Feed: The Left Coaster - AggScore: 57.8

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?

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.

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.

But the more interesting number was on health care. Because everyone is talking about the impact of Tuesday's vote on health care reform. And even though he got trounced in the overall vote, Democrat Creigh Deeds actually won, on health care. Whether that was because the voters generally trust Democrats more than Republicans on health care, or whether it was because Deeds had distanced himself from the president's proposal, it's interesting that health care voters didn't go Republican. Deeds may have been giving a mixed message, but voters still preferred him on health care.

CBS also noted that Virginia has now been electing governors from the opposite party of the president's for more than three decades. And the report included this very telling sentence:

McDonnell's victory in this off-year election has as much to do with who didn't vote as who did.

The Democratic turnout was suppressed. I'm guessing that if Deeds had been more of a Democrat on health care, more Democrats would had turned out, and the Deeds polling advantage on health care would have been even larger. Would he have won? Probably not. Overall, from reading the poll's internals, it's clear that voters were rejecting Deeds, not Obama, that the economy and local factors were the keys, but that health care was one of the few bright spots for Deeds.

But the story gets even more interesting, in New Jersey. CNN, from the same above link:

The economy, again. And this time the voters were turning out a governor who actually once had been CEO of Goldman Sachs. The degree to which that was a conscious decision is unknown, but if any national theme can be read into Tuesday's gubernatorial elections, it was that voters don't like an economy that is run by former execs of Goldman Sachs! And given that the president hasn't implemented the economic proposals made by liberals and populists- nationalizing the banks, adding a second stimulus package, adding strict new regulations to financial institutions, creating jobs programs, allowing judges to re-write mortgages to protect homeowners- it's just not honest to claim that the Tuesday vote was a rejection of liberalism. Had the president followed the advice of liberals and populists, perhaps voters would have been less worried about the economy.

But the big story, again, is health care. Because, again, the corporate media and the Blue Dogs have been claiming that this vote should endanger aggressive health care reform. But take another look at that health care number, from New Jersey: Democrat Jon Corzine was preferred by an astonishing 59 points! In other words, voters didn't reject Corzine because of their negative feelings about Democratic health care proposals, they rejected Corzine despite their extreme preference for them!

So, in both gubernatorial races, voters actually preferred the Democrat, on health care. To some, that might suggest that the Democrats can win next year by being Democrats, on health care. But the most telling result, from Tuesday's election, when it comes to health care, was in the only two federal races. The two Congressional races. Which the corporate media would rather we forget about. But we're not as dumb as they're dumb enough to think we are. And if this year's elections were in any way revelatory about people's attitudes on national issues, it would be this year's races for the political offices that actually will be legislating on national issues. If we were thinking about approaching it with any semblance of logic. And, of course, in this year's only two Congressional races, the Democrats won. In the California 10th, a Democrat was replaced by a more liberal Democrat, and that more liberal Democrat, Congressman-elect John Garamendi, has been championing universal health care for his entire public career. Meanwhile, the New York 23rd is largely comprised of districts that hadn't been represented by a Democrat since the 19th Century- until they elected Democrat Bill Owens, on Tuesday. And just days before winning that Congressional seat, when debating health care reform, Owens publicly endorsed a public option.

So, in assessing the national mood on health care, this year's results were resounding. For the Democrats. In races for Congress, Democrats won. They won despite or because of their being more liberal than their predecessors, and in one case, that victory was in what had been considered a Republican stronghold. And despite losing two state houses, both the defeated Democrats polled better than their opponents on health care. The Democrats' problems were on the economy. One sensible conclusion that can be made from Tuesday's elections is that the voters want Democrats crafting health care reform. Another sensible conclusion that can be made from Tuesday's elections is that the voters want Democrats pursuing an economic agenda that helps people more than banks. The main sensible conclusion that can be made from Tuesday's elections is that Democrats win by being Democrats.

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

It's time to step it up.

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:

The United States — the only industrialized nation to reject previous climate deals — had pledged to be a leader in climate change policy after President Barack Obama took office.

In Washington this week, three senators were scrambling to rescue troubled climate legislation, but it was unlikely to advance through Congress in time for Copenhagen.

"This cannot be an excuse for the world not to get an answer to the climate problem," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said Thursday during a visit to India.

As highlighted by BarbinMD, Senator Barbara Boxer is not messing around, in the Senate. The Republicans are doing what Republicans do: literally walking out on their responsibility. Agence France-Presse adds this little nugget:

One Democrat, centrist senator Max Baucus, who serves as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, broke with his party as the lone Democrat to vote against the bill, saying that its goals for reducing greenhouse emission levels were too ambitious.

Him. Again.

Meanwhile, the European Union has agreed that wealthier nations need to help poorer nations, but it has failed to agree on its own contribution. African nations boycotted a round of preliminary talks, because they believe their views are being excluded. But with international leadership desperately needed, the world's wealthiest and most energy-hungry nation isn't stepping up.

Reuters:

John Ashe, chairman of talks to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol, said failing a December deal, which he preferred, negotiators should wrap up at the next meeting in Bonn around May, as happened in 2000. "We did it before, can do it again."

Some other delegates said it could take longer, partly because U.S. carbon-capping legislation will not be ready this year despite a vote by a Senate panel on Thursday in favor of a Democratic climate bill.

A Japanese official said "unless it's agreed within six months after Copenhagen it will perhaps be the following year because of the U.S. mid-term elections." About a third of the U.S. Senate is up for re-election in November 2010.

Sounds encouraging. Granted, a lot of important issues are on the table, right now. But is any more important?

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.

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:

It's an oft-repeated statistic that the glaciers at Montana's Glacier National Park will disappear by the year 2030.

But Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who works at Glacier, says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of schedule, endangering the region's plants and animals.

The 2030 date, he said, was based on a 2003 USGS study, along with 1992 temperature predictions by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Three years earlier than the end of Kilimanjaro's snows. And the Arctic Ocean? From the BBC, just a few weeks ago:

The Arctic Ocean could be largely ice-free and open to shipping during the summer in as little as ten years' time, a top polar specialist has said.

"It's like man is taking the lid off the northern part of the planet," said Professor Peter Wadhams, from the University of Cambridge.

The U.S. Geological Survey's benchmark glaciers are vanishing. The ice sheets of Antarctica are collapsing faster than was anticipated. The the ice sheets of Greenland are melting faster than was anticipated. A Bolivian glacier is gone, years before was expected. The people of Papua New Guinea's Carteret Islands have already begun their evacuation. The president of Kiribati is appealing to nations to relocate its people.

The impacts of global warming are happening now. They are happening faster than had been expected. The United Nations Environment Programme just reported:

The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).

An analysis of the very latest, peer-reviewed science indicates that many predictions at the upper end of the IPCC's forecasts are becoming ever more likely.

Meanwhile, the newly emerging science points to some events thought likely to occur in longer-term time horizons, as already happening or set to happen far sooner than had previously been thought.

But if that's too much for you to explain to those just dipping their toes into the rising waters of reality, keep it simple: the snows of Kilimanjaro soon will be gone; so will the glaciers of Glacier National Park; the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer. Let them get their minds around those simple concepts, and then they may be ready to hear the real news. And then, hopefully, they will begin to be ready for the crisis management this crisis requires.

A very mixed message regarding civil rights, legalizing marijuana.

Digby has the damage.

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.

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?

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.

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.

The US government belatedly and underhandedly sees the Pakistani dangers, launching Predator drones from locations unknown to strike at “terrorists” with Hellfire missiles. Apparently many scary bad guys have been killed, for every single time infants, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and parents have their limbs blown off or eviscerated or both in the crashing plastic smashes but the United States keeps right on doing it, month after month.

The American media doesn’t like to talk about it much—even when Hillary Clinton recently took the perfectly deserved seething, searing outrage from Pakistani citizens for this new 21st century psychosis most citizens never heard of it. Hopefully that will change soon, we have immense problems presented with the war in Pakistan.

War it very well is, we used to declare it when our people (only 10 generations ago) got pressed, how could these intrusive missile strikes be anything else? Related to this issue is the shocking, crashing lack of American empathy, just how in the hell would Southerners react if some nation launched a drone that made a mistake, wiping out 20 perfectly innocent people in Atlanta one day because a missile missed a target? That happens with almost every drone strike in Pakistan.

It has now become the holiest of holy writs in Afghanistan that no civilian ever be killed, it destroys all elements of our mission there. Why then do we tolerate such appalling folly in Pakistan?

Something is wrong with our geopolitical coupling with Pakistan, those drones are launched from somewhere, and it’s not a carrier or Afghanistan. America has strong-armed weaponry and policy of death into tacit approval of another government that sure as hell won’t be found in a United Nations charter.

We are completely oblivious to the grave implications of mechanical killing by robots in this de-evolution. Drones are some kinda badass killers, it’s very true they fear nothing, have excellent bravery and take wounds perfectly, but we’re completely missing the long-term implications of a world with small nations that have no robot killing machines—are those countries forever to be abused by the merciless, relentlessly efficient killer nations that possess them?

To recap, we now have a killing un-declared at-war policy with Pakistan that very few Americans truly comprehend in a nose-wrinkling geopolitical coupling that produces horrifying gory deaths of innocents which Americans would not tolerate once, not for one second, on their own soil and people. Throw on a scary robotic era of death by machines on top of this nuclear enchilada and the result is not good. Not good at all.

We inherited this ungodly mess, yes, but does that mean we have to continue it? Is stupid deadly neocon policy that creates horrible new human issues of death something we should automatically carry on with? Is that progress in America?

No great human wisdom of warring with drones is to be found in these pixels, no great insights on what to do for the future in a world full of alleged scary threats. The point is that clear, ready coherent answers aren’t coming from the Obama/Clinton people either, and with so many unknowns we should simply stop. Stop war with drones until it can be coherently explained to the American people.

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:

As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

The answer was supposed to be a runoff election. Now, administration officials argue that Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said. He insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality surrounding the Obama administration’s own debate on a new strategy, and the request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, for upward of 44,000 more troops.

Three to six months? Does that sound eerily familiar? When even Thomas Friedman, himself, is calling for a drawdown of this particular war, it's time to pay attention. It's time to draw down the war! And as for that particular general who is calling for the president to escalate this lost cause? Sam Stein quotes from Jon Krakauer's appearance on Meet The Press:

MR. KRAKAUER: After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

GREGORY: And that's the important piece of it. And, and he actually testified earlier this year before the Senate, and this is what he said about it.

(Videotape, June 2, 2009)

LT. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Now, what happens, in retrospect, is--and I would do this differently if I had the chance again--in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture--or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.

(End videotape)

GREGORY: Even those who were critical of him and the Army say they don't think he willfully deceived anyone.

MR. KRAKAUER: That's correct. He, he just said now he didn't read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn't read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That's preposterous. That, that's not believable.

The general calling for more troops cannot be trusted. The Afghan government has no credibility. The Taliban are resurgent, and they are based in Pakistan, anyway. The only thing going well in Afghanistan is the opium trade. Which is going very well, indeed.

There is no explicable military path forward, and there is no end in sight. We have no Afghan partner. We have no end game. Bush's supreme failure cannot be fixed. As Nicholas Kristof just wrote:

When I travel in Pakistan, I see evidence that one group — Islamic extremists — believes in the transformative power of education. They pay for madrassas that provide free schooling and often free meals for students. They then offer scholarships for the best pupils to study abroad in Wahhabi madrassas before returning to become leaders of their communities. What I don’t see on my trips is similar numbers of American-backed schools. It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist extremists.

For roughly the same cost as stationing 40,000 troops in Afghanistan for one year, we could educate the great majority of the 75 million children worldwide who, according to Unicef, are not getting even a primary education. We won’t turn them into graduate students, but we can help them achieve literacy. Such a vast global education campaign would reduce poverty, cut birth rates, improve America’s image in the world, promote stability and chip away at extremism.

Education isn’t a panacea, and no policy in Afghanistan is a sure bet. But all in all, the evidence suggests that education can help foster a virtuous cycle that promotes stability and moderation. So instead of sending 40,000 troops more to Afghanistan, how about opening 40,000 schools?

Good question.

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?