Gillian Anderson, of X-Files fame, is raising funds for her Neurofibromatosis charity by auctioning off “doodles” from various actual celebrities, as well as some lesser-knowns like me. The full list is here; my contribution is here. Bid early and often, it’s for a good cause.

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The World at 350
A Last Chance for Civilization
By Bill McKibben

Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start — even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.

It’s not just the economy. We’ve gone through swoons before. It’s that gas at $4 a gallon means we’re running out, at least of the cheap stuff that built our sprawling society. It’s that when we try to turn corn into gas, it sends the price of a loaf of bread shooting upwards and starts food riots on three continents. It’s that everything is so inextricably tied together. It’s that, all of a sudden, those grim Club of Rome types who, way back in the 1970s, went on and on about the “limits to growth” suddenly seem… how best to put it, right.

All of a sudden it isn’t morning in America, it’s dusk on planet Earth.

There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

The rest.

The Penguin and Batman discuss the American electorate.

The latest Poor Man comix are especially funny.

Tuesday night, while John King was going all Minority Report on the big touchscreen electoral map, suddenly:

King just smoothly turned and talked to the camera while the thing rebooted. Looked like this has happened before more than once.

Full disclosure: I have a financial interest in Apple, a Microsoft competitor, obviously. But still. Reminded me of last year at the cricket world cup, when the stadium scoreboard decided that New Zealand batters 8 through 11 had scored a “floating point division by zero”:

Update: people who know more about this stuff than I do blame it on individual programs, not the Microsoft operating system. Fair enough. So the title of this post should be something more like “CNN Meets Software Written By Hired Professionals Writing Stuff That Is Supposed To Work With Microsoft, But Who, Despite Being Presumably Competent And Well-Paid Enough in Their Field To Be Hired by CNN and the International Cricket Council, Somehow Still Can’t Make the Stuff They Write For a Living in High-Profile Tasks For Near-Global Audiences Not Put Weird Things Up On the Screen, Which Microsoft’s Great Operating System Nonetheless Cannot Be Blamed For, Obviously.” I regret the error.

The news of Obama’s rock star visit to the House floor today, chatting up superdelegates, is bouncing around the blogosphere — but usually while overlooking this tidbit:

Clinton spent Wednesday in D.C. trying to lobby uncommitted House superdelegates, but she asked them to come to her… Obama showed up on their turf…

Even when reduced to begging, there’s still that same overbearing sense of entitlement that has crippled the Clinton campaign from day one.

Tuesday night in Indiana, Clinton insistently celebrated a narrow, short-term, meaningless victory, declaring it meant she was now “full speed” onward to her goal — precisely as everyone else was finally starting to see she can’t possibly win.

An overweening sense of personal entitlement… a prideful insistence on success in defiance of obvious facts… say, who does that remind us of?

And if that image offends her remaining dead-enders, let’s review: in the wake of 9-11, it wasn’t just George W. Bush telling the world “every nation has to be either with us or against us.” It was Hillary, as you can hear for yourself.

In October 2002, during the debate about giving Bush authorization to invade Iraq, it wasn’t just Dick Cheney telling the world in that Saddam Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda. It was Hillary, as you can read for yourself.

And in February 2005, it wasn’t just John McCain claiming that democracy was taking root in Iraq, and that the insurgency was in its last throes. It was Hillary, standing physically shoulder-to-shoulder with John McCain, as you can see for yourself.

Enough.

It’s September 12, 2001. You’re sitting in front of a TV, watching footage of the World Trade Center collapse over and over and over again.

All of a sudden, someone from seven years in the future walks out of a tiny temporal vortex, and tells you: George W. Bush is going to fuck this up so badly that in 2008, the United States of America will likely elect as president a black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim. Oh, and he also admits he’s used cocaine.

I think it would have been easier to convince me of the reality of time travel. “No, no, I believe you really are from the future. But the other stuff, that’s CRAZY.”

A new poll by International Communications Research found 68% of Americans want Congress to use the power of the purse to bring all troops home from Iraq within the next six months. This is up from 54% last September.

While this was paid for by Democrats.com, ICR is a straight and narrow polling company. These are valid results:

Should Congress:

Give President Bush 100 billion dollars to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the rest of 2008 and beyond
13.4%

Give President Bush 170 billion dollars to keep U.S. troops in Iraq in 2009 and beyond
9.8%

Give President Bush 50 billion dollars to bring U.S. troops safely home within 6 Months
16.8%

Require President Bush to use existing funds to bring U.S. troops safely home within 6 months
51.2%

Don’t know
5.8%

Refused to answer
3.0%

Starting this week, due to a slight rearrangement of my own work schedule, new cartoons will be posted on Salon on Tuesdays rather than Mondays.

Paul Rosenberg is writing a series at Open Left on the extremely important yet little-examined phenomenon of the creation of “shadow elites”:

While the notion of Fox News as “populist” is a ludicrous rightwing perversion in one sense, it is quite accurate in another sense we dare not ignore–and that is, quite simply, that it reflects the truest test of elite power–the ability to define the essential contours of populist thought, and to cast someone else as the dreaded “elite”.

This is a very old game, and it’s way past time we got a better handle on it.

That’s from Part I. There is also a Part II.

The only flaw is that Rosenberg fails to mention the real elites who control all unseen: The Rotarians.

Here’s “Jesus Made Me Puke” by Matt Taibbi, an excerpt from his new book The Great Derangement:

Fortenberry began to issue instructions. He told us that under no circumstances should we pray during the Deliverance.

“When the word of God is in your mouth,” he said, “the demons can’t come out of your body. You have to keep a path clear for the demon to come up through your throat. So under no circumstances pray to God. You can’t have God in your mouth. You can cough, you might even want to vomit, but don’t pray.”

The crowd nodded along solemnly. Fortenberry then explained that he was going to read from an extremely long list of demons and cast them out individually. As he did so, we were supposed to breathe out, keep our mouths open and let the demons out.

And he began…

“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of incest! In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of sexual abuse! In the name of Jesus…”

“In the name of Jesus,” continued Fortenberry, “I cast out the demon of astrology!”…

“In the name of Jesus Christ,” said Fortenberry, more loudly now, “I cast out the demon of lust!”…

“In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast out the demon of cancer!” said Fortenberry…

“In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of handwriting analysis!” shouted Fortenberry…

“In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I cast out the demon of the intellect!” Fortenberry continued. “In the name of Jesus, I cast out the demon of anal fissures!”

It’s things like this that make me convinced progressives, whoever we are, will ultimately lose and mankind will destroy itself.

That’s because incest, sexual abuse, astrology, lust, cancer, handwriting analysis, intellect, and anal fissures are genuine problems for people. Anyone who suffers from them naturally wants to know WHO’S RESPONSIBLE.

Bad political movements provide easy answers in the form of all-encompassing worldviews: it’s the demons, or the Joos, or the filthy Arabs, or the dirty Mexicans, or the capitalist swine, or Jane Fonda. (Or all of them working together.) Cast them out and all your problems will vanish.

By contrast, good political movements cannot provide easy answers, or in most cases any answers at all. What we think we can do is get us all $4 an hour more, plus health care and a little more control over our lives. What we can’t do is end human suffering.

Rationally speaking, this would be a giant improvement, particularly since the likely alternatives involve the deaths of billions. But irrationally speaking, we don’t want to just suffer less, we want to stop suffering. And this is something honest movements can’t offer.

That’s the problem. We’ll need to go to the barricades just to solve the problems that can be solved. But the larger problems will remain, and in the end, everyone will have to deal with them alone. It’s hard to get people to the barricades on this platform.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of a slight increase in pay
Plus a little bit less teasing for teenagers poor or gay
And a crappy little state for Palestinians someday
And that is all we’ve got
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
And that is all we’ve got