Undernews For September 29, 2009

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September 29, 2009

WORD

Traveling is a fool's paradise. . .I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. . .My giant goes with me wherever I go. -- RW Emerson

PUTTING OBAMA BEHIND US

Sam Smith
Permanent site

As inevitable disillusionment grows with Barack Obama, thanks to his lackluster performance, unfulfilled promises and often indistinguishable variation from his predecessor, it is perhaps time to put our toys away and return to real life.

The Obama campaign was in many ways just a misleading trailer hyping what's turned out to be a third rate film. And as one does not remain the prisoner of Hollywood's puerile productions, there is no reason to give politics' any greater loyalty. You just admit you blew the evening and move on.

The record is indisputable: the expansion of the AF-Pak imperial war, a stimulus package that bailed out the largest banks and left workers and struggling homeowners as "lagging indicators," a plan designed to improve the health of insurance companies more than that of all Americans, and a continuation of contempt for the Constitution.

One of the reasons Obama has felt comfortable pursuing such conservative politics is that, commencing with Clinton, a large segment of the liberal constituency has come to accept the view that incumbency is a reasonable substitute for sound policy. The depressing healthcare debate and lack of opposition to the Af-Pak war reflect the disappearance of a vigorous liberal base that actually believes in something and presses for it with the same sort of passion those on the right demonstrate so frequently.

In fact, if you scrap traditional presumptions and look at the American political spectrum based on specific issues, you find that the layout is not anywhere close to what we are told. Most striking is that traditional liberals, Obama and Democrats in general are closer to the GOP on many more these issues than they are to true progressives, Libertarians or Greens. In fact, on about a half of current big issues, Libertarians are closer to progressives or Greens than they are to the GOP.

The lesson? It helps to know who your friends are. But also how few they are. Pollsters generally give those who are left of center - including Greens, radicals or populist progressives - only one choice of self-identification: liberal. Yet even this inflated category is much smaller than generally acknowledged. Here's a chart from American Election studies, showing the percent of those calling themselves liberal since 1972. The percentage has varied merely nine points over this period, with the peak tally at 23%.

And it gets worse. Of those calling themselves liberal, 8 to 11 percent described themselves as only "slightly liberal," whereas the number who described themselves as "extremely liberal" never got above two percent. According to Gallup, the only groups in 2003 that comprised a quarter or more of liberals were those who had gone to grad school and 18-38 year olds.

Looked at another way, there are fewer self-described liberals than there are blacks and latinos. And while the cliche - raised to almost religious heights during the last campaign - has the black voter as an icon of liberalism, Gallup found that even 77% of blacks consider themselves moderates or conservatives.

Further the number of self-described liberals increased just three points from 2000 when Bush was elected to 2008 when Obama won.

If you eliminate the atypical ten point surge in conservatives in 1994 (thanks to Bill Clinton's strong negatives) the gap between conservatives and liberals varied a maximum of seven points between 1972 and 2004. In other words, all the debate over these three decades produced a shift in the identity of about 4 percent of all voters (i.e half the gap).

Finally, if you take every category Gallup surveyed except political party - and that includes ethnicity, gender, age, income, and part of country - you find that the percentage of conservatives ranges from 30% for blacks to 49% for white southerners, hardly an overwhelming gap. For liberals the range is from 11% for those 65 and older to 28% for those with graduate degrees.

In other words, Americans' political self definitions tend to be consistent in time and far less varied across demographics than we usually think. What is not consistent is how they use that self definition at the polling place. For example, the percent of self defined conservatives was actually a point or two less when Reagan was elected than when Clinton won or when Gore almost did.

Of course, turnout is a factor but again it doesn't help the left of center, because - being smaller in size than the conservatives - the latter need only to enthuse their base, not convert someone else.

But it can be done. Part of the art of politics is redefining the meaning of the voter's own self identity. For example, I have often argued that we have always had Christian fundamentalists in American politics; we just used to call them New Deal or Great Society Democrats.

Three years ago I took a look at 21 safe GOP states. Eleven had above average poverty, 12 had below average income and 8 had severe drought problems. If you didn't know they were sacred GOP turf, you might think they were excellent organizing ground for the Democrats. Finally, 15 of these untouchable states, allegedly impenetrable behind their walls of faith-based family values, had above average divorce rates - all of them at least 90% greater than despicable, godless Massachusetts.

Politics is about getting people to think about the right things. The same people going into a polling place can cast distinctly different ballots depending on whether gay marriage or potential job loss is foremost on their minds.

The GOP has been brilliant over the past few decades, convincing people to obsess about the irrelevant, politicizing the non-political, and yelling "Fire!" when those around them were actually drowning. This is not conservative; it's a con.

But the right has also been increasingly aided by a self-righteous liberal elite that has lumped victims with the cons instead of trying to rescue them. They call these victims racist, stupid and act as though everyone who doesn't talk and believe like them gets their facts and philosophy direct from the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

In fact, a Pew study this year found that less than 20% of the public turn on Hannity or Limbaugh regularly or sometimes and 62% of conservatives never do. For a crowd that loves to decry stereotyping, these trad libs do a pretty good job of it when talking about those not of their ilk.

This is the worst kind of self-defeating cliquish politics. Given that for three decades, the smug self-satisfied attitude of such liberals has generally been shared by less than 20% of the electorate, it is clear that unless one wants to live in a political gated community there has to be some effort to change the game. And as Martin Luther King admonished his colleagues, among their dreams should be that someday their enemies would be their friends.

This sense is virulently absent in today's liberal rhetoric and politics. Instead we have MSNBC and Fox throwing stones at each other with conservatives, thanks to the numbers, having the edge.

To find a better way of doing it, it helps to look at some past examples of groups that, while lacking the numbers, still changed the country. Two that come rapidly to mind are the early civil rights and environmental movements.

With the key word being movement.

We have become trained in recent decades by both liberals and conservatives to define action by simply being on a national mailing list and making a contribution. Which is why Move On and Emily's List are so powerful but nobody knows what a liberal is any more.
Movements work differently. They have causes. They don't use popes; they rely on independent congregations. They are driven not by remote saviors but by visible and accessible substance. They assume a commitment beyond the voting booth, they think politicians should respond to people rather than the other way around, and they believe in "Here's how" as well as "Yes, we can."

Two of the best movements in the recent past have been the early civil rights and environmental movements.

The congregational model of the early civil rights movement is still not well appreciated for its strength and effectiveness. America's obdurate inability to deal with ethnic cruelty - which not even a civil war could cure - was finally confronted in a meaningful way largely by a bunch of twenty somethings. In so many ways it differed from the style we traditionally adopt for political change. Nothing I have covered or been a part of has come close to changing so many hearts, minds, laws and traditions in such a short time as the mid-century civil rights movement.

Among its secrets: the holistic model of a church congregation whose worker priests not only preached a message but integrated it into support, education and community building. It is a style alien to us today. We see people as voters, contributors, email activists, enemies or allies, but not as lives for which we share responsibility as we involve them in our cause.

Consider this from civil rights activist in the Mississippi summer of 1964:

"It is most interesting to talk to whites. Most of them, when they see a white man and black man standing at their door, know what we are doing and immediately turn themselves off - they are 'not interested.' But the few who do talk to us are great. In spite of the weight of their prejudices, in some cases they are deeply concerned with what is going on about them and want to try to help. One white woman, who I signed up, wanted to come to the meeting tonight. I arranged for a baby-sitter and called her back. She said her husband had learned of what she had done and she was in a bad situation. I am worried about her, but she, because of her husband's antagonism and our very sane and sensible conversation, may become quite active in her own way. It takes a lot of walking and talking on our part to do this, to gain this, but it is worth it, every bit of effort."

Key to such an effort is the assumption that changing people's minds takes effort. And it is worth it. You don't just call some people racists, get a check from others, amend a piece of legislation and then move on. It is the sort of complex work one doesn't find much of in politics these days.

The environmental movement also produced its change but not so much by effective community organizing but by effective education. From Silent Spring on, a growing number of activists taught America what its schools and media had ignored. It wasn't that easy. As late as 1995, the Washington Post ran a story about global warming that split the arguments so neatly one could easily reach the author's own conclusion: "When you sort through the confusion, how much you worry about greenhouse warming turns out not to be a matter of science."

These two movements had an enormous effect in part because they weren't just about civil rights and ecology, but also about politics. It was a politics based on specific issues rather than specific people. Last year millions voted for Obama to produce change. The civil rights and environmental movements produced change and let the presidents catch up With them.

When you only have a small percentage of the vote , such movements are a far better model than the top down, icon obsessed, cliquish approach of liberals deeply embedded in the traditional Democratic Party.

As for Obama, we just need to follow Sam Goldwyn's advice about someone else: "Don't even ignore him." It won't always work - he is president after all - but he has also made it clear that if one's politics is based on real issues and not celebrity cults, he has little to offer. When he does join a cause, we should welcome him, but as a general rule he is one more rocky ridge to cross between here and progress.

As I wrote last December, "At times the movement may find itself allied with Barack Obama; at other times he may be its major opponent. In either event, Obama will define change no better than John Kennedy defined the civil rights movement or LBJ the anti-Vietnam war movement. Change doesn't originate in the White House; what happens there merely reflects the power of the change around it. Which is one good reason not to go soft just because Obama's in the White House. If he won't be an ally, then he must be made irrelevant."

Cause-driven politics can especially benefit from a number of characteristics including:

- A congregational approach building communities of like-minded souls working on consensus-chosen issues.

- An educational approach in which activists gain support by creating more people who understand and appreciate the cause they are promoting.

- A willingness to work with people on one or more issues even when you disagree with them on others.

- A distinction between the manipulators of thought, whether media or political, and the manipulated . The latter shown respect even if you disagree with them.

- Introducing communities to a society increasingly filled with atomized individuals.

- Thinking local. Bear in mind that each of the great positive rebellious political movements of the past - such as the populists, progressives and socialists - made their impact thanks to the ubiquity and effectiveness of their local organizing more than through such national efforts as presidential campaigns.

- Basing politics on doing the most for the most, which means a heavy emphasis on economic issues Currently painfull lacking among embedded liberals.

- A willingness to cross traditional ideological boundaries. Every time you do, you weaken political stereotypes and make it easier for people to think for themselves. Two outstanding cross-ideological issues are ending the drug war and decentralizing government decisions. Starting a group called Gays for Gun Rights wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

- An de-emphasis of leftist behavior designed to prove how radical you are in favor of relating progressive causes to the American norm and traditions. The public often supports substantial change but backs off if it feels it would be considered 'radical.' Many allegedly radical positions are, in fact, quite conservative, such as conserving our constitution, our integrity, our economy, our environment and peace. It is the establishment center that led us into disasters radical and extreme: radically wrong and extremely incompetent. That's why when people call me a radical, I sometimes say, no, I'm just a moderate of a time that has not yet come.

A year ago, Sarah van Gelder of Yes Magazine gave us a clue as to what an independent progressive movement might look like - based on polls - of "an agenda that the majority of Americans support, whether they vote red, blue, green or something else."
67% favor public works projects to create jobs.
55% favor expanding unemployment benefits.
76% support tax cuts for lower- and middle-income people.
80% support increasing the federal minimum wage.
59% favor guaranteeing two weeks or more of paid vacation.
75% want to limit rate increases on adjustable-rate mortgages.
58% believe a court warrant should be required to listen to the telephone calls of people in the U.S.
59% would like the next president to do more to protect civil liberties.
79% favor mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions.
90% favor higher auto fuel efficiency standards.
75% favor clean electricity, even with higher rates.
72% support more funding for mass transit.
64% believe the government should provide national health insurance coverage for all Americans, even if it would raise taxes.
55% favor one health insurance program covering all Americans, administered by the government, and paid for by taxpayers.
81% oppose torture and support following the Geneva Conventions.
76% say the U.S. should not play the role of global police.
79% say the U.N. should be strengthened.
63% want U.S. forces home from Iraq within a year.
47% favor using diplomacy with Iran. 7% favor military action.
67% believe we should use diplomatic and economic means to fight terrorism, rather than the military.
86% say big companies have too much power in politics
65% believe attacking social problems is a better cure for crime than more law enforcement.
87% support rehabilitation rather than a punishment-only system.
81% say job training is very important for reintegrating people leaving prison.
79% say drug treatment is very important.
56% believe NAFTA should be renegotiated.
64% believe that on the whole, immigration is good for the country.

The media and the mega politicians have taught us to judge politics and our own choices by the what is going on in the White House. This isn't just Obama's fault. Back in 1994 I wrote:

"[The] preoccupation with the presidency not only exaggerates the importance of the position, it distorts the constitutional division of political power, denigrates the significance of state and local government and creates pressures for presidential action when such action may be neither wise nor even lawful. We can not, even out of seemingly harmless celebrity worship, imbue our president with supra-constitutional virtues or powers without simultaneously damaging the Constitution and the democratic system it was established to protect.

"Besides, our presidential fetish badly skews our view of our country and the changes occurring within it -- not only elsewhere in government but beyond politics entirely. It trivializes our own collective and individual roles in creating social and political change. And, conversely, it can create the illusion of great change when far less is really happening."

It's time to move beyond Obama, to seize control of change again, making it a popular and not an elite choice and design, to redistribute power we have been trained to give to the few but rightfully belongs to the many, to build congregations of progressives as vigorous as those of past, to help and not hate those whose view of reality has been warped by our monopolized information system to better understand what's really going on.

If Obama wants to join us, fine. If not, then put him behind us. The future is too precious to let the dysfunctions of power leave us prisoners of its endless failures.

Permanent site

MEDIA DOES BETTER THAN McCHRYSTAL IN TALKING WITH OBAMA

Since taking office, Barack Obama has given over ten television interviews a month. He has also given five interviews a month to newspapers and magazines.

His commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has not been as lucky. He has had only one conversation with the president in the over two months since he took over the war. Here's how McChrysstal put it during a 60 Minutes interview:

"I've talked to the president, since I've been here, once on a VTC [video teleconference]."

CBS reporter David Martin: "You've talked to him once in 70 days?"

McChrystal: "That is correct."

BRITS FIND KICKING THE DRUG WAR HABIT WORKS FOR HEROIN

Time - Following the lead of Switzerland and a handful of other countries, Britain recently concluded a four-year trial in which longtime addicts were given daily heroin injections as part of a treatment program to eventually wean them off the drug. Now, with results showing the trial succeeded in reducing street-drug use and crime among participants, Britain could soon become only the second country in Europe to institutionalize the program. That would mean permanent, state-funded heroin clinics would be set up across the country to treat the most heavily addicted people. . .

In the trial, which was conducted in the cities of London, Darlington and Brighton, researchers divided the 127 participants into three groups, giving one group heroin and giving the other two intravenous methadone and oral methadone. Although all three groups showed improved physical and mental health thanks to the counseling and social services offered by the clinics, the heroin-using group fared much better than the others. After half a year, three-quarters had largely stopped taking street heroin. And the number of crimes committed by those in the group dropped from 1,700 in the 30 days before the program began to 547 in the first six months of the trial. . . .

Britain has long permitted doctors to prescribe heroin for a small number of hard-to-treat patients, but in the 1970s and 1980s doctors became reluctant to prescribe doses high enough to actually work, fearing patients would sell them on the black market. "It was a lose-lose situation," says Strang. Then, in the early 1990s, researchers from Switzerland, which was witnessing a dizzying spike in heroin use, came knocking. "They saw what we were doing and said, 'We can do better,' " Strang says. . . .

Among the researchers was Ambros Uchtenhagen, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich, who set up clinics in Switzerland where drug users injected heroin under doctor supervision and received counseling. "We found highly persistent improvement [among the patients]," says Uchtenhagen. Today, there are 23 clinics across the country that treat roughly 2,200 drug users, or about 6% of the nation's heroin addicts. The average stay is three years - a quick stint for users who average 15 years of heroin use. Less than 15% relapse into daily use. .

Recovered history

Progressive Review, 1997 - Two leading German police officials -- the prefect of Koeln and the vice prefect of Frankfurt -- have told the European Parliament that the monitored distribution of heroin can give drug addicts better life conditions and prevent them from becoming criminals. . . .A Swiss experiment with just such a monitored program has slashed crime, misery and death, report authorities.

Sam Smith, Utne Reader, 2000 - The surge in urban violence has its roots in the mid-80s. Drug use in America had actually peaked in 1979 according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Marijuana use was one-half what it had been in the late 70s and heroin deaths were down by 25% from 1975. During the Carter years, in fact, drug treatment efforts had been so successful that heroin overdose deaths dropped by two thirds.

But by 1985, with Reagan cutbacks in publicly-funded drug facilities, that figure started climbing back up. Those who could not afford private treatment were being hurt most and drug overdose deaths in major cities were up 18% over the previous decade. It was enough of an excuse for President Reagan to declare a war on drugs. There was no subtlety in this. The Washington Times reported: "President Reagan yesterday declared drug dealers a greater national security threat than terrorists" and the US News & World Report flatly declared that narcotics had turned "into a national security threat. Headlines, police blotters, death certificates testify to a nation on a binge."

Ironically, the renewed growth in urban drug use was being fueled by steps already undertaken by the Reaganites. The administration had early gone after marijuana, the easiest target and the hardest drug to hide. That it was also the most benign, causing less harm than either tobacco or alcohol, was ignored. As pressure was placed on the marijuana trade, prices rose and quantities declined. An economic vacumn for a cheap street drug was created and soon filled.

The first accomplishment of the Reagan war on drugs thus became the ready availability of a new and less expensive form of cocaine: crack. It was not an auspicious beginning. The war was quickly accompanied by a murder rate that rose with drug arrests. The number of murders in DC, for example, mounted 50% in two years. It is hard, in fact, to think of another domestic policy that has caused so much mayhem in such a short period as the war on drugs. Yet a decade later, only a tiny handful of politicians would publicly admit what Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza had said back in September 1988: "All of the action, in Minneapolis or elsewhere, is just spinning a wheel and chasing our own tails. It ain't working."

STUDY: GAY ADOPTION DOESN'T HARM EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN

Reuters - Gay or straight, the sexual orientation of adoptive parents does not have an impact on the emotional development of their children, according to a new study. . . "We found that sexual orientation of the adoptive parents was not a significant predictor of emotional problems," Paige Averett, an assistant professor of social work at East Carolina University, said in a statement. "We did find, however, that age and pre-adoptive sexual abuse were," she added. . . "We must pay attention to the data indicating that gay and lesbian parents are as fit as heterosexual parents to adopt," Averett added, "because at least 130,000 children are depending on us to act as informed advocates on their behalf." The American Civil Liberties Union has said that laws and adoption agency policies have created obstacles for gay and lesbian couple who want to adopt children.

THE HEALTH INSURANCE RACKET: ONLY MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL OWNERS HAVE IT SO GOOD

Dylan Ratigan, Huffington Post - Why is health insurance the only business that has an exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act other than Major League Baseball? . . .

Through the governmental negligence that we as voters allowed, a health care system was created in which a single health care company controls at least 30 percent of the insurance market in 95% of the country, including states like the following:

Maine, where Wellpoint controls 71% of the market.

North Dakota, where Blue Cross controls 90% of the market.

Arkansas, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 75% of the market.

Alabama, where Blue Cross Blue Shield controls 83% of the market.

This monopoly, combined with the misaligned incentives that trap people in employer-based health care, is causing the skyrocketing health care costs that are hurtling our nation towards bankruptcy.

I don't know what's worse: that most Republicans seem to be against ending this unfair legal protection for an entrenched industry that is ruining our country with their non-competitive practices, or that most Democrats seem to be threatening this arrangement only as a bargaining chip to push for a meaningless public option that wouldn't be accessible to almost 85% of the population?

Instead of improving our country, through creating and enforcing free and fair markets, our politicians are currently engaging in backroom deals, most of which protect the very companies who profit the most from these disastrous outdated systems -- industries like health insurance and big Pharma.

THE CATHOLIC WAR ON SEX

Amanda Hess, Washington City Paper - This week, Catholic University newspaper the Tower reported that the Washington City Paper would no longer be made available on the school's campus. In fact, the paper has been gone from the CUA campus since May 7th, the day that my story on CUA's campus sex ban, Screw U: Inside the Secret Sex Life of Catholic University, was published.

That morning, a very nice man who identified himself only as a CUA employee called to tell me that the university was removing the paper from the campus racks. "I just wanted to bring that to your attention and let you know that really sucks, because I know for a fact there are a lot of staff members and students that love to read your paper, and especially for this article," he said. . . .

Catholic University spokesperson Victor Nakas, whom I quoted extensively in the piece on the subjects of premarital sex, masturbation, and men kissing, explained the school's reasoning for removing the paper from campus. "These decisions were occasioned by the City Paper's hateful article ridiculing our Catholic faith," Nakas told the Tower. . .

Catholic University of America has banned sex, masturbation, pornography, and condom possession among unmarried students for years. Let's see how that's going for them: clandestine condom distribution, check; student center sex, check; healthy LGBT population (considering), check; masturbation, check; celebrity naked photos, check; girls sneaking into boys dorms, check; boys sneaking into girls' dorms, check; high-profile sexual assault case involving videotaped group sex in open CUA dorm room, check. Unfortunately, college students prefer doin' it to reading alternative weekly newspapers. . .

THE RETURN OF LSD

SF Chronicle - LSD, the drug that launched the psychedelic era and became one of the resounding symbols of the counterculture movement of the '60s, is back in the labs. Nearly 40 years after widespread fear over recreational abuse of LSD and other hallucinogens forced dozens of scientists to abandon their work, researchers at a handful of major institutions - including UCSF and Harvard University - are reigniting studies. Scientists started looking at less controversial drugs, like ecstasy and magic mushrooms, in the late 1990s, but LSD studies only began about a year ago and are still rare. The study at UCSF, which is being run by a UC Berkeley graduate student, is looking into the mechanisms of LSD and how it works in the brain. The hope is that such research might support further studies into medical applications of LSD - for chronic headaches, for example - or psychiatric uses.

13 WAYS (A PARTIAL LIST) PENDING HEALTHCARE BILLS FAIL

Michael Moore & Rose Ann DeMoro, Huffington Post

1. No cost controls on insurance companies. The coming sharp increases in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, etc. will quickly outpace any projected protections from caps on out-of-pocket costs.

2. Insurance companies will continue to be able to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

3. No restrictions on insurance denials of care that insurers don't want to pay for. . .

4. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas, where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

5. A massive government bailout for the insurance industry through the combination of the individual mandate requiring everyone not covered to buy insurance, public subsidies which go for buying insurance, no regulation on what insurers can charge, and no restrictions on their ability to decide what claims to pay.

6. No controls on drug prices. The White House deal with Big Pharma, which won bipartisan approval in the Senate Finance Committee, opposes the use of government leverage to negotiate real cost controls on inflated drug prices.

7. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay.

8. Tax on comprehensive insurance plans. That will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of bare-bones, high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies.

9. Not universal. Some people will remain uncovered, including those exempted, and undocumented workers, denying them treatment, exposing everyone to communicable diseases and inflating health care costs.

10. No definition of covered benefits.

11. No protection for our public safety net. Public hospitals and clinics will continue to be under-funded and a dumping ground for those the private system doesn't want. Public monies going to hospitals serving low-income communities will be shifted to subsidies for private insurance.

12. Long delay in implementation. Many reforms don't go into effect until 2013.

13. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; health care remains a privilege, not a right.

CLINTON BARES HIS SOUL ON NAFTA

David Sirota, Open Left - As a writer myself, I'm baffled by Taylor Branch's decision to follow up his epic work on the truly historic Martin Luther King, Jr. with a book on a historical footnote like Bill Clinton. I just don't get how you go from such genuinely important subject matter to tabloid-level stuff. . . That said, from the excerpts, I see there's some telling - if not really newsworthy - snippets in the book. In particular, check this out:

[] Clinton exploded in rage during an interview with Rolling Stone's William Greider when the journalist confronted him about the economic impact of NAFTA on America's working class. He yelled at Greider, telling him "You are a faulty citizen. You don't mobilize or persuade, because you only worry about being doctrinaire and proud," and lumping him in with "bitchy and cynical" liberals." Clinton told Branch: "I did everything but fart in his face." []

We know from John R. MacArthur's fantastic book "The Selling of Free Trade" that corporate CEOs were bragging that Clinton was deliberately using NAFTA to run "over the dead bodies" of workers and the environmental movement. So the revelation about Clinton's interaction with Greider isn't groundbreaking. . . but it is telling. .

Here we had a president being asked substantive questions by one of the best reporters about one of the most important policies, and here we had that president call that reporter "a faulty citizen" and later brag that he "did everything but fart in his face." Perhaps even worse, that same president insisted the concerns about millions of jobs lost and families crushed came out of some petty desire to be "doctrinaire."

That tells you everything you need to know about the inner workings of the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C. these days: Expressing concern for working people - or, god forbid, legislating on their behalf - is worthy of having your face farted on.

GREAT MOMENTS IN BRANDING

Telegraph, UK - The Wisconsin Tourist Federation , the body charged with attracting more visitors to the midwestern state will now be known as the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin, in an attempt to put a stop to the jokes. It seems that the federation was unaware of - or unconcerned by - the modern meaning of WTF until its acronym featured on a blog that compiles unfortunate corporate logos earlier this year. . . But the federation's corporate makeover is only partial. Its website is still listed on Google as the Wisconsin Tourism Federation, and the first button beneath the logo is titled "About WTF".

SOME REALLY AWFUL NEWS

Daily Galaxy - Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. . .

It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out.

Through Earth's history such collisions occur on the average every one million year. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, Hawking believes, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

"The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity," according to Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences team. . .

Early results indicate that in terms of population lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the infrastructure destroyed.

The top ten countries most at risk are China, Indonesia, India, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Nigeria.

"The consequences for human populations and infrastructure as a result of an impact are enormous," says Bailey. "Nearly one hundred years ago a remote region near the Tunguska River witnessed the largest asteroid impact event in living memory when a relatively small object (approximately 50 meters in diameter) exploded in mid-air. While it only flattened unpopulated forest, had it exploded over London it could have devastated everything within the M25."

What would happen to the human species and life on Earth in general if an asteroid the size of the one that created the famous K/T Event of 65 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic Era that resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs impacted our planet.

As Stephen Hawking says, the general consensus is that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 kilometers in diameter that strikes the Earth will result in the complete annihilation of complex life - animals and higher plants. . . .

How many times in our galaxy alone has life finally evolved to the equivalent of our planets and animals on some far distant planet, only to be utterly destroyed by an impact? Galactic history suggests it might be a common occurrence.

The first this to understand about the K/T event is that is was absolutely enormous: an asteroid (or comet) six to 10 miles in diameter streaked through the Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 miles an hour and struck the Yucatan region of Mexico with the force of 100 megatons -the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb for every person alive on Earth today. Not a pretty scenario!

Recent calculations show that our planet would go into another "Snowball Earth" event like the one that occurred 600 million years ago, when it is believed the oceans froze over (although some scientists dispute this hypothesis).

LAGGING INDICATORS: THE RETURN OF TENT CITIES

CNN - In cities across the country, people with nowhere to live have done what many would have thought unthinkable before the economic crisis: moved into tents. . . . Tent camps once associated mainly with the "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression are springing up in places as varied as Sacramento, California; Nashville, Tennessee; Pinellas County, Florida; Providence, Rhode Island; and Seattle, Washington. The camps have often led to standoffs between local governments that say the camps violate housing ordinances and homeless rights advocates who argue that people struggling to get back on their feet need a permanent place to stay.

BRITS OPEN UP LIBRARY BOOK BORROWING

BBC - Millions of book lovers can now borrow items from a public library regardless of where they live, under a new scheme. More than 4,000 libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are in the Society of Chief Librarians initiative. Existing membership cards or a proof of address will allow people to use any library in the scheme, although books have to be returned to the same area. . . The aim is to encourage more people to use libraries, in the face of competition from online book sellers and people browsing in bookshops with coffee bars. Among those who might benefit from the scheme are people who need extra reading material while on holiday. . . The society is developing a scheme for the future where one library card would allow the holder to borrow and return books to any public library in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

DOWN EAST NOTES

What's been happening near the Review's headquarters on Casco Bay, Maine. Details in the Coastal Packet.

After a 31-year ban on coffee that left many fairgoers scratching their heads or fighting withdrawal, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association invited two coffee vendors to participate in the 2009 Common Ground Fair. The longtime prohibition goes back to the first Common Ground Fair in 1977 when, according to MOFGA's Web site, there were no reliable sources of organically grown and processed coffee. The equatorial crop didn't jibe with the fair's focus on Maine-made foods either.Today MOFGA has a working relationship with the Ereguan Coffee Collective in El Salvador,. . . Another Maine school department is considering offering contraceptives to students, this time at Noble High school in North Berwick. Two years ago in a controversial move, the Portland School Committee approved offering birth control prescriptions to students enrolled in King Middle School health center. Students must have their parents permission to be enrolled in the school's health center and parents can disenroll their child at any time. . . . Census figures say the Pine Tree State, for the fourth year running, has the second highest percentage of households receiving welfare . . .Only Alaska had a higher number.

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