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Listen (Or Right Click and “Save As” to Download)

                          

During the past month we northeastern media elites have learned a thing or two about the kind of wrath Mother Nature dishes out with regularity to the rest of our country, and to the world.

From the comfort of our modestly variable four seasons, we read about mudslides, and wildfires nursed by blazing temperatures;  about tornadoes that throw buildings around, and hurricanes that drown cities.  Internationally, we read about tsunamis and earthquakes that kill hundreds of thousands of strangers.  We sigh in sympathy, and we turn the page, to read on about droughts that bring farmers to their knees.

But few of us know any farmers, and, although we’ve donated to Katrina victims, few of us have invited any of them up north for an extended stay.  Nor were we able to take time out from our pressing engagements, like pitching reality shows and cajoling chirping superstars to record duets, to go down there and lend a hand rather than a tax deduction.

But with the snowstorms of the past month and the nor’easter this past weekend, we’ve had a taste of how tenuous the assumptions that lie at the foundation of our daily lives are.

Assumptions like the multiple ways we have of getting in touch with one another, and how alone and even helpless we feel when the cable feeding us our broadband, our telephone line, and our television signal go down.  Cell towers get knocked out by 70 mph wind gusts, and, my God, we can’t text.  Power’s out, and suburbanite upper-crusters, who think survivalists are contestants in some reality show, have not a clue what to do, except maybe find a relative who escaped the brunt of the storm and go crash at their place.

We learn that what we, just yesterday, considered our high tech birthright can be lost to the elements, disrupted by hackers, or frazzled by solar flares.

The grid we live in and on is way more fragile than we care to think about.  Yet thinking about our dependence on it is precisely the first step we’ve got to take, in order, if needs be, to cope without it.

                          

Jobs.  They ain’t comin’ back.  Summit all you want; they ain’t comin’ back.

Corporate America has learned to squeeze blood from a stone, getting stunningly large productivity increases from Americans desperate to keep the jobs they have.  Whether it’s GE or IBM or AOL, they’re not about to give back their profit margins with new hirings.

Construction jobs aren’t coming back; not with the excess dwelling and office capacity that currently exists.  And the only source of funding for new, future oriented industries like solar panel production is…..CHINA.  So unless the Chinese want to build more than a few isolated solar plants in this country, the displaced auto and construction workers, among others, have to hope for unemployment benefit extensions to keep food on their tables.

And the big O decides to commit money we don’t have, and blood we don’t need to spill, to a war in a country that isn’t a country at all, as far as its own inhabitants are concerned.  Aside from Kabul and the surrounding region, what we call Afghanistan is tribes and warlords spread out on a land mass whose borders are figments of our imagination, not their reality.

If O was as courageous as he is articulate, he’d take the advice of an enlightened and farsighted friend of mine who advocates mining on the moon as well as capturing and beaming solar energy to earth from space, and immediately make that the prime  military directive.  And instead of outsourcing work to Blackwater (now “Xe”) and Halliburton, let’s go to the UAW, get the names and numbers of laid off factory workers, and give them first dibs.

Now there’s a new national defense initiative.

Otherwise, count on 8+% unemployment as the new normal/best case scenario for at least a decade, and expect a bit of organized civil insurrection and/or individuals going postal with increasing frequency.

P.S.  Decreasing jobless claims and fewer monthly job losses aren’t a positive sign.  The only positive sign will be substantial hiring numbers.  The rest is spin meant to placate the populace.

                          

How quickly will we be lulled into a catatonic stupor by Saudi promises of increased oil output?

Now that we’ve alarmed their obscenely wealthy princes by cutting down on our consumption in the face of budget busting prices, are we going to stick our heads back in the Arabian sand and put our urgency to fund and implement alternative sources of energy on the back burner?

Are we going to drill closer to home instead of innovate? And if we’re going to pay the price of drilling, can we use an equal amount of currency to find a way to harness the energies of the sun, the seas, and the subterranean so that we’re not compromised politically and ethically by our need for fossil fuel from people who don’t much care for us?

Are we that easy to manipulate?

Are we as intellectually lazy as we’ve shown ourselves to be over the last 8 years, voting for a friendly fella whose idea of research in college was finding out which New Haven 7-Eleven carried Heineken by the case?

Are we ready to wake up?

                          

This is a sprawling town with a massive road system and trillions in infrastructure and gaudy real estate. Almost all, directly or indirectly, paid for with oil money. No wonder Cheney and company are crazed beyond a stalker’s obsession to preserve the fossil fuel economy. Their cold blinders of self interest, that make everyday greed look puny by comparison, leave them no choice but to maintain their Neanderthal like posture. And so it may be their turn to suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. Too bad they’re probably taking the rest of us with them.

On another note, if Hillary was a class act she would announce on Monday, one day before the PA primary, that she was withdrawing from the Democratic race. Take one part Nunn, one part Reich, a couple more superdelegates, and the writing is on the wall for all but the blind, and the Braille’s pretty clear too. So if she wants to take one last shot at appearing more public spirited than power hungry, Hillary could be queen for a day and maybe, just maybe, engender enough good feeling that, should Obie loose, she might get another shot at it in 2012 from Dems who are otherwise disgusted by her tactics and raw myopic ambition.

Outta here tomorrow morning to mingle with some disenfranchised Floridians.