 On the north wall of my living room is a 37- by 58-inch map of the United States. It shows only landforms and drainage. It is beautifully executed.
There are no state boundaries on the map. There are no political divisions on the map of any kind, not even the names of states or cities or towns. There are just landforms — rivers, mountains, valleys, plateaus, lakes.
This map is all of us, commingled in our differences. But until November, we will be shown differing, even disturbing, realities in other media-manufactured and “Magic Wall” maps of the United States. Pundits and candidates will talk about red states and blue states and purple states — battleground states vs. safe states. And we’ll likely be shown maps with different shades of green.
Those green maps will show who’s spending what amounts of political money where. (For example, scroll down to this Washington Post map showing political ad spending by states. Some markets get plenty; many get bupkis.) But it’s not likely that we’ll be shown maps identifying the sources of that money — because, it seems, the Supreme Court of these United States says much of this money, given by the few, can be hidden from us, the many.
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 Breaking news re: the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed under cover of the New Year festivities in hopes that a hungover populace would maybe not notice. This might just put a wrinkle in the 2013 NDAA that goes up for a vote in the House today (Thursday, May 17, 2012).
“The government was given a number of opportunities at the hearing and in its briefs to state unambiguously that the type of expressive and associational activities engaged in by plaintiffs — or others — are not within Section 1021,” Forrest said. “It did not. This court therefore must credit the chilling impact on First Amendment rights as reasonable — and real.”
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 Here’s what I wrote last night:
On the other side of the fence, those of us who genuinely care about freedom and fairness are more outraged than ever. Outrage is motivating, and by the way, polls show that at least half of Americans support equality for LGBT citizens. It’s about six months until Election Day – how much mobilizing do you think we’re capable of?
Obama may or may not want the issue to go away, but from where I sit the religious right has today handed him a very large stick. Here’s hoping he has the courage and insight to use it on them. And let’s make sure that we, the people, make him embrace this, the most crucial civil rights issue of our generation.
Today, as if on cue, the president stepped up to the plate, big stick in hand. Full story »
Finally, erratic Obama wordsmiths have slogged their way to the ideal slogan: “Forward,” aptly safe and succinct and vacuous. What if it echoes MSNBC’s “Lean Forward,” itself no powerhouse of punch? Less is certainly more these days, and this president notches one more historic threshold: no other slogan since 1844 relies on only one word.
As Molly Ball of The Atlantic explained, slogans vary when focus shifts — from foreign policy to health care, now to the economy. But “nobody seems to know exactly what the message is, or what this campaign is about,” she opined, a main “part of the problem with Obama’s presidency. It’s sort of been all over the place.”
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So, it appears campaign season is under way in earnest. Mr. Obama officially kicked off the festivities in Virginia and Ohio yesterday, and we saw our first Mitt-scorcher on Denver TV a couple days ago. I’ve been thinking about the Obama administration’s performance to date for a few months, and perhaps now is as good a time as any to summarize what I think has been the dominant theme of his presidency.
My home state, North Carolina, has a wonderful motto: esse quam videri – to be, rather than to seem. Full story »
I take it back, conceding Karl Rove (a.k.a. Turd Blossom) must be smart. Full story »
What’s a vexed, reactive incumbent to do when his best-laid plans go awry, put upon by lying hordes after his job, then that pugnacious posse at the Supreme Court (SC)? Full story »
 I did, I did. I did saw a likeness.
So what hits the news last night?
Obama, Romney Say Admit Women to Augusta Golf Club
Oh, for crying out loud. I get that discrimination is bad. I get that discriminating against women is bad. But seriously? With all the discrimination running rampant across the country, from the endemic to the hyper-politicized, the President of the United States weighs in (by way of mouthpiece) on discrimination against a 1%er blue-chip CEO by an exclusive golf club. Okay, this is bad, too. On a list of bad things, maybe this is 49,518. Or lower.
Now I’m beginning to wonder just how many NASCAR owners the president is friends with. Full story »
 Here’s my personal top 5 reasons to vote “None of the above” this November:
1. Mitt Romney
2. Rick Santorum
3. New Gingrich
4. Ron Paul
5. Barack Obama
I feel this way because I am a far-left progressive liberal. If there’s a better term for my political position, I haven’t found it yet, but I keep looking. I’d say maybe “democratic socialist”, except I’d actually be willing to put my support behind a candidate willing to govern from a center-to-left-of-center position. Full story »
 What if disruptive fringes, propelled by delusions they “won” battles like the debt ceiling, figure the time was never better to smash through remaining 20th C. stop signs? Got a better explanation for the deluge of regressive throwbacks who defy learning from failure, whether non-trickle-down economics, less taxes mean more jobs, education by rote, morality from the Bronze age or heavy-handed militarism – now and forever? Full story »
 Last summer I did some thinking about Mr. Obama and the 2012 election. Specifically, would voting for him again be a good idea? I offered up several scenarios where I pondered ugly realities – long and short term – and concluded:
In the end, I don’t live in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida so my vote isn’t likely to count. In that case I’ll be safe enough casting a protest vote for whoever lands on the Green ticket. If it turns out that Colorado winds up as a battleground state in a tight election, then I have some hard-core soul-searching to do.
Ultimately, though, I can’t shake the feeling that something dramatic, something earth-shaking, something seismic aimed at the very heart of the system is going to be required to break the cycle of corruption and incompetence and butt-ignorance that shapes the course of American political and economic life.
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 In the brilliant movie Chinatown, the cornered, luckless hero (Gittes) demands the villain’s motivation:
Gittes: I just want to know what you’re worth. Over ten million?
Cross: Oh my, yes!
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?
Cross: The future, Mr. Gits – the future.
So drives today’s Republican providential villainy: at home, the conscious, cynical wholesale demolition of modern, secular, middle-class America – overseas, smashing medieval, non-Christian states that offend its entitled vision of the future. Sacrificing one White House race works if it sullies the waters of governance, seizes the Senate, and holds the House: onward rightwing soldiers marching off to ’14 and ’16 wars. Full story »
 Scene: Large Washington hotel room full of Democratic staffers.
Speaker: Savvy PR operative, speaking bluntly.
Message: People vote their prejudices, so public relations rule.
It’s remarkable how many of us harbor the myth that election engage core issues, policies, or programs – once call “content.” Dream on. Style wins elections, though curiously only one half of our political establishment honors this proposition. Simple question: why does Democratic publicity stink, outflanked, outpandered and outwitted by crude, Karl Rove-style schoolyard bullying? Name one snappy zinger from this White House that neutralized fake barrages from Birthers, racists, government-hating know-nothings spewing out “death panels,” or smears against a “food stamp president” with a “phony theology.” Full story »
Five months and five days after it killed a notorious American jihadist without due process of law, the Obama administration has offered an explanation of its actions in the death of al-Qaeda provocateur Anwar al-Awlaki.
 In September, a Hellfire missile fired from a drone aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency struck ground in Yemen. It killed not one but two American citizens. One was New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, 40; the other was Samir Khan, 25, who published media for Al Qaeda promoting terrorism. Al-Awlaki was the intended target; Khan, apparently, was just gravy.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday the government used a three-part test for determining the legality of killing an American citizen beyond immediate reach of U.S. courts. Reported the Associated Press:
[Holder] said the government must determine after careful review that the citizen poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the U.S., capture is not feasible and the killing would be consistent with laws of war.
After careful review? What constitutes review? Who determines how careful it is? Based on what legal standards? What policy underwrote the killing?
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 So, the Susan Komen Foundation has hired a big-hitter PR firm. And not just any PR firm, either.
Now, Komen is assessing the damage, and it’s using a consulting firm founded by two former Democratic strategists. Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), the firm Komen hired to help determine how badly the crisis hurt its reputation, is founded by former Democratic strategists Mark Penn and Doug Schoen.
The goal here seems obvious. Komen’s recent bout of ballistic podiatry cost it massive amounts of support among people who believe that women’s health shouldn’t be held captive to a reactionary, partisan social conservative agenda. The foundation has accurately understood that this means it needs people from the center and points left in order to thrive. Or, at this point, survive. So they go out and hire … Mark Penn.
Wait, what? Full story »
During their 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain both claimed the support of the people, citing evidence of small donors who gave to their campaigns. Both used that as a claim to be the true inheritors of the populist mantle.
We were so naive back then about purchasing power financing campaigns. How times have changed despite the continuing fiction of claims by candidates of “popular” support. Our small $201 checks no longer matter. Other people write bigger checks. Corporations can write indescribably large checks.
A report from the Campaign Finance Institute following the 2008 election refuted their claims. Looking at small donors (at least $201), mid-range donors ($201-$999) and large donors ($1,000 and up), the CFI concluded that nearly half of the 450 million donations to President Obama’s campaign committee came from the $1,000-and-up donors.
Both Obama’s and McCain’s campaign made use of bundlers (fundraisers who package checks from other donors), a practice perfected by President George W. Bush. Each raised tens of millions of dollars through the bundled checks of large donors.
Well, presidential candidates are populists no more. Super PACs, organizations freed by the Supreme Court to raise unlimited amounts of money for electioneering communications, have killed that lingering civics-class fantasy.
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[*B.S. means “Bad Science.” What did you think it meant?]
by Peter H. Gleick
Crossposted at Forbes and Huffington Post. To see S&R’s climate-related posts, click here
[Correction: Katharine Hayhoe was misidentified as a Republican in the original post at Forbes and HuffPo. This has been corrected below.
Peter Gleick updated the original posts at HuffPo and Forbes and removed Ben Webster from the Second Place text. S&R has updated this post to bring it in line with Gleick's update.]
The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now. Yet on the policy front, once again, national leaders did little to stem the growing emissions of greenhouse gases or to help societies prepare for increasingly severe consequences of climate changes, including rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea-levels, loss of snowpack and glaciers, disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and much more.
Why the failure to act? In part because climate change is a truly difficult challenge. But in part because of a concerted, well-funded, and aggressive anti-science campaign by climate change deniers and contrarians. Full story »
 Obama’s 2012 prospects: now for the bad news
John Cassidy, The New Yorker
December 30, 2011
“Consider yet another survey from Gallup, released on Thursday, which examined the ideological views of about a thousand people, who were roughly equally divided between Democrats, Republicans, and independents. (Actually, there were slightly more independents.) Despite this relatively even partisan split, forty-two per cent of the respondents described themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative.” Thirty-seven per cent described themselves as “moderate,” and just nineteen per cent described themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
If you think this sounds promising for the Republicans, I would agree with you, especially since fifty-seven per cent of the respondents described President Obama as “liberal” or “very liberal” and only twenty-three per cent described him as “moderate.” Full story »
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