National

This isn't getting much play in the media (naturally).

Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace prize winner and activist, has called for an international campaign to boycott mining companies, oil corporations and other businesses involved in the trade of fossil fuels. Writing exclusively in the Observer prior to this week's UN climate summit in New York, Tutu says the same approach that was taken by the 1980s anti-apartheid campaign, of which he was a leader, should now be adopted in the battle to halt global warming. "The most devastating effects of climate change – deadly storms, heat waves, droughts, rising food prices and the advent of climate refugees – are being visited on the world's poor," he states. "Those who have no involvement in creating the problem are the most affected, while those with the capacity to arrest the slide dither. Africans, who emit far less carbon than the people of any other continent, will pay the steepest price. It is a deep injustice."

When rounding up all the suspects who killed the "American Left" (or through inaction allowed it to die) you'd have to include American Christianity. This is from a piece at TPMCafe regarding the American Catholic Church, but it is true across denominations. American Christianity simply stopped being concerned with "the little guy" and started being about myopic self-righteousness or around January 20, 1981.

In less than two years, Pope Francis has changed the face of a two-thousand-year old institution. His emphasis on humility, mercy and social justice offer a vivid contrast to a vocal minority of U.S. Christian leaders who only see dark clouds and battles to fight. Think of it as the joy of the Gospel v. culture war Christianity fight. The latter is being kicked to the curb by a pope determined to rescue the church from self-righteous ideologues, princely clerics and conservative activists who think opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion are the only real litmus tests of authentic Catholicism.

In 1988 when Tom Carper was cruising to an easy victory over James P. Krapf he had already gotten a few pay bumps on his way to being a multimillionaire with a lifetime sinecure in the US Senate. During the same period (1988 to today), the income of the median U.S. household has remained just under $52,000. "Third Way" economics have been great for Carper - but terrible for the country. Tom Carper is an abject failure when considering what he's been able to deliver to his constituents. His "centrist" economic philosophies have been an unmitigated disaster for the people who keep returning him to Washington. I can only assume that the reason he keeps winning is that he has the good fortune to pitted against Republicans in elections.