BACK TO THE [GLOBAL WARMING] FUTURE

As Bill Maher points out so often these days, we have to call it "climate change" because otherwise the rightwingers confuse the issue because it still gets cold some places, averages being a difficult mathematical and "scientific" concept for them.

Nonetheless, the climate change brought about by global warming that was predicted by weather scientists has become a reality and is impacting all of us in one way or another very realistically. It's no longer a theory, obviously. The early winter we're having in the Northeast is a perfect example.

Yes, seasonal anomalies have occurred throughout history, including in my lifetime and yours, but not the extent they are occurring now and in recent years. As we all know, or can learn, by checking the stats, the warmest years on record have all occurred in the past decade, and rainfall records and extreme temperature variations etc. have occurred in the last few years as well.

So even though there are a few pre-winter Nor-Easters on the records over the past few hundred years, when you combine the one we just went through this weekend with other extreme record-breaking weather events of the past few years, welcome to the future brought to you by global warming.

I was up in the Berkshires at my oldest son's family's place where over a foot of heavy wet snow fell. We were actually snowed in, but luckily retained power. When the snow stopped Sunday morning and the cars were dug out and what looked like a foot and a half of snow was shoveled and brushed off them, my youngest son and I drove back to Jersey in a rare snowscape that was more like a movie dream sequence than a Christmas card.

The seasons in this part of the world were so finely tuned by nature [and evolution (oh no!)], that by the time the first really heavy snow of winter came, all the leafs were off the trees and the amount of snow that could accumulate on a tree branch was minimal, almost more of an outline than a burden.

But this weekend the snow was so thick and wet (the "snowflakes" looked more like small snowballs) as it accumulated on branches still full of leaves, it became too heavy for the branches to bear the weight and they either bent low to the ground (it was a trip to watch my daughter-in-law just tap a long branch of a ten foot tall bush bent down to the ground with the snow shovel and watch the snow fall off as the branch sprang back like a catapult and stood straight up in the air again as though brought back to life from near death) or broke entirely and were strewn across roads or smashed onto roofs of cars and houses often pulling electrical and telephone wires down with them.

The trip back was stunning and challenging. The countryside was so profoundly beautiful all covered in not just pristine whiteness but a whiteness that looked poured and melted in a unique way and amount. I pointed out to my son how rare a sight it was because nature normally doesn't cause this kind of snowfall until after the leaves are gone and the trees can withstand it.

It was stop and start as we sometimes inched our way around fallen branches and trees and in one case under one that had fallen in such a way as to create a tunnel only one relatively small car at a time could go through (buses and trucks and bigger vehicles were forced to turn back).

Even when we got further South into lower New York state and were on a big highway not a two-lane country road, there were still moments when branches or trees would fall or bend and block a lane so that at one point a car several vehicles ahead of us hit their brakes so hard it created what looked like the smoke from a big fire and the smell of burning rubber stayed with us for miles.

At one point on a back country road a snow-laden branch fell up ahead of us onto the road and, as often happens in adrenaline charged moments, seemed to occur in slow motion as I watched it hit the road and managed to find an extremely narrow path around it just in time. And then made it home to find our street blocked by fallen branches (the trees around here and up North are often so large that a "branch" is the size of a small, or not so small, tree) that took wires down with them.

Most of the trip there were no stoplights working or store lights on and the usual roadside joint we stop at for lunch (the famous "Red Rooster"—at least famous in that area of the central Hudson Valley) as well as all the others were closed because of no power.

We passed two gas stations in the several hour trip that had lines extending out from them reminiscent of the 1970s gas shortage, only more so. One line seemed to extend for more than a mile with folks out of their cars hanging out talking, the cars pulled onto the shoulder of the road and backed up as far as we could see. They were the only gas stations with their own generators I guess.

My youngest doesn't have school today. Even though the snow is mostly melted here, at least in the streets, so it would normally not be considered a "snow day" it still is, because there are so many trees and branches that have downed wires that it's unsafe for the kids to walk down many blocks in our town for fear of accidentally touching a live one.

If this were the only odd weather event of the past decade, or of my son's life, etc. it would not be unusual. But in his now fourteen years there have been many, and more and more as the years pass. This is a result of the climate change being caused by global warming and almost every scientist, and close to a total consensus of weather scientists, acknowledge this.

Yet the rightwingers, including the main one who comments on this blog, continue to idiotically taunt us "liberals" with the reality of unusually cold winter weather for early Fall, but have been and will be nowhere in the comments threads when the inevitable (these days anyway) hot spell hits between now and next summer and breaks all records in that direction, despite the fact that I will, as I always do, point that out to them when it occurs. Their silence will be, as always, deafening, because anything that doesn't support their ideological beliefs is ignored or denied despite reality.

[PS: Just got back from driving my son to a friend's and saw trees that had crashed onto houses, down power lines, including just half a block from his old school, and only one lane of traffic on many streets because of the piles of branches etc. and to further make my point above, this kind of scene has become relatively common in the past few years and since I moved here a dozen years ago.]

HOW MUCH CLEARER CAN IT BE? PART TWO

You have to watch the "Weathering Fights" clip from a recent Daily Show (here). It illustrates perfectly the glaringly anti-intellectual, anti-reason, anti-logic, anti-facts, anti-reality core of rightwing ideology as a Republican strategist confirms everything this blog has ever posted about rightwing ideology.

INDIAN WINTER?

I'm back in The Berkshires again after several weeks and before the big snowstorm they're supposed to get here, there's already snow on roofs and in yards from several days ago.

When I was a kid and we had a warm spell in November they called it "Indian Summer"—so should below freezing weather and serious snowstorms in October be called "Indian Winter?"

Whatever it might be, it's worth it to get to see my oldest son, Miles, play bass in a Black Sabbath tribute band last night at the local pub/restaurant. With a giant screen on the small stage behind them projecting Godzilla fighting Mothra, and the band in costumes, the guitarist [Rob Sanzone] as "Buckethead" (Miles explained that's an actual guitarists' guitarist who plays ripping ax in various bands and wears a mask-with-a-bucket-on-his-head disguise, as the guitarist did last night).

Miles wore a long black wig and grew a Fu Manchu moustache to look like the original Black Sabbath bass player. The singer [Scott Bartzch]was dressed as a mummy for a taste of pre-Halloween. Some folks came dressed appropriately as well in costumes that Miles had to explain to me echoed various Black Sabbath songs.

I never dug heavy metal or death metal or any of the categories of metal except for some of the guitar hooks and riffs. I know there's some great musicianship in some heavy metal bands and even some great songwriting, complex and original in some cases. But I just can't get past the general assault aspects of the music that often drowns out any and all subtleties.

I came home with my ears ringing more than they do anyway, and feeling like the air pressure was off in there too. But, and it's a big but, I have to say the set I caught was totally exhilarating. Couldn't have asked for a better way to get the ya-ya's out. Rob, the guitarist, is always amazing, the drummer [Ben Schworm] was awesome, the singer nailed it and Miles held it all together (from my perspective of course) with a solid bass beat and sound.

My daughter-in-law invited several of my grandson's friends along and they crowded the area in front of the small stage bobbing their heads ala metal bands and fans while two aging obvious Black Sabbath fans with little or no hair to throw around still bopped to the music and sang along to all the lyrics with gestures and high fives and all.

There's so much talent in the world these days, maybe always has been, that almost anywhere I go I get to experience it in full bloom. Like last night. Back to Jersey tomorrow on what hopefully will be melted snow or plowed roads.

And as I write this my youngest, my grandson and one of those boys (six boys including my son and his nephew slept over last night, that was a trip) are playing guitar, bass and drums down in "the music room" of the little old mill-town house Miles and his wife rent and it couldn't be more cool. Ain't life grand when we let it be?

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Unfortunately, the other night in Oakland was like a replay of a nighttime version of what happened in Berkeley during the "People's Park" protests in the Spring of 1969, when Reagan was governor and ordered  the troops out to disperse people who had created a wonderful neighborhood park out of a piece of land the University of California owned but had been used for quite a while as an unauthorized parking lot.

Flowering plants and homemade see saws and sandboxes were too much for the rightwing conservatives to allow the hippie students to plant or build or make. Then and even more so now, corporate greed must be justified, even deified and certainly protected by force and corporate criminals given passes or excused or if incarcerated put into country club prisons. But citizens with no corporate power are to be treated as criminals and less than human.

To paraphrase what someone else said: History may not be repeating itself here, but it's certainly rhyming.



PS: I'm sure you've already heard and read about the Iraq War veteran shot above by an Oakland Police tear gas canister, but here's a less catastrophic yet still horrific photo of another victim:

ANOTHER LIST

I still don't have any compulsion, or hardly even any desire, to write lists, since the brain surgery (where before I compulsively made them all day and night long). But I have become compulsive about listening to every song in my iTunes library alphabetically by title. Which led me to notice that those beginning with the word "Don't" make a very compelling list, even a poem if you leave out the "artists" and just read the titles.

Don't (Elvis)
Don't Answer The Door (B.B. King)
Don't Be Cruel (Elvis)
Don't Be That Way (Bing Crosby)
Don't Be That Way (The Kansas City Five live)
Don't Blame Me (Miles Davis)
Don't Blame Me (The Nat King Cole Trio)
Don't Bother Me (The Beatles)
Don't Bring Me Down (The Animals)
Don't Do Me Like That (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
Don't Fence Me In (Bing & The Andrews Sisters)
Don't Fence Me In (David Byrne)
Don't Fence Me In (Frank Sinatra)
Don't Forget Tonight, Tomorrow (Sinatra)
Don't Go (Nat King Cole & George Shearing)
Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore (Van Morrison)
Don't Know Why (Norah Jones)
Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight (James Taylor)
Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (The Animals)
Don't Like Goodbyes (Sinatra)
Don't Look Back (Luscious Jackson)
Don't Lose Your Cool (Scott Buck Trio)
Don't Make Me Over (Dionne Warwick)
Don't Pass Me By (The Beatles)
Don't Play That Song (Ben E. King)
Don't Put Your Finger In Yourself (The Tinklers)
Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (Glen Miller & His Orchestra)
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough (Michael Jackson)
Don't Think Twice It's All Right (Dylan from "Freewheelin'")
Don't Think Twice It's All Right (Dylan live from the soundtrack to "No Direction Home")
Don't Turn Out Like Your Mother (The Proclaimers)
Don't Worry 'Bout That Mule (Louis Jordan)
Don't Worry About Tomorrow (Van Morrison)
Don't Worry Baby (The Beach Boys)
Don't You Believe It Dear (The Artie Shaw Orchestra w/ Mel Torme)
Don't You Know I Love You (The Clovers)
Don't You Miss Your Baby? (Count Basie)

HOW MUCH CLEARER CAN IT BE?

You may have already seen this, but it's worth watching again.

ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS: THE PRISONER EXCHANGE

I've been meaning to write about this because I haven't really seen it written about or even as part of the discussions from the same old talking heads on TV (though the past several days I wasn't paying as close attention to TV news as I usually do so I may have missed it).

That Israeli governments, at least since Rabin was assassinated back in the '90s, but before that as well on many levels, have always refused to negotiate with whoever represented the Palestinian-statehood-cause supposedly because they were too militant or unwilling to get their own house in order especially in terms of security, for Israel.

What this pattern of resistance to recognizing legitimate Palestinian demands as anything more than hubris did was feed into the recruiting strategy and growth of more radical entities, thus Hammas replaces the PLO as the more radical alternative after the Israeli government refuses to negotiate with PLO leaders who haven't gotten their security down so that their members aren't physically attacking Israelis.

I know the argument that it was the PLO leader Arafat who refused to bend in the negotiations that took place under Clinton's watch that blew what was the closest that conflict has come to a real resolution. But it was Israeli resistance to dealing with Arafat until then that backed him into a corner of competing with even more militant factions of Palestinian resistance (as well as Israel's refusal to give up their claim to all of Jerusalem or to stop all settlements).

At any rate, no matter how disappointing the failure of that almost resolution to the problem, it's only gotten worse since. Now the rightwing influence in the Israeli government is stronger than ever, people who not only don't want to concede on Jerusalem and settlements on Palestinian land, but who believe all of Israel should be only for Jews, have an outsized say in the Israeli coalition government.

So the prisoner exchange was the way that rightwing Israeli government chose to humiliate and weaken the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that for the past few years it has succeeded in doing what every Israeli government has always demanded of the Palestinians, that is: create a secure West Bank. One, it turns out that is actually also the most efficient and secure and stable and successful Palestinian area in modern history, exactly what the Israeli government has been asking for for decades.

Abbas and his government in the West Bank met all the demands the Israeli government had, nonetheless the Israeli government continued and continues to not just add ever more settlements to the West Bank but also in East Jerusalem, the part of the city the Palestinians claim and has been occupied by Arabs for generations but now are losing ancient homes and buildings to bulldozers and new developments or takeovers of their homes and buildings by rightwing Jewish groups.

So out of frustration at the Israeli government's refusal to stop these incursions or negotiate a resolution to them, Abbas went to the U.N. to ask for Palestinian statehood, figuring if he got it, or even pressure to get it, the Israeli government might finally be willing to negotiate equally and not as conqueror and conquered.

It was a pretty smart move I think, except he didn't realize the depths the right will always go to, in any country or situation, to maintain its own power over events. Netanyahu's government instead of responding to the U.N. statehood plea instead negotiated with the more militant and radical—and proclaimed enemy of Israel—Hammas to secure the return of one Israeli soldier for over a thousand Palestinian prisoners, some of whom had committed atrocities against Jewish Israelis!

Hammas knew this would humiliate Abbas and his strong and successful West Bank government, and so did Nethanyahu. He was willing to humiliate Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, the only one ready to negotiate a peace settlement with Israel and the only Palestinian group that even accepts Israel's right to exist and deal with a sworn enemy of Israel, just to weaken Abbas and avoid any concessions to the Palestinians' legitimate demands.

And to add salt to the wound, Netanyahu, almost simultaneously, announced the rightwing Jewish takeover of an entire Israeli Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. So, as often happens with the right, Nethanyahu succeeded in defeating his one possible ally as well as the possibility for a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, and strengthened the enemy that he can more easily justify crushing when the opportunity arises, as he did not that long ago in the invasion of Gaza where Hammas presides.

It's cynical, ultimately self-defeating and from my perspective evil as well. But a lesson probably not lost on the right in this country as well, where Obama and most Democrats dare not criticize Nethanyahu for fear of the "Israel lobby" in DC that wields as much power as the NRA and Wall Street there, unfortunately (and yes I know there is an alternative "Israel lobby" in DC but it's influence is almost nil).