Dear Markos,

While I am addressing this letter to you, it is also intended for John Amato, Arianna Huffington, Digby, John Aravosis and all the other powerhouse players in the Netroots Nation.

We have seen over the last few years the power and influence of the blogosphere grow exponentially. You, and others like you, have influenced the direction of political campaigns, made or broke candidates for high office, impacted public opinion, and even forced some mighty big corporations to come to heel. But now I am asking you to harness that power once again and direct it against a single person.

There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1. the Republican model, in which an "aestheticized" politics is promoted (in this case, it's the "aesthetics" of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2. the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is "bad pragmatism" and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Docudharma)

**Contrary to the comments, the blog -theseeing.wordpress.com, is run by me. Thank You.

As the 2008 Presidential Election heats up, I think it is time to analyze both candidates, thoughtfully. As most people have already seen John McCain (as an aggressive, hawkish, not-in-sync with the public candidate), which is quite true, I think we should also spend some time analyzing Obama. While everyone regards McCain's foreign policy as hawkish and following the steps of the Bush administration, we should also take a look at Obama's stance on foreign policy.

I recently told an Obama supporter that Obama's foreign policy seemed a little 'weird.' She told me to refer to Samantha Power, a foreign policy adviser to Obama.
*Some of you might remember Power as the lady who humorously referred to Hillary Clinton as a "monster."
Thus, I analyzed Samantha Power, and this is what I found:

Al Gore is now giving a major speech in Washington, setting out an ambitious goal for the USA to produce all of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2020. While I have not heard the speech yet, I thought I'd comment on the technical feasibility of the plan, and the underlying economics of such an endeavour.

from the Department of Energy's recently published study about bringing wind power to 20% of total generation

The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.

Initially on European Tribune, and also on the Oil Drum. UPDATE: see disclosure below the fold.

Book Review: Ginsberg, Benjamin.  The American Lie: Government by the People and Other Political Fables.  Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

This, part two in a series, will analyze Benjamin Ginsberg's book The American Lie as a "cynical realist" take on the American political process, suggesting that even though it's marginally useful to be "cynical," we still must be against "bad pragmatism" and in favor of politics for the greater good even when confronted with the corrupt system we have today.

Next: either a history of bad pragmatism, or a diary on the latest bad pragmatist outrage.  There WILL be a Bad Pragmatism pt. 3.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

Sometimes a little history is in order to understand the evolution of U.S. law and the rights we assume have always been ours.  There's some real food for thought in the kernels of history...and those of you who considering the relative importance of the next choice for SCOTUS and POTUS vs. "Our Constitutional Rights" may enjoy (or need) some context.

America tells an enthralling tale of liberty and justice and rights.  And no, even some of the ones you take for granted now (like the Fourth Amendment protection against wiretapping) weren't always rights, even in my lifetime.

Call me an optimist.  Coal is king, tar sands oil is booming, the arctic is melting, tropical cyclones keep setting new records, and my own city is still flooded.  Yet, in these times, a revolution in both energy and electrified transportation is taking place right beneath our noses, and perhaps nowhere are we seeing the seeds of this being planted more than on the island of Oahu.

Read on to learn more about the world you may be leaving to your grandchildren and the role Hawaii's third largest island may play in bringing it about.

This past week, a powerful speaker named Van Jones spoke at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. He spoke about politics, the economy, the environment, and family values. But his speech was about us.

A few thoughts and a link to the video below the fold.

Let’s keep this simple.

McCain: Drill in the continental shelf of the coast of the United States, suspend the federal gas tax for the summer, and greatly expand nuclear power usage through construction of new plants.

Obama: Pass a second stimulus package, tax windfall profits of oil companies to help fund renewable/alternative energy program over ten years akin in scale to the mission to the moon, and consider nuclear power if issues of security and waste storage can be settled in advance.

This is a follow-up to my last diary, A pragmatist looks at FISA.  Thank you to everyone who took time to contribute to that debate.  But within that debate, several of you asked what I mean by "pragmatism," or argued as if I were referring to nothing more than Clintonian triangulation.

As someone who has engaged real policy battles with conservatism for twenty years - from base policy when I was a Marine, to my former church's stand on my community's gay rights ordinance, to authoring and pushing through a human rights amdnement to my law school constitution, to courtroom battles on behalf of defendants, to my involvement in local community committees - I've had many opportunities to learn, often from my own mistakes, how to wage a political fight.  I've become convinced that pragmatism is what gets problems solved.

So please follow this pragmatist over the fold as she explains what she means by "pragmatism."

It has taken an abortive impeachment attempt, a couple of contentious elections, a terrorist attack on American soil, the invasion of two sovereign nations, and political intrigue that would make Niccolo Machiavelli proud, for the neocon establishment to consolidate power within the U.S. Government to the extent that the traditional system of checks and balances has, for all intents and purposes, withered beyond recognition.  Dick Cheney’s vision of a restored and empowered Executive Branch has been realized, and the notion of public accountability has gone out the window.  Wrapping themselves in the banner of patriotism and national security, this authoritarian Republican cabal has positioned itself to influence both foreign and domestic policy in ways that have deliberate, enduring consequences.  The obvious beneficiaries of this enterprise are the corporate giants that tend to flourish under imperialistic policies that favor exploitation of cheap foreign labor, unlimited natural resources, and virtual freedom from environmental regulation.

John McCain has been talking about his new energy policy, and how it is going to be different from the Bush energy policy, even as he agrees with Bush on expanded oil drilling.

I wrote in my inexpert-way about peak oil recently in a few diaries. If you haven't read them, they're here, here, and here (links in chronological order).

Here are a few more thoughts.

Although the general election campaign informally started weeks ago, after Senator Clinton's endorsement of Senator Obama last week, it has officially begun.

We are consistently told, from the media and from both campaigns, that this is a "change" election. Obama in particular has been able to mobilize and energize millions of people either disillusioned or newly political, and bring them onboard his campaign.

GOOD 'BRANDING' DOES NOT A MOVEMENT MAKE

Let me say up front that this is my first ever diary on a political blog.  Ever.  

I have been reading the Kos for a while now, and have seen how the tone has changed over the course of the election, as it has just about everywhere else.  One of those places has been my own happy Democratic home.

Our marriage, which has weathered all kinds of hell, the likes of which would make Oprah's Book Club faint, is really struggling with the issues raised by this election.  

And yet, just like all those challenges we met and vanquished in the past, we know this is going to make us stronger and more in love than ever.

If we can ever figure out what the hell is going on and how to talk to each other about it without having to put on flak jackets.

Sound familiar?

So. Kossacks.  Follow me below the fold.  My marriage, like our beloved Democratic Party, is in desperate need of intervention.  Because the Party needs unity, badly, and can perhaps learn much from my serio-comic melodrama of a marriage. Whether that means a Party in unity or two factions in two twin beds remains to be seen.

Mathematicians (and many others but in slightly different contexts) speak of "metrics" and "metric spaces" as alternative ways of measuring what is commonly called the distance between points A and B. Basically, it comes down to the fact that you can judge the distance from, say, your house to your mother's house in a variety of ways:

1. in miles (or kilometers)

2. in the time it takes you to get there  

but also by...

3. how tired you are when you get there (if you are walking).

4. how many bus stops lie between your house and your mother's house (if you're taking the bus and don't like having to stop all over the place)

Just a ramble for a Thursday night.

Friday, end of wageslave work week draws nigh, and we are having beautiful warm weather here in New York City, makes a person kind of dizzy.

So I thought I'd speak of the difference between force and power.

Why not?

See, I think that the Bush misAdministration never had their own power.  Whatever power they had was always stolen.  They are crooks, after all.

So far in this series, we've talked about how I came to EVs, Saudi Arabia's investment in battery research, the state of modern battery technology, a flawed EV tax credit, and a much improved one.  That's all nice and good, but we haven't really touched solidly on the issue that's going to be number one for most potential EV buyers and other interested parties: economics.  

That's the topic of today's diary, and we're going into it in detail.  Read on for more information.