Non-ordinary Joe

Joe Bageant writes in Dissident Voice about what it's like to be Poor, White and Pissed. A long piece but well worth reading. Writing from the belly of the beast--that is, Virginia--Joe follows in the line of "what liberals don't understand about red-state America" but with humor, clarity and compassion. Personally, it was the line about spending your life "yanking guts out through a chicken's ass" that did it for me. Lordee I reckon!

Later Days Addendum

I refuse to believe that things cannot get better. Even if they can't, I refuse to look away. I won't be anesthetized, or marginalized, or made to shut up.

And if I have to go and rest my face against a canyon wall every once in a while in order to be able to stand it, then that's what I'll do.

These walls will be here after us. They're beautiful, but they don't care.

But I do.

Later Days

I have promised myself to post more often, but it's hard when the early-spring canyons are so inviting, and the news of the day--any day--is depressingly the same.

We all need a break from the world sometimes. But the world doesn't go away just because we're not watching. Shit happens.

People get blown up in Iraq. Politicians lie. Christian fundamentalists await the Rapture.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that we're not on the downside of the slippery slope to, if not extinction, then to a sorry squalid Hobbs-ian state of perpetual war and moral diminishment. Maybe the organochlorines building up in our bodies will finally make it imposssible for us to reproduce. Maybe that's the good news.

Wow! How's that for a bleak outlook? Do I need a hike or what??

The More Things Change (Part II of Many)

Back in Moab, I've been bouncing around between temporary living quarters until I can find a place to live. Ah, the itinerant life! The inside of my car actually feels the most like home--I've spent enough time in it lately--but I hope I won't have to resort to living there.

Meanwhile, little has changed here. I had no sooner arrived than I read in the paper about a county council meeting that broke out into unspecified "personal attacks" and had to be adjourned; the issue under discussion was revision of the county's OHV (off highway vehicle--of which there are plenty here) ordinance. ATV drivers want to use portions of the county's paved roads to get from one trail to another. Having seen more than a few of these machines driven by children at high rates of speed, the idea of sharing the road with them gives me hives. Of course there are those in the community who feel otherwise, and they're entitled to their opinions. Apparently not all of them feel the same way.

And then there are those who seem to think that whatever serves their interests necessarily serves the interests of the larger community. Therefore, anyone who disagrees is a moron, and a dangerous commie scum yuppie elitist moron at that.

Like I said, some things never change.

Though I must say that the explicitly nasty tone these arguments have taken is new, at least in my experience. But one has only to look at the national scene to see that nastiness has become the norm in public discourse.

Exhibit A:



Now what, you may ask, does AARP have to do with the military or with gay marriage? I'm still waiting for USANext, the astroturf group running these ads to smear AARP for its opposition to Social Security privatization, to tell me.

The only answer I can think of is that they really think we're all idiots.

We shall see....

Happy Valentine's Day

Sen. Barbara Boxer with 4500 roses sent to thank her for saying the things we wish all Democrats would.

Where the Heart Is

I drive across the long dry plain of southeastern New Mexico, with the snow-covered 11,000 ft. peak of Sierra Blanca sticking up like a vision of water from another world.

The Mescaleros are prospering with their casino and high-priced inn. There is a big new church overlooking the town. Catholic, of course--no Baptists here. Sierra Blanca is their sacred mountain. You can see why.

This landscape looks so rugged compared to the lush forests and wetlands of the southeast, but it's incredibly fragile. Each ecological niche may only contain a handful of species who have adapted to its harsh dimensions. There is nothing extra here.

I'm home, at least in the larger sense. There is a lava flow at the head of the Tulerosa Basin; there's a lot of volcanic activity in this area. Tomorrow I hope to get up to Ojo Caliente to soak in the mineral springs. I sure do like this life on the road. If only my credit cards would hold out, I could do this forever.

Bingo

(see below)

Greetings Earthlings!

Spent most of yesterday on the long climb up to the caprock of west Texas. Damn, I love the west! Yeehah.

Finally got into Roswell at ten o'clock. Spotted some mysterious lights a few miles outside town, which is promising. Now I'm off to search for UFO-alia.

Politics? What politics? Culture? I'm in Roswell, New Mexico for heaven's sake! More later...I'm off to look for evidence of alien life.

Barbarians at the Gate

Blogging at you from the campus of LSU in Baton Rouge. Thank you, computer gods, for wireless technology.

I've been hiding out in a cabin on the beach in the Florida panhandle for the past few days, getting ready for the long but happy trek to Moab. Amazing to hear nothing but the sound of surf and wind for two days. No traffic, no sirens, no computers either. Thank you, goddess, for places like this. No thanks to the people responsible for the onslaught of condo development just outside the gates, though.

Developers go build in Hell.

Florida could have been a paradise if more of this land had been set aside years ago. As it is, I wonder how much of what is special about it will be left in five? ten? years' time. Unfortunately, I'll probably get to find out.

Catching up on the news, I'm delighted to see that Howard Dean has been elected chair of the DNC. May this be the beginning of a rebirth of progressive politics. And about time.

Coffee's getting cold--time to move on.

PS. The bat is up! ActBlue is taking donations to the DNC.

Contribution amount:
$

The Shoe Fits

Juan Cole takes on National Review's Jonah Goldberg; there's already been a lot of commentary so I won't add to it, except to quote this:

Cranky rich people hire sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure generally that rightwing views come to predominate even among people who are harmed by such policies.

Yup.

Apocalypse Now?

Oh good. Scientists say the west Antarctic ice sheet is melting, something they previously hadn't expected to happen for 100 years.

British scientists have discovered a new threat to the world which may be a result of global warming. Researchers from the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously assumed to be stable may be starting to disintegrate, a conference on climate change heard yesterday. Its collapse would raise sea levels around the earth by more than
16 feet.

BAS staff are carrying out urgent measurements of the remote points in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) where they have found ice to be flowing into the sea at the enormous rate of 250 cubic kilometres a year, a discharge alone that is raising global sea levels by a fifth of a millimetre a year.

Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, told the conference at the UK Meteorological Office in Exeter, which was attended by scientists from all over the world, that their discovery had reactivated worries about the ice sheet's collapse.

Only four years ago, in the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), worries that the ice sheet was disintegrating were firmly dismissed.

Professor Rapley said: "The last IPCC report characterised Antarctica as a slumbering giant in terms of climate change. I would say it is now an awakened giant. There is real concern."

He added: "The previous view was that WAIS would not collapse before the year 2100. We now have to revise that judgement. We cannot be so sanguine."

Collapse of the WAIS would be a disaster, putting enormous chunks of low-lying, desperately poor countries such as Bangladesh under water - not to mention much of southern England.

The conference has been called by Tony Blair as part of Britain's efforts to increase the pace of international action on climate change, in a year when the UK is heading the G8 group of industrialised nations and the European Union.

Mr Blair has asked it to explore the question of how much climate change the world can take before the consequences are catastrophic for human society and ecosystems.

Yesterday, it heard several alarming new warnings of possible climate-related catastrophic events, including the failure of the Gulf Stream, which keeps the British Isles warm, and the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland.

But it was the revelations of Professor Rapley, head of one of the world's most respected scientific bodies, which were the most dramatic, as they reopened a concern many scientists assumed had been laid to rest.

Antarctica as a whole is a land covered by very thick ice, but the ice sheet covering the eastern half of the continent is very stable as it sits on rocks that are well above sea level.

Worries about the ice covering the western half first surfaced more than 25 years ago when it was realised that the base rocks are actually well below the level of the sea.

In some circumstances, it was feared, such as a melting of the edge of the ice sheet from rising temperatures, sea water could get under it and eventually lead to its collapse.

Yet the 2001 IPCC report, the principal consensus view of the international community of climate scientists, thought that very unlikely, and said such a collapse was improbable before the end of the current century, or even for 1,000 years.

What puts a very big question mark over this, Professor Rapley said, was the recent discovery of the extremely rapid discharge of ice into the Amundsen sea from the WAIS at three remote ice streams, Pine Island, Thwaites, and another unnamed site.

"There is a very dramatic discharge from this region which, five years ago when the IPCC report was written, we just didn't know about," he said. "What we have found completely opens up the whole debate." It had only been recently discovered, he said, because the area was so remote. But BAS scientists, with US help, had established a base in the area to investigate. Professor Rapley said there was some evidence that the discharge was a relatively recent phenomenon and it might be caused by rising ocean temperatures.

Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, who opened the conference, added another ominous prediction when she said that major global warming impacts on the world in the next 20 to 30 years could not be avoided. Whatever we do, potentially disastrous world temperature rises will take place because they are already "built into the system," she said.

Her forecast that we are powerless to prevent major damage from climate change is accepted by scientists but it is rare for such a frank admission from a politician. It reflects the concern at a high level.

It was amplified by senior climate researchers, who said the amount of future warming to which the world is firmly committed, because of greenhouse gases that have already been put into the atmosphere, will be enough to threaten the survival of many ecosystems and wildlife species such as polar bears and penguins.

"I believe that most of the warming we are expecting over the next few decades is now virtually inevitable, and even in this time frame we may expect a significant impact," Mrs Beckett said.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm old.

Shame on You

Paul Krugman makes yet another heroic attempt to explain why the Social Security so-called "crisis" is bunk.

Saw a piece on Headline News tonight about how, after 2042, Social Security may only be able to pay 70% of benefits. Then they show today's average benefit of $849 (?--from memory), take 70% and gasp! $594!

You mean in the year 2042 I will receive benefits of only $594??

Well, no. Although you wouldn't know if from listening to this report. Social Security benefits are set to increase periodically at least through 2042, to more than keep up with presumed inflation. So a 70% cut in benefits--which will only happen if we do absolutely nothing for the next 35 years--will still mean benefits greater than those we receive today.

Deceptive? You bet. Look for more of the same.

Hey--it worked for Iraq, didn't it?

Bush will be embarking on what Josh Marshall endearingly calls his "bamboozle-palooza" tour to sell this latest lie to the American people. Fool me once....

All Computers Go to HELL

This means you. I mean me. I mean my computer HAS gone to hell for about the last week and a half, thus no posting. I managed after many trials to perform the cyber-equivalent of the Heimlich manuever, forcing it to cough up my data. A little the worse for wear, but there it is. Thank you, computer gods. Now fuck off.