TWICE BITTEN
Now that some time has passed since the presidential inauguration, we thought we'd bring you what we found to be our favourite commentary on it.
Big Money but No Big Lines
On Obama’s Second Inauguration
There were no memorable lines in President Obama’s second inaugural address. Certainly nothing like Franklin Roosevelt’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” which was in his first inaugural, or like John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
But there was plenty he said that was troubling.
The problem mostly wasn’t what he said. It was how he said it, and what he left unsaid.
Take climate change.
The president acknowledged the problem, saying: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”
So far so good, but then he didn’t talk about any serious steps to do that, such as shutting down coal-fired generating plants and putting a stop to plans to import dirty, massively polluting and inefficient oil from Canadian and US tar-sands deposits. Instead he focussed on economic opportunities to be had if the US would start investing seriously in new energy technology. He did not take this unique opportunity to tell Americans honestly what the risks of inaction are: The extinction of half the species on the earth, including primary food sources that keep billions of us alive, and the risk of runaway warming that could raise the oceans by 16 to 60 feet. Instead he focussed parochially on storms and droughts and forest fires getting worse. This was a wasted leadership moment if there ever was one.
When JFK made his one inaugural address, the Cold War was at its height. He didn’t fudge the moment, and instead let Americans and the world know the gravity of the threat of mutual global nuclear annihilation by describing the situation thusly as “both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.”
President Obama had the chance to lay the current even worse crisis out with equal clarity. He blew it, instead portraying the climate change crisis as simply an opportunity for the US to gain or lose the leadership in a new technological marketplace. [It's going to take unprecedented large-scale disasters, such as floods, wildfires/drought, and storms before the corporatocracy will realise the graveness of the situation. Will it be too late?... We'll know within 20 years. eds]
On education, he also narrowly focussed on schools as job training centers, instead of as transmitters of culture, saying: “…a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.”
What about training our artists, dancers, poets, historians, writers, musicians and philosophers? Today, in school district after school district, art and music teachers, librarians and others are being laid off by financially struggling school districts. Where is the president’s leadership in trying to preserve real education in America?
The president was also disingenuous, and no more so than when he spoke of war. At a time when the US killing machine is still going full speed in Afghanistan, and when he himself is cranking up the use of armed attack drones in countries around the globe, the president, departing from his prepared text, said that the US was “ending ten years of war.” There was particularly loud applause at that line, but it is simply not true. Not only is the US negotiating to keep over 10,000 US troops indefinitely in Afghanistan, but it is expanding its drone and Special Forces attacks in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and elsewhere around the globe, while continuing to threaten Iran with an attack.
He also said, in his prepared remarks, “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” Yet he made no announcement of a plan to end Congress’s 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which over the past 12 years has turned the US into a police state, leading the federal courts to approve all manner of violations of the Bill of Rights and to grant the executive branch exceptional powers on the argument that the US is legally in a state of war and that the 50 states themselves are part of the battlefield.
The president seems content with this situation, which is by definition a “state of perpetual war.”
“We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law,” he said. And yet the rest of the world knows that America is violating the highest law, the UN Charter, with its drone attacks and its targeted killing programs, and by failing to prosecute those who authorized the illegal invasion of Iraq, the deliberate torture of captives in the Iraq and Afghan Wars. The president went on to say, “We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully – not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear,” and yet there are no negotiations to end the half century long embargo of Cuba, or to resolve disagreements with Iran. Nor is the president demanding that America’s client state, Israel, dependent as that country is on billions of dollars of US military aid every year, cease its military occupation and subjugation of Palestinians and negotiate an end to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Surely the most jarring disconnect, though, was the inaugural celebration itself. There is no reason why a Constitutionally-mandated ceremony has to be financed by private money, yet the president’s Inauguration Committee solicited and had, by this last weekend, accepted over $124.3 million in contributions from corporations and labor unions, according to the Center for Public Integrity. That dwarf’s the $50 million that was raised in private donations for the president’s first inauguration. It also came in much bigger amounts, as the president this year dropped a $50,000 maximum donation limit he had set for his first term Inaugural. This time the limit was set at $1 million.
The list of corporations and labor unions seeking to buy influence through this unique funding opportunity provided by the president includes Bank of America, Coca-Cola, FedEx, AT&T, the health care management firms DC Health Care Inc. and Cetene Management Corp., East Lake Management & Development Corp., Financial Innovations, Inc., the electric generating company Southern Company Services and Exxon/Mobil. Exxon alone gave $260,000 to the committee.
Unions that donated included the International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, American Federation of Government Employees, American Postal Workers Union, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, Laborers International Union of North America, Sheet Metal Workers International, United Food & Commercial Workers.
All these companies and unions are donating not out of some sense of civic duty but to in order to buy favors from the White House during the president’s second term.
These contributors–and especially the corporate ones, since at least the unions are representing large numbers of ordinary working people — make a joke out of the lines the President spoke when he said, “For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” and later, “You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.”...
Dave Lindors a founder of This Can’t Be Happening and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He lives in Philadelphia.
We're not too hopeful for any substantive changes toward relieving unemployment, reigning in corporate excesses, and protection of the environment (which of course fighting global warming is a primary component of) from the new administration. More people just need to become aware of our current situation by abandoning the corporate media, and finding alternative news/information sources, before significant changes can occur in this country, especially. Some of our favourites we provide links to here, that we've found to really be truthful and important.
MID-WINTER UPDATE
Now that we are in the peak of our winter here in South-Central Alaska, let's take a look at how it has transpired so far.
A very good climate data source for Alaska, comes from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks' Climate Research Center.
A very good climate data source for Alaska, comes from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks' Climate Research Center.
"The Alaska Climate Research Center is a research and service organization at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Our group conducts research focusing on Alaska and polar regions climatology and we archive climatological data for Alaska."
This is the plot of the daily high and low temperatures from the official Anchorage climate station at Ted Stevens International Airport; surrounded by the waters of the Knik and Turnagain arms of Cook Inlet on two sides. And is thus often 5-10C warmer in winter than the Chugach Front, especially on clear nights. Along with some plots (below) of precipitation, snowfall, and snowdepth. As you can see, overall South-Central Alaska had slightly to well-below average temperatures from mid-October, until early December. Along with unusually dry weather and scant snowfall, due to a cool, dry north to northeast flow that was often in place over the region, as a cold upper-level low pressure system was frequently in place over the mainland of Alaska and NW Canada.
But by early December, a pattern change occurred where the jet stream became more "progressive" over Alaska, so that upper-level high and low pressure systems began moving through more frequently. This has continued through the current time now, late January, and has brought several warm-ups above 0C to the region, one of which brought significant freezing rain and then rain, in mid-January. This episode in mid-January, caused by a "high-amplitude" southerly flow from the subtropics, brought very warm air northward, at one point rain was falling even as high as 1000-1500 metres in elevation in the Chugach. The snowpack was seriously diminished at this point, with many exposed slopes melting nearly completely. Well-below freezing temperatures after this then caused solid ice to form in what was left of the seriously degraded/ripened snowpacks. Coating much of the landscape in several cm of solid ice, which we had never seen to occur anywhere we have ever lived before (Interior AK, SE AK-the rain forest/maritime panhandle, Western Montana, Eastern, and Western Oregon).
Fortunately these appalling and dangerous conditions were mitigated shortly thereafter by somewhat cooler weather systems traversing the region from the south and southwest. The snowpack began re-building, and conditions became safer and more enjoyable for outdoor recreation. There was even a short cold-snap during the past week that brought the region it's coldest temperatures of the winter, for two days. This winter so far has been much more docile and uneventful for us here in South-Central Alaska than the last one.
http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2012/04/winter-of-our-content-south-central.html
Without any of the strong low-elevation wind-storms, such as we had in December 2011, and last September.
http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2012/09/williwaw-woes.html
For which we are thankful, and hope will continue.
Without any of the strong low-elevation wind-storms, such as we had in December 2011, and last September.
http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2012/09/williwaw-woes.html
For which we are thankful, and hope will continue.
It's one thing to look at graphs and numbers though, pictures of the actual conditions here in South-Central Alaska really help to fully illustrate the story.
Even before the big snowfall in early December, the colder than average conditions and a little bit of snow in the first two weeks of November kept the landscape looking fresh and wintery. Ice built up thickly, as here on the South Fork of Campbell Creek in early Dec.
The big warm-up with rain in mid-January was the most noteworthy and disturbing event of our winter. These numbers are from January at the Anchorage airport. DEP is departure from the long-term (30-year) average. Note 21-22 positive DEPs on the 13th and 14th, our abrupt warm-up and rain event.
DY MAX MIN AVG DEP HDD CDD WTR SNW DPTH
11 27 21 24 7 41 0 T T 9
12 39 24 32 15 33 0 T T 9
13 42 33 38 21 27 0 0.40 0.0 9
14 44 33 39 22 26 0 0.02 0.0 8
15 34 21 28 11 37 0 0.00 0.0 8
16 22 19 21 4 44 0 0.17 3.0 9
13 42 33 38 21 27 0 0.40 0.0 9
14 44 33 39 22 26 0 0.02 0.0 8
15 34 21 28 11 37 0 0.00 0.0 8
16 22 19 21 4 44 0 0.17 3.0 9
Here on the 14th of January, when the temperature was around 3C in the late afternoon, our snowpack was fully ripe, melted and slushy, and it was raining lightly. Our research assistant Kluane had to splash around in the North Fork of Campbell Creek to stay cool, in his thick winter coat, on one of our regular shorter hikes.
And you can see just how skimpy the snowpack became, even looking up toward the 1400-1600 metre elevations of the Chugach Front. This was on the Konoya Point trail, at around 500 metres, looking back in up the canyon of the North Fork of Campbell Creek.
Whilst the lower elevations became encased in a treacherous coating of solid ice, from the ripened snowpack and rain, which then re-froze.
When we get our warm weather systems moving up from the south, and southeast, usually it still stays below 0C above 800-1000 metres. And above these elevations, strong e-se winds whip and howl through the Chugach, blowing the snow around above treeline. We like to see this occasionally, it's quite dramatic, and although temperatures aren't much below freezing, when winds are 100 kph and greater at times, we have to really be careful.
A few days after the demoralising warm up/rain event, and even after a quick 4 cm shot of new snow, I took the APR staff classic cross-country skiing uphill for the first time this winter. Starting at around 400 metres off of the Powerline trail, temperatures had remained below 0C since the last little snowfall, and conditions were great. As we ascended though and reached elevations above the cooler air flowing over the "Bowl" from the north, it became very icy. As the snow above 600 metres had melted and re-froze, so it was hard and very icy/crusty. Very fast going uphill and on flat stretches. Mattie and Kluane were greatly enjoying their first good outing in some time. But I had to take off my skis on the descent and walk the steepest sections downhill. Snowplowing continually on the icy crust to remain in control, became quite painful over the incision area on my leg and down the front, where the metal plate was installed. We are hoping that will improve with time.
By the time of our assistant-editor Mattie's sixth birthday, on the 25th of this month, continued below-0C temperatures and occasional light snowfalls made for safe and enjoyable nordic skiing conditions. She's very happy I'm able to ski again, as now she can run more, yet still be right at my side. Whilst our research assistant Kluane circles ahead of us. Mattie has become our trusted and true wilderness guide and security chief. She learned from Homer, before he passed on, and now is fully at ease and aware of all our hazards.
She's even had four near-death experiences, somewhat similar to her lead editor, which is greatly endearing. Happy Birthday Mattie! And thank you for keeping us safe, and trying to teach our research Assistant Kluane (we do see signs he is maturing and have hopes he will grow into Mattie's level of wisdom and understanding).
Just before we had our two coldest days of this winter so far, on the 27th/28th, we had another nordic ski outing on the flatter trails right behind the CFRC, which Kluane was greatly enjoying. The new snow was deep enough now to provide an even more stable footing for skiing and walking (and biking) on top of the solid ice underneath. On this day, temperatures were around -10C, which was perfect.
Our coldest two days of the season were brought just a few days ago when an upper-level low pressure system developed over Interior Alaska, and very cold air flooded south across the Alaska Range, and over the Chugach, and through the lowlands. Making the snow dance on the higher ridges. We love these kind of days here, which seem to be coming less frequently now.
Temperatures at and around the CFRC here at the Chugach Front dropped to as low as -33C (-28F) at night, recovering only to about -21C by day (-6F). This made for some beautiful hoarfrost displays on the rapidly growing new ice on the N. Fork of Campbell Creek.
Which research assistant Kluane was surveying here, taking breaks occasionally.
So, as of the end of January, we've only endured one large warm-up with rain in South-Central Alaska, and no strong lower-elevation windstorms. And snowfall has been much less than average, but at least has been restored to good condition for winter recreation. We hope these relatively benign conditions will continue for the rest of the winter. Cheers.
