raising money for what?

So way more people than I expected brought cookies. I was too late to get ads in the paper and didn't even have a sign. MoveOn helped me by making sure anyone who wanted a local bake sale could find one. Who needs the papers? In spite of the competition of over 700 such sales being held that weekend, there was a steady trickle of people all afternoon buying cookies [and one coconut cake that was fantastic]. We took in about $300 to send to Obama and I assume others did far better.



The turn out for the MoveOn bake sale was impressive. I did nothing, I organized nothing, I did not ask for help or volunteers. From noon to four a small crowd, in effect a rotating party, of people who want Obama to win hung out at the table and we talked. I guess either we are all fools for politicians or Bush and his cronies are now, at long last, finally seen for the crooks, despoilers and well armed imperial nincompoops they always were. The sense I got of these people was feelings both of resentment for what has been done to our country and hope but I wonder if the hope is well placed. Are they hoping for a progressive, as MoveOn members are assumed to do, or just hoping to avert a further lurch backwards?

Chris Bowers at Open Left was where I read it first, about a month or two ago: the good news is Obama is going to get elected. But the bad news from Bowers, later echoed by David Brooks' "Two Obamas" piece in the NY Times , and now summarized well at HuffPo by Sam Stein: Obama will take few or no progressive stances in order to accomplish this. When you find agreement from those two poles of the political spectrum, assume its damn near true or the world is about to end and "true" is even less relevant than usual.

I suppose being pragmatic pays...up to a point. Beyond that point, you are a conservative or a thief or both. If electability is your only good, what makes you any different than George Bush...how was he "better" than Kerry?

Meanwhile have you seen Kucinich and his impeachment articles? He has gone missing in the MSM. Dubya has refilled the latrine with fresh doings that ought to make a nice addition to Kucinich's charges and bring the list up to a nice round 20. Bush is trying to pretend his own administration has not been brought to heel by the courts, refusing to read that the EPA has called for reduction of green house gases.

The pique at the pump may be all it takes for the shallow American voters to dump the republicans. Thank god for personal financial pain. The pollsters tell us the economy strongly dominates the minds of voters and the truly gigantic geopolitical blunder and moral nightmare of Iraq is issue number one for less than on fifth of US voters. Good, lets not suffer any honest self examination! But I hope the gathering tide I sensed at the bake sale is not so simple as wanting a fix for a habit we should never have indulged. Neither McCain nor Obama propose adequate energy programs to avert runaway climate deterioration. Here, from a scientist who accurately predicted the general outline of our weather changes for the last twenty years, are some ideas that might save us. Hansen's article echoes my old "feedback"post...which echoed what he has written in Scientific American and elsewhere for decades. Science, you see, can be this trick that equips common sense to operate like great foresight. A pity this country looks down on scientists.

Speaking of down, I clearly am. It doesn't really make a difference whether the effective IQ of the most powerful nation on earth is about 45 or its just that I am crazy...we don't get along too well and don't like listening to one another just now. I have pretty much run out of things novel enough to be worth reading and will probably only type when screaming would be inappropriate. I think more and more seriously about packing up and going where I can feed and warm myself without causing any harm to barrels of oil or bank accounts and living that way with such company as can stand me until I die naturally without any artificial and bloody expensive preserving efforts.