August 5, 2009 archive

1. The NY Times reports Obama tries to put a brighter face on the economy. The White House is trying happy talk to persuade Americans that a jobless recovery means the U.S. economy is getting better. Though, “double-digit unemployment could be a psychological threshold with political ramifications for Mr. Obama.”

   “In January, the Obama team predicted that unemployment would remain at 8 percent or lower in 2009 if the recovery bill passed.” Last month, Vice President Biden admitted the Obama Team “misread how bad the economy was” at the start of the year. The White House argues, however, that without Obama’s reward-the-rich economic policies, the economy “could be worse”.

2. McClatchy reports Most of the U.S. is ill prepared to help children in disasters, says Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate. “We’ve historically looked at special populations as an afterthought,” Fugate said. “Children are not small adults.”

   “The worst prepared states, which had few or none of those plans, include Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana and Missouri, as well as the District of Columbia.”

3. AP reports that Small Pacific islands call for big carbon cuts. Seven Pacific island nations say the world must cut by 45 percent by 2020, or their nations will be lost to rising sea levels.

   “The group of seven small countries – the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu – adopted the position of the global Association of Small Islands States that asks developed nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050.”

   The Sydney Morning Herald adds Australian Prime Minister Kevin “Rudd said he was shocked to hear from regional leaders of coastal villages already being abandoned and farmland and water supplies destroyed by rising salt water.”

   The IPS reports Oxfam Australia predicts 8 million climate refugees as the island nations succumb to the rising seas. “Climate change could produce eight million refugees in the Pacific Islands, along with 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years”.

4. The NY Times reports China seeks climate accord without strict limits. China is “the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide” and “together, China and the United States account for about 40 percent of pollutants linked to climate change.”

   Yu Qingtai, China’s climate envoy, “underscored China’s opposition to placing a ceiling on its emissions of greenhouse gases… Limiting China’s development would hamstring efforts to raise its living standards closer to a level that the developed world… China has proposed that the developed world commit to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020.”

   “The developed countries, in realizing their industrialization, have discharged a large amount of greenhouse gases in the course of one or two centuries,” he said. “The cumulative emissions by the developed countries have caused global warming. Who should take the historical responsibilities?”

Big Orange has been all over the Birfers and Teabaggers of late, which I’ve found fairly boring and pointless, but then, I just follow for the news and occasional good analysis. They can bitch endlessly about anything they see as threatening to their cause. Whatever that is at this point.

I have been fairly intrigued with what’s happened with Keith O’s getting quashed on his Bill-O-Baiting by GE (which owns NBC) so that Bill-O would quit exposing their corporate hijinks in retaliation for getting his itty feewings hurt by Keith. I also found it fascinating yesterday when Keith, just back from vacation, informed Kossacks that Richard Wolffe wouldn’t be his live-in ‘independent’ analyst and occasional show-sitter anymore, given that Wolffe has been exposed as a corporate PR hack. Today, however, MSNBC’s management has contradicted Keith by stating they don’t mind at all if Wolffe wants to be their live-in ‘independent’ political analyst even if he’s on the payroll of the corporations that are often making the news being analyzed. Hmmm…

This is to elaborate on a previous diary on Gramsci: as I argued there, we need a new historic bloc.  I’m updating the argument to discuss the Congressional contest for a “robust public option”; the old historic bloc appears to have partially collapsed, with the deflation of Republican popularity, yet no new historic bloc has arisen.  The attempt to create a “robust public option” may have encountered so much resistance, I argue, because it is trying to work with the old historic bloc.  We, therefore, need a new one.

(crossposted at Big Orange)