On another topic entirely, RealNews has this excellent video explaining the many ways in which "clean coal" is an utter fraud. If you are an American and a Democrat, could you please forward a copy of this to Barack Obama and BEG him to remove this nonsense from his energy platform? Thank you.
In the heat of the ObamaMania over at DailyKos comes this singularly beautiful post from a native Appalachian pleading with her fellow Democrats for understanding and inclusion for West Virginia and Kentucky. Some samples:
Is West Virginia Welcome in Your Democratic Party?
Over the last week or so, I've heard a lot of kossacks writing off West Virginia, making fun of West Virginia, and even saying West Virginia doesn't matter. Some have painted all of Appalachia as racist homophobes who will never change. Some even said that Obama is in mortal danger there. Some have suggested that we revert to Clinton-style "states that matter" campaigning, leaving West Virginia and Kentucky behind altogether.
Well, progress hasn't left us behind, and I hope that progressives won't either.
And...
I've seen a lot of frustration expressed lately about what many kossacks consider to be willfully ignorant people. Some of you believe that information is as readily available to everyone as it is to you. Some of you believe that the cost of accessing available information is the same for everyone as it is for you. I've even seen comments from people exclaiming, "But golly gee, everyone has access to the Intertoobs!" I guess some of you have never heard of the digital divide.
Not everyone has access to the Internet. There is a huge gap between the have and have-nots when it comes to Internet access, and the divide is down economic lines. I hate to point out the obvious, but Appalachia ain't exactly well-to-do.
Among those who have access to the Internet, there is also a skills divide. In order to use the Internet effectively, you must have not just a minimum level of technical competency but also a minimum level of information competency.
A person can learn to use a web browser and an email client and still not have the information competencies needed to obtain and process information from reliable sources on the Internet. This is why substantial numbers of people get most of their online political information from the chain emails that the rest of us filter into the Trash folder.
And...
These are not willfully ignorant people. These are hardworking Americans who are doing the best they can with the hand they were dealt. These are people who are proud to put a union bumper sticker on their car. They hear the word solidarity, and they think brotherhood, not commie bastard. These people bled for progress. If they are ignorant now, it's because we left them behind. If we believe in the 50 state strategy, then it's time for us to stop leaving these people behind.
Progress happens in the most unexpected places.
My best friend's little sister was the first person to "come out" at my hometown high school. Before her bravery, gay and lesbian kids were afraid to come out for fear of violence against them. I am so proud of her. She opened the door for so many other kids in that little Christian town. The same town that only started having proms in the 80s because dancing is a sin now has gay and lesbian students attending prom as same-sex couples. She and her high school sweetheart were the first. Against all odds, against everyone's best advice, she prevailed in our small-minded little town.
I can`t help thinking about my own attitudes towards Americans in general, and that the one quality I value the most is tolerance. As in not just `putting up with`, but as in `making an effort to understand their point of view even if I disagree, and try to inform and influence from a position of mutual respect`.
So while the ObamaManiacs are talking respectfully to the residents of Appalachia, they might want to point out that mountaintop coal removal is a largely automated process that is responsible for a sharp decline in coal mining jobs - not to mention the TOTAL ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION involved - and that Obama is the only one on record even coming close to opposing it.
Ok, so it`s too late for West Virginia. There`s still Kentucky.
Honestly, I didn't have any particular problem with Hillary Clinton at the beginning of this campaign, other than a sort of lingering doubt over whether she would prove to be as much of a disappointment as her husband. But she seemed smart and serious and tough and had a lot of great policies, so I would have been perfectly happy to see her become president.
In fact, in any other campaign her tone and her tap-dancing approach to awkward questions like the one about mountain-top removal would have just seemed like politics as usual. It's only when you hold her up next to Obama that the contrast becomes glaringly apparent.
"Strip-mining is an environmental disaster! ...We have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains."
See? How hard was that?
Now, Barack Obama is hardly the poster-boy for the environmental movement. His support of so-called "clean coal" technology, bio-diesel and ethanol is naive at best. At worst it may have something to do with his being from a state that produces large amounts of both coal and corn. However, there are signs that he is starting to educate himself and consequently modify his stance on some of his more controversial environmental platform positions. That in itself is pretty unusual for a politician.
Wow! That must have been really exciting and scary. Like something out of a Van Damme movie. Too bad we can't see... oh, wait... do we have... yes, we have video!
Cue the video, Hank.
Hillary must really hate Al Gore for inventing the internet.
And before you ask, yes, that was the only time Hillary ever landed by plane in Bosnia (as verified by her newly released schedules), and yes, that's her daughter Chelsea with her, and no, there was no "running with their heads down to get into the vehicles to get to their base" because the base was right there.
Again, in any other campaign this kind of blatant lie embellishment would be considered business as usual. But somehow Obama has changed all that. Our tolerance for bullshit has decreased. Our sensitivity to political obfuscation has increased. It's like that commercial where the picture looks normal until they peel back the haze and it all becomes so much brighter.
We're Claritin Clear!
Even the pundits have been inspired to pull their heads out of their asses once on a rare while, to step back and ask themselves "What the hell are we doing?!" Like this little exchange on CNN last week between Anderson Cooper, Carl Bernstein and Roland Martin:
BERNSTEIN: Obama has called for an elevated conversation about race. And what are we seeing here, is the bottom- of-the-barrel conversation, a talk show nation hysteria, picking words out.
We need to look at all of these candidates, including Hillary Clinton, including John McCain, in the context of their lives. And the remarks that they make need to be understood in the context of their lives. And the choices they have made in their lives about pastors, about marriages, all about -- every aspect of their lives need to be looked at in the totality.
And, as long as we keep pulling these threads out, we're not going to have any kind of meaningful debate in this campaign…
…COOPER: It's interesting, Roland, because these are not the kind of conversations that -- that television or radio programs -- well, maybe radio does it better -- but, in this heightened atmosphere, does very well, that this is the kind of -- I mean, it's a difficult conversation to have, and it's a very nuanced conversation to have. And we live in an environment which is all about sound bites and -- and people yelling on television.
MARTIN: Yes, but we -- but we don't have to do what they do.
We -- we can call for something different. You know, last year, Anderson, when I hosted three faith specials on CNN, it was amazing the number of people who said, thank you for having a real conversation about faith on television that just didn't deal with abortion and homosexuality.
We can do that. The question is, do we have the courage to do that?
Well no, of course they don't, because then they went right back to pulling threads. But still, how often do moments of clarity like that happen on the newsnets?
I don't know. Maybe I'm seeing a trend here that doesn't really exist. Maybe the small changes I'm noticing are only temporary, and once the real campaign starts it'll be back to business as usual. Probably.
I'll keep watching, though. You never know when some of this new clarity might stick.
_______________
UPDATE: Oh, I'm sorry. She didn't lie - she MISSPOKE. Wait... where else have I heard that word recently? Oh yeah, that's right.
And in other Clinton-related news, someone recently had the nerve to ask her what she thought of mountain-top removal coal mining, which I blogged about here. You'd think this would be a no-brainer given that a) it utterly destroys mountains, valleys, entire ecosystems, and the health and homes of any humans living anywhere nearby, and b) it is almost entirely automated, resulting in a 90% decrease in mining jobs in West Virginia.
I am concerned about it for all the reasons people state, but I think its a difficult question because of the conflict between the economic and environmental trade-off that you have here.
I'm not an expert. I don't know enough to have an independent opinion, but I sure would like people who could be objective, understanding both the economic necessities and environmental damage to come up with some approach that would enable us to retrieve the coal but would enable us to do it in a way that wouldn't damage the living standards and the other important qualities associated with people living both under the mountaintop and people who are along the streams.
You know, maybe there is a way to recover those mountaintops once they have been stripped of the coal. You know, I think we've got to look at this from a practical perspective.
Aside from once again demonstrating her mastery of the art of political equivocation, she is, in fact, LYING when she says she doesn't know enough about it to form an opinion. Hillary Clinton has sat in on Senate Committee hearings on mountaintop removal since 2002, so she knows damned well what is going on here.
I was thrilled yesterday when I saw the front page of the Toronto Star. Thrilled to see this issue finally rise above the fold in the mainstream media, but also nauseated as I always am when I see these pictures.
I first read about this brutally efficient method of coal mining last fall over at DailyKos, where a number of diarists have been slogging away at the issue for some time now, trying desperately to be heard above the din of the Democratic Primaries. This one in particular just took my breath away.
I think it hit me especially hard because I had just recently driven through a more northerly part of the Appalachian range in Pennsylvania, and was completely blown away by the beauty and peace and presence of these pristine green mountains. Rising serenely above the freeways and the drab grey industrial towns, they loomed impossibly high, covered in an unbroken blanket of trees. I have never seen the Rocky Mountains, but I cannot imagine them to be any more beautiful than these.
So it wasn't all that difficult for me to imagine what those mountains would look like stripped of their trees, slashed by access roads, with the top third of their height blasted away entirely.
Here in Ontario, where we call our electricity "hydro", we like to pretend that abominations like this have nothing to do with us. But the fact is that 20% of our electricity still comes from coal, and 40% of that coal comes from Appalachia. How much of that comes directly from mountain-top removal no one will say, although it is practised to one extent or another by just about every coal company in the region and is becoming more widespread every day.
Still, asking how much of our electricity comes from MTR coal is kind of like asking how much of your hamburger meat comes from human corpses.
