Have Obama and the Democrats forgotten how to fight?
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Thursday, July 1, 2010 One of the strangest lead sentences I have ever encountered appeared in Politico last week. It read: "John Kerry has been the most aggressive advocate of climate change legislation in the Senate this year -- so aggressive that it's rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way." The story went on to say that Kerry's "zeal" is "making some swing-vote Democrats cringe at the thought of negotiating with someone they fear is tone-deaf to the political realities of their respective states -- particularly in a difficult midterm elections year." So there you have it: Once criticized for being too aloof and patrician, Kerry is now being assailed for daring to have passion for the cause of reducing the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere. Note that none of this is about the legislative merits. Kerry is being criticized for caring too much about an issue and not thinking enough about an election -- for being insufficiently opportunistic and unprincipled. And Democrats wonder why the polls find an "enthusiasm gap" that suggests their supporters will sit around grumpily in November while Republicans flood the polling places. It might help if voters saw President Obama and his party in Congress fighting for something going into these elections (including their record on health care and financial reform) rather than reacting, retrenching and retreating. Kerry's attitude is not the problem. It's part of the solution. Let's be clear: Yes, it is hard for politicians from coal states, or from states whose utilities use a lot of coal, to get enthusiastic about carbon caps. It's also true that many of the Democrats fighting for their political lives represent rather conservative states and districts. They hear most from voters who are talking -- make that yelling -- about big spending, big deficits, big government. Some of their constituents even think of Obama as the Manchurian candidate. There's also this: If the unemployment rate were hovering around 5 percent instead of above 9 percent, and if Republicans were not intent on using the Senate to stop just about everything Democrats are trying to do, the public's mood about Washington and how it works would be less lethal.  Visualize unemployment at 12% and reread.In the face of these core problems, there is increasing grumbling among congressional Democrats about the Obama administration's habits. Some wonder whether Obama is indifferent to their fate. Others sense that the president is far more solicitous to those who oppose him than to those who bleed for him. And many are questioning whether Obama's lieutenants have figured out that they have not been the messaging geniuses in the White House that they seemed to be in the 2008 campaign. On the current course, even a Republican Party whose leaders say the most outlandish and extreme things -- and whose own congressional rank and file worry about their lack of a coherent program…

 Oscars 2010: 10 best picture contenders   The 10 best picture nominees in this year's Oscar nominations are:    

  This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanityIt's hard for a species used to ever-expanding frontiers, but survival depends on accepting we live within limitsComments (567) George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 December 2009 20.00 GMT Article historyThis is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.The meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy. We are the universal ape, equipped with the ingenuity and aggression to bring down prey much larger than itself, break into new lands, roar its defiance of natural constraints. Now we find ourselves hedged in by the consequences of our nature, living meekly on this crowded planet for fear of provoking or damaging others. We have the hearts of lions and live the lives of clerks.The summit's premise is that the age of heroism is over. We have entered the age of accommodation. No longer may we live without restraint. No longer may we swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live in the moment, as if there were no tomorrow.This is a meeting about chemicals: the greenhouse gases insulating the atmosphere. But it is also a battle between two world views. The angry men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we have. A new movement, most visible in North America and Australia, but now apparent everywhere, demands to trample on the lives of others as if this were a human right. It will not be constrained by taxes, gun laws, regulations, health and safety, especially by environmental restraints. It knows that fossil fuels have granted the universal ape amplification beyond its Palaeolithic dreams. For a moment, a marvellous, frontier moment, they allowed us to live in blissful mindlessness.The angry men know that this golden age has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.I fear this chorus of bullies, but I also sympathise. I lead a mostly peaceful life, but my dreams are haunted by giant aurochs. All those of us whose blood still races are forced to sublimate, to fantasise. In daydreams and video games we…

The US strikes deeper in Pakistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

"The al-Qaeda leadership (shura) has apparently now installed itself in Jani Khel village in the Bannu district of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)."
Taliban a step ahead of US assault Asia Times Online, August 11, 2007.

KARACHI - Wednesday's missile attack by an unmanned United States Predator drone on the Pakistani village of Jani Khel marks a significant development in the battle against militants.

On the one hand, it is the first such attack to take place outside of the semi-autonomous tribal areas, that is, in territory directly ruled by Islamabad. Previous US strikes have focused on North Waziristan and South Waziristan, where at least 20 missile attacks and a cross-border commando raid have killed scores of people since September.

But on the other hand, the strike also signifies that there is now a genuine alliance between the Pakistani military and US forces against the common foe of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Previously, under former president General Pervez Musharraf, this relationship was blurred by pockets of latent sympathy on the side of the Pakistanis for the militants.

The drone is reported to have fired at least two missiles early on Wednesday morning at a house near North Waziristan. An unnamed Pakistani security official said that six foreign militants "with links to al-Qaeda" had been killed. Unconfirmed reports said one of them was Dr Abdullah Azzam al-Saudi, who is said to be a coordinator between the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership.

Whether al-Saudi is indeed dead is not so much the point. What matters is that the Pakistanis had passed on to the Americans information of al-Qaeda's shura (council) in Jani Khel.

Pakistan had known of the shura since it was set up over a year ago, but as it was not in a tribal area and therefore directly under the writ of the Pakistani government, this intelligence was never shared.

Indeed, on one occasion Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda deputy leader, was cornered during a shoot-out between the Pakistani security forces and militants in the district of Bannu, which lies just outside the semi-autonomous tribal areas, but on learning of his presence the law-enforcement agencies allowed him a safe passage.

Clearly, under Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kiani - currently in Brussels for talks with North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials - highly sensitive information is now being relayed to the US. This has dangerous implications.

Al-Qaeda is likely to spread out south into the cities, instead of going north to the tribal areas. The result could be the bloodiest of all battles in urban centers.

The village of Jani Khel was initially chosen as the tribal areas,…

California will run out of money in February By Guy Adams in Los AngelesThe State of California will run out of money within two months, forcing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to start settling bills and paying employees by issuing "IOU" notes, his chief financial officer has revealed. John Chiang, the state controller, admitted on Monday that a spiralling budget crisis, which has left California spending billions of dollars more each month than it can raise in taxes, will see his coffers run dry some time in mid-February. At present, Mr Schwarzenegger's administration is spending $11bn a year more than its total income. The figure is now rising exponentially and has been forecast to hit $42bn (£29bn) by 2010.Unless taxes can be raised, or spending reined in, millions of public-sector employees and private contractors face having their salaries paid in "registered warrants," a piece of paper which the Governor will promise to exchange for cash as soon as he is able.The effective bankruptcy of an entire state is unprecedented in American history, even during the Great Depression. Yet despite California's standing as one of the most prosperous regions of the wealthiest nation on earth, its Governor seems powerless to stave off disaster.So-called "direct democracy," through which small interest groups can enact laws by making them the subject of an electoral "proposition" or ballot measure that attracts more than 50 per cent of the vote, has severely limited his ability to manage finances.Property taxes, the mainstay of any state's income, have been frozen for many homeowners since a proposition was passed in the late 1970s. A separate measure, introduced in the 1980s, means that income taxes cannot be raised without the agreement of two-thirds of the state's lawmakers.Meanwhile, a raft of other ballot measures control spending, meaning that only 25 per cent of California's spending is considered "discretionary". The rest has been "earmarked" for a particular cause or project.The result has been political gridlock, with the minority of Republicans at the state assembly in Sacramento able to block tax rises, while the majority of Democrats refuse to countenance any cuts in spending.Mr Schwarzenegger, who declared a "fiscal emergency" earlier this month, has pledged to hold round-the-clock negotiations to find a deal between Democrats and Republicans in his legislature in time for Christmas.However, public-sector unions yesterday pledged to block his plan to force state employees to have two extra days off a month, saving $1.5bn a year.