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How About Some (brilliant) actual Progressives for Obama's Economic Advisers ? Oh, now that it's out that Lawrence Summers blitzed Harvard for a billion bucks with derivatives (not to mention a huge whack to its gender equality image), ... doesn't our Prez now have the perfect excuse to put some, you know, real Democrats into the financial cat bird seats? I recommend Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman , and Texas University's James Galbraith ( Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government . ) If you haven't seen these guys on TV, on the Net, in print or somewhere, you are just not paying attention. They are SMART (and I happen to think, right on economic issues). At the very minimum they look more alert than Summers.

The Flat Ten Years of Climate Temperature Never mind the stolen climatologists' e-mails (aka Climate-gate), the biggie among climate change deniers is the fact that worldwide temperatures have been more or less flat for the last ten years or so. "SEE!?" they say, "NO WARMING!" Well, three things: (1.) The flat temperature where the thermometer is stuck is still warm enough to be melting the North Polar Cap and glaciers all over the world, i.e. "stuck on warm." (2.) A likely reason for the pause in warming is that the sun is in " the deepest solar minimum in almost 100 years " cutting its radiation to the Earth - a situation not likely to last very long. (3.) In the context of even a brief period of time - one century - this flat spot is just a normal wiggle in the temperature graph. See the flattening there? (top chart, right side) When the sun "wakes up," you can bet the line will start up again. Trends aren't smooth line...

Running Out of Water, Land and Trees Gotta love this: Now THAT's a farm! Check it out . And this baby produces food 24/7/365, using a tiny percentage of the water the same production would use in flat farming. (Still Sci-Fi, btw.) On a smaller scale there is Valcent . (Full disclosure: I bought some penny shares in Valcent.) And further pumping up my Sci-Fi sense, when we master farming vertically, we will be ready to grow greens on the moon and Mars. Gotta have your greens, SpaceBusters. Look ahead; behind is a mess.

Create These Jobs, Oh Government o'Mine I hear from the right (a lot), "The government create jobs? Riiight." Like that is impossible . Well how about fixing some pure government stuff, like this: As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways Yuck! This N.Y. Times headline spun me around a few times. Let's face it, sewer systems are mosdef government thangs. So fix them! Expand them! Hire a bunch of people ("create jobs"), buy lots of concrete and steel (American, of course, creating jobs), buy mucho equipment (from American manufacturers, creating jobs), and get underway right away, PLEASE. How many jobs would be created? I'm guessing tens of thousands, but I am but a blogger, bud, so I really don't know. However, this paragraph from the Times article makes it sound reasonable: "In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dump...

How to Respond to Reeely Rotten Politics Wow, the hard Right is pee-ing all over President B. H. Obama. The Moonies' Washington Times revisited the whole Birther thing in a sideways slap at the Prez as "not one of us enough to know how wrong he is." (Heard about it on Rachel Maddow, MSNBC.) So if the right is going to get (stay) irrational, untruthful and just nasty, maybe the rest of us shouldn't be so hard on Obama if he's not moving as fast as we'd like on some issues. I mean, he's had almost a year , for heaven's sake! We snipe a lot, apparently expecting him to be FDR, Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln all rolled into one right away. Now. Today. Ooops, too late. So let's keep our support for the issues and principles we believe in, and our backing for the best guy likely to come along for a while for getting them done. I'm just saying...

Those Blasted Blue Dogs Don't I remember a lot of media noise during the 2006 Democratic take-back of Congress about how one way they did it was to nominate appropriate candidates in normally red districts and states who could ride the wave of Bush nausea and beat the incumbent Republicans? And what amounted to "appropriate?" Why conservative Dems, of course. What a concept! Now, what do I get on the e-mail machine? "Let's Beat the BlueDogs - and Blanche Lincoln!" This apparent rethinking of the 2006 strategy comes from http://www.actblue.com/page/democratscom. That's the "Progressive Wing" of the Dems. I hear no contradiction from the center of the Dems, where ever that is. (Kerry? Bingaman?) Ah, well. I'm just finishing a book about Harry Truman (more later on that), and I'm reminded that politics is a mysterious art. Picture credit: Michele Spiziri here.

The Frumster Some of my best friends are Republicans. Seriously. However, only a tiny fraction are ultra-right-wingers. (Note the restraint. I did not say " wingnuts ," which I think reflects the poison in our polarization.) For the record, I think two strong parties with opposing, well-defined ideas for solving our problems and facilitating The Pursuit of Happiness, Justice for All, etc, is the way it oughta be here in the U.S.A. However, the collapse of the current Republican Party into internecine warfare between the Tea Partiers and the Big Tenters is NOT helping the Repubs define their ideas for solutions and facilitations . David Frum , ex-W guy and author of "Comeback; Conservatism That Can Win Again," vividly spells out the problem with the Tea Party approach; NO SOLUTIONS. Check it out. So I say (in awe of myself for my open mindedness) that if David Frum suddenly replaced Sen Jim DeMint /Michael Steele as the main conservative thinker,...

Not Transparent Enuff OK, I tried to put my vote on the wall of RepowerAmerica.org and my Internet powers failed me. It's a simple vote for clean energy, with a picture if you want it. I did a high wire act by our solar panels and I can't seem to get in on RPA.org, so here: There was some text that says something like "Clean energy makes even olde guys feel righteous." Be advised I did not fall off the roof. So if it ever comes up on RPA.org you know from whence it came.

What Should Democrats Stand For? I hear a lot of "It can't be just anti-Trump. Democrats need a vision for our country. In the midst of World War II, FDR had the time and the sense to make a very important point. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "In our day certain economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. " A second Bill of Rights   ....under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, or race, or creed. Among these are:   1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines throughout the nation.  2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.  3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.  4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom, freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopo...

Lookee , lookee ... the "press" might be waking up to stuff a modest blogger has been saying for a while. The Obesity Epidemic Isn ' t Just About Willpower " Overeaters now find themselves in the same category as smokers or drug addicts, tainted with the aura of moral weakness and lack of willpower." so sayeth U.S. News & World Repor t. Check out: The Fat American Mystery - New Clues [Updated] Hopeless Fat [Updated] Plastics for Obeisity , Cancer and Diabetes - UPDATE So maybe America (and a lot of the rest of the world) didn't just suddenly lose its willpower after all? Maybe the processed food industry and the chemical industry had something to do with it?

Er....I mean... The bizarre PriceWaterhouse Coopers "research" released by American's Health Insurance Plans (the health insurance industry) is the perfect argument for the PUBLIC OPTION. Check out their conclusions as you can by any media report or direct reference to their "research." I keep putting that in quotes because research it ain't. It is skewed, selective "fact" choice and strongly biased conclusions meant to frighten Americans into seeing healthcare reform as the bigbadboogieman. I hope we are a society too savvy to fall for that emotional BS. But non-fear-laden conclusions from what they say about private insurance premiums in light of the Baucus Committee bill (sort of) say volumes about where the private health insurance companies are AT. 1. If they can't get a "safe" risk pool (98% of the population), they can't make their God-granted profit margin. (As it is, they create safe pools by weeding out the sick peop...

New estimate of how many Americans die each year because they don't have health insurance - 45,000 a year. That's up from the already staggering 18,000 we have been hearing. Since the study seems sound (Harvard researchers), I was moved to crank out a PowerPoint slide. Now that's taking action! Take a look: Sources: Afghanistan ; Iraq ; Vehicle crashes ; N o health insurance SEEMS like we should do something about that yellow bar. p.s. Want to hear a really scary death statistic? 440,000/year from smoking.