December 2007 Archives

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Thinking back, it was an ominous portent when Rove orchestrated a "surge" of conservative fundamentalist Ohio voters at the eleventh hour on election day 2004. I suppose they thought it worked so well that they'd try that wording again in order to add a level of magnitude to their warmongering. So we had a "surge" of troops. I always thought that, by definition, a surge was an increase in force that occurred over a short period of time, resulting in momentum. It's been at least six months, hasn't it? According to recent media, "the surge is working." Which means exactly, what?

As if that wasn't bad enough, the word "surge" or "to surge" or "surging" becan to appear all over the place during this last year. This seemed to be perfectly acceptable, despite its lack of originality and sometimes semantically questionable application.

2007 was the year of the "surge."

One day last week I found that the following had occurred:

A Surge in copper prices helped drive gains in mining
A Surge helped McCain at the polls in New Hampshire
A Surge in demand at food pantries feeding the poor was seen at the holidays
A Surge in shares of Umbro, maker of UK jerseys, occurred, boosting stocks
A Surge in crude oil prices followed a US consumer spending binge
A Surge in tech stocks was seen after taking a breather
A Surge in Polish asylum seekers needing housing was experienced
A Surge in visits to Edwards and Huckabee websites was tabulated
A Surge in online retail rescues sales
AND, THE Surge is working in Iraq, says Bush

Checking today, there is still no letup in the general surging as:

A Surge in global energy announces review of Canadian Tax Reserves
A Surge in UK shoppers post-Christmas makes up for disappointing pre-sales
A Surge masks growing concern over New Year slump
A Surge of shopping occurs on Boxing Day
A Surge of holiday travellers crowds airports
A Surge is seen for Edwards, who had the right message at the right time
A Surge is also seen for Obama
A Surge in Iowa is hoped for in Iowa
A Surge Boosts McCain's campaign with success of Iraq
A Surge is seen in rainwater tanks applications
A Surge is seen in soybeans pricesA Surge for the holiday leads to crowded airports
A Surge is seen in solar stocks as oil spikes
AND THE SURGE is still working in Iraq.
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Google Results 1 - 10 of about 49,800,000 for surge [definition]. (0.10 seconds) on 12/21/07 at 10:44:02 PM.

Definition Poem

Surge
a billowing or rise, waves
a movement, of an army

Surge
rapidly, the dollar against the yen;
rushing forcefully forward, as a crowd

Surge
a sudden or abrupt increase,
speculation, emotion, crime

Surge
a heaving upward, vessel's movement
fore and aft, ebbing and flowing of the sea

Surge, a citrus soft drink introduced in Norway
by Coca Cola under the name Urge
to compete with Pepsi's Mountain Dew

Surge, a fictional character, a Marvel Mutant
of the student body of Xavier Institute,
leader of the new X-Men

Surge
a glacial velocity of substantial advance
most commonly in Alaska and Canada

Surge
an oversupply of voltage, rise of pressure,
momentary to several seconds
can damage electronic equipment

Surge
a rise in water pressure, in bays and harbors
atmospheric fluctuations, more rapidly than usual
said of a glacier

I remember Benazir Bhutto as a mixed bag for women: a privileged intelligent and elegant woman, a dubious leader, and victim of the immense and tragic power struggles of the evolving south central Asian world. She was also a mother, and it is as such that I feel the tearing of my own heart in the wake of her assassination yesterday.

Let me clarify "mixed bag for women."

The women who became national and world leaders in the latter half of the 20th Century (including, but not limited to: Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Corazon Aquino, Benazir Bhutto) found that being seen as a tough-minded leader was far more useful than being seen as a mother of children, a nurturer. In the new millennium, we are a bit more conflicted about multiple roles; we want to see leaders in their human forms as well, for which we often punish them.

But Bhutto was both a tough-minded leader AND a mother, and recently, according to accounts in the Washington Post and other media, returned to Pakistan with mixed feelings about those roles and how they tend to hit up against each other.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Both are moms and both are "tough-minded" leaders. For me personally, the sight of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House with all those children around her choked me up. The encounters I have had with Hillary Clinton are personally inspiring. But I am as concerned and disappointed about where both have gone as I can be.

They have tried to work within the limited and limiting power structures of the party system, playing by the rules set up by men jockeying for more power, higher positions, and often working against the needs and interests of the people who elected them. Balancing between the powers of good and evil as these women seem to do well, does not lead to positive results for humankind; it leads to more compromise and frustration.

Any parent will tell you that raising children is often a battle between the heart and the head. For women also operating in the competitive worlds of business and politics, policy and economics, war and diplomacy, the split can be palpable.

As an example, let us return--reluctantly--to the year 1999, when Bill told us he did not have sex with that woman. At that moment, who did Hillary Clinton believe she needed to be? The loyal wife? The future world leader? Chelsea's mom? And why did she not deck him, or at the least, send him packing for a few weeks to cool his heels at Blair House?

Nancy Pelosi, who has a kind of bully pulpit position, not to mention years of experience raising children and surviving in politics, does not appear to know how to lead with the kind of tough-minded compassionate sense that she must have parented with. How can she not be sending these idiots to their rooms, or at least to their books, to read up on what they are missing about the Constitution, torture, and general fair-mindedness?

And what does this have to do with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto?

Enter Elizabeth Edwards: tough-minded mother and fighter for good. Does anyone doubt her sincerity, especially since she has been so absolutely clear about her priorities? This is a woman straddling mothering and campaigning at the same time she is straddling life and death. Good grief! Literally.

As we all struggle with the violence, criminality, thuggery, injustice, and theft of democracy in the service of profits and powermongering, what more can and should women be doing about it? I ask myself regularly, as a mother, would I let my kids get away with this behavior?

Of course I wouldn't.

And that is why the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the hard choices and positive work of Elizabeth Edwards, and my disappointment in Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton collided last night in heartbreaking realizations. The night before, Richard and I, in a sado-masochistic frenzy of video-watching, decided to view The Road to Guantanamo, Iraq for Sale, and No End in Sight. By the end of that night, we were clear about how this mess of the world unfolded, and it was also clear how deeply we hope Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush will receive the appropriate consequences for their evil-minded and bone-headed actions. But what can WE do? As I wept and fumed, I thought about the Code Pink women, and the women activists I have been working with over the past few years, including many of you, and I thought:

Women of the world: the courts and the police and the generals and the leaders have blown it. Cooperation with the institutions of government has led only to compromise and ineffectiveness. Our children are in moral and physical danger, and the core principles of democracy and fairness, the hope for change for the better, the very heart of the matter is in our hands. Let the murder of a woman who tried to straddle between the worlds of loving and tough-minded parenting and tough-minded caring governance be a rallying cry for the "fair sex" to teach the lessons of fairness and balance.

And let us do it NOW.

Discuss below. (NSA, I hope that the thought of the wrath of women scares the shit out of you. Unless, of course, after reading all that email and online threads, you feel like joining us. It won't be violent, you know--we are, first and foremost, nurturers. But it WILL be effective. Contact us: we know you have our numbers.)

Here we come a wassailing among the leaves so green

It's Christmas Time in Washington, and neither Woody nor Cisco nor MalcomX nor Martin Luther King are in sight (see below for lyrics). What is in sight, is too much green stuff.

It's December 25th, for Christ's sake (as Huckabee might put it). As benefits an old 18-foot wide Washington rowhouse, I've got a tiny postage stamp of a front yard, maybe 12-feet deep, with one camellia, one 15-foot high Japanese maple, a red climbing rose intertwined reluctantly through a simple cast-iron fence, a new yellow climbing rose just starting out, and a few sprays of various groundcovers, also new.

But what's this? Damn, it's the daffodils, muscling their way through two inches of two-week old bark mulch. The little yard is full of them, but this is ridiculous. It's December! When we moved into this house 8 years ago, the daffodils came up in late March. They're admittedly in a sunny spot, nestled up to a brick housefront that radiates heat at night. Last year, I was alarmed when they came up in late January, only to be blasted by a subsequent freeze, so that only a few of them ever managed to blossom.

The camellia also went off much earlier last year, and the frost turned its beautiful blossoms into the most unattractive color brown, and now it's fixing to do the same thing, only earlier.

Watching an entire season disappear before your eyes is a strange and unnerving experience. It's not unlike the equally strange and unnerving experience of watching your country disappear before your eyes. There's even a simple connection between the two: George W. Bush, and the inexplicable failure of the Congress, the courts, and the electorate to act to save the country and to save the planet.

Students of stressed natural systems warn of the existence of tipping points, (or to be a little more mathematical, of non-linear responses), where a situation that has been getting worse a little bit at a time suddenly accelerates past a point of no recall, like over-fishing cod off New England and then boom, all of sudden there are essentially no more cod to be caught.

How can you tell when you are close to a tipping point? In ecological policy, there is a concept called the precautionary principle, which suggests that in the absence of data or experience showing that some new action is safe, say the release of a new pesticide, you should not allow that pesticide to be released commercially until its manufacturers have proven that there are no harmful, unintended side effects.

Our country has refused to embed the precautionary principle into environmental law, unlike the European Union, for example.

But we would be equally well served by a precautionary principle in the political arena as well. From this point of view, the efforts of the founders to embed a system of checks and balances into the Constitution was a conscious effort to set up such a precautionary system. That this system has utterly failed to protect us from the constitutional depredations and the illegal prosecution of aggressive wars is a great tragedy.

Depending on the failure of the follies of ones enemies to undo them makes for a most unsatisfactory and unsaleable politics. How much pain and torture, how many innocent civilian deaths, how much of our national treasure thrown away, before enough people see what's sitting there in front of them, the determined shoots of authoritarianism, forcing their way into the light?

Steve Earle's song is a reminder of times when other Americans saw clearly the dangers facing the country, Americans who were spit upon and reviled and even murdered in political show trials. They're not names that trip off the tongues of politicians touring Iowa, but they're the names that burn in memory, because they refused to close their eyes, or shut their mouths.

Recently, a 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta, which has been very influential on our legal system, was auctioned off for $21.3 million. The copy was owned by Ross Perot, and was sold to the Carlyle Group, with which the Bush family is strongly associated. Casey Morris shared my outrage,and wrote about this a few days ago.

It seemed somehow symbolic somehow, in the Christmas season, when consumer spending is encouraged in order to prop up an indebted economy. It made me wonder, on a larger scale, what else has been bought and sold recently, behind closed doors?

As US debt has soared, foreign investment has also increased, particularly in the mortgage market (which turned out to be a time bomb). Just in the last couple of weeks Morgan Stanley sold almost 10% of itself to China. CitiGroup received a shot in the arm (sold part of itself) from Abu Dhabi. foreign companies own or lease many of our bridges and toll roads.

Here, the conservative Heritage Foundation makes a plug for foreign investment in America, but also reveals that 32% of American assets are now under foreign control. Reading between the lines, they also reveal that our budget deficit and low savings rate make this necessary. Foreign governments can easily invest in American assets, starting by going to an informative website like this). With the dollar so low, there are alot of bargains to be had. We are fairly desperate to deal, as our national debt currently stands at $9,136,418,062,457.29, we have a monumental trade deficit (import far more than we export), and in each of the most recent years we have had a budget deficit (which is cumulatively, our debt and its massive interest).

Congress has been discussing foreign investment in the infrastructure of the US since the controversy about Dubai acquiring control of some ports. Questions have been raised about how to balance economic openness with national security and how much control foreign companies should be allowed to have over U.S. infrastructure.

From their report:
The country with the most holdings in the United States is the United Kingdom, followed by Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. At the end of 2004, the sum of all foreign assets in the United States had an estimated market value of $2.7 trillion, though only 2 percent of these holdings are owned by state-run companies. Foreign companies' holdings are most concentrated in the manufacturing sector, but they also extend into several of the eleven "critical" areas identified by the Bush administration.

In the energy sector, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, and Venezuela's state-owned Citgo all have holdings within U.S. borders. Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson are major telecommunications providers; French-owned Sodexho U.S.A. is the largest food service company in the United States, and even serves meals on Marine Corps bases; and the largest private security firm operating in the United States, Securitas, is based in Sweden.

Middle Eastern entities (excluding Israel) bore the brunt of the ire surrounding the Dubai Ports World purchase. These entities account for about 0.5 percent of foreign investment in theUnited States. However, these companies have some high-profile holdings, including New York's Plaza and Essex House hotels, the Caribou Coffee Co., and the aircraft manufacturer Cirrus Industries, Inc.

What is a consumer to think, at Christmas? As consumers, we depend heavily on foreign products and services. Eighty percent of our children's toys come from China, and parents and nonprofit agencies had a rude awakening this year, as many items contained dangerous levels of lead. Some of us work for foreign-based employers, or have our jobs sent out of the country, or people come into the country to work (a related but different issue). Then, there is Reverse outsourcing, where Indian (and other foreign) companies actually create jobs for Americans rather than the reverse.

Is it xenophobic to wonder where all this is leading, particularly as the government has recently spent billions to bail out some of our banks to cover for bad loans that were partially financed by foreign investors. This is an expensive undertaking, when we are simultaneously involved in wars largely financed through borrowing from foreign investors.

A friend wrote today suggesting that Hillary was outspending the rest of the Democrats in Iowa and might pull it out there. As you all know, as a DCPer and as a movement analyst, I have no horse in this race, nor would I endorse anyone. But I thought it might be fun for you to see what I told him, and let's see if I have any credibility left after January 3rd!

Dear __,

Not so fast. It's not ALL about money. I don't think we know how the Iowans are going to caucus and here's why:

As a movement analyst who has called a number of these races correctly, often against what the pollsters understand, there are a certain factors on the nonverbal front that make or break a candidacy:

1. Listening: Here HRC may have the advantage. No one models listening behavior up close the way she does. She had good practice in her Senate race in New York state, where she listened impressively. I have observed Edwards' ability to actually lean over and listen well, but too often, his responses are a little too pat, or canned. Iowans tend to hate that. Obama is a tad remote, and that may work against him in the end. But Hillary has practiced her "listening tour" demeanor and people may be swayed towards her for that reason. However, note that when I made phone calls into Iowa four years ago, she was hated. Universally despised. So her listening demeanor needs to overcome some fairly high negatives.

2. Accomodating/Shaping/Connecting authentically: Shaping always trumps content, see Huckabee for evidence. Shaping is the ability of the candidate to move both posturally and gesturally in three-dimensional patterns that include the back pat, handshake, hug, or inclusive spreading and enclosing patterns. The key here is authenticity. Clinton and Reagan had it, Kerry had it on the stump but rarely on TV, Bush has it on occasion but anyone who thinks it's authentic is fooling themselves. It is a limited form of shaping--the buddy-back-slap pretty much sums up his relational abilities. Huckabee has it, tons and tons of it. Edwards does too, but it does not read as authentic all the time--he often distances at the same time he accomodates. Hillary does not do this well at all, although she can--at least I have personally experienced it in a small group setting. Obama has it in droves, but does not always ACCESS it when necessary. He is not yet master of the authentic exchange, but he can get there. The question is: Will he? Has he? Iowa will tell us a lot.

3. Grounding: Grounding--the ability to "hold the ground" through an energetic connection to the ground beneath, reveals something about commitment and follow through as well as maturity. Chris Dodd is by far the most grounded of these candidates, but it's not enough to overcome the rest of his limitations. Hillary can be extremely grounded but she also tends to access what we call BOUND flow at those moments--she looks a little rigid. When she is grounded, she is her least feminine self, and when she is most feminine, she often loses her grounding. She has clearly been practicing to appear both strong and feminine. Obama needs to be more grounded. If he wins Iowa and NH, he is going to need more help than just Oprah (who may be the MOST grounded human being on the planet). Edwards just does not have much grounding--his character is one of passion and energy and charm, but I am not sure we understand how well he will get the job done.

4. Complexity/Innovation: Movers who are patterned and predictable, but complex and variable (within a range) inspire. Huckabee has this ability, which is why he is beating the crap out of Romney. Hillary has little variability and she needs to develop more--the droning just does not work. Edwards is almost always the same: predictable without offering anything new or innovative. (I say this despite his having some of the better policy ideas--but if you can't sell it at the dance, no one will buy it). Obama has much more of this than any of the others, which is part of his appeal.

Iowans, god bless 'em, are hard to fool. Those who participate in the caucuses are still thinking about it. But, there is also the concept of the "last click" and that plays a role. For those who work fulltime and are swamped with information, there is a tendency to go with the most recent impression. This is a function for western society as a whole. It does not hold true for the older generations, who are slower to come to conclusions. But for anyone under 60, the "last click" impression is the most potent impression and people will vote for the one whose most recent "click" resonates positively.

And there you have it. Too close to call yet, and what the next week will bring by way of candidate education remains to be seen! As my brilliant husband often says: the candidate needs to learn what works.

I guess what I am saying here is that candidates win by love OR money. And we all know what the world needs now is....

cue Dionne Warwick...

Yours in movement,

Karen

Speechless.

From The Department of Things I Couldn't Possibly Make Up Because No One Would Believe Me:

NEW YORK (AP) — A 710-year-old copy of the declaration of human rights known as the Magna Carta — the version that became part of English law — was auctioned Tuesday for $21.3 million, a Sotheby's spokeswoman said. The document, which had been expected to draw bids of $30 million or higher, was bought by David Rubenstein of The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, the spokeswoman said.

Just. Shoot. Me.

George Bush and his minions have succeeded in driving the inequality of wealth and income to historic highs. But in most of our lives, in most of the country, it's not always easy to see just how far down the road to a pure kleptocracy Bush has taken us (with the acquiescence of the Democratic Congress, which could not even be bothered to close a tax loophole for hedgefund managers, some of whom are making more than $1 billion a year--that's right, one billion dollars in income in one year.)

But when I opened the front section of the New York Times this past Sunday, the wealth thing hit me right in the face--or perhaps I should say, on the wrist. In a news section only 29 pages long (not counting the front page), there were 5 full-page ads for watches, plus another 5 ads adding up to another page. One out of five pages was a watch ad.

According to a report in the Canadian magazine McLean's, luxury goods are hot, especially expensive watches:

In 2006, jewelry and watch sales hit US$62.2 billion in the United States, up from $58.4 billion a year earlier, according to research by Unity Marketing in Stevens, Pa. Better yet, the biggest sales growth happened in the luxury watches segment, which jumped 39 per cent from 2005.

And if diamonds and platinum aren't good enough for you, AFP reports from a Swiss watch convention last spring that you can buy a watch made with "oxidized steel" from the wreck of the Titanic! (AFP, April 11, 2007)

Is this the best of all possible worlds, or what?

Alas, there is a fly in the ointment, at least if you're a Swiss luxury watch maker. Their market is dying. According to a report from a marketing firm, roughly half of those aged 18 to 34 don't even wear a watch (that includes me, and I'm a long way from that age bracket!) Seems that cellphones, i-phones, Blackberries, etc. provide perfectly good time.

What do you think? Would you be upset by a 100% tax on luxury watches?

For lots of good stuff on the grotesqueries of income inequality, see the website Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality (and subscribe to its always interesting newsletter.)

Yesterday, Governor Jon Corzine signed into law a measure repealing the state's death penalty, making New Jersey the first state since 1982 to abolish capitol punishment.

Gov. Corzine gave, in part, this explanation as his reason for doing so:

“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”

That's Corzine's reason for opposing the death penalty. Here's mine:

I wouldn't want the state to impose the death penalty on someone who murdered my family member or loved one. I'd want to do it myself. With my bare hands.

And that's the point.

Our laws are our agreement to be civilized in the face of abject barbarism. In the face of unspeakable cruelty. When confronted with the most baseless inhumanity one person could impose upon another.

Opposing the death penalty isn't saying yes to murderers. It's saying no to our own reactionary impulses which, given free reign, would destroy our own souls.

Opposing the death penalty is looking at the worst that a human being can do to us, and deciding that it will not change our own standard of humanity. Of decency. Of morality.

Abolishing the death penalty saves us from ourselves. It stops murderers from taking souls in addition to taking lives.

The death penalty isn't about the murderers. It never has been. It's about us.

That's the point.

(photo credit: LouLou)

It was a tense week in Bali, as the effort to reach an international agreement on global warming dragged on until the end, with a last-minute compromise. You could hear frustration, to say the least, in Al Gore's voice, as he spoke of his own country obstructing a deal (see video below), referring once to "the elephant in the room". Europe and America disagreed as to the amount by which carbon emissions by rich countries should be reduced by 2020. US, Canada and Japan were some of the last holdouts (see poster below), with US objecting, at one point, to a sentence that India wanted included. At stake was a global treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Groups blamed the US for watering down the final version by pushing out firm targets or timelines. Friends of the Earth called it a "suicide pact". This final agreement followed two tense weeks of wrangling over who should take responsibility for carbon emissions, as Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary general, facilitated negotiations. Now we can expect two years of intense final negotiations over how to prevent a temperature rise over this century which could threaten thousands of species and billlions of people. The Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012 and needs to be superceded and the plan for this needs to be ready in 2009.

While all this was going on internationally in Bali, back in America, the US House of Representatives passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which then passed in the Senate. Republicans threatened to filibuster, so that more votes (60) would be needed to pass it. This forced the Senate to go to work on revisions and delay the vote until next week, with corporations working behind the scenes to trash as much of the renewable energy conditions in the bill as possible.

It is absolutely mind-boggling to have had environmental champions such as Gore and Kerry come so close to the Presidency, only to have to continue to live under a President who represents Big Oil. It is a small bit of karmic justice to think of the Gores partying in Oslo to Earth Wind and Fire, and the Kerrys getting to travel to Bali then Africa, but not enough. We need to hold the 2008 candidates to a high standard on this issue, particularly since some are still in the Dark Ages, ie., skeptical about whether global warming exists. Ordinary people are wondering why Iowa has ice storms when they used to have snow, just one of many examples. People need to pull the wool off of their eyes and make some connections between lifestyle/consumption, big oil, the environment, the real causes war and the future of the planet.

Kerry Statement on Bali Climate Change Roadmap

Kerry was the only member of Congress to attend the international conference on climate change in Bali earlier this week.

“The good news is the world came together and produced a draft climate change roadmap, the bad news is that the United States’ sole contribution was to make it less clear where that road from Bali will lead. The Bali roadmap is not all it could have been, but it is nonetheless a mandate for action whether George Bush realizes it or not. Equally important, while the Bush administration is increasingly out of touch, their days in power are also numbered. It will require new American leadership in 2009 to ensure that the United States leads rather than resists the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We’re in a race against time, but we also have new opportunities to ensure that the industrialized nations and the developing nations come together to meet our shared but differentiated responsibilities in the years ahead.”

Al Gore in Bali: On US Obstructionism

Additional (frustrating) reading:

EPA Pushed to Lower Reporting Standards
Hard Choices on Climate Can Wait for Next President"
Ominous Arctic Melt Worries Experts"
Bitter Divisions Exposed at Climate Talks
The Last Emperor: China's Pollution Problem Goes Global"
Biofuels Scarce On Bali Agenda

Good summary:

Governments Pleased With "Defining" Climate Deal

OR:

Darla and Donna Do DC
www.chesapeakecitizens.org

[Editor's Note: The following is from our friend Diane, from Baltimore, who has joined and led many an action in Congress, including several Backbone Campaign adventures. We would NEVER suggest the use of such tactics in your own locale, nor do we, at the DCP, endorse any candidate, ever. But we enjoyed the story anyway.]

This Christmas season, two Maryland soccer moms (who exchange meat loaf recipes, teach Sunday school and share carpool duties) felt upset that Congress members had been naughty in 2007 -- by violating their oaths of office, i.e. using billions of our dollars for funding the illegal and unpopular Iraq occupation, and by not impeaching the criminals Bush and Cheney. Why was Congress deliberately setting a treacherous precedent by promoting a permanent war economy with our money, and by supporting unbridled presidential power in the 21st century? Gosh darn it!

So these two feisty gals wiped away their copious tears, put on decent foundation and lipstick, and got to work. They wrote subversive Christmas carols, wrote ringing truth-to-power letters on adorable stationery to 13 representatives, baked organic impeachment and (crumbling) Constitution cookies, and stuffed cute anti-war stockings with coal. They also prepared a "thank you" tin of cookies for the one Congress member who has stood for Americans in every vote he has cast: Representative Dennis Kucinich, whom they support for President in 2008.

Kudos for DCP's very own Karen Bradley, who appeared on Hardball yesterday to analyze the movement styles of the Republican candidates in the last Republican debate. (Karen was joined by fellow movement analyst Karen Studd.) Together, the two candidates walked through clips of Romney and Thompson, Huckabee, and Guiliani, highlighting strengths and weaknesses in their movement profiles. Both Karens agreed that if they didn't know anything about any of the candidates and were just reviewing their movements for the first time, Huckabee had the most integrated movements. (Karen was telling me that Huckabee was the candidate to watch last summer, based on this movement analysis, at a time when he appeared to be stuck firmly at the back of the pack.)

Both Karens hold professional degrees as Certified Movement Analysts, through a program run by LIMS, the Laban-Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, in New York.

To see Karen at work, go to Hardball's video highlight page, and click on "debate body language."

Today's entry is a short meditation on a job ad which I ran across yesterday. As readers of this blog know, we spend an inordinate amount of time puzzling over how the world came to be in such a mess...why did people vote for George Bush the first time, much less the second time....why is the war in Iraq still dragging on with so little public protest....why aren't we mounting a WWII-level mobilization to convert our economy to renewable energy and stop global warming....

Coming down from the mountain of abstraction, this job ad reminded me of how utterly mundane destruction can be. Here's an excerpt, with the "meat" in italics.

Gryphon Technologies (www.GryphonLC.com) is seeking PAO and congressional liaison professionals with Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Joint DoD and Homeland Security public affairs/congressional experience to provide on-site contractor program outreach and advocacy to military and homeland security customers in the Washington, DC, National Capitol Region. Junior, mid-grade and senior positions are anticipated. The successful candidates will help create critical program awareness, understanding and conviction with key stakeholders within the Armed Services, DoD and DHS, industry, public and the Congress, to U.S. and foreign audiences.[italics added]

Never heard of Gryphon Technologies either, huh?

Gryphon has extensive experience with a major emphasis in shipboard and shore site combat system and training system design, integration, installation, program management, logistics, studies, research, and analyses.

Not only is Gryphon one of the fastest growing defense firms, it's a woman-owned 8(a) certified small business. This SBA program provides some very special incentives to help small businesses compete for government grants, starting with access to a pool of no-bid contracts.

What got me thinking was the stated goal of this position, to "create critical program awareness, understanding and conviction with key stakeholders." Conviction. Let's say you take the job, and you're sitting at your first evaluation with your supervisor, and she holds up the evaluation form and asks how things are going on the conviction front. How do you know when you have succeeded in inculcating "conviction"? Do they hand you a manual when you start that explains how conviction will be measured, and provides instructions on what it is that you are supposed to do to foster the growth of such conviction?

It's a closed world we're dealing with here, no outsiders, only people who have already been working inside the defense/homeland security world (how much longer will defense and homeland security remain separate categories, other than for propaganda purposes?). Given who the company's customers are, this restriction makes perfect sense. Here's a list:

• * Naval Sea Systems Command
• * Naval Surface Warfare Center
• * Naval Undersea Warfare Center
• * Strategic Systems Program Office
• * Program Executive Offices
• * Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
• * Office of Naval Research
• * Naval Research Laboratory
• * Marine Corps Systems Command
• * Naval Air Systems Command
• * Naval Air Warfare Center
• * Missile Defense Agency
• * USAF Aeronautical Systems Center
• * Commercial Clients

The ad doesn't say how many people Gryphon is hiring, but it's more than one. And there's the nub: these positions are being pedaled as PR jobs, not lobbying positions, even though creating conviction in "members of Congress" is boldly stated in the ad. The number of lobbyists has exploded since Bush was elected in 2000, more than doubling by 2005 to 34,750. But as this little ad illustrates, the actual number of people who spend their days influencing Congress must be many times greater. Lobbyists are required to report their expenditures; PR people are not.

So when you get an email or a phone call asking you to get in touch with your elected representatives at any level of government, think about the thousands upon thousands of people who go to work every morning with a list of people to call and create their version of "critical program awareness, understanding and conviction."

Do you remember:
Your first computer? How many RAM it had? When you upgraded? When you got color? How about your first laptop? Were you on dial-up? Do you remember Prodigy? First hearing of "weblogs?" When "podcasting" was esoteric?

Do you ever:
Check blogs or your email from work? Go to the computer first thing in the morning before doing your personal hygiene routine? Put off eating or feeding your kids to read just one more news item? Get antsy and nervous when your server is down or your power goes out? Avoid taking sea cruises? Check your email or internet from a cell phone or blackberry?

You may be a nerd. I suspect that I am after the email I got the other day (which follows). Be aware that I was being somewhat facetious (ahem!) and certain comments may have been taken out of context by the interviewers in the interests of comic relief. It's not just Michael Moore and Sacha Baron Cohen who do this! I had actually kind of forgotten about this interview, and so it kind of took me by surprise!

Here is the email:

Hey DiAnne!

Negin here from the YearlyKos convention - I was running around with a couple of camera men, one of whom interviewed you for the latest episode of Nerd of the Week: The Blogger Nerd.

Well, the episode is up! And you're in it! And you're great! The details are below, if you feel compelled to... oh, you know... do a blog post about it (democracy cell project, silenced majority portal etc), that would be awesome and super-appreciated.

I hope you're doing well and I hope you enjoy the episode (my fingers are duly crossed!)...
Negin
(From the film "Nerdcore Rising" and companion web series "Nerd of the Week")

Negin gave me these links:
Details for Nerd of the Week: The Blogger Nerd url:
You Tube link
or
Daily Kos link

I went to the NerdCore Rising site and found this trailer.
Nerd Core Rising movie trailer for the upcoming full-length feature film, from the same guys who made "The Blogger Nerd".

Here is the "Blogger Nerd" video:

Last night, Richard and I watched Hotel Rwanda, the movie. For those of you who have not seen it, it is the story of Paul Rusesasbagina, who was hotel manager in Rwanda who wound up taking care of and protecting over 1200 Tutsi Rwandans after the country was almost completely abandoned by the West while the slaughter of almost a million people went unnoticed by the western world, and only a tiny group of UN peacekeepers were left to deal with what was, despite the Clinton administration's spin, genocide.

It is a heart-breaking movie, all the more so because of what we all know is happening in Darfur, Pakistan, Iraq, and so many places. We are not a very nice species. We often hurt each other, sometimes with a brutality that is disconnected from any and all religious beliefs.

Today brings news of CIA destruction of "interrogation" tapes. Medea Benjamin, of Code Pink, who went to Pakistan to support democracy activists, was thrown out of the country for that action. (That is not terrible in itself, but the car she and Tighe Barry were in was stopped, surrounded by military with drawn weapons, and the car was seized, they were driven at high speeds away from their friends to a police station. I can only imagine what that ride must have felt like. They could not have known what was going to happen to them.)

As a potential "domestic terrorist", it is becoming increasingly clear to me that activism is an ever-more dangerous pursuit. As we have pointed out many times, and in the words of Justice William O. Douglas, "...it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

What do we do as darkness settles?

Last week I attended the American Anthropological Association conference here in DC. The AAA has taken a stand against the use of its knowledge base for purposes of torture or subjugation, and the presentations reflected a high degree of consciousness about appropriation of culture and representations of hegemony and resistance.

One of the most interesting presentations was from Avi Bornstein, of John Jay College at CUNY, on "Passion and Engagement".

Well, once again, I find myself listening to political crap so you folks don't have to. However, in this case, I think you might want to catch it on You Tube and see what you think, and come back here and give your opinion. For what it's worth, here's mine.

Former Massachusetts Governor Williard Romney, Republican Candidate for President of the United States gave a speech at the George HW Bush Library in College Station, Texas, this morning on faith, values, mormon(little m), my Jesus is your Jesus, and Patriots for jesus (big P, little j).

It was carried live and uninterrupted by MSNBC and, I think, CNN as well. It has been hyped by boht of them for three days non-stop, or roughly since Huckabee moved into first place in Iowa.

Ostensibly, it was designed to make people less fearful of his Mormon beliefs, and how really is a Christian, just like you, America.

Here's what it was: It was appalling to me that ANY primary candidate for office gets over an hour of from media time (including pregame and post game), by himself, to talk about his faith. Is this going to be offered to anyone else?

Here's the problem with that for ALL other candidates: Williard was introduced by a former President, he had almost a half hour of unquestioned, unchallenged, and uniterrupted prime air time to say whatever he wanted. Do you have any idea what that would cost in real dollar terms? If I were another candidate who was not able to get that same opportunity, I would be suing the ASS off of the cable stations, if for no other reason than it amounted to an enormous unrecorded de facto campaign contribution.

The next HUGE problem, is that the only people who get that much "speech" time, such as Romney had, are either already their party's candidate for the highest office in the land, or they are already the President. This action dramatically elevates how people will view Romney. It elevated him to Presidential in a way that only this opportunity, afforded no one else, could. Disgusting. And Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, and Sally Quinn did the color commentary for MSNBC.

Now having said that, how was the speech? The speech was beautiful There were some passages that were absolutely stirring. It was well written. Romney's delivery, however, was not up to the quality of the speech. I feel like sending the speechwriter a case of scotch. Romney delivered it too fast, and he gives me the impression that he has almost as much Botox in his face as Judy Nathan does. There are lots of muscles that just don't move. And he never uses his hands (as Bill Clinton does effectively), nor does he effectively use any tonal or emphatic range of expression in his voice that would have made the speech Kennedyesque. Yeah, the speech could have been that good, and the whole episode could have been that devastating to his opponents. Unfortunately, he went too fast in the beginning, used none of the sense of drama or crescendo that the speech itself contained, and it came out fairly flat to me.

Like I said, I so want to send the speechwriter a case of scotch.

Did it work to set at ease the minds of Iowa voters who know nothing about mormonism beyond the Osmond family, Wayne Jeffers and Big Love? Well, they wouldn't have found out a whole lot about Mormonism from this speech, except that he believes that Jesus is the son of God and the details aren't important. I suspect that some evangelicals will disagree about the details part.

Did it work on Matthews, Scarborough, Buchanan, Kuo, and Quinn? It sure as hell had Matthews, Scarborough and Buchanan believing that Jesus Christ himself would be coming by any minute to give Williard a high five from God. Interestingly, Kuo, the only person there really qualified to speak on how this would likely be perceived by evangelical voters, was far from convinced. And Sally Quinn chirped up with "this speech completely demolishes the line between Church and State". Her comment was ignored. I don't mean pointedly ignored. I mean it was if she had never spoken. Now normally, I think Quinn is God awful. I mean, really bad. A true Hostess of the Washington as Village beltway culture set. But she made a powerful observation and was utterly ignored. Unheard. That's noteworthy.

Overall, I have to say this--all of this Romney Mormonism versus Huckabee's Southern Baptist Ministerism, versus Guiliani's Catholicism, and Fred Thompson's "I'm good with Jesus-sim"... well, I don't get it. I don't. They are all rushing to say that religious tests are bad, oh, and by the way, I'm God's choice for President, and then lying up a storm about how their beliefs won't impact how they run the country.

Of course it will impact how they run the country. From A-Z, from Roe to Wade. Personally, I think every Christian out there should be wondering why they ALL aren't vanishing in a hail of fire and thunderbolts every time one of them opens their mouths. I know I am, and I'm not exactly a believer in the Big Black Book of Magic, or in organized religion as it's used by many of them

In the end, to me, it just looks like they are arguing about who has the best imaginary friend.

I'm looking for something a little deeper in my candidate for President.. It's past time for the crusades to be over.

In response to Karen's comment on Richard's thread yesterday, I have some thoughts on the issue of candidates with whom you agree, and even personally like in some areas, but with whom you strongly disagree in others. How do you make that decision of how to weight what is most important to you, and why?

In Karen's case, she spoke of Governor Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who is currently in second place in national polls for the Republican Party's nomination for President of the United States. Though Karen agrees and supports his compassion on issues such as poverty, there are a number of things on which she disagrees with Gov. Huckabee.

So as the day approaches where we each will have the solemn opportunity to cast our vote in primaries all across the nation, how do we resolve these conflicts about candidates? Surely no candidate will be able to fill all of our wish list of issues. If a vote is to be meaningful, shouldn't it be more considered than a beauty pageant? Shouldn't this be, at the very least, an exercise in critical thinking?

Since Karen and I have spoken about Huckabee on several occasions, and she mentioned him on yesterday's thread, I am going to, if you will indulge me, use him as an example of how my thinking goes in this process. In the comments section, I'd be interested to hear how other process their choices for Presidential office, if you wouldn't mind sharing what can be a highly personal process.

My post here will also address the part of the constitutional prohibition of a religious test for candidates, as it seems abundantly evident that we will be subjected to information regarding each candidate's faithiness, whether there's a constitutional ban on this or not.

At the risk of turning this into an "Is Mike Huckabee Nuts?" thread, I'm going with the yes, Mike Huckabee is nuts.

But he's not alone. I'm also going with an anyone who believes in creationism is nuts and therefore not qualified to hold public office.

I don't know who I am supporting, and I certainly wouldn't write about it here if I did, but I sure as hell know who scares the crap out of me, and not as just a candidate for the highest office in the land, but I would think the same of any candidate for any public office who held this set of beliefs.

You know what makes Huckabee scary in my book? The same thing that made Nixon scary, and Reagan scary: They are true believers. They believe everything they are saying with absolute faith and conviction. Again, scary. In these troubled and hyped and hyper frightened times, enough people are willing to substitute the judgment of someone, anyone, who has a high degree of certainty of whatever it is they believe, for their own judgment.

Whenever people abandon critical thought, chaos will follow.

Mike Huckabee is a creationist. Nothing he says or does convinces me that put in the position ofdecision making on where to spend the education money, he will not advocate for teaching that exact belief set.

Creationists frighten me. They are, by definition, ideologues. They are not amenable to evidence or reason. By definition then, all argument is based on emotional and personal truth.

This is fine, if Huckabee wants to be President of the United States of somewhere else. But it is, by definition, antithetical to our Constitution, and most especially, our system of juris prudence, which in its ideal state, depends on the complete lack of emotion in our evidentiary code. That quality of reason and evidence absent emotion is designed to be balanced with the zeal of advocacy. That adversarial relationship represents the balance which is justice.

In other words, everyone is entitled to their opinion as to what a set of facts may portend, but each person is not entitled to their own set of facts.

In creationism, Huckabee seeks to have his own set of facts.

Why? I assert this because creationism is not a theory. It is a belief. A theory must be able to be disproved, as well as proved, in order to rise to the definition of the word, "theory". Since you could never disprove creationism, it simply is not a theory, but a belief. The quality of the rightness of that belief is not at issue. What is at issue, is that Huckabee would present it as an alternate theory of the universe, and that would be creating his own set of non-disprovable facts.

But what about the Constitutional ban on religious tests for candidates for President. Doesn't this constitute a de facto religious test?

No. Huckabee never seeks to assure us that he, as President will protect and defend the Constitution, despite what his innermost beliefs might be. On the contrary--he cites his past experiences as Governor of Arkansas in carrying out the death penalty as an example of what he did in just such an instance. In the last public debate, Huckabee, when presented with this problem, prayed for guidance on what to do. Put the man to death, as was the law, or pardon him?

In this instance, Huckabee's only sworn duty was to uphold the laws of Arkansas.

In the end, Huckabee put him to death. But not because it was the law. And not because he had studied the case and assured himself that the person had been rightfully prosecuted in accordance with all of the laws of the State of Arkansas. He did it, because he had prayed on it. Let me say that again... He prayed on it. Not, as we note, did he say, "I upheld the law and prayed for forgiveness." But, instead, he prayed on it, and this was the answer.

I am frightened of any mere mortal who prays and thinks that God has told them what to do. I'd rather have a mere mortal who seeks the best information, asks the best questions, and uses the best impartial judgment of facts to be the person to have the nuclear missile lauch codes.

But what if the candidate has evidenced compassionate behavior in his past leadership role? What then?

Compassion towards some does not translate into compassion for all. What if compassion becomes an apocalypse on behalf of the greater good? Rather then suffer under the fear of evil, we have another leader who believes we have to destroy this village in order to save it?

No, thanks. I've seen that movie before.

I'm more concerned that a candidate for office be able to recite the Bill of Rights than the Ten Commandments.

In the end, I'm equally likely to deny any candidate for office my support based on their view of my rights with regard to my physical autonomy. Nothing says incompetent, unstable, and women are whores who are incapable of making good decisions, like telling me that the government will now be in charge of my uterus instead of me. And it's not just my reproductive rights, but my end of life rights as well. I don't want the government anywhere near my uterus, or any other part of my body for that matter, including my last beat of my liberal bleeding heart.

That someone even thinks the government is competent enough to substitute its judgment for my own when it comes to my physical autonomy is reason also enough to disqualify them for public office.

And it's also prima facia evidence that they are, quite simply nuts.

I've had enough of leadership by ideological nuts to last me for a lifetime.

There's been some back-and-forth over on the Open Thread about some of the peculiarities of the caucuses. As a Kerry staffer, I got a complete top--to-bottom course in all things Iowa, short only of spending time on the ground there. But many of the staff I worked with ended up going there for the last month or two, and those of you who were on the Kerry blog at the time will never forget the wonderfully insightful and always reassuring blog posts from "Mark from Iowa."

I came to understand what a totally unique phenomenon the whole Iowa election process is. And I never stopped being impressed with how seriously the people of Iowa took their civic responsibilities as the first people to pass judgment on the candidates. For my part, I am less concerned about the quantity of people who show up for the causes than I am about the quality of the commitment.

Yes, it's hard to get people to come out on a cold Iowa night. But the decision that people are being asked to make is not a trivial one, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that you need to be highly motivated to come out and participate in an hours-long process. I want people in those rooms who have taken the time to get out and see the candidates, and who have spent some time talking with their friends about the strengths and weaknesses of the field. Once past Iowa and New Hampshire (which shares some of the same virtues of retail politics), most voters' exposure to candidates will be through the woeful filters of the mass media, and commercials. Iowa and NH are the two places where the mass media's conventional wisdom does not severely crowd out critical thinking.

For example, in the fall of 2004, Howard Dean was the hot ticket, and John Kerry was polling in single digits in national polls. But Mark and Kerry staff kept telling us that the Kerry operation on the ground in Iowa was in fine shape. And I noticed something peculiar in the Iowa polls. Dean got up to 30 or just a little more, and then stopped. While his national numbers were strong, the polls suggested that despite all his trips there, and the national boom, that he wasn't closing the sale with any new voters, that he was hitting some kind of ceiling.

And as we learned soon enough, polls in Iowa in October/ November didn't predict very much what actually happened in January--the national media treats the public like idiots in this respect, writing story after story all spring, summer, and fall on horse race numbers that don't mean anything. Without Iowa, there is no place else in the nominating process that is as open to underfunded candidates who would never be heard if they had to compete in a money-dominated primary. Look at what's happening on the Republican side, with Romney having spent millions in Iowa, only to see Huckabee surging past him. (And for those of you who think Huckabee is cute or charming or whatever, the guy is a religious nutcase in a pleasant-sounding container. See Mike Taibbi's excellent piece on Huckabee in Rolling Stone).

As to the operation of the caucuses themselves, some people are troubled by the 15% rule, which requires a candidate to get 15% of the supporters at a given caucus, with candidates below the cut forced to drop out. Supporters of weak candidates can then choose to go home, or they can walk over and join up with any of the candidates who made the cut. This system forces candidates to appeal not just to their hard core supporters, but to reach out to supporters of other candidates to be their 2nd choice. Unlike the "first to the post," winner-take-all model that we use in most elections, Iowa voters get a chance to register at least their 2nd choice.

I lived in Cambridge, MA in the early 80s, and the city used a proportional representation system like this one to pick city council candidates, with an 10% ceiling rule. You numbered your choices for city council in priority order, and if you picked someone with less than 10%, then your vote went to your 2nd choice. It was theoretically possible to vote for all 20 or 30 candidates, and have your vote end up going to the person you picked far down the list, if all your earlier choices were for candidates who got counted out. This arrangement made for very interesting politics and coalition building among candidates.

I'm not arguing that Iowa is perfect, by any means. But given a choice between a media-commercial driven, first-past-the-post, secret ballot vote, and Iowa's retail, proportional representation, stand-up-in-public caucuses, I'll take the caucuses any day as the best way we have to kick off the campaign.

As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'
Marshall McLuhan

In times of media conglomeration and corporate merger, many are branching out into alternative means of both production and content, whether it be food coops, biodiesel cars or DIY video. Since the Millenium or so, digital photos and music stored on-line have moved in on hard copy photo albums and CD collections. The "Millennial generation" that followed Gen X are known as media-savvy multitaskers and "Technology" has a section of its own in the news media.

Now that we are HTML-enabled on this website, we have been visually enriched with photos, graphics and YouTube videos. YouTube, for video-sharing, has existed only since February of 2005 but already has been the source of debate questions for the 2008 Presidential elections! YouTube displays commercial movie and TV clips as well as music videos, but also amateur material. I have made four videos: a Daft Punk concert, a Bush protest, a dance craze in Paris and a zombie event. It was far easier than I would have imagined. DCP reader Ralpheh keeps busy at YouTube with political videos.

YouTube is now owned by Google. There are at least 50,000,000 videos now, according to a Google search and up to 100 million videos views per day. Social networking sites allow posting of videos and they are traded like baseball cards once were. YouTube is also a popular means of band promotion.

2008 political candidates are using YouTube to advertise, both for the major and third parties. It has also been used by candidates recently in France, Italy and Australia. Republican Senator George Allen was defeated in 2006 after a YouTube video clip was shown in which he made racist remarks.

Content on YouTube is supposed to be copyright-free, but this is self-policed unless a copyright holder reports the infringement, and questionable material can be reported. The legal position on acceptable materials is still fluid, and will probably be shaped by a number of pending lawsuits. Viacom, BBC and others all have large lawsuits pending against Google. YouTube does have technology for detecting copies of licensed videos by examining the audio.

I had read about a controversy where teens were recording fights on mobile phones and putting the videos up on YouTube. When looking for something else, I came across threatening videos from opposing Hispanic gangs in LA. YouTube has removed videos, as from the teen serial killer in Finland. There have been other controversies, as in Honduras, where high government officials were posted in videos on YouTube which implicated them in corruption. The videos were considered espionage and privacy invasion. YouTube has also been criticized for allowing videos showing animal cruelty. Spammers and pornographers are constantly looking for ways to get their content through.

YouTube is blocked in Morocco and certain video types are banned in Turkey and United Arab Emirates. YouTube was banned in Thailand and is now unbanned. I did notice that FaceBook members from Pakistan were some of the first I saw to install the application that can show YouTube videos on the site. At a time of political turmoil in their country, the most popular videos they posted showed Japanese rap groups. Many schools and workplaces block access because of productivity and bandwidth usage issues, but savvy students find ways to get around the firewall.

YouTube is now available in language-specific versions in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Poland, Russia, Spain, China, and soon Turkey. Most of these versions are new, and YouTube.com (American English) has been available from February 2005. Right now size is limited as is quality, but larger playback is possible. Sound quality is gradually improving, if special software is used. YouTube videos can now be viewed on iPhone, iPod and Apple TV.

YouTube was originally funded by advertising, and this is still the case now that it is owned by Google.
Videos are classified as: Top Rated, Most Discussed, Top Favorites, Most Linked, Recently Featured and Most Responded. There have already been YouTube Video Awards.

We already have many YouTube examples on this site, and mainstream media even jumps on the YouTube bandwagon at times, as in this example video from CNN, called "How Do Videos Get Picked For Debates":