You Need To Listen To This

Ten Years

Political Will Is A Renewable Resource

Today, in Norway, Al Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on environmental issues. Here are some exceprts from his speech:

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken -- if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, "We must act."

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We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency -- a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst -- though not all -- of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively, and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."

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In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia, and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half-million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another.

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Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

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As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, "Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice." Either, he notes, "would suffice."

But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope, and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

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Now comes the threat of climate crisis -- a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called "Satyagraha" -- or "truth force."

In every land, the truth -- once known -- has the power to set us free.

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When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy, and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, "It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship."

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Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions

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We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

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And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon -- with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance -- especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where Earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they've taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters -- most of all, my own country -- that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other's behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.

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The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?"

Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act."



Found here.

Congratlations To The Man America Elected President In 2000

Early this morning, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

He certainly deserves it, as every environmental disaster prevented likely prevents another war, another group of refugees, another tragedy for countless species.

And I'm getting a lot of pleasure out of how pissed off that stinking non-entity in the WH is this morning. Hide, Barney! Hide!

No one would have blamed Al Gore if, after having the election stolen from him by SCOTUS, he'd gone off to his farm to drink himself into an angry oblivion. He didn't do that. As a grandmother, I'm v. grateful for what he's done with the last 7 years.

Like The Manson Family, But With Cleaner Hair

Early this morning my brilliant friend E, guestblogger extraordinaire and author of the Second Best Football Blog in the World, sent this article to me. I'm only now coming up for air and getting around to sharing it, which is the fault of the people with whom I work who fail to understand the concept of "a calendar" rather than E or Bill Maher. (And, yes, I realize that Maher can be a phenomenal ass. But when he's right, he's right.)

It turns out that the Justice Department is entirely staffed with Jesus freaks from a televangelist diploma mill in Virginia Beach. Most of them young women with very little knowledge of the law, but a very strong sense of doing what they're told. Like the Manson family, but with cleaner hair. And more inappropriate purses. And even more embarassing web pages.

Actually, and I've been blogging about this for quite some time, the Bush junta has staffed almost every level of every governmental agency, department, and cabinet with Monica Goodlings -- true believers whose allegiance is to a Christianist state and not to the United States of America. They're going to be sitting there waiting for President Gore or President Clinton or President Obama, ready to undermine everything that the president tries to do. And government employees are notoriously difficult to remove. Think Defense, EPA, NOAA, Treasury, Education, Labor, Interior, etc., etc.

I hope the Dems have a plan for addressing this.

There are, of course, elites and elites. There are elite lawyers who went to Harvard on scholarship, hoisted themselves on their own shoelaces, and who wind up at DOJ where they prosecute bad guys. And, then, there are elite legacies who go to Yale because that's where their daddy went and who grow up to fuck over the entire planet. Perhaps we need two different words to describe these two different things.

Kansas, get the fuck over it.

Tiny Penis Disease

It always brightens my day when a man completely gets it. Paul Waldman, a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America and author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success shows in this Alternet article that he completely gets it.

Last month saw Al Gore's triumphant return to Capitol Hill -- the once-ridiculed candidate now acknowledged as a visionary and treated with long-overdue respect. But the most remarkable moment of Gore's hours of testimony in both houses may have been one in which he wasn't even involved. It shined a light on both the changed atmosphere in Washington today, and the fear and loathing that that change is bringing on.

The most confrontational part of the day came when Gore was being questioned by Oklahoma senator, famed global warming skeptic and former chairman of the environment committee James Inhofe, in a battle of wits that was not exactly an equal match. Inhofe had trouble getting Gore to answer questions the way he wanted to, and kept interrupting him and complaining about the limited time he was given.

After some back and forth between Inhofe and Gore, the new chair of the committee, Barbara Boxer of California, put a hand on Inhofe's arm and said, "I want to talk to you a minute, please." After Boxer suggested that Inhofe give Gore the time to answer his questions, Inhofe replied, "Why don't we do this: at the end, you [Gore] can have as much time as you want to answer all the questions..." Boxer then interrupted: "No, that isn't the rule. You're not making the rules. You used to when you did this," she said, holding up the chair's gavel. "Elections have consequences. So I make the rules."

Boxer spoke with appropriate authority: not angry, not loud but unmistakably firm. There was no doubt who was in charge in that room. You could almost see the steam coming out of Inhofe's ears, not only because he had been deprived of his power, but because he was deprived of it by a woman. She even held up the gavel, the symbol of that power, and practically taunted him with it. Freud couldn't have scripted it much better.

The response in some quarters was unsurprising. Michael Savage, whose hateful rants are reportedly heard by 8 million radio listeners every day, hit the roof. Referring repeatedly to "foul-mouthed, foul-tempered women in high places bossing men around," he opined that the image of a woman giving a man orders would lead to more terrorist attacks (or something like that -- it was a little hard to follow).

And it isn't only extremists like Savage who are having trouble stomaching the idea of women in positions of increasing power. We now have a female speaker of the House, and the strong possibility of the first female president; the prospect is sending some men over the edge. MSNBC host Tucker Carlson recently described Hillary Clinton as "castrating, overbearing and scary." Why Carlson looks at the junior senator from New York and immediately fears for the safety of his testicles might be something he and his therapist should explore, but he's hardly alone -- after the election Chris Matthews wondered on the air if Nancy Pelosi was "going to castrate Steny Hoyer." And Matthews has gone through a series of man-crushes on politicians whom he sees as super-hunky in their masculine ways. First it was George W. Bush, then John McCain and the current object of Matthews' affections is Rudy Giuliani. "I think he did a great job," Matthews said about Giuliani's tenure in New York. "And I think the country wants a boss like that. You know, a little bit of fascism there."

If Rudy ends up getting the Republican nomination, it will be because the GOP primary voters ignore his stands on hot-button culture war issues in favor of that little bit of fascism they crave. And if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, we can expect a virtual explosion of sexist rhetoric, every last drop of it based in fear and anxiety. She already gets described with a whole series of derogatory adjectives that don't seem to ever be applied to male politicians -- she is "ambitious" (unlike the men running for president) and "calculating" (unlike every other politician), to take just two. U.S. News recently noted that a speech she gave "was devoid of hard edges, contrary to her longtime image among critics as a harridan and a polarizer." She must have appreciated the compliment. Conservative radio and TV host Glenn Beck admitted that Hillary Clinton's voice drives him crazy. "She's the stereotypical bitch, you know what I mean?" he said. "After four years, don't you think every man in America will go insane?" (ABC News recently announced that Beck will be offering his insightful commentary on Good Morning America.)

For years, our campaigns have been marked by the "gender gap," the fact that Democrats do marginally better among women and Republicans do better among men. The gender gap in the 2004 election was actually relatively small -- John Kerry won women's votes by 3 points (51 to 48), while George Bush won men's votes by 11 points (55 to 44). But it is the fact that the latter margin is so much larger than the former that is worth noting. It is men, and white men in particular, who are so easily persuaded by campaigns like the one Bush ran, which can be boiled down to, "I'm a manly man, and my opponent is a sissy." Bush beat Kerry among white men by an astounding 25 points.

Should Hillary Clinton be the nominee, the gender gap will no doubt be bigger than it ever has been before. Part of this will come from some women who might have voted Republican (or not voted) casting their votes for her. But more of the gap will come from men fleeing from her, spurred on by the likes of Savage, Carlson, Beck and Matthews insisting that if you vote for a woman, then you must not be a real man.

One can't avoid noticing that as a group, conservative media figures are not exactly secure in their masculinity. Forever promoting war when they avoided military service themselves and doubling over to protect their tender parts every time a strong woman appears on their television screens, it's no wonder they are so impressed by politicians who may not be real men but know how to present a convincing facsimile of manliness.

Much of the audience that tunes in to the corps of overcompensating pretend macho men is just as insecure about their manhood, ready to cast a manly, masculine vote lest anyone raise an eyebrow at their choice for president. That doesn't mean that Hillary Clinton -- or any female presidential candidate, for that matter -- can't win. But if she goes around holding up any long, firm objects, a lot of guys' heads might just explode.

This story about Boxer fascinates me, not the least because even after she said to Inhoffe, "I want to talk to you," Inhoffe continued to try to just keep talking to Gore as if Boxer weren't there. I doubt there's a woman in the work world who hasn't experienced something similar. The result was that Boxer had to chide him: "Elections have consequences. You don't make the rules anymore."

Waldman's spot on when he notes that conservative men sure do seem terrified of that great big Vagina Dentata in their minds. I still think that Newt Gingrich's assertion that the U.S. should just bomb Iran in order to show Iran that "you're tiny and we're not" says as much about conservative men's real concerns as anything that I've ever heard. EVER.

Interestingly, I had lunch w/ someone on the Hill who was repeating the Boxer/Inhoffe story. I think it's going to become iconic. It's sort of like Pelosi telling Bush to calm down and quit issuing threats, as if she were gently admonishing the least-bright of her grandchildren. The women are taking control. They're going to start out, at least, gentle and firm. But for those like Inhoffe who persist in pretending that the women don't even exist, much less exercise any power, well, gavels have lots of purposes.

Really, conservative men, it's going to happen. We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. You'll like the easy way a whole lot better in the end. Trust me.

~Someone at Eschaton Comments linked to this article today and I apologize for not remembering who it was.

FREEDOM!*

Thanks to Fab New Employer, who has actually heard of the this neat concept called "support your staffers' professional development," I’ve had the opportunity to attend the annual NTEN conference this week. Of the sessions I’ve attended, one of the most compelling was a panel on net neutrality, consisting of representatives from Moveon.org, the Free Press, the Consumer’s Union, and one poor schmoe from Verizon (had to admire his bravery, since he must’ve realized he was walking into the proverbial lion’s den).

For those of you who are just joining us, a little background:

Way back in the stone ages (actual time: about 15 years ago) when DARPA first released ARPANet to the public and the Internet was born (thanks in part to Al Gore, who was an early and passionate supporter of funding for this crazy idea), we all accessed this wonderful “series of tubes” over phone lines. Ah, the screechy mating call of the modern modem.

Because of this, the Internet was governed by the rules that govern phone lines, one of which ensures non-discrimination based on content or carrier. So if Ma Bell ran the phone lines, and I have MCI and you have Verizon, AT&T can’t refuse to put my call to you through, or slow it down, or mess with the signal so that it comes through delayed or distorted.

Stay with me here. All was well in Netland until cable companies started offering service and the major providers started running FIOS. Cable companies are governed by different rules than phone companies (anyone who gets a cable bill knows they’re allowed to charge different prices for access to different content and to deny access to some content all together), and running all that fiber was expensive, damn it, and we telecom companies want to get PAID.

Next thing you know, attorneys are making arguments before SCOTUS. You can read the full ruling if you have lots of time on your hands, but the point is that SCOTUS admitted that, while ending the historical neutrality in the treatment of content could have serious negative effects on the Internet, based on the current laws, they had to rule in favor of allowing the providers to charge more for differential access, starting in August 2005. SCOTUS also encouraged Congress to consider passing new legislation to address this issue.

”So what?” you think. “I know I pay more for broadband than my moms, who insists on sticking with her old dial-up account. What’s the problem?” The telecoms aren’t looking to charge consumers extra. That’s already legal. Net neutrality opponents want to charge extra to content providers to ensure that their content gets preferential treatment – their pages load more quickly, their high-bandwidth applications (voice, video) work without delays and hiccups, etc.

“OK, so Verizon DSL loads Yahoo! faster than Google because Yahoo! paid them a big pile of cash. I’ll just switch to Earthlink.” Yeah, that won’t help you. First of all, raise your hand if there are 10 different providers in your ‘hood. 5? More than 3?

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Mmm-hmmm. Secondly, most of those providers do not in fact own the lines, and that’s where this battle is taking place. To quote Ed Whitacre, CEO of SBC:

“Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?”

Net neutrality opponents claim that they have to operate in an unregulated environment where they can recoup the costs of running all that FIOS or Wall Street won’t continue to provide investment capital. RIIIIIIGHT. Wall Street’s going to quit investing in the Internet. Because, as my spouse, The Big Geek, is so fond of remarking: “The Internet? Pffft. It’s a fad.” (hope the sarcasm translated there) Sorry. Not buying it.

They’d also like you to believe that this is about whether Amazon.com loads 2 seconds faster – or slower – than Borders.com. It’s not about Amazon versus Borders. You know what? They’ll both find a way to pay for fast access to their publics. So will Foxnews.com. You know who won’t? Hecate. Atrios. Daily Kos. Skype. YouTube.

The Internet, in its relatively brief lifespan, has been a powerful force for democracy, even anarchy (in the good way, not the setting fire to public buildings way). Meanwhile, EVERY OTHER FORM OF MEDIA has witnessed dramatic increases in ownership consolidation. Do you really want to live in a world where Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets are your only source of news? Me either.

So what can you do?

1. Support the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, sponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Go contact your Senators now. I’ll wait…
2. Join Save the Internet.
3. Stay informed about what’s going on.

Freedom of expression is a terrible thing to waste.

*NB – you have to use your SexyCrazyBraveheart Mel voice, not your WingnutAntiSemiticOpusDeiDrunk Mel voice, or it doesn’t sound right.

The Planet Has A Fever

My president.

Gore Slaps Barton Around And Around

The planet has a fever," Gore said, sounding incredulous at Barton's skepticism. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says, 'You have to intervene here,' you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that says this isn't important.' "