Burnin’

For most Americans polar bears are animals they see from time to time in the zoo or maybe on a PBS special. In other words, the polar bear is totally remote, whereas the things that need to be fueled with oil–one’s car, one’s home, one’s business–are all quite near and dear. Hence, how much do we really care about the plight of the polar bear or what happens way way up there in Alaska? The answer to that rhetorical question is, of course, not enough.

Frances Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), reminded me in an email that this year is the 50th Anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Sadly, her occasion for doing so wasn’t a party announcement, but a grave letter of concern, asking for help now that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has given Shell the green light begin exploratory drilling in the area. Because what we care about as a nation, now as always, is the discovery and removal of natural resources.

According to The Guardian:

The Minerals Management Service, part of the federal Interior Department, yesterday gave Shell the green light to begin exploratory wells off the north coast of Alaska in an Arctic area that is home to large numbers of endangered bowhead whales and polar bears, as well as walruses, ice seals and other species. The permission would run from July to October next year, though Shell has promised to suspend operations from its drill ship from late August when local Inuit people embark on subsistence hunting.

Environmentalists condemned the decision to allow drilling, saying it would generate industrial levels of noise in the water and pollute both the air and surrounding water. Rebecca Noblin, an Alaskan specialist with the conservation group the Centre for Biological Diversity, said: “We’re disappointed to see the Obama administration taking decisions that will threaten the Arctic. It might as well have been the Bush administration.”

That’s damning criticism and fans of The President might bristle at the suggestion. But facts are facts.

In related news, Willamette Week recently ran an article that asked people who supported Obama for President what they think now, one year into his run. Lawyer and peace activist, John Bradach, isn’t pleased.

I was disappointed when he adopted the war team that Bush had left in place. For Obama to take those guys on, he really has allowed himself to be maneuvered into adopting those policies. And that’s not why I voted for him. Now I’m really disappointed, more than cautiously disappointed.

I do not want to hear Barack Obama justifying war, period. I am tired of wasting American kids on that war and on that policy, which is not going to win and will just be an indefinite commitment of American blood and resources.

Obama promised change, but change isn’t easy to implement in Washington, DC. But there’s more to it than that. Policy wise, change was always a false promise from Obama, a centrist Democrat.

Obama has been building consensus since his days on the Harvard Law Review, and he’s not about to veer from that practice now. Yet to truly change the way things are, the art of compromise itself needs to be compromised.

Activists seeking “Climate Justice” have been methodically protesting in Copenhagen during the two-week U.N.-sponsored summit on climate change, in order to push delegates and leaders toward real solutions instead of the usual rhetoric-filled nothingness.

According to The New York Times, the protests went from peaceful to heated today.

In Wednesday’s demonstrations, protesters began massing north of the center shortly before noon and pressed into a tight line of riot police blocking access to the hall. Some of the officers wielded truncheons against the chanting, shoving protesters in a close-order scrum. After forcibly removing protesters from a truck parked in an intersection outside the Bella Center, police in blue vans kept moving the protesters backwards, nearly pushing some into a watery marsh.

As the police vans advanced, skirmishes broke out with protesters who formed human chains and chanted their commitment to nonviolence and to helping people in parts of the world that they said would be hardest hit by climate change. A number of protesters encouraged individual groups to keep pushing against the police.

Apparently, 250 people were arrested today in these “skirmishes” with police. Like the protests around the WTO meetings in Seattle and elsewhere, it’s a hard core minority that seeks to escalate the confrontation. But I don’t believe anti-capitalist sentiment is a minority opinion. People are tired of powerful interests simply running people into the ground.

Mette Hermansen, 27, studying to train teachers, and a member of the International Socialists of Denmark, told the Times, “In the Bella Center they are not discussing solutions to climate change. They are discussing how rich countries can continue emitting and how to sell that to the public. We are not preventing leaders from making solutions but encouraging them to make solutions.”

Bonus click: I also wrote about “Hopenhagen,” the U.N.’s effort to rebrand the famous Danish city during the Conference, on AdPulp.

Darby and I have been intently viewing seasons one through four of HBO’s The Wire (care of Netflix), which leaves just season five to go. I’m afraid we’re already dreading the end of the series. We don’t want it to end, the way you don’t want a great novel to end. But end it must.

In preparation for this coming conclusion of what one critic calls the “greatest TV show ever made,” I’ve begun searching for and processing the criticism.

Mark Bowden of The Atlantic called the show’s co-creator, David Simon, “the angriest man in television.” In an interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, Simon says he doesn’t mind “being called that” and asks rhetorically if there’s a better response to the America of the last decade.

Bowden also makes note of the literary form advanced by The Wire.

Some years ago, Tom Wolfe called on novelists to abandon the cul-de-sac of modern “literary” fiction, which he saw as self-absorbed, thumb-sucking gamesmanship, and instead to revive social realism, to take up as a subject the colossal, astonishing, and terrible pageant of contemporary America. I doubt he imagined that one of the best responses to this call would be a TV program, but the boxed sets blend nicely on a bookshelf with the great novels of American history.

It’s a point well taken. I’ve often thought that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would be successful in Hollywood. It’s also interesting to understand Simon’s background as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. For 12 years the man told detailed, well researched, fact-filled stories, but those stories didn’t change policy in City Hall, Annapolis or Washington, DC. Simon isn’t holding his breath to see these changes come as a result of his TV show either. He sees the problems in America (like the failed War on Drugs that his show dramatizes) as systemic, and argues that conditions will have to become much worse before they get better.

Here, let’s listen to the man:

Simon says our economy doesn’t need the underclass, and that’s why these urban black communities have been pushed completely from the frame of American life. He’s right about the extreme marginalization, but I would counter that this nation does need the underclass and that poor, under-educated workers can become productive and change their station in life and possibly the country’s future in the process.

President Obama is conducting a “jobs summit” this week to help spur jobs training and jobs creation. In my opinion, we need to get off our collective ass now and institute a 1930s-style public works program. It doesn’t take a genius to see how much work there is to do. The nation’s roads and bridges need repairs and we must build high speed rail from Seattle to San Diego and from Miami to Boston. Moving to energy, the nation’s entire electrical grid needs to be refitted to store and conduct DC current produced by solar and wind. And the list goes on. Meanwhile, little progress is made.

In one episode of The Wire, “Bunny,” of Baltimore city police, says he doesn’t know what the answer is to getting kids off the corner and returning the streets to the citizens of Baltimore, only that it can’t be a lie. That’s correct, and it can’t be a lie in real life. Yet, empire is a lie. The wars to maintain it are a lie. The war on drugs is a lie. Saying we don’t have the resources nor the will to house the homeless, feed the hungry and care for the uninsured is a lie.

It’s easy to get fired up by The Wire, and that art’s role in society—to challenge us, to make us think, and help us to care. On these fronts, HBO’s gritty crime drama is a huge success.

Frustrated with the lack of meaningful dialogue around the nation’s health care debate, columnist Paul Krugman let one rip in The New York Times yesterday.

Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.

Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.

Yes, because the zombies–in this case the insurance companies and big pharma–have lots of money at stake. When there’s lot of money at stake, the public will be under-served every time. That much we know.

Krugman, unlike most Americans, is a student of history.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again.

Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.

Sadly, our present day recession is bad, but not bad enough to break the stranglehold. We haven’t reached a tipping point yet. In the 1930s one-in-three Americans was out of work and let’s remember that women typically didn’t hold jobs at that time, which meant one-in-three households had no income whatsoever. Today, things are falling apart, but not as fast.

More importantly, the psychology of the situation isn’t leading Americans to fundamental change. Instead of coming to terms, millions are busy trying hard to hold on to whatever they have—their boat, their home, the college fund for the kids and/or a retirement nest egg. Let’s just get back to normal is the prevailing mindset and that’s not going to lead to radical change.

We needn’t look back very far to recall what a miserable start the Clinton White House had in 1993 because of health care. Whatever the powerful interest–health care, the gun lobby, welfare farmers, warring oilmen–they can be outdone, but only through a massive public uprising. And who has time for that kind of vigilance when there’s a job to keep (or find), kids to feed, dogs to walk and favorite TV programs to capture on the DVR?

Krugman is astonished that nothing has changed in America. He knows we ought to know better. But we don’t know better and therein lies the real challenge. How do we lead our neighbors, friends and family from the fear that binds them into a new era of cooperation and trust? I don’t know any way other than to write it out and talk it out.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine today features Chicagoan Bill Ayers, college professor, author and former member of Weatherman Underground. He provides some great answers.

How do you define yourself politically?
I think I am a radical. I have never deviated from that. By radical, I mean someone trying to go to the root of things.

Do you regret your involvement in setting off explosions in the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol?
Anyone who thinks what we did is despicable should look at the fact that the U.S. government killed three million people in Indochina between 1965 and 1975. That’s really despicable.

How do you feel when you wake up?
Happy, and then I drink coffee and I’m even happier. I’m a work in progress and, even at 64, living in a dynamic history that’s still in the making.

You’re weirdly cheerful for a former bomb-thrower.
I suffer from a genetic flaw, whichis that my mother was a hopeless Pollyanna.

President Obama is a published author and a man who considers himself a writer. So, expectations were high today when he delivered his inaugural address.

Time Magazine has the speech in its entirety. It’s well worth reading several times over.

Here’s one of the best parts, IMO:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

I love how President Obama calls out “the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things” and says they are directly responsible for our nation’s “prosperity and freedom.” What a celebration of American ingenuity and a call to arms for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. The nation needs us to risk, to do, to make—now more than ever.

Cross the Burnside Bridge into downtown Portland and you will be greeted by one of the most iconic neon signs in existence. It says, “Made in Oregon” and features a leaping stag whose nose cheerfully turns red during the holiday season.

The sign was first constructed by the White Satin Sugar Company in 1940. It was changed in 1957 to read “White Stag” by White Stag Sportswear. The Naito family, owners of the Made in Oregon chain, again rebranded the sign in 1995.

This is where it gets interesting. Made in Oregon is a brand name and prominent retail business in Oregon. But the phrase “Made in Oregon” is a mantra that all Oregonians can relate to and embrace. So, it’s a particularly positive piece of branding that has transcended commerce and become a civic landmark.

Now, University of Oregon, a tenant in the White Stag Building where the neon sign is perched wants to modify the text of the sign to read “University of Oregon.” See WWire for a sketch of the proposed changes.

According to Portland Business Journal, there’s resistance to the change from residents of Portland and city officials, some of whom attended Portland State University (presumably Oregon State grads would have a say in this, as well).

It’s hard to fault O of U for pursuing the change. It’s a bold move, but one that would clearly help build their brand after the dust up washes out to sea. At the same time, it’s hard to support U of O in this, since the existing sign works for everyone, not just Ducks.

I cherish the election maps offered by the design team at The New York Times.

It’s good to see the overlap of these bubbles because it shows that red and blue co-exist in the same places. It’s a finer distinction than the red state/blue state point of view.

Another striking map is the Voting Shift map which shows where each party received more votes in 2008 than they did in 2004. There’s a very identifiable red streak from Texas to West Virginia that’s interesting because it’s so well defined, localized and contained.

Bill Moyers appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air today. He is one of our best journalists and he served on LBJ’s staff in the 1960s, so he’s well qualified to speak on the historic events transpiring in America today. He says “he felt a great stone lifting from our neck” but he also recognizes the racism that continues to exist in many parts of the American South.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” -Obama

See the text of President-Elect Obama’s inspirational speech at Grant Park in Chicago last night. By the way, Grant Park was the setting for a scene of another kind 40 years ago during the Democratic National Convention. I’m sure Obama’s team chose Grant Park in part for that reason. It’s a healing move.

Just hours into America’s new start, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow will deploy missiles near Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans.

Medvedev also singled out the United States for criticism, casting Russia’s war with Georgia in August and the global financial turmoil as consequences of aggressive, selfish U.S. policies.

He said he hoped the next U.S. administration would act to improve relations. In a separate telegram, he congratulated Barack Obama on his election victory and said he was hoping for “constructive dialogue” with the incoming U.S. president.

Medvedev also proposed increasing the Russian presidential term to six years from the current four, a major constitutional change that would further increase the power of the head of state and could deepen Western concern over democracy in Russia.

[via NPR]

I’m glad we had the opportunity to visit Alaska in August of 2007. Having been there, I feel better equipped to understand some of the thinking emanating from “The Last Frontier” that now shapes our news cycle.

Salon founder David Talbot, concerned with the right wing attacks on Obama that question his love for country, writes:

The Republican ticket is working hard this week to make Barack Obama’s tenuous connection to graying, ’60s revolutionary Bill Ayers a major campaign issue. But the Palins’ connection to anti-American extremism is much more central to their political biographies.

It’s a revealing article and I enjoyed reading it, but I have some issues with it. For one, I’m not ready to say the Alaska Independence Party–which Todd Palin once belonged to, and Sarah Palin recently gave a shout out to–is an “anti-American extremist” organization.

image courtesy of Kayak Juneau

The fact that AKIP sent a Governor to Juneau in 1990 is one argument against this derisive labeling. Unless, of course, a majority of Alaskans are anti-American extremists.

Honestly, I know little about this political party or the people who support it. From what I can see in their platform, it’s essentially libertarian, with some “extreme” views on property rights thrown in. The point is I don’t need to agree with AKIP’s platform to agree that third party politics is of value to the citizens of this nation. Also, the idea of Alaska as a separate nation is not hard to conceive. It’s hard in that Imperial America would never let those natural resources go without a fight. But if you skip over that part, and see it from an Alaskan’s perspective, it makes some sense.

I’d actually take it much further and suggest that America could be divided into a group of nation states defined by its natural bioregions. If states’ rights hadn’t been so severely trampled by Reagan and company, this might not be as necessary as it is today. But they were trampled, and the homogeneous federalism that we endure today is no answer for a nation with many distinct cultures tied to place. For sure, all Americans have things in common, but not like they do with the people who share a climate, a dialect, water and food sources. I’m sure many in Alaska wonder what elected officials and bureaucrats in Washington, DC know about their lives. I wonder this all the time, but I don’t consider my views to be anti-American.

We need wild ideas and extreme points of view to help us stretch. It’s the way to a better future. America is often touted as “the cradle of democracy,” by political figures of all stripes. Great, then let’s push the envelope and find new ways to increase our personal liberties while also securing sustainable paths to energy, food and water. Can you think of a better time to reinvent ourselves and the way we do things in this country?

What qualities make a maverick a maverick?

Can a hockey mom from small town Alaska lay claim to the word “maverick” and be believed by large segments of the voting population? I don’t think there’s any question that she can, and that fact has a fiery old lady from Texas upset.

Samuel Augustus Maverick

According to The New York Times , Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, shrinks a little each time she or her children hear Sen. McCain or Gov. Palin use the term to describe themselves.

Let’s look at where the meaning of this word developed:

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

As Maureen Dowd points out, also in today’s New York Times, “True mavericks don’t brand themselves.”

Film critic, Roger Ebert, discusses the vice presidential debate as theater in today’s Chicago Sun Times. His is one of the more relevant approaches, given that TV has totally altered how politicians get elected in this nation.

I get the feeling that the powers that be in the Republican Party saw what happened to Nixon in 1960, and collectively agreed to never let that happen again. And for the most part they’ve been wildly successful at selling their mythical version of a much slimier reality. But I digress.

Here’s some of what Ebert saw in Governor Palin last night:

When she was on familiar ground, she perked up, winked at the audience two of three times, and settled with relief into the folksiness that reminds me strangely of the characters in “Fargo.”

Palin is best in that persona. You want to smile with her and wink back. But who did she resemble more? Marge Gunderson, whose peppy pleasantries masked a remorseless policewoman’s logic? Or Jerry Lundegaard, who knew he didn’t have the car on his lot, but smiled when he said, “M’am, I been cooperatin’ with ya here.” Palin was persuasive. But I felt a brightness that was not always convincing.

I think Palin is clearly Marge, not Jerry. A comment on Ebert’s post by “Citizen Spain” says it best:

What annoys me most is that Palin’s disarming Marge Gunderson quaintness has transformed a significant portion of our population into drooling, blathering Mike Yanagitas. Such a super lady!