sachs,and instead let a couple of these villains take the fall, while directing the money to regional banks and tying the whole thing to real financial reform last spring?

*And how much better off would Obama be right now if he started the health care debate with "Medicare for all" in 2010 as the Democrats' starting point last spring, and then told the GOP to argue against that all year with their own plan?

What do you think?

Premature High-Fives At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Apparently, there is a self-congratulatory mood setting in around the White House and the Democratic leadership on health care. The NYT runs a story today whose theme is that President Obama's relatively hands-off strategy, despite critiques from many quarters, has worked. There seems to be some back-slapping going on amongst Rahm and the boys, that several bills have made it this far, and are about to be melded into one bill, with the perception that victory is at hand.

Yet two things struck me. First, the story indicates that Obama met with liberals last Thursday night to convince them that making history was more important than a good bill that met their goals. No one should be surprised at this: Obama is more focused on his place in history and optics than good policy. Second, the story glosses over one speed bump: even though Team Obama credits itself with taking a step-by-step approach focused on moving something that can pass and be signed, for all his plodding he still does not have 60 votes thanks to Jolting Joe.

So either he's about to placate Joe with an industry-friendly bill that will doom Democrats in 2010, or he's ready to ditch the pursuit of 60 votes and get his historic moment through reconciliation, perhaps getting a better bill in the process.

A Pakistani Meander

Time was freight technology, geopolitics and pure bad luck of being too physically close to a British warship could deliver an extremely unfortunate American experience: you’d get pressed, forced into seaman’s service on that ship with some of the most brutal labor around until it was convenient for them to drop you off, usually years later. Such was the manifest outrage of Americans being put through pressing we declared war on the United Kingdom for it in 1812, starting a long, long line of stupid American military egotism that only results in tragic, wrenching death and brutal male squishing of our most cherished American ideals.

Our latest grave American folly is the far, faraway land of Pakistan, a place of nuclear dangers in fractured murky tribal politics ensconced in an impossible landscape. Many Americans are uneasily aware that Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the bastion of Middle East peril we should have spilled blood for (if it was ever necessary, which it was not), yet very few citizens recognize we are at war with Pakistan--as much bloodily, butcherly fashion as any war we have waged—a war that has terribly pernicious new dangers that need to be openly discussed immediately.

Afghanistan: With Democracy Dead, It's Time To Leave

The myth of Afghan democracy is now officially over. Think Iran under Ahmadinejad. Think Russia under Putin Medvedev Putin. As explained by The Guardian:

Afghanistan's western backers are pushing for a rapid coronation of Hamid Karzai as president without going through with a second round of voting after the Afghan president's closest rival pulled out of the race today.

Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the runoff vote after the rejection of nearly all of his demands for changes to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the suspension of government ministers, which he said would have reduced the risk of massive fraud in the next round of voting. The announcement threw the election into disarray, with some analysts labelling the fiasco "a shocking failure" of efforts by the west and other international communities to build a democracy in Afghanistan. A legitimate Afghan leader is seen as essential to western war aims, and has prevented Barack Obama from being able to make a decision on whether to send up to 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan.

But there will be no legitimate Afghan leader. So, what again were the war aims? As previously noted, October already is the deadliest month, for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Which broke the record set in August. Which broke the record set in July. Anyone notice a pattern, here? I mean, anyone else? The horrors of August had already made this the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and things have only gotten worse, since. And now there is no legitimate government for U.S. troops to be working with and defending.

David Sanger, of the New York Times:

Open Thread

Paul Krugman explains that more job growth now will help, not hurt, the younger generation in the future.

Deficit hawks like to complain that today’s young people will end up having to pay higher taxes to service the debt we’re running up right now. But anyone who really cared about the prospects of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers — and those who enter the work force in years of high unemployment suffer permanent career damage, never catching up with those who graduated in better times.

Why can't the hawks understand that? Or are they so enamored of continuing tax cuts for the rich that they'd do anything to cut more spending today?