September 2007 archive

Often left wing bloggers describe themselves as progressives, shying away from the L word–liberal, and that upsets me.  Saint R Reagan succeeded in making “liberal” a dirty word and instead of fighting back, too many moved on.  Well, I’m a freakiin liberal–a proud liberal, an unambiguous liberal, a fanatic liberal, a civil rights liberal, a human rights liberal, an environmental liberal, and a drinking liberal.

NB. Likely to be cross-posted other places, but you heard it here first.

What is “It”? Well, America’s future.

James H. Knustler’s The Long Emergency (also Wikipedia) presents a very bleak picture of the future for much of America over the century ahead.

Broadly breaking the US into five regions, the Southwest will be quite possibly taken back by Mexico and in any event largely depopulated, the Southeast will descend into neo-feudalism, the Inland West (mountains and great plains north of the Southwest) will be massively depopulated returning to migratory bands of subsistence hunters, and the Pacific Northwest faces the risk of being preyed on by voracious Asian pirates.

Only the “Old Union” has a plausible prospect for surviving more or less intact, though living at an 18th century standard of living modestly improved by some of the most robust of scientific advances, like the knowledge that infection is causes by microbes.

Fortunately for my peace of mind, the organization of the book let me into the most substantial flaw in Knustler’s argument well in advance of the start of painting this grim picture, and so the understanding that, “it will probably be bad, but at least it doesn’t have to be this bad” was the silver lining to working through his dark picture.

… meet you after the fold.

As long as we are doing short diaries, I’d like to offer this:

There are two kinds of republicans:

Rich ones:

And it looks, at least for the moment, that Lord Rama might win!

http://news.bbc.co.u…

As the prospect of an attack on Iran grows more likely, nobody has arrived at a rational explanation for why our nation would undertake such a foolhardy adventure with such a high probability of disastrous consequences. If reason cannot be our guide, we must look elsewhere. The only explanation that fits all the available evidence is that Americans wish to expunge their sins in Iraq through a catastrophe.

Like the guilty murderer in “Crime and Punishment,” Americans cannot carry the pain of what we have done to Iraq. We have effectively destroyed a nation of 20 million people that was the cradle of civilization. Close to a million civilians have died in the war; two million have fled; much of the country’s institutions have been looted and burned; and cholera is ravaging refugee camps.

We did this to Iraq, and we know that we did it. No moral person can carry responsibility for this enormous transgression without atonement. Here is what form I believe the atonement will take.

Street Fight, Marshall Curry’s 2002 documentary provides fascinating and often disturbing insight into the down and dirty politics of Newark, New Jersey and the race baiting tactics used within the African American community to elevate one candidate while attempting to destroy another.

In 2002, Newark was literally drowning in poverty, ghettos, unemployment and crime. High school graduation rates were in the low 40% range. There were two cities of Newark–the thriving downtown and suburbs, where the “Renaissance” of the city had been thriving and the ghettos neighborhoods of the Portuguese, Latino and African American communities.

In 2002, Cory Booker, an up and coming young Democrat, community activist and local Ward Councilman, decided to run against four term incumbent, Mayor Sharpe James. What he didn’t realize was that he wasn’t just running against a lifetime politician (James had been in one office or another for 32 years in New Jersey).

Booker was literally running against the entrenched establishment that was determined to hold onto power, even if it meant using the same tactics that the whites had used in the South against civil rights activists 40 years earlier.

{Crossposted on To Us!  Permission to use noncommercially with attribution.}

Open post to Brian Williams of NBC News:

In response to this from your Daily Nightly blog, in which you wrote

A number of television journalists gathered for lunch with the president at the White House today — a practice becoming more and more common when this president has a major speech to deliver. The following is a review of my notes, and is offered here under the ground rules established by the assembled White House senior aides. Vice President Cheney attended but did not speak.

I realize that you don’t publish my comments, pointed and critical as they are, but I hope that you are at least reading and considering them in the spirit in which they are offered.