On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, we can make history.  Yes, we can.  I am absolutely thrilled at the possibility before us.  I cannot wait to walk across the road– maybe I’ll go in my pajamas– to the polling place at the Spencertown Fire Department and pull a lever for Barack Obama.  I will then smile, and I will continue to smile.  I’ll smile because I never thought this could happen.  I never thought we’d actually get out of the Bush years alive.  And I never thought a candidate, a black man no less, could unify the forces of light in America.  And I think that by voting and getting out the vote in this election we can actually restore the rule of law, fairness, equality, justice, peace, and even prosperity in this country.  Yes we can.    

As I’ve said before, if Barack Obama’s presidency is one tenth as effective as his campaign, if his presidency is one tenth as creative as the musical explosion the campaign has brought about, we’re all, all of us, going to be just fine.

And so, with less than a week to go, let’s go back to this and let’s get it done:

Please vote.  Please help to get out the vote.  Please talk to your relatives, children, friends, colleagues, associates and urge them to vote.  This election can make history and it can bring hope and it can change the course of the nation. Yes we can.

Here you go.  Something to move you this Monday.  Something to revivify you.  Something to get you to shake it.  Something to lift you up. We’re counting down.  One week.  From Kenya:

Play it over and over.  Go ahead.    

This very brief essay that might be about hypocrisy. Or it might be that that McPalin campaign is giving you and me and all the other people who care about Global Warming a raised middle digit.  You decide.

These are polar bears:

In May, 2008, before she was a VP candidate, the Great Huntress decided that polar bears shouldn’t be on the endangered species list, where Bushco had put them.  The Anchorage Daily News wrote:

The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday.

She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state’s northern and northwestern coasts.

Palin argued there is not enough evidence to support a listing. Polar bears are well-managed and their population has dramatically increased over 30 years as a result of conservation, she said.

Climate models that predict continued loss of sea ice, the main habitat of polar bears, during summers are unreliable, Palin said.

The announcement drew a strong response from the primary author of the listing petition.

“She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Alaska deserves better.”

Put simply, Palin is a hard-core global warming denier:

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

But you already knew all of that.  You’ve already ranted and banged on the table about this and cursed a blue streak at the screens on your television and monitor.  This is nothing new.

Then, last night, on Keith, I thought I saw Sarah Palin wearing on her right lapel a polar bear pin.  Just like this:

I was paying special attention, because I wanted to see whether she was still wearing the RNC purchased and soon to be donated to charity designer threads.  Normally, I don’t pay much attention.  Last night I was paying attention because I wanted to see if she had gotten, well, more frumpy.  That didn’t happen. To put it mildly, I was surprised by the pin.  Maybe I’m easily surprised.

There is no really satisfactory explanation for this.  Are they hypocrites of the first degree? Is the McPalin campaign that clueless? Maybe after the last eight years, they think cluelessness, for which they have voted 90% of the time, is a qualification for running the nation.  But then I had a darker thought.  Maybe she’s wearing the pin to “energize the base,” and it’s a gigantic FU to anyone who cares about the environment.

You choose.  Either way, I wish McPalin would be gone.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

You know it’s one kind favor, I ask to you

You know it’s one kind favor, I ask to you

See that my grave is kept clean

It’s a simple enough blues.  It was initially sung, I think, by the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1927 under a pseudonym.  It was so popular that he re-recorded and re-released in 1928.

It’s been recorded by BB King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Canned Heat, The Grateful Dead, Mike Bloomfield, Keiji Haino, Diamanda Galás, Meindert Talma & the Negroes, Lou Reed, Furry Lewis, Chrome Cranks, the Dream Syndicate, Thelonious Monster.  And, of course, by numerous, numerous others.

It’s been in my head for two days.  I heard BB King’s latest version of the song yesterday on NPR while I was driving home.  I can’t seem to turn it off.  “One kind favor I ask of you/one kind favor I ask of you…”

Join me in my head.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

A Beluga Whale

Some great news, and a slap in the face to Sarah Palin.  The New York Times reports:

The federal government on Friday placed beluga whales that live in Alaska’s Cook Inlet on the endangered species list, rejecting efforts by Gov. Sarah Palin to keep the whales from coming under the increased protections.

The relatively small, whitish whales, sometimes visible from downtown Anchorage in the inlet’s silvery water, declined by almost 50 percent during the late 1990’s, and federal scientists say they have not rebounded despite protections that included limiting subsistence hunting by Native Alaskans. About 375 whales have been counted in Cook Inlet each of the last two years, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” James Balsiger, an acting assistant administrator in charge of the agency’s fisheries programs, said in a written statement announcing that the whales were in danger of extinction.

The announcement, whose timing was tied to a predetermined schedule under the Endangered Species Act, drew attention once again to Ms. Palin’s positions on environmental issues. The governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, has come under scrutiny for her ambiguous statements about climate change and her administration’s effort to prevent another species, the polar bear, from being declared a threatened species.

And why is Governor Palin opposed to Belugas?  Wanna guess?

As with the polar bear, Ms. Palin’s administration had fought the beluga listing because of its potential to restrict coastal and offshore oil and gas development. The beluga listing also could affect a proposed bridge over Knik Arm that would connect Anchorage to the Matanuska-Valley and Ms. Palin’s hometown of Wasilla.

Arrgh.

And here’s an appropriate way to celebrate, with a song from Raffi my kids used to love back in the day:

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The answer is Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zippo. Zero.  They haven’t got a clue.  They are going to let it all come down, however it comes.

Permit me some extreme grouchiness.  And anger.  And despair.

People I know were evicted today from their home in the wake of not being able to pay their mortgage.  A long legal battle ended.  They lost.  The Sheriffs were there.  There was the cliche, the spectacle of having the young children sit on the curb while the furniture was deposited on the lawn. I don’t have $30,000+ to loan them to stop it.  Nor do their friends or family.  And I don’t see Congress or anybody else stepping in to do anything about this.  Maybe later on, when they’ve moved out and lost their home and are living somewhere else.  Maybe then there will be some “relief.”  For somebody else. I wish they lived in Chicago, but they don’t.

And then there’s this:



One Year of the DJIA

Everything you need to know about tonight’s debate in a handy pre-debate essay.

See this?

That’s the Dow Jones for the past year in graphic form.

The Dow closed at 9447 today.  Last year on this day it was 14,198.  That means (gross over simplification coming) for every $141 dollars in your 401k, your pension account, your SEP, your stock portfolio a year ago, you now have $94 because you’ve lost $47 in the market.  That $47 is vapor.  It’s gone.  The only solace in this, if there is any, is that the Government didn’t get to put all of your social security money into this market so it could be vaporized as well.

The chart is a microcosm of what’s going on in the rest of the US economy. The credit markets aren’t functioning.  Consumer confidence is in the dumps.  With foreclosures going crazy, with gasoline and fuel oil prices still sky high, with unemployment way up at record levels, with housing prices way down, with the mortgage market in chaos, with the economy running a gigantic deficit, with a massive trade deficit, and with the dollar suffering, with 60% of the polled people saying the country is headed for a depression, what can the candidates possibly say to us about this mess?

Everything that doesn’t deal with the economy is wasted talk.  Even the wars are off the front pages for the moment.

That’s what this debate has to be about.