Friday Critter Blogging

We're on a road trip this week. The cat is at home, cared for by our long suffering neighbors and undoubtedly indignant about her servants' absence. She'll reappear on the blog soon enough.

However I did photograph a few mammalian critters on hikes this week.


This squirrel dodged away from us at Turtle Rocks in Wyoming.


There was more sun when this chipmunk checked me out near Estes Park, Colorado.


At the appropriately named Big Elk Meadow, this animal came out to feed at dusk.


At the Great Sand Dunes National Park, this deer was feeding among creekside brush.

Gun limits

Nice to see there is still somewhere that aspiring cowboys can't pack their pseudo-pricks. This was on the door of a National Park Visitor Center.

In a ugly bargain to win credit card reforms for consumers last year, Congresscritters accepted a National Rifle Association measure to allow guns in national parks. This reversed a hundred years of Park Service policy; the measure allowed continued restrictions at visitor centers, but not at park lodgings. Somehow I don't think having to share a campground with armed neighbors is any way to open our outdoors to most families, but I'm just a narrow-minded urbanite; where I come from, the gun-toters are mostly drug running thugs.

This week the NRA demonstrated again just who rules both Republicans and Democrats. Almost every other non-profit organization that spends money on campaign ads will have to disclose the names of the main donors under new legislation. But not the NRA; it won an exemption that apparently applies almost exclusively to the gun rights advocacy group.

The NRA amendment would exempt any group that (a) is at least 10 years old, (b) has 1 million annual dues-paying members, (c) has operations in all 50 states and (d) receives less than 15 percent of its funding from corporations or labor unions. Guess how many groups would qualify? The NRA and perhaps the Humane Society and the AARP. Smaller nonprofit groups would have to play by the new disclosure rules.

Actually, the Sierra Club claims 1.3 million members, so I don't know why it might not fit these criteria. MoveOn is ten years old and claims 5 million members, though I suppose many don't pay annual dues.

Still there is something a little sick about the legislative clout gun advocates repeatedly demonstrate in Congress. Most cities would happily ban guns and ought to be allowed to.***Curiously, this is an issue on which my usually frustrating Senator, Diane Feinstein, is quite responsible. Of course, she saw two colleagues murdered by one of these gun toting guys in 1978.

Democrats at work: they don't care, they don't have to

By a vote of 52 to 45, the Senate rejected a jobs package that would've extended unemployment insurance, offered some tax breaks to individuals and businesses, kept doctors in the Medicare program and more.

Ezra Klein, June 16

We know Republicans represent the rapacious rich, but we elect Democrats to try to get a little balance on a corporate-tilted deck. With votes like these, why bother?

Oh yeah, but the Republicans are also bat-shit crazy flat-earthers, religious and sexual bigots, and always ready for another nice little war. So we have to elect Democrats.

Democrats should not be surprised if come November, a lot of people ask, why bother?

Oil disaster cloud hanging over splendor

Driving north from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, we stopped at a weathered diner by the side of a lonely road. The waitress who poured our coffee was welcoming and talkative. We agreed that her natural setting was simply stunning. The peaks of the Sangre de Cristo range gleamed in bright sunlight. The air was crisp and clear.

But she wanted us to know she felt confused and conflicted.

"It's hard with that oil spill -- with the oil still pouring out. I don't know how I ought to act.

"I mean, it's so awful; it's just ruining the Gulf. I feel like I shouldn't be happy, shouldn't enjoy the beauty here while that is going on. But it is so beautiful here."

We pretty much agreed we should enjoy the world while we can. But we all share the premonition of horror that the BP oil calamity seems to imply.

And we agreed that we are angry about what we see and feel. But what to do?

Because I'm on the road, I didn't hear the President's speech on that question, but it is hard to imagine our oil-captured political system is capable of measures that would rapidly reduce oil dependence and carbon emissions, as we must. All we can do is try to create pressures that politicians find it hard to ignore.

Movie Manor in Monte Vista exceeds expectations

It's hard to imagine anything much more blandly generic than a U.S. motel that is a franchise of a national chain. The good news is that these places are routinely clean, fairly comfortable, provide hot water and soap, and seldom offer any hidden surprises. The bad news is that upon entering one, you could be anywhere -- any local color disappears amid universal, low-key sameness.

The other day on our road trip, we were having trouble finding a motel with a vacancy after a long day of hiking West Spanish Peak (pictures later). We never did figure out why every room in Alamosa was booked, but we drove 17 more miles to Monte Vista blearily hoping to find something.


We were thrilled to see the sign for this place and thrilled to get their last available room. I didn't pay much attention when the clerk said "the movie volume controls are on the wall." Huh?


So they were.

When I pulled aside the curtains, here were the views:




After cleaning up, I found the energy to notice the room's details.


A pseudo-film strip served as molding around the top of the walls.


This picture replaced the usual generic motel decorator art.


Every room had not only a number, but also a star's nameplate.


The motel facade carried on the theatrical motif.

The night's movies -- Shrek and Prince of Persia -- were part of the deal. I have to admit, I wasn't up for either after a long day. I did snap a blurry picture of this trailer, just to prove I could have watched a movie out my window.


For what it is worth, this trippy motel cost no more than any of its boring sisters. Recommended.

A lesson from the road: age has privileges

There I am, right after making a delightful discovery at this remarkable national park. I had just bought an "America the Beautiful" National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass.

Because I am 62, I was eligible to pay only $10 for a lifetime card to be used for admission to our federal parks! All I have to do is not lose the thing and I'm in for free, for life, along with anyone else in the car.

If you are under 62, you can get a similar lifetime pass for $80. That's a great deal too!

Oddments from the road

Driving around U.S. western states (bits of California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado) I'm seeing a great deal of natural beauty. Future posts will share some of those photos.

But just as much fun are the oddities of the road.


This purple-coated toreador with golf club and shades turned up in Truckee, CA.


A women's bathroom at a truck stop in Nevada offered this selection. Get your condoms and essential oils cheap.


Wendover Will let us know we'd come to his Nevada town.


The No Worries Cafe outside Park City, UT really was a welcoming place.


I might have felt some sympathy for this business in Walsenburg, CO -- except that it was a Carl's Jr.


The builder of Bishop's Castle in southern Colorado is carrying on an argument with building codes, liability laws and the government in general while erecting his odd obsession.


What's it for? Nobody but possibly Jim Bishop knows. What interested me was that this outlaw edifice appears on many road maps.

Budget short-takes: Barney Frank's commission has some good ideas

Nice to see at least some folks in Washington looking to solve the country's budget woes in one of the right places. According to The Hill:

A bipartisan commission appointed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) laid out ways on Friday to eliminate almost $1 trillion in defense spending over the next decade. The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out options the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

A report from the commission pointed to options including the elimination of programs, a reduction in weapons stockpiles and a reduction in troop sizes and deployment in order to shrink the growth.

“Leaders from the left, right and center agree on two major policy changes: The U.S. deficit must be reduced and the Pentagon budget can reverse its exponential growth while keeping Americans safe,” said task force member Paul Kawika Martin, policy and political director of Peace Action, a grassroots peace organization.

If Washington politicians is going to agonize about the national deficit (which they shouldn't until the economy gets back on its feet), at least these folks are looking at one of the right places: our bloated military. We currently account for nearly 50 percent of all the military spending in the world. It simply is not plausible that such an enormous excess over everyone else is necessary to keep us as safe as may be possible. (And that military was useless to protect us from moderately well-organized fanatics who were willing to die for their hatreds on 9/11.)

And this commission doesn't seem to have taken into account that we are paying for two ill-conceived, unnecessary wars. We ought to be able to find some savings by getting out of other peoples' countries.

So by all means, cut back the military to cut the deficit. And remember the other source of cash to do the job: tax the people who have the money -- the rich. That ought to help get us back in balance ...

Transgressive speech

A week or so ago, a video turned up showing Helen Thomas, a veteran White House correspondent and long time affliction of the powerful, letting it all hang out about Israel:

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. Not Germany. Not Poland."

If you can't imagine why she would have said such a thing, I recommend Crossing the Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird.

Thomas said more:

When the questioner, who knew he's caught a live one, asked what Jews should do, Thomas didn't miss a beat, saying "They should go home. Poland. Germany. And America and everywhere else."

If you can't imagine why saying such a a thing was enough to push Thomas into retirement, I recommend Crossing the Mandelbaum Gate by Kai Bird.***I have just finished reading this excellent memoir as an audiobook. While I highly recommend it, I have to say that this "edition" needed "proof-reading." It is extremely distracting to hear a reader mispronounce proper names of people who populated the nightly news in my lifetime. This is a common fault in otherwise satisfying audiobooks. Publishers should work to prevent this.

Afghanistan: those who willingly serve

Over the last few days I've had some thoughtful conversations with a new friend who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It's not an easy place for a progressive activist to live. It is famous for choosing to close public parks rather than pay taxes, for being the headquarters of the virulently homophobic Focus on the Family organization, for being home to the U.S. Air Force Academy.

She explained to me that, at first, she just felt totally alienated from most people she met in the town. She wasn't even sure she wanted to know the people she encountered. But over time, she learned that her conservative neighbors were sometimes decent, even smart, people who simply had had different experiences -- and that led her to re-examine, not her own progressive opinions, but how she thinks those of us on the leftish side of things need to talk with our neighbors.

In particular, she has learned to recognize and appreciate that many of those who are part of the U.S. military really do think of themselves as volunteering to serve their fellow citizens. They believe they are sacrificing themselves for us all.

That observation ran through my mind as I read New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's blast against the willingness of most citizens to ignore our ongoing Afghanistan war.

There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001.

Americans have zoned out on this war. They don’t even want to think about it. They don’t want their taxes raised to pay for it, even as they say in poll after poll that they are worried about budget deficits. The vast majority do not want their sons or daughters anywhere near Afghanistan.

Why in the world should the small percentage of the population that has volunteered for military service shoulder the entire burden of this hapless, endless effort? The truth is that top American officials do not believe the war can be won but do not know how to end it. So we get gibberish about empowering the unempowerable Afghan forces and rebuilding a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent civil society.

... Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

My emphasis.

Nine years after 9/11, youngsters who were children on that terrible day are dying in Afghanistan in the service of no strategy that our leaders can explain. For what?***Uh-oh ... maybe in the end the war is about this discovery.

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

I feel for those Afghans who only wanted to live as they always have.

Water for rural communities in Nicaragua

For isolated, desperately poor people in the Nicaraguan countryside, having a better future means they need clean water, latrines, more efficient cook stoves, and reforestation projects. The people-to-people development project El Porvenir works with Nicaraguan communities to make these necessities accessible to more villagers. In Spanish, El Porvenir means "The Future." See more in this 9:59 video.

As El Porvenir co-founder Carole Harper says in the film, "Communities are invited ... if they want to ..."

That's the kind of aid that has staying power -- aid chosen by the recipients.

Sabbath consciousness; time consciousness

Judith Shulevitz's strange, ambivalent, wide-ranging, learned, somewhat bemused and utterly fascinating The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time is beyond easy description. I won't try hard. Suffice to say this is a mix of personal reflections, Jewish belief and tradition expounded and dissected, Christian history recounted (very thoughtfully, this Christian thinks) and social implications probed.

Here's Shulevitz telling us what the Sabbath -- God's day of mandated rest, the Fourth commandment in the Hebrew Decalogue -- is and does for us:

If I were forced to single out one thing that is truly exceptional about the Sabbath, it would have to be its efficacy. The Sabbath does something, and what it does is remarkable. People who study the ways in which cultures evolve might say that the Sabbath gives societies a competitive advantage. It promotes social solidarity.

Imagine that there was a job called 'social architect;' and you had it. Your job description would be dreaming up the perfect society, ... casting around for existing social institutions to model your new society on, you'd happen upon the Sabbath. If a strong and powerfully interconnected communal life was high on your priority list, you'd quickly realize that you had stumbled on a very good way to achieve it ...

In the first step, you'd write laws to limit work time. That would make room for other kinds of time -- rest time, recreational time, family time, time for friends and guests, and, of course, time for God.

In the second step, you'd designate one particular day as everybody's day off. That would coordinate schedules, so that people across a wide range of occupations and social spheres would all have to stop working at the same time and be forced to turn toward one another, individually and in groups.

The third step would be to ordain that the day off be taken every single week, rather than now and again, so that not working at that time would become a regular habit. Once the weekly, rhythm of work and rest had become ingrained, it would set your community apart; it would establish clear boundaries between your society and all others, and boundaries, as everyone knows, are wonderful tools for ensuring the cohesiveness of a group.

And fourth, you'd make the day festive, filled with song, wine, food, and pretty clothes. People would come to look forward to the day as a treat, rather than experiencing its restrictions as a burden.

We don't have such a Sabbath. Some peoples, at some times have lived various approximations, some on Saturday, some on Sunday, not always happily. At present, we are losing most vestiges of Sabbath consciousness to our technologically-mediated 24/7 lifestyle.

...the advent of mobile time erodes the plausibility of the Sabbath the way coastal waters turn boulders into sand. This sea change isn't as complete as it may yet become. The large temporal frameworks of our lives remain fairly firm. We still work comparatively standard hours or go to school from morning till afternoon, fall through spring. But to the degree that electronics take over our activities and our interactions, personal time becomes more fungible.

Scattered about this book are intimations that recall meanings much of our experience obscures for any who want to recover them.

Think of sacred holidays as wells; they tunnel down through temporal strata and allow the past to bubble up into the present through the liquid medium of myth. Keeping the Sabbath means sliding the cover off that hole on a weekly basis. ...

That rings true for me. Making time for rest, for ritual, for Something out of the ordinary, that calls to me.

Saturday scenes and scenery: Healthy food in plenty in the Mission

A recent article by Latoya Peterson in the web edition of The American Prospect lamented how difficult it has proved to develop farmers markets in Washington DC that serve low income communities and improve nutritional options. Too often farmers markets attract mainly young, urban professionals.

The open-air markets have become a familiar part of the summer landscape, but the shoppers most often browsing the stalls reflect just a tiny, wealthy segment of the city. Why isn't everyone shopping here?

... Farmers markets have been touted as the next great hope in stemming the obesity epidemic by providing fresh fruits and vegetables to those neighborhoods that are underserved by grocery stores but often full of fast-food restaurants. However, with all the pushes to make farmers markets more accessible -- like allowing food stamps and partnering with Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs -- the core issue has still not been addressed: Healthy foods need to be convenient and accessible as well as affordable.

The San Francisco Mission District includes some of the poorest census tracts in the city and has its quota of fast food chains. But my neighborhood also has an enviable selection of fruit and vegetable markets that are widely patronized by residents both comfortably off and very poor.


This is my corner store and fruit and vegetable stand, a little over a block from home. Like many inner city residents, I do far more of my shopping here than makes perfect economic sense. I am willing to pay a little more to save the time and hassle that it would take to drive to a supermarket -- there are fully stocked Safeway stores about 10 blocks away both north and south. There's a new Whole Paycheck (Whole Foods) about 6 blocks away. But the owners of this corner store chose their produce carefully -- their stock is usually better and sometimes cheaper than the big guys. And they stock a very carefully selected stock of household necessities crammed in every nook of their tiny space, so I can usually make do.


If I walk down the block, I'm likely to see this fellow on the corner. These corner fruit vendors peddling flats of fruit are a relatively recent addition to the neighborhood. Apparently some smart farmers have figured out they can get a better price for their produce through this distribution channel than by selling them to fruit wholesalers. When the items for sale are in season, the quality is indistinguishable from anywhere else.


If I wander over to the post office, I see this store across the street. It gets a lot of traffic, even though there is a supermarket (IGA) just down the street which boasts that inner city rarity, a parking lot. It doesn't seem to hurt this corner store.


This stand is just a block away on Mission Street. It too usually has long lines at the cash register inside.

Why does the Mission have such a wealth of easily accessible fresh food? Some thoughts:

• Location in California, the nation's fertile desert. Yes, this is where vast quantities of the country's produce is grown, at least in some seasons. But most cities have some local vegetable gardening near by.

• Many of these stores cater to an ever-churning stream of new immigrants who arrive here expecting to buy and cook unprocessed fruits and veggies.

• These same immigrants will work at rotten jobs like hawking strawberries on the corner for lousy pay.

• Store owners are entrepreneurial new immigrants themselves, willing to work endless hours to make a go of it. My corner store is run by Cambodians whose family matriarch walked across her country to escape starvation under the Khmer Rouge dictatorship. She has never stopped working and expects her younger relatives to do likewise.

• These are mostly family businesses; there are always more relatives to bring into the tasks, even if, like the elderly gent in the last picture, they are reduced to a watching role.

• The owners of these stores know their customers. They have to choose their stock selectively to cater to the wants and needs of the people of the area. The successful ones do.

As a child in the 1950s, I remember going to markets like these run by Italians in Buffalo. What seems so rare in contemporary cities is actually very old. Will we continue to value it? I think so.

Friday cat blogging

The other day while we were sitting on the front steps, Frisker demonstrated what for her is extraordinary bravery and slipped out to eat grass. (Usually we keep her in, but how could we deny her on the first warm day of the season?)


She really likes a bite of greens now and then. She didn't get sick.

What's this "immigration reform" all about?

Last Sunday the PICO community organizing network hosted a regional rally for immigration reform at Mission High School in San Francisco. About 300 people from all over the Bay Area came together to push for reform.

After the rally, I went to dinner with some folks from my church. One of the priests from our parish had worked hard to build the rally and urged us to support reform. People were very willing -- but they worried that they didn't know what it was all about. What follows is an attempt to unpack some of the basics of the U.S. immigration mess for folks who know something needs to be done, but who haven't been so personally touched by this broken system as to have to try to figure it out.

The largest advocacy coalition working for a new law, an assemblage of religious congregations, civic groups, unions and policy networks, is called Reform Immigration for America. These are not radicals -- theirs is a minimum program that might be within the reach of the possible in the political context in Washington. These are their principles for a reformed immigration law:

The necessary components of reform include: (1) improving the economic situation of all workers in the United States; (2) legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States; (3) reforming visa programs to keep families together, protecting workers’ rights, and ensuring that future immigration is regulated and controlled rather than illegal and chaotic; (4) implementing smart, effective enforcement measures targeted at the worst violators of immigration and labor laws; (5) prioritizing immigrant integration into our communities and country; and (6) respecting the due process rights of all in the United States.

Let's unpack those items:

• 1) Improving the economic situation of all workers in the United States. U.S. workers fear that a flood of immigrants will drive down their wages. There are plenty of studies that show that immigrant workers provide a net benefit to the U.S. economy, but that isn't necessarily true for individuals who find themselves in competition with newcomers, particularly in certain jobs, such as construction. Concurrently with a new immigration law, government needs to work to keep unemployment as low as possible to enable everyone to contribute to the economic health of society. Government programs should help potential workers upgrade their skills and acquire more education to stay in the job market.

• 2) Legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants working and living in the United States. There are some 12 million undocumented people in this country. Overwhelmingly, they came to work because they couldn't survive at home. Businesses here were happy to hire them: they work hard and they don't have many legal rights to complain about being squeezed. They are here; they are the main workers in many low wage sectors of the economy; they pay many taxes and rarely dare use social services. No matter how much resources the government throws into checkpoints and raids, these people can't all be deported. We need, not an amnesty, but a path to legalization whereby these people could pay fees, learn English and eventually earn legal status. These people are in limbo because the legal pathways to come here to work are so jammed up, so poorly administered, and so arbitrary, that they showed the initiative get here and worry about the red tape later. The ancestors of most U.S. citizens were people who did the same thing and we celebrate their gumption. But now that we're here, we sometimes want to bar the door against those who come later.

• 3) Reforming visa programs to keep families together, protecting workers’ rights, and ensuring that future immigration is regulated and controlled rather than illegal and chaotic. It's sometimes forgotten that just about every "illegal" immigrant is someone who is a legal immigrant's auntie or son. Many undocumented parents have U.S.-citizen children; arbitrary immigration enforcement tears apart families. Meanwhile, politically influential businesses have persuaded Congress to create special sorts of visas that enable them to bring in workers they want -- but those workers' rights to remain or even change jobs are controlled by the employers. These special legal statuses create all sorts of inequities. There's also an immigration lottery that literally gives foreigners a chance to enter their names for a drawing to come in legally. Immigration law needs to be made simple, clear and fair; it currently is an irrational maze.

• 4) Implementing smart, effective enforcement measures targeted at the worst violators of immigration and labor laws. Unscrupulous employers grossly exploit immigrants who do not have legal rights. Stories of abuses such as locking foreign workers in sub-standard housing, failing to pay promised wages, and even sexual trafficking of women who thought they came for legitimate jobs are far too common. Another common way immigrants are exploited is by shady characters who promise to act as legal advocates and charge huge fees for filling out basic forms, taking advantage the newcomers' weak command of English and U.S. procedures.

• 5) Prioritizing immigrant integration into our communities and country. Last time the U.S. enacted a major immigration reform, in 1986, the federal government encouraged the creation of nonprofit organizations to teach English and citizenship. These programs are an investment in our democracy, by bringing newcomers into our society as full participants.

• 6) Respecting the due process rights of all in the United States. One of the bad results of having a large immigrant population living outside the law is that some authorities will treat people they think may fall into that category in arbitrary and brutal ways. There are numerous instances of early morning raids, immigrants jailed without any legal process in privately run prisons, even citizens who "look" Mexican being deported without a chance to prove their legal status. A fair immigration law would restore due process to everyone in the United States.

Reform Immigration for America makes several other points in its principles that seem very right to me:

• Reform needs to be comprehensive. You can't do one thing, like spend more money on the Border Patrol, but not do the other things and get the results we all want. Push at one part of the problem by itself and you just move people and money around, not create solutions.

• Immigration reform requires thinking long term. As a society, we're not very good at that, but we have no choice. A lot of the human dislocation of which immigration problems are a symptom happens because the global economy is changing and people are responding in whatever way they think will keep their heads above water. We must invest in improving the education and skills of people who are already here as well as figure out how to use the skills and energy of immigrants; none of this is optional.

Though I have bounced these ideas off Reform Immigration for America's list of principles, the exposition here offers my opinions, not theirs.

Oil still flowing; lest we look away ...

There is no "over."

Tom Toles is a national treasure.

On the road again ...

Light blogging this week; I'm on a vacation road trip, currently in Laramie, Wyoming with rudimentary wifi. Photos later when I have access to more band width. Here are tonight's brews from the road:

California primary today

For Democrats, No on Prop. 16 is likely the most important vote we get to cast at the conclusion of this seemingly endless primary season. I laid out all my personal choices some weeks ago in this post. If I were in the appropriate district in San Diego, I'd also be choosing challenger Marcy Winograd over Representative Jane Harman.***Republicans have the headline contests today. It's the saturation TV buys of ads for Carly Fiorina for Senate and Meg Whitman for Governor that have made this primary season feel so endless. Why do corporate execs think they should move over to run the state, especially ones with pretty dubious records? These two certainly have made boom times for Republican consultants and media buyers, spending their millions of Silicon Valley dollars.

The New York Times reports Republican fears that these primary struggles have made the party's exclusionist immigration politics all too visible. Underdogs trying to dislodge the money women have challenged the front runners to repudiate any possible softness in their attitude toward newcomers, especially Spanish speaking ones.

The primary here on Tuesday will be the highest-stakes electoral contest since Arizona approved a tough immigration law, and that has allowed Mr. Poizner to reshape the campaign, focusing a series of stark attacks on Ms. Whitman. The extent to which immigration has, in the view of many Republicans, hijacked this contest has stirred worry that the nominee chosen next week will be weakened in the general election against Jerry Brown, a Democrat and former governor.

"There's a difference between talking about a problem and trying to exploit the problem as a wedge issue to try to get scared white voters," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican analyst here. "I'm not speaking as a lone wolf on this in the Republican Party. It's concerning a lot of us."

Hispanics are becoming increasingly influential in California politics. One in six voters this November is expected to be Hispanic...

Republicans should be worried. This week I was taking pictures on the streets in San Francisco's Mission District -- and suddenly realized that a Latino man was watching me anxiously. I did what I usually do when this happens: walked over to him and explained in a friendly way that I lived down the street and liked to shoot in my neighborhood.

He smiled: "With that lady running all those ads ... I feel like we have to be careful you know ..."

I said yes, I hoped we'd elect Jerry Brown as Governor in the fall and wouldn't have to worry so much.

He said "you know, that Pete Wilson works for her." He didn't have that quite right; former Governor Wilson is one of Meg Whitman's backers. But I knew what he meant; among California Latinos, the name "Pete Wilson" is short hand for white politicians who hate them.

Yes, Republicans better be worried that the nativist rhetoric among their primary candidates will activate Latino voters who might otherwise ignore the midterm election.***Quite a few other states will have primary elections this day; I'll be curious to see whether Bill Halter can knock off Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.

Demand an accounting for torture

The National Religious Campaign against Torture is asking for a full inquiry by the U.S. government into abuse of persons swept up in its campaign against terrorists. Their 5:34 minute video is designed to remind religious congregations of their obligations to speak out when their government engages in immoral actions.

Concurrently, Physicians for Human Rights has issued a new report about U.S. doctors' complicity in experiments on human torture subjects designed to control and inflict pain for the purpose of extracting information.

Both of these efforts ask people to recall and act upon the values they claim to cherish, whether as people of faith who believe in a just and loving God and/or as healers sworn to do no harm. Values, like other faculties, wither and die if they are not exercised.

Afghanistan: 104 months and counting

As of today, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will have been underway for 104 months (since October 7, 2001). This makes this war the longest foreign* conflict this country has ever fought, exceeding in length the war in Vietnam. One might have thought the richest, strongest power the world would have accomplished its purpose in one of the world's poorest countries in that time period, but apparently not.

Many Afghans are pretty sick of living in an American theater of war. From the Afghan Women's Writing Project, here's part of a letter that a woman who calls herself Shogofa has written to President Obama:

Dear President Barack Obama,

We want to live without fear.

I will never forget this war, what we have lost and how our lives have been destroyed as a result of an American policy that doesn't concern itself with innocent people. After you were elected, we hoped that everything would be all right. But it is worse than before.

One thing is clear: our people are tired of war. We have tried to explain our problems again and again, and yet the situation gets worse with every passing day. Why doesn't an Afghan life have value? What did we do that we are the victims of first the Taliban, and now the US?

It is destroying us -- especially women. Too many people die, or lose their homes. Too many children are homeless in our country. It may be the poorest country in the world, but who is responsible for this? Everyone thinks about politics, but no one thinks about human life.

Do you think that your army is useful here? Or that it will bring peace? You are wrong if you do. I witnessed a mother and son who lost their lives crossing the road. The American army thought they were terrorists, but they were trying to find money to support their family. This is how we lose members of our families. How many people will die? We don’t know.

Day by day, our country is destroyed. People can’t walk freely on the road or drive. The Kabul road is too difficult for passengers now. Everyone hates it when cars get stopped and people are prevented from going to work. We don’t feel comfortable in our own country. It is like we are strangers in our own home. ...

You can read the rest of her plea here.



* On what today is U.S. soil, it would probably be fair to say that the frontier wars to drive out and kill off native peoples extended far longer, but those took place in episodic bouts, rather than in one long slog.

San Francisco twilight

Taken while eating in the exterior courtyard of the downtown restaurant, Le Colonial, which occupies the space where Trader Vic's used to be. Great space in which to dine, somewhat expensively, with friends.

The BP Gulf oil disaster: What does "some" collection look like?

According the Associated Press:

"A cap placed over the gusher was collecting some of the oil ..."

It could mean this:


Or it could mean this:


BP has not been very convincing in describing the magnitude of the oil leak -- nobody wants to risk the liability that might go with a higher, but more likely, number.

In either case, "some" is mighty small compared to the likely size of the outflow.

Thanks to jamess at Daily Kos for the charts.

Saturday scenes and scenery:Bear in the bamboo!

I don't know why, but this panda has survived a stormy winter and rainy spring hanging on a potted bamboo on Guerrero Street.



The toy is carefully attached with one of those baggie tie fasteners that the police use for instant handcuffs.



I'm a little surprised at how well the stuffed animal has held up.

Budget short-takes: Those deficits

Anyone paying any attention has noticed that the "deficit hawks" -- led by the Pete Peterson crowd who want to privatize Social Security and gut Medicare -- have been screaming that the government must stop spending so much. Every sane economist (most quite mainstream people) -- folks like Paul Krugman and Bradford DeLong -- says spend more now, get the economy moving again so the government has more income and people have less safety net needs -- then worry about a growing deficit.

Today Ezra Klein tried to propose a grand bargain to move toward a sane deficit reduction plan. It seems worth thinking about:

Yes, deficits can become a problem. But the problem facing America is long-term, not short-term, deficits. Which is why every wonk answers this question the same way: Expand short-term deficits to boost employment and commit to credible deficit reduction in the long-term. The right move for deficit hawks would be to release a proposal that pairs a generous jobs bill with serious long-term reforms (for instance, a bill providing $300 billion in immediate stimulus and also lowering the cap on the mortgage interest deduction, bringing back the full estate tax and cutting defense spending).

Klein's suggestion contains two elements that I'll campaign for any day:

• higher taxes on people who can afford to pay them (in 2009 only .3 percent of estates paid estate taxes according the CBPP; this will change if Democrats stick to their promises)

• cutting war spending.

Economists, especially urban futurists, like to suggest reducing the mortgage interest tax deduction. My thoughts on this are unsettled.

The deduction makes it financially advantageous for as many of us as possible to "buy" homes -- to take out a mortgage and pay that debt instead of paying a landlord. Is this good policy? It certainly helped build suburbs from the 1950s onwards -- but suburban patterns have turned out to tie us to an oil-dependent transportation system and sprawl. This is environmentally unsustainable. Sheer density makes New York City one of the greenest places in the country, hard as that is to fathom.

Being an urban person and also a "homeowner" -- I get the best of this: urban convenience and the deduction. But I could be convinced on policy ground that a cut back in the mortgage interest deductiion, in exchange for my hobby horses -- higher taxes for the rich; cut war and imperial spending -- might be a socially useful bargain.

I'm not holding my breath; I don't believe most of the deficit hawks have any larger policy agenda than increasing the take of the greedy.

Budget short-takes: Secretary Clinton has something important to say

Before this slips down the memory hole, it's worth noting that Hillary Clinton said something very true last week that we don't usually hear from elite members of the political class. At a national security discussion at the Brookings Institution, she opined:

"The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues (the United States is), whether it's individual, corporate, whatever the taxation forms are," she said.

Clinton pointed to Brazil's high taxation as an example that other countries should strive toward.

"Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what -- it's growing like crazy. And the rich are getting richer, but they're pulling people out of poverty," she said. "There is a certain formula there that used to work for us until we abandoned it, to our regret in my opinion."

Fox News, May 28, 2010

Sure, consider the source. Fox probably thought they'd caught Clinton admitting to a secret plan to impose socialism. And she did assure listeners that she was speaking for herself, not necessarily administration policy.

But what she said is simply true. Since Reagan took office in 1980, the United States has pretended that the general welfare depended on allowing the rich to get richer while income inequality grows exponentially. But this is not the formula for a stable, prosperous society. It's government's job to seek to raise up the majority so as to spread the goods of the country broadly -- broad prosperity makes the whole society work.

It's the job of the people to remind the government of its responsibility.

Another view: how far has the Gulf oil spread now?

As in the images I've posted previously, here's a visualization of the extent of the BP oil gusher superimposed on San Francisco. Note that since last week, the oil has overrun Sacramento and pushed farther toward the Sierras.

This one is from Ifitwasmyhome; it uses your location as the center if it knows it. You can enter other locations in the bar at the top.***As of Monday, more than 25 percent of the Gulf waters were closed to fishing.

Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that we better get used to this -- the oil well may not be capped until Christmas.

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government's current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

My emphasis. We need to get used to this.

I also think Monica Potts is prescient about the political consequences of such a prolonged spill.

The undirected frustrations Americans feel about the economy are only reinforced by this slow-moving, ridiculously huge catastrophe, and that could be really bad for the Democrats in November.

Unless people in this country can learn to respond to crisis in an imaginative, can-do spirit, like that shown by FDR in Depression and the war against the fascist powers, we are in for a dispiriting period of lurching from shock to shock and wondering what happened to our imagined immunity from pain.

U.S. disposes of uppity Japanese PM

Okinawan protesters attempt to disrupt surveying for potential location for U.S. Marine base.

This isn't getting much attention in this country, but over the last few days, while we were focused on Israeli brutality and the Gulf oil gusher, the recently elected Prime Minister of Japan was a casualty of our empire (and probably his own political weakness.) I'm drawn to the story because I've been following effort by Okinawans to reclaim their island from U.S. Marines who have held on to bases there since World War II, sporadically assaulting and raping the locals, largely with legal impunity. An exhaustive catalogue of these crimes is available at the link. Anti-base candidates won all the offices on the Japanese island in 2010; rage against continued U.S. occupation remains intense.

Yukio Hatoyama, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto) swept into office at the end of last August as the candidate of "change." His party replaced the ruling Liberal Democratic Party which had held power since 1955 for all but 11 months. Japanese had big hopes. One Hatoyama's promises was to get the Marines off Okinawa.

Even in the post-election euphoria, "sober" U.S. media like the Los Angeles Time sounded a warning.

"He's not going to rupture the relationship [with the United States], but I do think he will try to have a somewhat more Asia-centered than U.S.-centered policy," said Ellis Krauss, a professor of Japanese politics and policymaking at UC San Diego. ...

"He's going to pretty quickly confront some realities of Japan's situation and find it might be a little difficult at times," Krauss said.

And he did. President Obama gave this other popularly elected "change" guy the cold shoulder; War Secretary Robert Gates visited Japan in March to lay down the law: the Marines would stay. And last week Hatoyama caved. His popularity sunk to under 20 percent, his party feared he would drag them to defeat in upcoming elections -- so yesterday he was pushed out of office.

Must not trifle with the hegemon. Bad PM!

Somehow I suspect that Japan will not put up with this kind of humiliation forever.

Steve Clemons of New America Foundation and The Washington Note has written an important, far more nuanced and knowledgeable, account of these developments.

Gaza relief flotilla eyewitness report

CNN has broadcast an interview with a U.S. woman who was on one of the ships in the flotilla boarded with such lethal results by Israeli troops in the Mediterranean.



The speaker, Huwaida Arraf, was one of the Free Gaza Movement organizers of the flotilla.

[She] told CNN Israeli troops roughed her up when they responded aggressively to her ship, a smaller one in the flotilla that was near the Turkish vessel where the casualties occurred.

"They started coming after our ship," she told CNN, "so we took off and they charged us also. Eventually, they overtook our ship and they used concussion grenades, sound bombs and pellets."

She said the people on her ship tried to keep them off. She said they were told the vessel was American and the people aboard were unarmed.

But, she said "they started beating people. My head was smashed against the ground and they stepped on my head. They later cuffed me and put a bag over my head. They did that to everybody."

Unlike some number of people on the large Turkish ship, she came away intact. The 5 minute interview is very much worth listening to.***In the practice of non-violent action, people simply perform the act of justice which they believe they must do. Their opponents often respond with violence. It is an expected reality of nonviolent action that the casualties occur not among those with the weapons -- the enforcers of injustice, the bullies, the soldiers -- but among those seeking change. Violence is not pretty. It is messy. It creates confusion. To be on the wrong end of it is not romantic or heroic; harm happens and it is real. But the practice of nonviolence asserts that it is better that those who are doing justice should suffer than that the oppressors should suffer more.

Can nonviolent action work? Will the sacrifice of the lives of people on this flotilla help to relieve the suffering of the people of Gaza? That depends on those of us who weren't there. The world outside the United States and Israel comprehends that both international law and human compassion demand an end to Israel's punitive blockade. Can we bring this empire up to the level of common humanity? That's the moral question these events pose to people in the United States.

The best thing about getting older

A friend who has been battling breast cancer for the last year, successfully we have reason to hope, writes on her online journal today:

...finally, June 1= MEDICARE!!!! So as of today, I no longer need all the insurance I have been carrying; hooray for that! The sun shines and I have things to do,

That sense of relief is what the health care fight was all about, really. Too bad we only got a half measure, an extension of hard-to-access, troublesome private insurance to more people. We still need Medicare for All if we are to claim to be a civilized country.

But for more individuals, the sun shines (that photo is the view over Sunol in the South Bay one lovely morning).

A stunning realization ... just don't do it!

I agree with Rand Paul about something. The Republican Senatorial candidate from Kentucky and notorious Civil Rights Act skeptic responded to the Massey coal mine explosion and the BP Gulf oil gusher with the comment:

... sometimes accidents happen.

Right he is. And when you have no way of overcoming or even mitigating the results of an accident, you probably simply should not do any activity that you know might lead to an accident. That seems a smart prudential standard to adopt.

Under that standard, I can think of a couple of activities we would be smart to avoid: deep water oil drilling and nuclear power development.

What else do we do that might very well result in accidents from which human society and the natural world suffer irreparable harm? Leave suggestions in comments.