Clearly "nothing", as in Jefferson-Jackson in Des Moines. What the hell other than the threat of a primary challenge mounting about the time the honeymoon wears off and the "100 Days" accomplishments is ... no single payer until the next administration, no smart, purposeful, use of public money to transform the transportation sector, no radical energy plan, ...

We wanted a Democrat, and if all we got was center-right administration attempting to market its image as center-left, then we'll have to get us a real Democrat.

I checked "nothing". We've been to Iowa. For Gore.

The current economic crisis was triggered of course by the sudden collapse of an assumption. The so-called subprime mortgages were many of them without collateral -- that people weren't expected to pay back. The assumption was that if you lumped them together and securitize them, and magically that is going to remove the risk ... That assumption just went splat, and things began to unravel. And now in the midst of this frenetic effort to find a bailout, many are saying we should have prevented this. We should have realized that the short-term greed was overcoming a clear vision of what the risk was. Well, now is the time to prevent a much worse catastrophe, because the world has several trillion dollars in sub-prime carbon assets, based on the assumption that it is perfectly alright to put 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours.

Since we met here last year, the world has lost ground in the climate crisis. This is a rout -- we're losing badly. The water supply is partly held in the ice packs of the mountains and the glaciers. They're disappearing. Haiti was ravaged by four different hurricanes, and of course the devastation came after the environment had been devastated with all the trees had been cut down. There are still people in Galveston waiting for food, for water, and medicine. A half a million people were evacuated from their homes in California because of record fires. The University of Tel Aviv just published research showing that for every one degree of warming, there will be a 10 percent increase in lightning strikes all over this planet, with drier vegetation in a warmer world and more dead vegetation because beetles are no longer held back by frost.

The fires are out of control on every front -- the strength of the storm, the depth of the drought, the movement of tropical diseases into areas that never experienced them before. This is the result of a dysfunctional, insane global system that we have to change. For the first time in all of human history, we as a species have to make a decision. If we make the right decision ... the answer to the economic crisis can truly provide an opportunity to make the right kinds of change.

...

We should stop burning coal without sequestering the CO2. The coal and oil companies have spent in the United States alone half a billion dollars in the first 8 months of this year promoting the lie that there is such a thing as "clean coal." "Clean coal" is like "healthy cigarettes" -- it does not exist. It could theoretically exist. The only demonstration plant was canceled. How many such plants are there? Zero. How many blueprints? Zero.

...

Today the U.S. Congress is talking about energy. They are, without debate and without a single hearing, preparing to lift the moratorium on the development of oil shale, which would vastly multiply the amount of CO2 from every gallon of gasoline. This is utter insanity, and it demonstrates that the wealth and power and influence of the entrenched carbon lobby, that twists policy and puts out illusory impressions, is overwhelming the free debate. We need to stop this.

...

I believe that for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that there's no risk from the global climate crisis represents a form of stock fraud, because they are misrepresenting a material fact. If you're a carbon company and you're going out there and trying to convince people to buy your stock and that the climate crisis isn't that big a deal, and you're superstitiously giving money to these phony think-tanks that go out and try to gin up phony arguments while the entire scientific community has put out five unanimous reports in the past years practically screaming from the rooftops about how we need to solve this -- if you're a carbon company doing this, in my opinion you're guilty of a form of stock fraud, and I hope the state attorneys general around the country will try to take some action on that.

...

And if you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what's being done now, I believe we've reached the stage where it's time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants that do not have sequestration.

Somewhere in the next two minutes Matt Stoller finds his wee little brass ring. Its all MB's fault, she let him post at It's Still the Ecomony, Stupid (a post I'm fond of is the link to Max Sawicky, in April, 2003, on what to do with Iraq's oil revenues -- we'll be coming back to that next week when we visit Susan Collins' latest idea.

MB and I will be writing in Al Gore's name on the ballot. The Maine 1st CD is wicked safe blue, so its not likely to reverse gravity, but its the only vote we feel represents us.

We'll write in John Edwards just below Al Gore.

Global warming is a problem of unprecedented magnitude and that's why we've launched the largest mobilization campaign ever. Actions by individuals like you will be the driving force behind this campaign and our ultimate victory. We're going to succeed, but I need your help today.

More than 850,000 people have already joined us, but if leaders in business and government are going to make stopping climate change a priority, we need you to urge your friends to get involved today: http://wecansolveit.org/invitealliance

We need to grow to 1,000,000 members by April so we can send a loud message that we want action now. That is why I need you to forward the email below to all of your friends and family right now and ask them to add their voice.

Thank you,

Al Gore

P.S. You can donate to our efforts here.

The Martin Agency is running We Can Solve It for the signature side. The donations and mailing list management functions are run by David Geller's What Counts.

While many in the South characterize climate change as an environmental and/or economic issue, to us it raises questions of culture and survival.

It seems odd to me that in the climate change community, the effect on agriculture, and therefore human misery, in Black Africa, is front-and-center, yet in the civil rights community, the quest for social solidarity that transcends race ends at the waters' edge, and contemporary Africans are no more necessary than contemporary Inuits, or particulate and gases (other than greenhouse) on urban populations.

In Le Temps, in Radio Suisse Romande.

My co-workers, in from Norway, Germany, Catalonia, France, and Switzerland for Monday and Tuesday ask if Al Gore can still be nominated.

I answer "Yes, but there are some complications ..."

I will try and make the car show, it is wierd writing using a Swiss-German keyboard.

North Korea and Iran are treated as a nuclear ensemble in the common-to-both-parties political lexicon. I'm going to try and seperate out the Iran part, and try and delineate that part of the JRE text that differs from the standard Axis-of-Evil text. New readers please keep in mind that I write about Iran from time to time, in a series called Return of the ... One True King. A link to the last part is here.

In his major primary piece on pre-emption and nukes, the only "justification" offered by the Bush/Cheney administration for its Iraq War with any theoretical legs, Edwards thoughtfully listed the Soviet-era warhead inventory management problem first.

60 percent of Russia's nuclear material remains unsecured. That country has 20,000 nuclear warheads and enough material to produce 60,000 more Hiroshima-size bombs.

Edwards' first "post-Soviet" talking point is establishment of a new Global Nuclear Compact (GNC) to reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The implementation language is overtly multi-national and repeats the explicit mechanism of assistance for peaceful use in exchage for strict controls over waste and reprocessing of the Clinton/Gore administration. While not explicitly a UN or an existing Treaty Organization, "leading nations" and nuclear technology overlaps with the Permanent Members of the Security Council, which means France, the Federation of Independent States, and China, as well as Japan and Germany. Broadly, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' second "post-Soviet" talking point is a UN Security Council vehicle to make economic sanctions easier to apply when the requisit condiditions arise. The "carrot and stick" approach of the GNC institutionalized by the primary Treaty Organization. Again, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' third "post-Soviet" talking point is to triple the spending on securing the "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union", and to end development of two new weapons technologies -- "bunker buster" nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missiles. This is as anti-Bush/Cheney as one can imagine, and Tehran has no interest in "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union" finding any use in West Asia.

Edwards' fourth "post-Soviet" talking point is to strengthen our intelligence capability, and no sane person in Tehran or anywhere else wants to see another US military adventure based upon bad intelligence. This approach is inconsistent with the administrations punitive and criminal outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Edwards' fifth "post-Soviet" talking point is creating a high-level NPT role in the administration. Again, a position Tehran is more likely to appreciate than the current incoherence and outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Having less time than Professor Cole to write (I've a housefull of unruly post-vacation weasels to mind and lots of washing to attend to, not to mention paid work) my Edwards-and-Iran thinking is that he's wicked better than the BC04 war-rhetoriticans. Granted, the US-Iran war hasn't happened, yet, but the insane desire for war has been bubbling under the surface of both states since the fall of Reza Shah and Jimmy Carter, and it is only one accidental or one calculated act away. As Vice-President of the United State, John Edwards seems more unlikely than most to succumb to the lure of the ongoing phoney war with Iran, let alone let the fiction escape from its confines and consume whole armies and cities, as the phoney war with Iraq has. I will sleep better at night when he is Vice President.

Afternote: Since "breach of the NPT" gets so much attention in the Axis-of-Evil demonology, it is useful to read Article X of the NPT:

1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

I'm not surprised to see that for Joe, neither the ground nor finance exist. We'd planned to hit every meat packing plant in Iowa, and Yucca Mountain activist in Nevada, and always take enough to beat the 15% floor and simply accumulate delegates. It can't make us better or smarter than he, he got the job and we got bumpkis, but its good to know how Joe sees the big picture.

Update: 12 hours later 70.42.42.155 is responsive.

The third segment of the show was Ralph Nader, who announced an exploratory the day John Edwards announced the suspension of his campaign.

I'm not ready to turn my face to the wall or do whatever it takes to become blissfully numb, and we've already been down the Gotta-Unite-Behind-the-Indian-in-High-Office road -- it has no peyote, no roadmen and no soul, and it's called Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Al Gore is not running. Chris Dodd is not running. Dennis Kucinich is not running. John Edwards is not currently running.

Freedom is choice. Here's a link.

And today the six DLC (the next gen) endorsed the guy who thought that Donald Rumsfeld was mainstream, along with the vast majority of the Bush nominees. h/t Lambert @ Corrente

Several yesterday. Probably more today.

Woke up thinking if Edwards had to drop out within four weeks of the first Party caucus to extract a promise from the Hero Twins, who claim they alone can make the trip to Xibalba and defeat the Lords of Death, to protect the hopeless, the downtrodden, the poor and the working poor, what did the Hero Twins promise to inflict upon the hopeless, the downtrodden, the poor and the working poor, if he stayed in a fifth week or a sixth week or longer?

Something worth reading is this.

So, he's going to rise to the level of Nixon, Haldeman and Erlichman, which is actually the gold standard, the high-water mark for the Federal-Tribal relationship, but he's too inexperienced to actually know what he's doing, and in all liklihood, he'll just promote Ross Swimmer. That plus an annual "Summit", which either means a do-nothing 400-and-some-plus-ONE media circus, or a USET+NCAI+IGA+ONE clubman's foursome that excludes Hawai'i, Alaska, and all the fucked-over-by-the-BIA, the fucked-over-by-corrupt-Chairs, the fucked-over-by-Abramoff, and all of the Urbans.

Edwards actually worked the Lumbee issue, which counts far more than the promise of symbolism and circuses. Edwards could cut to the chase and just say "I will invite Ms. Eloise Cobell to join my Administration as Secretary of the Interior. He could run that into the seam of dirt MB's mined since we set our sights on Saint John McCain, hitting Haliburton and the Petro-Oligarchy as casually as children chase crows out of the garden corn.

Cobell v Babbit began under Clinton, and the MMS mess wasn't invented by the RNC, they just improved on a pre-existing condition.

And if you use sendmail, or an operating system product that at any point in its licensing history, ever required a license from the Regents of the University of California, even if unknown to you, your email transits sendmail relays on Berkeley Unix hosts, which is what most ISPs actually use in operational practice, you're using the work products of two men who've been married for longer than I've known them, to each other.

Happy Everyday, Kirk and Eric!!!