I had an email to day from Brian. The subject was Yes, California Matters. I agree with most of what he had to say.  In particular, there are a set of Congressional Races that are close and really need to have all of the support that they can get.  Durston, Brown, Cook and Leibham need all the help they can get.  

It has been a long time since the day I first suggested to Pete McCloskey that he take a look at CA-46.  I knew Pete has no love lost for Crazy Dana Rohrabacher. A lot of people have been involved since, but it was the right thing to do by someone who, as Robert Drake commented, put “his principles before his party.”  

I am beginning to wonder just how far that goes.  I will find out on Nov. 4.  As many of you know, I have blog called California Greening.  I share the writing with Alex Walker, a Green from Compton.  Alex has a post today about why he will not vote for any California Democrat this year.

My point is that the ongoing vilification of all things Republican, however much deserved, brings us to the point where a lot of excess and skulduggery is forgiven or ignored just because the person is not a Republican.  

Even Alex finds the Republican candidates to be laughable.  Which makes the failures of so many Democrats to be even more puzzling, because they don’t need to be that way to win election.

However, my litmus test for this will come on election day and I will be watching the results of the 2nd CD in Louisiana.  That is where Cold Cash Jefferson is in a runoff for the Democratic nomination with a special election to be held on December 6. The winner of that runoff will have to face Republican Joseph Cao and Green Malik Rahim. Rahim runs a non-profit in NOLA.  He kept it running, kept it with food and kept the lights on during Hurricane Katrina.  Now, his non-profit is another organization that is building or re-furbishing housing in the 9th Ward.

If Jefferson wins the primary, as I have an indication he might based solely on the race issue, then I will look for the creation of a Democrats for Rahim committee.  Anything less that that does not follow the lead of a Pete McCloskey.  I would follow McCloskey about anywhere.  I wouldn’t follow Jefferson to the door other than to make sure he closed it behind him.

Yes, California Matters.  But the only way that we will make it right is to be more like McCloskey and less like Don Perata.  

(cross posted from California Greening.)

A wide group of science advocates attempted to stage a presidential debate this week in Philadelphia. The subject would have been science and the manner by which science would be used to inform public policy in the administrations of a President Clinton, a President McCain or a President Obama. Since these three candidates for office would have had to deal with substantive matters, of course the all declined to participate.

One reaction ended up in the Wall Street Journal today, where I really did not expect it. The OpEd, penned by Nobel Laureates and Cal Tech faculty members David Baltimore and Ahmed Zewail. Baltimore is President Emeritus of Cal Tech.

Apparently the top contenders for our nation’s highest elective office have better things to do than explain to the public their views on securing America’s future.

Instead we have had we had Democrat Obama complaining about the lack of substance in the debate that did take place.  

Last night we set a new record. It took us 45 minutes . . . before we heard about health care. Forty-five minutes before we heard about Iraq. Forty-five minutes before we heard about jobs. That’s how Washington is.

I don’t feel any sympathy for Obama. He had a choice. He could have accepted a debate that would have been focused on substance and he chose not to participate. That’s how Washington is.

We are still waiting for the change that will happen.

When Laura Richardson won the CA-37 race last year, it gave her a real advantage to defend her seat this year.  That makes Peter Matthews continued opposition interesting and, even more to the point, opens the question of what Brezenoff is talking about in the LB Post.  

Though it seems like just yesterday that the 37th district Congressional seat was up for grabs (it was, in fact, just last summer) there’s a Congressional election going on again this year, and it will be decided not in November, but on June 3rd in the Democratic primary. The Republicans, knowing they have to marshal their resources in districts they might actually win, have fielded no candidate. Perennial libertarian gadfly Herb Peters has stayed out of the race, and my party, the Green Party, is focused on grassroots organizing and internal party matters. There are three candidates, and they are all Democrats.

Call it a snoozer; I call it an opportunity. We can elect a representative with passion, integrity, creativity, and intelligence.

Or we can vote for the status quo.

I recently began reading a blog called The Rehearsal Studio.  The blogger, Stephen Smoliar is a writer who uses the space to “exercise ideas before writing about them with greater discipline.”

Off and on I find Smoliar riffing on the theme of “slow journalism.”  The furor that swirled around the New Hampshire primary gives multiple examples of how the need to have immediate explanations, immediate responses to any little thing that happened greatly change the signal to noise ratio through out the media, and especially in the blogosphere.  

Phrases like Rush to Judgement and Echo Chamber provide Smoliar with headline phrases.

I think that I tend to agree that we are most often missing the long view of history when we are being told what think, how to intrpret each little event, when yesterday’s polls are old news because there is a new one today, never mind that polls can go horribly wrong.

This is a case where more is not necessarily better, or even good.  Is the trend to instant gratification, immediate news, live-blogging good for us? Is the facebook / my space social networking really beneficial for the discussion of ideas or is it just another example of the Balkanization of the internet, where people who already think alike amplify each other’s opinions rather than enter into a real discussion of ideas?

I tend to re-read those writers who provide the material for contemplation rather than just a few symbolic jabs to be repeated, varied, manipulated.

In an email to supporters this week, Pete McCloskey tried to close the book on the Revolt of the Elders.

Now Hastert is leaving, DeLay has left, Ney is in jail, Pombo has been dethroned by Jerry McNerney, and now Doolittle is leaving. The lesson (to be pondered by the new Democrat majority):  “Power indeed corrupts.”

I remember McCloskey’s commentary on those famous words from Lord Acton used above.  He wrote about visiting his Stanford Law School friend John Ehrlichman in prison and hearing Ehrlichman saying that “It took us three-and-a-half years to be corrupted by the power. …”

I already see signs that the flow of corrupting influences has begun to move.  K-Street is hiring Democrats.  Members of Congress resigned at the end of 2007 so that their time in the lobby penalty box is one year shorter.

Maybe, we need a people’s lobby.  There are some who claim that this resides on the internet.  Maybe so, maybe not.

The Green Party’s first Presidential Debate will be held tomorrow at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco.  Starting time is 2:00 PM. I have commented before, and Brian has put it in the upcoming events calendar.  So, below the fold, I will pass on key updates.  However, if you can not make the debate you will get a chance to listen afterwards on KPFA and possibly on Democracy Now.  

Since this debate was first announced, and posted here, there have been several changes:

• Georgia activist Elaine Brown has dropped out.
• The two candidates who had not confirmed previously (Texas GP CoChair Kat Swift and West Virginia business owner / film maker Jesse Johnson) have confirmed their attendance.
• KPFA will rebroadcast the debate between 7 and 10 PM on Jan. 15.
• Democracy Now is going to send a film crew to the theater.  I am not sure whether they will re-broadcast the entire thing or just give it the usual film clip coverage.

I am of the opinion that Nader will have to really ask for the support and offer some sense of being really interested in running “as a Green” if he expects to win the nomination.  You hear a lot of people bloviating about whether Nader “endorsed” Edwards or not. (I never thought he did.) But, just like all of the other candidates, he will be caught up in the pace at which this nomination process is unfolding. I already have my vote by mail ballot in hand.  It will take a strong showing by one of the other candidates to make me change my vote away from Kent Mesplay.

Thanks to Dave Roberts at Gristmill I learned today that there is an operating distributed power plant in Germany that could allow that country to go to 100% renewable energy by 2050.  The study / pilot project came out of the University of Kassel.  

The easiest way to understand what they are doing is to watch this short (7.24 min) film.

If you go back through all of the candidates energy plans and the talk in the ABC New Hampshire Debaste, all of them, Democratic or Republican, you have to conclude that they all have no faith in our industry; no faith in our technology; no faith in America.

Now, I find out that there is going to be Presidential Energy Summit with those same candidates held in Houston, TX on February 28th. Well, maybe a few will drop out by then.. Richardson???

Who sponsors this summit?  Shell Oil, Independent Petroleum Producers Association (lobby).  

What great energy plan will we see here?  Not much, I would bet.  The moderator will be Tim Russert and it will be broadcast on MSNBC.  Someone needs to get to Russert and make sure that he puts some pressure on all of them.

(Cross posted from Green Commons this AM)

I will go out on a limb and predict that Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination.  It is a big limb almost broken off from the weight of all of those who are on it.  Still, I have not yet heard anyone give the rationale that made up my mind on this  It is a matter of his choice of words.

If you listen to his speech in Des Moines when it had become clear that he had “won” the caucus selection there.  It was filled with the word “we.”

This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long – when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who’d never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so.

This was the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment.

Years from now, you’ll look back and you’ll say that this was the moment – this was the place – where America remembered what it means to hope.

If you listen to Hillary Clinton’s speeches, they are filled with the word “I”.  It is about what “I” have done or what “I” will do, always “for you” but it never it is never about “we”.

One time Republican spin meister, Frank Luntz, has a book out now with the title “Words that Work.”  He makes the point that “It’s not what you say. It’s what people hear.”  Luntz goes on to remind us just how he has been so successful.

Before you can create, and certainly before you judge, you have to listen to people and respect them for who they are and what they believe.  Just because you may not ultimately accept or endorse someone’s subjective perceptions is no excuse for refusing to acknowledge that they exist

At a point in time when the voters of this country doubt the sincerity of politicians, when we believe to the core of our being that all politics is corrupted by the power of corporate money, Obama’s inclusive “we” makes it clear that the power is now coming back to the people.  It is merely a rhetorical device, but one on which he can build a movement, pull in the people, get new voters to the polls.

Other candidates will ignore this to their peril. It is the reason that people flock to Obama and not to Edwards.  It is the reason that Hillary will lose, because, with Hillary it is never about ‘we’.  

The Green Party will hold a presidential debate in San Francisco on Jan. 13.  The announcement is today on the Alameda County Green Party web site as well as having been posted at Third Party Watch.  

Five of the seven (7) candidates who will appear on the Green Party primary ballot will be in attendance.  They are Jared Ball, Elaine Brown, Kent Mesplay, Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader.  The other two on the California ballot, Kat Swift (CoChair Texas Green Party) and Jesse Johnson (CoChair Mountain Party of West Virgina… affiliated with the Green Party) have been invited and either can not make it or have not yet confirmed.

According to the post at Third Party Watch:

California, which will likely control between 20 and 25 percent of the delegates at the national convention, is the big prize and the race to watch.

I am working with the event organizers to try and establish a live blogging feed from there as well as a live audio feed.   If nothing else, we will have someone blogging from there and posted to California Greening.