The Unimaginable Life

Harold Meyerson asks the question of the moment. Is paralysis in politics the “new normal”?

“Watching the centrist Democrats in Congress create more and more reasons why health care can’t be fixed, I’ve been struck by a disquieting thought: Suppose our collective lack of response to Hurricane Katrina wasn’t exceptional but, rather, the new normal in America. Suppose we can no longer address the major challenges confronting the nation. Suppose America is now the world’s leading can’t-do country. [...]

Centrist Democrats’ opposition to health reform verges on the incoherent … Why Democrats of any ideology want to cripple their own president in his first year in office, and for seeking an objective that has been a stated goal of their party since the Truman administration, is a more mysterious matter.”

(h/t Daily Kos)

President Obama lays it on the line today about health care reform, confronting Republicans who would block access to health care for millions of Americans in an attempt to make him look bad:

In his weekly address this past Saturday, the President clarified the importance of including a Public Option in the health care reform bill (h/t mcjoan):

That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family. And that’s why we’ll put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry: no more yearly caps or lifetime caps; no more denying people care because of pre-existing conditions; and no more dropping people from a plan when they get too sick. No longer will you be without health insurance, even if you lose your job or change jobs.

Andrew Sullivan has not backed off of the story of how close we came to having Sarah Palin – a woman totally unprepared, and uninterested in being prepared, for national office – a heartbeat away from being president. He explains why it matters:

I’m getting lots of emails telling me to move on. I will. But I want to explain why I think the Palin drama is actually important. It’s not because of her: she’s a delusional, narcissistic and disturbed person who would be voted off a reality show in the first rounds. It’s because of John McCain, the Republican establishment and the mainstream media. What happened last fall was a warning sign to all of us about how corrupt and cynical the GOP, McCain and the MSM are. They colluded in such a way that this unstable, erratic, know-nothing beauty queen could actually have been president of the United States. What matters is that all those in on this scam be exposed and their way of conducting themselves be reformed until they stop risking the fate of the country and the world on their own vanities and cowardice.

Matt Steinglass makes a good argument for blaming McCain for putting Palin in the potential position to be president:

He certainly has a substantial amount of charm and an instinct for playing the press, and he’s hardly the dumbest guy in the Senate. But he is not a responsible or serious person. And to a great degree, when he met Sarah Palin, he probably felt he was looking at a younger version of himself. Which is to say that the “rot” in the GOP, the eagerness to substitute celebrity and resentful pseudo-patriotic gibberish for real political discussion, goes back a lot longer than 8 years.

It is time to start preparing for the possibility of a serious flu pandemic during the coming winter flu season. Here is what the experts are thinking and worrying about:

“Hundreds of specialists from 40 countries meeting at a posh beach side resort in this tourist mecca were plotting strategies for what many dread could become an outbreak rivaling a 1918 flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

Health officials in the United States, Mexico and Canada fear that a strengthened virus will return north with the winter cold. And the United Kingdom’s health minister warned this week that the flu could strike as many as 100,000 Britons a day by the end of August.

“We need to plan for the most extreme scenarios as well as for the likely scenarios,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Influenza is perhaps the most unpredictable of infectious diseases.”

the experts

The freedoms that we celebrate on July 4th have taken on a new meaning for me this year, as we also celebrate the election of the first black president in American history. A friend of mine knew someone from Europe who said during the campaign that Americans would never elect a black man as president. Well, we did it! It is not an exaggeration to say that Barack Obama – and perhaps more importantly the American people – have renewed my faith in American freedoms and in America’s unique place in the world as a beacon of inspiration and renewal. For the July 4th celebration, I have put a new soundtrack into my last video about Obama’s campaign for president. Lyrics by Bob Dylan, music by Bruce Springsteen. You can see the video with the original soundtrack here.

-CDP

Obama is lending an ear to cleantech CEOs and investors. Keep talking.

-CDP

It is hard to see the recovery coming from this chart (see below). Will the Stimulus funds have an effect this summer?

Update: Paul Krugman calls for a second round of stimulus, warning that we could still be headed for another Depression. The states are about to swing the axe and make enormous budget cuts, which will mean even more job losses and less money flowing through the economy. A lost decade due to deflation is a real possibility. Krugman thinks it’s time for decisive action by President Obama:

All of this is depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.

So have we failed to learn from history, and are we, therefore, doomed to repeat it? Not necessarily — but it’s up to the president and his economic team to ensure that things are different this time. President Obama and his officials need to ramp up their efforts, starting with a plan to make the stimulus bigger.

-CDP

(Chart is from Calculated Risk, hat tip to Daily Dish)

James Fallows reports from the Aspen Ideas Festival:

On energy, a disturbing factlet. (And obviously not the only disturbing observation on the energy-and-climate front.) I heard three people separately observe that when it comes to future sources of “clean” energy, there is not a single field in which U.S. companies are the technical or market leaders. One person gave an informal ranking of the leaders this way:

Solar-powered electricity (ie, photo-voltaic systems): Norway, Japan, China
Solar-thermal systems (for heating water or buildings) Spain the leader in getting systems deployed
Wind power: Holland, Denmark, China
Geothermal power: nobody
Nuclear power (“clean” in the carbon-footprint sense): France, Japan
CCS, “Carbon capture and sequestration” (stripping out CO2 and burying it): Norway, Australia, Canada.