Frank & Ernest

Media (Not Enough) Blues

Pity the poor news media. For the past several years, major newspapers, magazines and TV networks have slowly but surely responded to what they must have thought was a major conservative shift in the country, as well as the legendary permanent Republican majority. They got rid of their less-than-conservative executives, editors, writers, columnists and replaced them with neocons, fundamentalists and right wing crazies. Now that their transformation of the media is just about complete, what happens but the American public ain't buying that crap anymore.

Fox News ratings are tanking, which is only the beginning. Really too bad for the newspapers especially, because it took them so long to divest themselves of journalistic standards to wallow in far right bilge, and now it will take years for them to shed these hapless pounds. If they ever can. News as entertainment has already limited the intelligence of the news media gene pool.

Meanwhile we can watch The Daily Show (which some study showed features as much news content as actual news programs) and Keith Olbermann. Maybe someday there will be a newspaper or magazine worth reading that isn't British.

The Wave of Democratic Progressive victories washes over the nation...  

so voters Wave goodbye to the Republican Congress, Rumsfeld, Pombo, Allen... 

The Wave

The dimensions of this, summarized by kos: We won, and won big. Not only did we take the Senate, take the House, and destroyed Republicans at the state legislative level, but we didn't lose a single senate seat, we didn't lose any House seats, we didn't lose any governorships, we didn't lose any state legislatures. It was a rout of epic proportions.

Kos is also trenchant on the Democrats' agenda, and shoots down the notion that the Democrats elected were conservatives. While some have different positions on social issues (most of which they'll never have to vote on), they are much more progressive and populist on economic issues, against the war and torture, and for constitutional rights. In other words, they aren't extreme right wing lunatics, like the ones who have been running the country. Matt Stoller has more specific details on Dem candidates--the more conservative tended to lose, while the more progressive won. Note especially the support for universal health care.

Georgia10 adds this: When you can't get an abortion ban passed in freakin' South Dakota, America isn't trending conservative. When you can't get a gay marriage ban passed in Arizona, America isn't trending conservative. When opposition to gay marriage bans was more than 40% in 5 of the 8 bans that passed, America isn't trending conservative. When a majority of Americans choose Democrats to represent them, America isn't trending conservative.

Apart from the governator, the Wave swept Democrats into state offices in California. Results on propositions are mixed, but the worst ones were defeated.

Think Progress outlines some of the "firsts" in this tidal wave: the first woman and first Italian American Speaker of the House, more women in the Senate than ever before, the first Muslim elected to Congress, three House committees with African-American chairs, and of course (though TP doesn't mention him) Senator Bernie Sanders, the first declare socialist, who is so down to earth that his socialism is not an issue in Vermont or probably anywhere else.

The first victim of the wave was Rumsfeld, who promptly quit as secretary of Defense. But Bush promptly appointed an insider cut from the same cloth, who may go along with a change in policy but is an interventionist and Republican loyalist deeply involved in Iran-Contra and past machinations that helped create enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere. It seems Bush really wanted to appoint Kissinger, but even the lame duck Senate might not confirm a zombie.

Stop The Insanity

Get rid of the Republican rubber stamp Congress that enables Bush's Iraq madness, that believes getting tough with terrorists means taking away fundamental American and human rights, that cuts taxes to enrich the superrich and impoverish everyone else, that hasn't done anything to address the Climate Crisis but deny it, or make America energy self-sufficient but finds the time to enrich a lot of crony corporations, from Exxon to Halliburton to Enron.

Get rid of this arrogant Republican Congress that has shirked its responsibilities of oversight--that spent all of 12 hours on finding out who was responsible for Abu Gharaib but these same Republicans spent more than 140 hours of hearings on investigating the Clinton Christmas card list.Get rid of this arrogant Republican Congress that has devastated this institution by refusing to listen to minority views, while it invites its favorite lobbyists to literally write the laws it passes.

Get rid of this dangerous Republican Congress that, together with President Bush, gave away nuclear secrets to terrorists and rogue states, while refusing to join the world in limiting nuclear proliferation.Stop Bush's power to intimidate his political adversaries, and his power to disrespect and disgust the world. In the eyes of many Bush has become one of the most dangerous men in the world--in England Bush is rated more dangerous than the president of North Korea. Stop the Torturers in Chief from destroying America's place in the world--from corrupting America's soul.

Get rid of this clueless Republican Congress that won't even raise the minimum wage, that does nothing about health care as businesses fail, families fall apart, individuals die.Send a message to those who support Bush's insane, tragic war in Iraq, who helped him lie his way into it, who together ignored the disaster they should have foreseen. Just as they ignored the lessons of a simulated hurricane in New Orleans, they utterly ignored the recently exposed results of a 1999 war game that predicted every awful consequence of the war they nevertheless arrogantly pursued. They have spilled our blood, spent our treasure, and they kill and maim the innocent and destroy another country, and they will keep doing it until we stop them.

And if you need more reason to dump the Republican 109th Congress, Think Progress has 109 more.Stop the death, stop the madness. Vote Democratic today. It won't solve everything, but it will slow this insanity down. This is for the future.

Fix It AND Stop It

This is what I've been afraid of. This is what I saw coming: A debate among climate change experts has some researchers now suggesting that we focus on limiting the damage done by climate change, rather than on passing laws intended to prevent global warming.

This piece by Kate Raiford chooses two advocates to represent these opposing views. On the Fix It side is Sterling Burnett, an environmental ethicist and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative nonprofit organization in Dallas dedicated to free market solutions. On the Stop It side is J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director at Fresh Energy in Minnesota.

Burnett says we should concentrate on efforts like building seawalls on threatened coasts and innoculating people in Africa who are in greater danger of malaria because of the spread of mosquitos in the regions getting hotter: that is on dealing with the consequences of the Climate Crisis, and even preparing for what effects we anticipate in the short term. Hamilton says that we must reduce greenhouse gases by 60% by 2050 to "protect against the most dangerous consequences" farther in the future, which according to scientists could include the end of civilization and a planet scoured of most life as we know it.

This is not an academic or even political argument (though it has elements of the latter), nor is it just a trumped up debate for the sake of a story. It is a battle for commitment, attention and resources, with the explicit premise--at least in Burnett--that there is only enough to do one or the other.

As consequences of the Climate Crisis become more obvious, more frequent and more serious (even when not everyone agrees to the causal link) the demand for action to respond to effects will grow. We are learning as we go, as we have already in the Californa heat wave of July and early August; there are problems (and solutions) few have anticipated.

The demands to concentrate on Fix It will grow louder. But can we really afford to concentrate only on that? Burnett argues additionally that we don't know enough about what might happen in the future to act now, especially on large scale changes such as dramatically scaling back greenhouse gases and switching to alternative energy.

Hamilton argues that we can't afford not to act to Stop It--stop the heating from reaching the tipping point of global catastrophe-- for scientists are telling us how horrendous the future is likely to be if we don't. Morever, by its very nature we must anticipate it, because the greenhouse gases we'll send into the atmosphere now and in the next decade will affect the climate years later. Once we find out the tipping point is passed and the accumulating climate changes are feeding on themselves, it will be too late to stop it.

Hamilton also maintains that action towards stopping it will improve the present: cleaner energy reduces dependence on foreign oil, reduces pollution and can help create a stronger economy and a healthier world.

Hamilton is right that many of the necessary steps to stop it in the long term will be of benefit in the short term. But those steps alone will not fix it. Wind turbines will not attack malaria; solar power doesn't help elders endangered by heat stroke.

Burnett is right that we have to pay attention to the effects of the Climate Crisis in the short term, in the now. But he is wrong that we would be wasting resources or taking an unnecessary risk by working to stop it. Both are necessary.

They are in fact equally necessary. But the reason I have been pounding on this theme of fix it and stop it is that very soon there is going to be a lot of pressure to fix it, and this is likely to be a right wing theme. Working to stop it has become identified as a left wing theme. Neither side so far embraces both, even though both are crucial. We must be here for each other now. And we must work and sacrifice for our children and grandchildren and the future.

The left so far is largely ignoring the fix it side. And they leave that issue to the right, which will sooner or later take it up, and run with it hard. Some will use it to end efforts to stop it. This is an early indication of that. But we can't let that happen. It is defeatist to say we don't have the resources to do both, before we've tried to do either. But we will certainly waste the precious resources of time and energy by getting into a political war about doing one and only one, take your pick.

We must work simultaneously to fix it AND stop it. Doing both is the test of our civilization. Even if we fail to see this we will surely fail as a civilization, and we will deserve to fail.

Climate Crisis Denial--Lucrative but Lonely

Climate Crisis denying is a lucrative job, but it's getting very lonely. In recent days, scientists who authored the two studies principally used by deniers to support their claims have written opeds saying the deniers are misusing and distorting their data, and that they fully accept the reality of global heating as caused mostly by our years of dispersing greenhouse gases.

One is in the New York Times today. Peter Doran is the coauthor of a 2002 study that found some cooling in Antarctica, which deniers Michael Crichton and Ann Coulter (among others) have cited as proof that heating isn't happening, or that scientists don't agree, or that scientists don't know what they're talking about.

Here's what Doran says...

Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals -- thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals -- all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?

Another scientist, whose data was misused by the Wall Street Journal and others, corrected the record in a Los Angeles Times oped reprinted here. This was a study of studies by Naomi Oreskes:

My study demonstrated that there is no significant disagreement within the scientific community that the Earth is warming and that human activities are the principal cause.

Papers that continue to rehash arguments that have already been addressed and questions that have already been answered will, of course, be rejected by scientific journals, and this explains my findings. Not a single paper in a large sample of peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 refuted the consensus position, summarized by the National Academy of Sciences, that "most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

Of actual deniers, one in Virginia, it was revealed today, is on the payroll of coal-burning utilities. A secret coal industry memo calling for more financing of deniers admits that most deniers, scientists or not, have "no involvement in climatology."

As is documented in An Inconvenient Truth, most climate crisis denying research was financed by the fossil fuel industry. And with another $10 billion+ in just the last reported three months soaked in by Exxon-Mobil alone, that financing is likely to grow. Considering all the available cash and the few folks with the credentials to claim it, if climate crisis denying were a stock, every broker in the world would be advising clients to buy it---a high growth opportunity. For as long as it lasts.

How Hot Is It?

Armageddon will start next week said the supermarket tabloid I passed at the checkout. Maybe I should have checked the date. What's going on in the Middle East looks like the start of it.

Meanwhile, most of the U.S. is gripped by the other apocalypse--just as this story asserted that this year so far has been the hottest in the U.S. ever, and it's not even August yet, most of the nation was broiling. Our little coastal strip is foggy but cool, so I wasn't that aware of the high heat elsewhere today, until I posted Climate Crisis "Fix It and Stop It" piece on the usual community blogs, and got some comments at dkos about how insanely hot it was today in the high Rockies and upper Michigan. Southern California is choking, and vast forest fires continue.

So I looked at the Weather Channel tonight for the first time in awhile, and saw a weather map that was solid red--all 80s, 90s and over 100 degree F highs in the east, midwest, south, southwest, west, north, everywhere but a few coastal strips. And the forecast for the coming week is equally brutal. DC over 100, and Detroit mighty close. Boston and New York, Pittsburgh and Philly in the upper 90s.

There is now ongoing drought, the above cited article says, in 45% of the US. And though 2006 may turn out to be the hottest year on record, it would only be beating out 2005.

So how is the Weather Channel, and hence the nation, handling this? They are now outfront about linking global heating to longer, hotter and more frequent heat waves, with thousands of deaths because of them. But that report comes and goes. While we're looking at the very red map (meaning all heat, though it does give a certain meaning to that other red signification on US maps), the weather man is cheerily advising ways to "beat the heat," like playing with water balloons.

After the forecast (cheerful delivery to horrendous information), we return to the ongoing taped dramas of super storms, the Weather Channel's equivalent of horror movies, or maybe reality shows.As bizarre as this schzoid imagery is, it looks familiar. Where have I seen this before?

Then it hits me--this is America in the 50s and 60s, coping with nuclear weapons that could obliterate life as we know it in a second. But the government assured us there was nothing to worry about, nuclear weapons were our friend, and so we were officially cheerful about them, while we were told to duck and cover. In the meantime, the movie theatres and drive-ins were showing horror films about radiation monsters and invaders from space with invincible heat-rays.

This is how we behave in the face of official denial. Our government won't admit or face the problem and so obviously is not going to do anything about it, so our only defense is to not think about it. Or we'd go crazy. Although in trying to pretend we aren't thinkng about it, and we don't know the government is failing us, we are going crazy anyway.

How hot is it? Our leaders have thrown enough money down the sinkhole of Iraqnam to stop the Climate Crisis in its tracks, and go a long way towards fixing the problems it is causing. They have thrown enough destruction into Iraqnam to destabilize the Middle East, and they've crippled our ability to deal with other countries, including those fighting there, and including allies elsewhere, so the American people can only watch as the world tears itself apart.

Any sane government would have a cabinet level Climate Crisis team working on fixing it and stopping it. But then, no sane government would have lied and blundered its way into the Iraqmire. Both failings are crippling the future, and making a lot of people suffer in the present.

So before you duck and cover, don't forget your water balloon.

Lack of Intelligence (Son of Iraq)

Sy Hersh in the New Yorker warns that the Bushites are still intent on the rockets red glaring in Iran, with signficant opposition from within the US military:

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

According to Hersh, these commanders point to a lack of reliable intelligence on possible targets. But there is also the lack of intelligence already displayed by Bushite leaders, who not only failed to heed warnings of their disastrous course in Iraq, but apparently failed to learn anything when those disasters happened.Hersh quotes a senior military planner: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides “really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary,” he said. Hersh adds: I was told, the current chairman [of Joint Chiefs], Marine General Peter Pace, has gone further in his advice to the White House by addressing the consequences of an attack on Iran. “Here’s the military telling the President what he can’t do politically”—raising concerns about rising oil prices, for example—the former senior intelligence official said. “The J.C.S. chairman going to the President with an economic argument—what’s going on here?”

These military sources have themselves learned something from Iraq, however. The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.

In essence, the generals and planners don't know enough about the targets or the military response. They see the likelihood of a wider war, with the US military already stretched thin. The economic and political repercussions they must factor in their planning include oil price rises and oil shortages, and condemnation by other nations, including current allies.

If there is any good news in this story, it's that the administration may no longer be considering using nuclear bombs in such an attack on Iran. But the situation remains dangerous on many levels. Apparently Las Vegas oddsmakers are pegging the chances of an attack on Iran this year (like for instance shortly before November elections) at fifty-fifty.

The No Rove Blues

Karl Rove's lawyer dashed visions of Karl Rove frog-marched into prison when he announced that he'd received a letter from prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stating that there were no plans to indict Rove.The responses on the lefty sites were varied. Some questioned whether Rove was "cooperating," maybe to get Cheney. Some dissed those who had reported that Rove would be indicted, and those who believed them. An Associated Press report suggested that while Rove was lying to the press and public, he was telling the truth to the FBI:" The decision not to charge Karl Rove shows there often are no consequences for misleading the public."

And some went after Fitzgerald, previously an unquestioned hero. Though Fitzgerald's office refused to confirm it had sent this letter, some of those who accepted his lawyer's veracity said Fitzgerald's decision didn't make sense. "Those of us who have dealt with Fitzgerald in Chicago know that he has been a political pawn of the Bush Administration since he was appointed," wrote Sheldon Drobny. He suggests the White House gave Libby up to limit the damage.

Frank Dwyer suggested the only reason so many believed Fitzgerald is an incorruptible hero who would bring Rove and others to justice was because they needed to believe somebody was going to save the country: "I suspect if you put your faith in Fitzgerald, you did it for the same reasons I did: because you wanted to, because you needed to.The point here (here and everywhere) is that no institutions in a democracy are safe if the party that holds power is ruthlessly determined to corrupt and subvert those institutions to keep that power, especially when the rest of us are too disorganized or demoralized or lazy or stupid or afraid to stop them.Our situation is very serious.

This country is in very great danger, more danger than it faced in 1861. (Even if it had split apart on Lincoln's watch, one part would still have been, potentially, honorable, good, just, faithful to the idea of the Constitution.)He calls for focus:We need to decide very specifically what we want and who can best lead us in achieving it; and then we need to fight as hard as we can one more time to persuade enough Americans to vote with us--against greed, meanness, and corruption; for the Constitution and the idea of democracy."

His hope, like that of others, is desperate. The only person he sees out there who can do this is Al Gore, and so far Gore is not running for anything. "We really shouldn't argue too much with each other: we need to unite and move quickly, boldly, the way we would if we were being attacked by an enemy from another planet--because, in a very real sense, we are. Make no mistake: it will be hard, even now, to defeat a party that believes it has a special dispensation from God to lie and cheat because God wants it to keep power. Losing to this party again is unthinkable--but it can't be. We have to think it, and let the thought of the meaning and consequences of that defeat inspire our greatest efforts. Otherwise, all we will be left with is a slim doomsday consolation: my apologies to the penguins and the polar bears, but an electorate so stupid as to be taken in again by these terminally greedy aliens among us will get what it deserves and deserve exactly what it gets. "

The worst thing about Rove not being indicted is that he'll be out there for the next election. He's already pumping up the Republican troops with his usual character assassination and bullshit rhetoric.But maybe it's good to realize just how hard it is going to be to reverse this flow, even with Bush bottoming out at 33% or so, and Democrats irrationally exuberant over their chances to retake Congress in November. Recent press treatment of moderate Democrats, let alone progressives, reverted to Clinton era form. They never gave Clinton a break, they hated Gore (and still do) and disdained Kerry. Here's Jonathan Schwartz on what we can expect from the trad media:

"Of all the things that drive me crazy about my progressive compatriots, it’s this belief that you can change the corporate media with accurate criticism of it. They believe at some point the people within the media will realize they’re wrong, and their behavior will improve.This is insane. The corporate media is the way it is because it exists to make as much money as possible. It doesn’t exist to give people an accurate picture of the world. It doesn’t exist to provide jobs for honest journalists. On rare occasions it will do both. But mostly it won’t, because the need to make as much money as possible usually conflicts with everything good.

Waiting for this to change is like waiting for Santa Claus to bring us presents. But Santa Claus won’t ever bring us presents, because THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS."

While we look for some space in that "usually," we also feel obligated to add AND NO SANITY CLAUSE EITHER.

Climate Crisis: Some Inconvenient Hunters

While oil companies pour millions into absurd ads singing the praises of carbon dioxide, and rabid right swiftboaters spread their usual false stories (claiming that Al Gore and others used five cars to travel a few blocks to a screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," when in fact they all walked), Gore's movie opens to widespread attention, which for the forces of darkness makes it an inconvenient hit.

But that's not all that's happening in the Climate Crisis. NOAA issued its official prediction for hurricane season: 13 to 16 named storms, with 4-6 hurricanes of level 3 or higher intensity. NOAA's predictions last year were way low. Ocean temperatures are warmer than normal, which feeds the storms. Other stories indicate New Orleans is in the crosshairs again this year, and though levees are repaired, there's not a lot of confidence they would hold under the stress of a major storm.

Longterm, the results of two new studies assert that global heating may be more intense than the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions--by as much as 78% higher. According to the BBC, the studies take into account various feedback mechanisms not measured in other studies.

And closer to the ground and to today, there's this story:

A recent nationwide survey shows that it's no longer just radical environmentalists who think global warming is real. About half of America's hunters and anglers -- including many who said they voted for President Bush in 2004 -- told pollsters they are witnessing firsthand, in the outdoors, the effects of some form of climate change, according to the results of a nationwide survey of sportsmen released Tuesday by the National Wildlife Federation, an environmental group based in Washington, D.C.The sportsmen are seeing climate change in the form of lakes that no longer freeze over for ice fishing in the winter, fall-hunting seasons without enough snow to track deer and other drastic environmental changes they consider a threat to wildlife, the group says.Of those who say they have seen such changes, the majority attribute those changes to global warming, and many go a step further to blame the burning of fossil fuels as the cause of the warming.

Creating Dictatorship

It's easier and quieter than you think. Bush has gone pretty far towards this goal, if it is his goal, by simply asserting he has total power: to imprison without charges or trial, to spy on Americans without showing cause, to make secrets, reveal secrets and prosecute others who reveal secrets according to how he wants to; to say which laws he will follow and which he will not. He's defending torture, trying to expand his power, and threatening the press with prosecutions for reporting his secret excesses. His popularity may have tanked, close to 3/4 of Independents now disapprove of his administration, but nobody is even trying to stop him, and the idea that he is paralyzed by bad poll numbers is disingenuous.

Now he wants to appoint an Air Force General to head the CIA. He's getting some opposition, but word is he's announcing the appointment anyway. For awhile it seemed to some that the military would be the countervailing force against Bush's imperial excesses abroad, like nuking Iran. But the military is also a potent tool which the Bushites may want to use. Bush has announced military takeover as his solution for emergencies like Katrina and a bird flu epidemic. Control of the military, and control by the military, is essential to a dictatorship.

Plus his apparent choice to head the previously civilian intelligence agency is a General of the Air Force. The Air Force is the service that will get to drop their favorite bombs if he orders action against Iran. In Seymour Hersh's article revealing the Iran plans, several high ranking military leaders were said to be appalled, but he could quote some in support--from the Air Force. And those dissident retired Generals who made so much noise? How many were Air Force? I don't recall one. The Army and Marines are bearing the brunt of Iraq, the Navy will take the brunt of an Iran counterattack, but the Air Force gets to shock and awe.

But fascism doesn't depend entirely on dramatic action in Washington. It can be promoted with budgets and expectations. Why do you think FBI and other government agents spy on meetings of Quakers in Florida--because they really believe they are dangerous terrorists? Probably some do, but probably some local directors needs to generate reports and paperwork to justify salaries and operations.

Besides the NSA wiretapping and FBI spying revealed months ago, we are also seeing an increase in local police monitoring and strong-arm tactics against lawful groups and individuals, including bands of dangerous vegans. The atmosphere for this is created in Washington, but it is also financed and promoted there actively. If you know anything about how people operate when they are dependent on grants and allocations from government, you know that they do what they can get the money to do. If that's survelliance and riot equipment, they get and use survelliance and riot equipment; if money comes to support people doing those things, then those are the things that get done. And when there's a benign demonstration in your precinct, you still have to get out the helicopters and the riot gear, just so you can say you did. But you may need a few arrests as well.

As DarkSyde at Dkos points out, we're spending a trillion dollars on an unnecessary and largely immoral war in Iraq. If we had spent a trillion dollars on alternative clean energy, do you think we'd be up against it because of gasoline prices, and faceing global disasters and the distinct possibility of future wars and devastation because of the Climate Crisis? We'd have enough left over to install a decent health care system, so many of us wouldn't face the distinct possibility of dying because we can't pay for medical care, and a public health system so we wouldn't be talking about turning over the country to martial law and a military dictatorship in event of a serious epidemic.

Fascism may be coming in on little cat's feet, but by the time soldiers are in charge of American streets, it will be too late to rescue freedom. It will just be a sign that the rest of the pieces are in place--electronic survelliance, economic control, a subjugated internet, the already corrupted press, a powerless Congress and compliant judiciary. And some emergency to clean house of the remaining dissidents. It can't happen here? I'm telling you my dear, that it can.

Senate to Citizens: You're On Your Own

If the US Senate has expertise on anything, it's wind. And a Senate committee picked a curious time to issue its windy report on federal preparations for hurricane season: it says that FEMA is useless and should be abolished, Homeland Security is helpless, but unfortunately, with the start of hurricane season weeks away, nothing will be done about it.

According to the AP, The bipartisan investigation into one of the worst natural disasters in the nation's history singled out President Bush' and the White House as appearing indifferent to the devastation until two days after the storm hit. It said the Homeland Security Department either misunderstood federal disaster plans or refused to follow them.

The report had nothing good to say about state or local governments either. Its chief recommendation was to get rid of FEMA completely, and start a new agency with a brand new acronym. That ought to do it.

But even acronyms take time. All that printing. Also structuring the department so it has the power to do what FEMA used to do, before it became the stepchild of Homeland Security. The new acronym would also be under Homeland Security, but it would be, well, different. The acronym, for example.

For better or worse, there's no chance of any of this getting done by the time the other big wind---the one that causes hurricanes--begins this year. So it seems that all the Senate has done is to tell folks down in the hurricane zone that it's officially time to panic.

Bush Planning Nuclear War, Soon

The initial reaction to the New Yorker report by Sy Hersh has caused officials to claim that an attack on Iran is not imminent. Britian's Jack Straw has called the idea "nuts," and something that he is sure the U.S. is not seriously contemplating. Presumably he believes that Bush and his Bushites are not nuts, which is a vote of confidence experience does not encourage.

The story therefore still stands: Sy Hersh, whose reporting on Iraq and torture in the New Yorker has been unfailingly accurate, writes the ultimate horror story: Bush is planning to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

Bush's latest delusion is that an all-out attack on potential nuclear, chemical and other industrial facilities as well as military targets will humiliate the rulers and force regime change in Iran. Once again, the good guys will "rise up" and take over. Because Iran is believed to have underground "hard" development and command sites, Bushites are pushing for the use of nuclear weapons. Hersh:

He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

There is no political opposition within Congress so far, he writes:

The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Hersh does hold out the hope that there is sufficient resistance within the military--the Joint Chiefs in particular--to forestall the use of nuclear weapons, but the planning for an all-out sustained and devastating bombing attack, as well as the use of U.S. Special Forces troops, is at an advanced stage and proceeding quickly, Hersh writes.

His story mentions some of the political dangers in the region, especially the rise of even more terrorism as chaos ensues. Beyond what he writes, we can imagine the danger to Americans in Iraq of any such attack, and the immediate economic shock of fantastically higher oil prices. If the U.S. uses nukes it will be an outcast in the world. We can expect immediate cessation of any oil from countries like Venezuela. We can expect to be marked throughout the world and throughout history with the highest shame visited on any people, at least since Nazi Germany.

We have madmen with the fingers on the trigger. Let's hope there is enough time and enough will to stop them. If you have never raised your voice before, now is the time. Get the attention of your members of Congress and demand they demand Bush renounce the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and enforce this with reasserting the role of Congress in authorizing any preemptive attacks.

Libby's Strained Pleas Turn Deadly?

It's not the smoking gun. But is it a mushroom cloud? Or just some Libby's mushroom soup?

At first Scooter Libby contended he was way too busy to remember who told who what about secret CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, or anything to do with her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, and his confirmation that Saddam wasn't buying uraninum to make nukes. But Libby's strained pleas went nowhere. In a court filing yesterday, he came up with a new one: Bush made me do it.

Sorting out the significance or even the meaning of Scooter Libby's allegation that Cheney told him that Bush told him to reveal classified information from CIA asssessments to the press (Judy Miller at the NYTimes) is just getting started. But on its first day it was played in the establishment media as the biggest challenge to the Bush administration so far.

The emphasis is on the selective leaking of only the part of the intelligence analysis that supported the Bushwar in Iraq, not the doubts that would have tempered an executive who hadn't already decided to invade, and was only looking for p.r. to silence actual or potential opposition. We've learned recently that Karl Rove was concerned about it in 2003 and 2004, specifically because it could hurt Bush's re-election.

This information in general has been available for awhile. Anyone who watched Bill Moyers on PBS in 2004 and probably before, for example, would know most of this already: that the most knowledgeable experts within State and Energy didn't believe the Saddam is going nuclear story. What's new recently is the proof that Bush himself was presented with these conflicting views, in a form that even he could be expected to understand: a one page memo. And what's new in this story is that these leaks Judy Miller of the NY Times used to write her stories supporting the Bushite view came to her from Libby as directed by Cheney, who claimed they were authorized by Bush.

Therefore Bush is exposed as not telling the truth about what his government knew and didn't know, believed and didn't believe, about Iraq. While this is hardly news to some of us, it is apparently news to the TV bobbleheads and solid enough for major news media to play it as news.

Some stories are claiming that, if true, what Bush did is not illegal because the President does have the power to declassify. But is this the same thing? One of the statements on this that I did understand was by Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Dem on the House Intelligence Committee:

"The President has the legal authority to declassify information, but there are normal channels for doing so. Telling an aide to leak classified information to the New York Times is not a normal channel. A normal declassification procedure would involve going back to the originating agency, such as the CIA, and then putting out a public, declassified version of the document.

"I am stunned that the President won't tell the full the Intelligence Committee about the NSA program because he's allegedly concerned about leaks, when it turns out that he is the Leaker-in-Chief."

There are all kinds of possibilities opened up by this revelation, and it may yet pit Cheney's people against Bush's people. But apropos of a previous post, the press had not a single question on this topic for the White House in the morning press briefing after the story broke. Not one.

In the meantime, Senator John Kerry has called for the U.S. to withdraw troops beginning next month if the Iraqis don't form a government by then, and by the end of the year even if they do. He had a rhetorical battle on the Senate floor over it.

Iraq continues to disintegrate in violence and chaos. The Bushites claim more and more "authority" for their authoritarian wannabe dictatorship on domestic spying, and reports continue to say that the Bushites are preparing to attack Iran. Why? Because they are going nuclear. Or so the Bushites say. Experts estimate that Iran is from 5 to 10 years away from any nuclear weapons. But then, in the fine print, the experts were saying that about Iraq as well, even if Saddam had the nuclear program they said he did, but which he didn't.

Bushites Discover What's Wrong with Climate

The Washington Post finds further evidence that the Bushites have systematically interfered with scientists paid by the public from announcing any findings that might contradict their faith-based disbelief in global heating. It extends way past NASA (and climate expert James Hanson) to the weather people---you know, the ones who supposedly believe that the increased ferocity of hurricanes has nothing to do with global heating--at NOAA. As well as other agencies where keeping an eye on climate is part of their job.

Apparently what they couldn't forbid or suppress, they censored. Both happened to this guy:

Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' "

They purged key words all right. But what did they put in their place, I wondered, so the release made some sort of sense, and didn't look like one of those Freedom of Information Act FBI files with every word blacked out except "the" and "a"?

Of course I realized the obvious answer. In place of "global warming" or "climate change," the Bushites would substitute "liberal." As in "Sea level may rise 20 feet, due to liberals." Or "The consensus of scientists now is that liberals are real, the unfortunate byproduct of human activity." Or "If left unchecked, liberals may threaten life as we know it on planet Earth."

The creative Bushite censor might vary the pattern with the occasional "Democrat" or "secular humanist," or take a foreign policy approach and use "evildoers" and "terrorists." In this way, Bushites can show they support science, as long as it is politics-based.

OCEANS RISING FAST

was the headline yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Glaciers and ice sheets on opposite ends of the Earth are melting faster than previously thought and could cause sea levels around the world to rise as much as 13 to 20 feet by the end of the century, scientists are reporting today. If the researchers' estimates are correct, a rise in ocean waters projected by the new studies not only would drown many of the low-lying inhabited atolls and islands that are already endangered by rising ocean waters, it also would threaten coastal cities and harbors on every continent.

Scientists have been warning for decades that greenhouse gases from autos and industry are warming the planet and raising the seas, but the studies appearing today in the journal Science are the first to suggest that sea levels could climb as high as 20 feet as a result of global warming. The studies by two teams of researchers are the first to combine data on long-term climate change and sea ice melting from both the north and south polar regions.

Are we living in a science fiction movie? Because it's this kind of headline that the camera fixes on, with dramatic music underneath. Yet this is a real one.

We know we're not living in a science fiction movie because the next scene would have all the world leaders gathered to decide what to do about this crisis. When in the real world they are much more level-headed. Well, level-headed on the greens. On the fairways they bend a little, as their foursome of lobbyists and corporate racketeers chuckles about Miami disappearing under the waves in a few decades. But Jeb will be out of office down there by then, so who cares...

Meanwhile those dizzy scientists, unaware that they are tools of green nazis and the liberal media conspiracy, are saying in relatively plain English:

"This is a real eye-opener set of results," said geoscientist Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, who led one of two teams of university and government climatologists. "We need to start serious measures to reduce greenhouse gases within the next decade, (and) if we don't do something soon, we're committed to 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet) of sea level rise in the future."

The premier climate scientist in the world, NASA's James Hansen's reaction:"The further implication is that we have to get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions now, not wait 15 years until some magic new technology is available."

Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton geoscientist and member of the university's Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program, agreed with Hansen. "These are important papers," he said in an interview, "because they provide new insights into the effects of temperature change on melting ice at both poles. They show how even modest increases in global temperatures could put the Earth in a dangerous spot. We don't have to know for sure how fast the glaciers and polar ice sheets would disappear to realize that this is a serious warning, and by the end of this century we could be locked into an irreversible trend that no technology could reverse."

The conclusions of these scientists came after studies involving several methods of discerning temperatures in the past. The advanced state of glacier melt is confirmed by satellite imagery, the Chronicle story says. The New York Times adds that observation of the glaciers themselves indicates that ice is breaking apart in warming periods, evidence that the process is underway sooner than expected.

"Models are important, but measurements tell the real story," Dr. Zwally said. "During the last 10 years, we have seen only about 10 percent of the greenhouse warming expected during the next 100 years, but already the polar ice sheets are responding in ways we didn't even know about only a few years ago."

But of course these are all delusional radical Muslim Frenchmen who hate our freedom. For the truth on the climate crisis, best check out the sites where rabid right plagarists foam at the mouth on command.But for the sane among us, what does this all mean? This is just--if you pardon the expression---the tip of the iceberg.

This is the interface of the ongoing Climate Crisis we face now with the Earth=Mars doomsday scenario we begin to enter if we don't pay attention and change our ways. From last year to the end of the century, no matter what we do to limit greenhouse gases, we will face Climate Crisis problems. We can ignore them, as we apparently are currently ignoring the prospect of another devastating hurricane season. Or we can deal with them one by one, as if they aren't related, which means we won't anticipate them well enough or in enough time to apply resources most efficiently or even prevent some problems (by protecting cities against sea surges, for instance), or to prepare for them far enough in advance. Only when you see the pattern can you develop a real strategy.

Or we can get over ourselves, stop this immense waste of time and energy, acknowledge the reality of global heating and the Climate Crisis, and do what even those cheap 1950s science fiction films do---get serious about what we can get together and do about it. First, to deal with the problems that could happen because of the heating that is going to happen (caused by greenhouse gases in the past decades), and then significantly lessen the heating we're now creating and will create in the next decade, so that by the end of the century, we might still have coastal cities and a few fellow species to rebuild the planet with.

If you want to get more specific on global heating, what its effects are likely to be and what some "solutions" being researched look like, you can go to this page, where you'll also find more before and after glacier photos.

Why Are We in Iraq?

The topic of "why are we in Vietnam?" was so persistently examined in the 60s that Norman Mailer used it as the title of a novel. It's somewhat different these days---the question isn't so obsessive, but then this period does often seem anesthetized if not lobotomated. But those who do ask come up with a variety of answers: oil, G.W.'s Revenge (either on behalf of Daddy, or on Daddy), the neocon strategy for world domination, oil, the permanent war economy, Iraq as the permanent military base to replace Saudi Arabia, oil, etc.

They are probably all true in some measure, and others besides.But here's a response I haven't heard before, that tends to explain the virulence of the Bushite post-9-11 complex of war, torture, imperial disregard for law and civil liberties, the whole hog of excess.It's in a discussion Tom Englehart has with journalist Mark Danner at Salon. Danner apologizes for engaging in speculative psychologizing, but even with his embarrassment, I think he's on to something:

The central question here is: Why did we have the kind of response we did after 9/11? The Bush administration, which professed itself so strong on national security, had let the United States suffer the most catastrophic attack on its territory in history. We have to remind ourselves of the effect of this. Remember, their major security programs were the Strategic Defense Initiative and confronting China. They thought that terrorism, which they didn't care about, was a matter for sissies. Like humanitarian intervention, the threat posed by non-state actors -- and many other concerns of the previous administration -- all this stuff was, as they saw it, a kid's view of national security, so they ignored it. And afterward they knew very well that reports existed showing how they had ignored it, most notably the PDB [Presidential Daily Briefing] that was famously titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." This was a very human thing. Having proclaimed how strong they were on national security, they were attacked. I think that accounted, to some degree, for the ferocity of the counterattack. You don't need to get too deep to see that. When you look at this idea of the gloves coming off, the implication is very much exculpatory. They're saying, in effect: Before the gloves were on, so we weren't able to detect and prevent this attack. "

So Danner is saying two interesting things here: first, the ferocity of the Bushite response was proportionate to their extreme shame of having left the country unprotected for 9-11, and second, that their insistence on torture and wiretapping is a way of telling everyone, including themselves, that the reason they didn't see the terrorist threat was because they weren't torturing and wiretapping back then, not because they simply weren't paying attention.Not paying attention is something this administration does very well. Maybe the only thing.

And in case you weren't paying attention yesterday, The Big Smirk has gone below the one-third of the approving electorate that was his rock solid rock bottom, in one poll. In all the others he doesn't get higher than 38%. He's lost Independents and now the Republicans who were along for the ride.

The Democrats' 9-11

If the 2006 elections were held in March or April instead of November, just about all any Democrat would have to do to win would be to buy 15 seconds of TV time and mutter three words--Iraq, Dubai, Katrina--then go home and plan the victory party.

But the election isn't till November, and the issue with the greatest staying power and most potential isn't either of the obvious ones: it's Katrina. It's the Democrats' 9-11.

Bushites have made shameless and effective political use of 9-11. But Democrats have not effectively focused on an equally powerful phenomenon, with its equally powerful associated images, that is ready-made to tell the tawdry story of Bush administration failure. The Democrats have Katrina. And it's about time they used it.

The issue is ready-made because it remains powerful in the public mind, even with the extreme fall-off in coverage of the affected region, and the Democrats' failure to concentrate on it. Just in the past week or so:

An Ipsos poll conducted for Associated Press shows Americans choose spending on Katrina over spending on Iraq as the country's highest priority by a margin of 2 to 1:64% to 31%. Nearly 90% believe that the affected area is still devastated. More than half are not confident that the federal government can handle a similiar disaster in the future.

A WNBC poll conducted by Marist College says :Among the many controversies surrounding the Bush Administration, its response to Hurricane Katrina is most troubling to voters. 66% of registered voters nationwide are bothered a great deal or a good amount by the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Although Democrats are most critical, 64% of independents and 42% of Republicans are bothered by how the administration handled the disaster.

(Hat tip to Political Wire which reported both polls.)

Katrina is the narrative that tells all the stories about Bushcorps that Democrats need to tell. Inattention and inaction when Americans were in trouble and needed their federal government. Disrespect for working people, the poor and people of color, which can be further illustrated through many other policies and failures. Failure of leadership, and failure of character. An aftermath studded with scapegoating and more evidence of the Culture of Corruption in the awarding of no-bid contracts to cronies. Wasting taxpayers' money on these contracts with companies which demonstrably fail to do the job.

Even the Bush administration admits that its response was too little and too late. But what is their solution? Its Homeland Security office issued a report recommending the full militarization of disaster response. Such a response leads directly to a critique of the Bushite penchant for a police state, in the guise of national security.

There is also a clear opportunity to get the Climate Crisis on the table at last. Katrina is also a golden door to making the Climate Crisis a Democrat issue, especially with the recent statements by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, amending the view that the severity of Katrina and other hurricanes last year was not linked to global heating, to say that some researchers there think there is a causal link.

Katrina offers the emotional center and the opportunity to begin an incessant and relentless assault on Republican failures, while making the positive case for what Democrats stand for.And it is not too late. Katrina is not going away. Cleanup still continues, and bodies of the dead continue to be found in New Orleans, at the rate of one or two a day. More than 1400 dead are recorded, with some 2300 still missing, three-quarters of that number are African-Americans.Levees are being rebuilt, amidst controversy.

Hurricane season is fast approaching.Katrina should be on every Democrat's lips going into the 2006 Congressional elections.

And there is occasion to begin very soon. According to Truthout, a march is planned for March 14, the day before the first scheduled evictions of Katrina victims. It will be in Washington, and the route goes past FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, o the White House. A rally will be held in Lafayette Square Park.

Apart from its specific purpose to bring attention to the plight of Katrina survivors, this event should be the unofficial but very real beginning of the 2006 campaign: the Katrina campaign.

Bush has other vulnerabilities. Monday's CBS poll has his approval rating at an all-time low of 34%, which means that even his previously unshakeable core support is shaking. The words that are sinking Bush and the Republicans right now are Iraq, Dubai (several Democratic Senators introduced legislation today to ban foreign government control of U.S. ports) and Katrina. All must be hammered, but the one with the most resonance, which allows for making a positive case as well as a negative assessment, is Katrina.

The Late News---Very Late

This Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle Insight section published three related essays under the headline of THE WAR ON HYPE. Ben Friedman's began:

Conventional wisdom says that none of us is safe from terrorism. The truth is that almost all of us are.

The rest is just as succinct and pointed. He continues:

U.S. homeland security policy conjures up a flawless enemy that could strike at any moment, in any place. That policy institutionalizes the fears terrorists created and harms liberal values. Most homeland security experts say that Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans shows how vulnerable we are to terrorists. In fact, it shows that most Americans have better things to worry about.

Friedman points out that the supposedly massive spending on homeland security "pales in comparison to increases" in U.S. military spending, mostly for Iraq. But Congress has appropriated some $207 billion to fight terrorism, according to Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie's piece, with homeland security dispersing some $50 billion just this year. And on what? Their piece begins:

Rest easy, America. As a response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Princeton, N.J., Fire Department now owns Nautilus exercise equipment, free weights and a Bowflex machine. The police dogs of Columbus, Ohio, are protected by Kevlar vests, thank God. Mason County, Wash., is the proud owner of a half-dozen state-of-the-art emergency radios (never mind that they are incompatible with existing county radios). All of these crucial purchases -- and many more like them -- were paid for with homeland security grants.

Doesn't it make you feel more secure that $100,000 in such money went to fund the federal Child Pornography Tipline? That $38 million went to cover fire claims related to the April 2001 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico?

Their conclusion:

Indeed, as the above examples suggest, states and cities are spending federal homeland security grants on pet projects that have little or nothing to do with security. State and local officials fight over who will get the biggest share of the money, regardless of whether they have a legitimate claim to it. Hence, of the top 10 grant recipients, only the District of Columbia also appears on a list of the 10 places most at risk of attack... And don't think high-risk cities necessarily spend their money wisely...

This of course is in addition to the utterly dumbfounding news of the past few days--that the Bushites turned over operation of major U.S. commercial ports to Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, with the state in question implicated in supporting terrorists (including 9-11 highjackers) and facilitating Iran's nuclear program.

But the stupidity is even more widespread than the pork:When Congress isn't doling out cash indiscriminately, it's overreacting to yesterday's attacks instead of concentrating on cost-effective defenses against the most likely current threats.

The third article, by James A. Lewis, concludes that even these threats are way overblown.

Americans receive a steady stream of warnings and alarms about new and horrific perils that await them. Pandemics, dirty bombs, cyber attacks, bioterror and other exotic threats are always on the verge of being unleashed onto a shamefully unprepared republic. Yet, judging from statistics on life expectancy, violent deaths and war, we live in much less perilous times than any generation before us.

Or as Ben Friedman put it: By any statistical measure, the terrorist threat to America has always been low. As political scientist John Mueller notes, in most years allergic reactions to peanuts, deer in the road and lightning have all killed about the same number of Americans as terrorism.

But of course, you don't scare the shit out of an apparently cowardly nation by declaring a war on allergic reactions to peanuts.

The fact that Insight put this page together is laudable. (I say this with the pride of a contributor, to a similiar Insight thematic section on the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima.) But that this might still be considered a daring act is ultimately very depressing.There is nothing about the terrorist threat said here that could not have been said in late 2001--and essentially it was said in this very blog, among others.

There is nothing about the forms of threats and the scandal of homeland security spending that couldn't have been said three years ago.

To decide on the right course of action to protect America required a correct assessment of the threat, not to mention some glimmer of an idea of the causes of terrorism, a bit more to the point than "they hate our freedom."

But we were steered into blind fear, and like trembling sheep we followed, uttering pieties for our brave leaders.By diverting us from understanding the real problems and devising and implementing real solutions, with real scrutiny of the results, while addressing other problems with the proportionate seriousness they deserve, panic has made us far less safe. Not just from terrorism. From every conceivable threat--from a Climate Crisis storm, from a flu epidemic, from dying because we don't have health insurance, you name it.

And so for nearly five years our media has apparently been paralyzed by the same gutlessness with which we as a society faced an unfamiliar (but hardly new) threat to our denial more than our lives.

Or maybe it was because at least some in the media knew what would not be heard. We said it here then; no one listened. Maybe no one could hear, until now. And the sad thing is, how many even now can hear it?

Shooting Reveals Who Really Runs the White House

The New York Times has one of those insider gossip reports on tensions between the staffs of the president (The Big Smirk) and vice-president (Dead-Eye Dickhead.) Those tensions always exist between staffs, and a situation like this one--with Dead-Eye's negligent shooting and serious wounding of a 78 year old man under still unknown circumstances at a"birds in a barrel" hunting emporium--always brings it out.

But this is the supposed vice-president, who has no constitutional duties other than presiding over the Senate (which he hardly ever performs) and letting people know where he is in case the president dies. His staff should be about as powerful as the First Lady's.

Of course that's not the case in this White House. Amidst all the grumbling and rumbing in the piece about how Smirk's staff would have been more forthcoming sooner, there's the money paragraph:

Several White House officials said no one among the White House staff, including the chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., felt empowered to dictate how news of the accident would be handled.

The Smirk's Chief can't impinge on the power of the v.p.'s staff? Think what this would have been like if the vice-president's name was Quayle (rather than the quail being yet another escaped terrorist, leaving a Republican lawyer as collateral damage.)

Not that Cheney being the real prez is any big revelation---he's the guy who worked with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and all the architects of the current bloody policy to create booty for their corporate fellow trough feeders. And nobody much believes the Smirk can do much more than walk and clear brush at the same time.

But now it's pretty obvious to everyone, isn't it? That must drive the Smirk's staff nuts, as well as turning them even redder, this time with embarassment.

A Private Big War

As the Bushites continue their Iraqnam war, they are waging another war at home, on the American people and on America itself. Contempt for the Constitution and civil liberties is just part of it. The whole of it is a private big war, on behalf of corporate profits, feeding off the people who don't profit.

The Iraqmire that's killing thousands and turning a country into a weaponized hell, is a privatized war. Taxpayer billions (to be paid for generations) are going to Halliburton and various private armies, just as the current Medicare prescription drug debacle is designed not to help seniors or safeguard their health, but to enrich corporations and their obscenely overpaid executives.

Meanwhile, cuts in programs affecting people in the U.S., especially the poor, the sick, the old and others outside the Bushledged few, became law in late 2005. Now at the same time as they are demanding a trillion more in war spending for their corporate pals, the Bushites are asking Congress for more war on America in its proposed 2006 budget.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that among the programs targeted for elimination are:

• The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food packages for some 400,000 low-income seniors.

• A preventive care block grant, which helps states provide preventive healthcare for "underserved populations."

• The TRIO Talent Search program, which helps colleges and universities assist disadvantaged teenagers so they can finish high school and go to college.

Among programs facing major cuts, according to CBPP:

• Section 202 housing for low-income elderly, which would be cut 26 percent below the 2006 level.

• Section 811 housing for low-income people with disabilities, which would face a 50 percent cut.

• A 79 percent cut for Community Oriented Policing Services, which aims to put more police on the streets.

• Child Care and Development Block Grant, which would face more than $1 billion in cuts over five years. CBPP reports that by 2011 the number of children receiving child-care assistance would drop by more than 400,000, compared with the 2005 figure.

There are proposed cuts in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Cuts in enforcement for missed child support, and cuts to environmental programs, including the restoration of the Pacific salmon, and cuts to National Parks. All of these have already been cut, and cut again. Some are barely functioning. And as they function less and less well, people blame government more.

On the day this budget was announced, the Big Smirk himself had an unusual experience when he attended the funeral of Coretta Scott King: he was forced to be present while people were criticizing him. As the Los Angeles Times reports, there were pointed references in particular from President Jimmy Carter, who referred to the illegal wiretaps and other survelliance endured by Martin Luther King and Coretta King.

"This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over," he also remarked, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Rev. Joseph Lowery noted Coretta King's opposition to the war in Iraq, and could have been commenting directly on Bush' s budget. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

Call the Talese, They're Trying to Steal My Sales

Our Story So Far: Nan Talese is James Frey's editor, and she went on the Oprah Purgatario to explain the publishing business. I don't know if she was booed, but someone wrote that Oprah gave her a dirty look when her cell phone chimed. To keep you up to date on the zeitgeist, Oprah was criticized for backing Frey in a call to Larry King. Then she was applauded for apologizing and going after Frey on her own show. Now the predictable backlash has begun, and Oprah is getting criticized for holding a public stoning, humiliating Frey and his editor, and not listening to Their Side.

So here's how a Wall Street Journal article (Yes! This is today's free one! Oh thank you thankyou WSJ!) begins:

Last Thursday, publishing-industry veteran Nan Talese was excoriated on television by Oprah Winfrey for publishing James Frey's 2003 "A Million Little Pieces," a bestselling memoir about the author's struggle to overcome drug dependency that he has since admitted is partly fictitious.

But on Friday morning, Ms. Talese walked into 22nd-floor offices in Midtown Manhattan to a standing ovation from her colleagues. Soon afterward, she received a call of support from Peter Olson, chief executive of Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc. publishing arm."I've gotten more than 500 emails over the last few days, and the overwhelming majority have been supportive," says Ms. Talese whose imprint, Nan A. Talese, is part of Random House's Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group. Indeed, many members of the publishing industry have rallied around Ms. Talese and Random House, saying that they would have published "A Million Little Pieces" as well and could have been duped just as easily.

The WSJ story is ostensibly about how it's too expensive for poor poor pitiful publishers to fact check their books. Not everyone in publishing agrees that nothing can or should be done, however. Some publishers say the "Million Little Pieces" incident may well result in some changes in how books are vetted. "The entire process will have to be rethought," says James Atlas, president of Atlas Books LLC [followed by a plug for Atlas' last book.]

Full disclosure: Many years ago I had a very short meeting with Nan Talese, when she was an editor at a different publishing house. It was a courtesy to one of her (fiction, acknowleded that is) writers who I knew. I waited around, got to sit down long enough to hear her dis everything I'd done and everything I proposed to do, thanked her very much and left.

I also used to know James Atlas, and I believe the last time I saw him I was pitching story ideas when he was an editor at the NY Times Magazine. He was more positive about the ideas but when it came time to assign, Atlas shrugged.

Also, I must warn you that reading this blog or anything else on your computer can cause headaches, heartaches and acid indigestion. A small number of readers have suffered seizures and required medical attention. Others have dipped into prolonged depression, puncutated by anxiety and anger, leading to reading a lot of psychology books and babbling on blogs. If symptoms persist, tough shit, you're not covered.

Now where was I? Right---the story quotes others pointing out various relevant factors: the much larger marketing budgets for some books which cut into editing resources for all books, and even the Power of Oprah as a key factor in what kinds of books get published. Implying that Frey wouldn't have gotten on the show if he'd called his book fiction, as he apparently did until other publishers passed on it.

But none of this bothers Nan Talese. She goes right from harvesting applause, phone calls and e-mails to a working lunch with--who else?--James Frey, as they go over wording to be added to new copies of his book, pointing out in the best possible way that it's apparently a pack of lies (although on Oprah, Frey reportedly had problems remembering what was and what wasn't true, if any. ) And here's her bottom line:

Last week, the publisher issued a statement saying, "We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of 'A Million Little Pieces.'" In an interview, Ms. Talese said, "We will continue to print the book as long as there is public demand for it."

We bear "a" responsibility? Apologize for any "unintentional confusion surrounding the publication"?? What is that supposed to mean? There was no confusion surrounding the publication. It was published satisfactorily, well enough to get in stores and sell three million copies. The problem is with the words in the book, and its author, who shows signs of being a pathological liar.

But the last part is very clear. "We will continue to print the book as long as there is public demand for it." Makes it sound like a public service. Here's the book, judge for yourself, we won't be a party to censorship. Right. And because we're so sincere, we're giving the book away free.

Not exactly. They didn't say that, of course. Frey may have been disgraced and suffered an hour of humiliation, but he's rich. And absolutely no one is asking him to give back the money. Which might lead to Nan Talese and Random House being asked to give back the money. This is America. Ain't nobody going to give back no money, pardner. And I ain't lyin. Really.

Another Random House editor is quoted in the story saying he"expects that the future reception for first-time memoirists could be different, especially 'those with highly melodramatic, uncorroborated life narratives.'" What an ironist. Frey has killed the memoir market for awhile, except for his own books. But the implication is clearly that when faced with "highly melodramatic" life narratives, those with integrity and an actual sense of responsibility exercise editorial skepticism. But then there are those who read with greed, and the ease of exploiting paying readers is the chief if not the only deciding factor.

I mean, what would happen if you expressed doubts and he took the book elsewhere? Or if you checked into it a little and found out it wasn't true---that the truth was not nearly so gripping and un-putdownable as the lies? You certainly don't want to put yourself in that position.

And clearly this is something that Nan Talese understands, along with apparently everyone she knows.

It's Mourning in America

The mourning has begun, quietly. NBC has announced that The West Wing will not return for another season. It wasn't much of a shock when NBC cancelled American Dream before this season, another show we watched every week. But it seemed unlikely this series would go to the trouble of a creating a season-long cliffhanger--who would be the television President next year?--when there wasn't going to be a next year.

But of course, it was a business, not a creative decision, taken by a network that has lost its touch in both areas. The real world had already intruded with the death of John Spencer, one of the original West Wing stars. Now we're truly bereft, with no president but the so-called "real one," and Geena Davis, who will have to do.

I got a retroactive sense of this cancellation's inevitability in the reaction of a bunch of young whiners at Salon. One didn't like it because it was unrealistically intelligent, and besides, her actor boyfriend does like it. The one contributor who wasn't busily displaying his hip cynicism had to apologize because it made him feel good (i.e. corny.) These are apparently the viewers that advertisers pay attention to. Good luck.

The Internet attracts nitpickers, so I shouldn't expect anyone to simply acknowledge that it was at worst an interesting hour of television not about criminals or crimestoppers, and at best it was great. But the real reason I remained loyal was the simple fact that since 2000, President Barlett was my President, the chief executive of our alternative reality. I wasn't sure Jimmy Smits was going to do it for me, but I was willing to give him a try---and he's been looking and sounding like an acceptable substitute lately. (Not Alan Alda, sorry. One Republican president at a time is way more than enough.)

The idea that all we are to be left with is Bush may be too much to bear. Somebody has to set the standards, remind us of ideals, of intelligence and acting morally even in difficult or complex situations. The uber-hip Salon writers sure don't.

Maybe The West Wing's real sin was frequently articulating issues better than either politicians or the news media. We can't let a mere TV show even slightly slow down the collapse of civilization.

So we're left with the White House of Commander in Chief, now the property of the Bochco family, and its chief of staff, Tom Szentgyorgi (who I wrote about long ago when he was a young up and coming playwright.) Not a terrible alternative. However, for the best writing on contemporary issues as well as some of the best and funniest acting and general bizarre entertainment, we watch Boston Legal.

We're trying out that new series, Injustice, and still enjoy Numbers. Other that these, it's DVDs of Northern Exposure---its third season has some of the best television ever. No wonder old TV shows are the hottest trend in DVDs.

Molly to Dems: What Are You Afraid Of?

Karl Rove made a speech promising that Republicans will make national security their key issue in the 2006 congressional elections, drawing a contrast between their "post-9-11" agenda and the Democrats' alleged "pre-9-11" worldview. Some Washington Democrats were apparently already quaking in their slippers at the prospect of being perceived as soft on terrorism by squeaking too loudly about the Bushites ongoing attempt to make the presidency a dictatorship while shredding the Constitution.

If that's not enough, Osama bin Laden shows up for the first time since just before the presidential election in 2004 to remind people why they should be scared. If Osama isn't on Bush's payroll, he should be. Who has been more important to the Big Smirk-- Rove or Osama-- seems pretty much a tossup.

So what's a Democrat to do? While some thought must be given to political realities, it's time to step up. If Al Gore's speech wasn't clear enough, listen to columnist Molly Ivins:

"The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief. "

While the Repubs have managed perceptions well enough to keep people scared of Democrats almost as much as of terrorists, maybe it's not so dangerous out there as Dems may imagine. As Molly points out:

"What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?"

We do know who they are afraid of: the America people who have been so easily made afraid. So what Al Gore said bears repeating:

"Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously? [Here I think he meant to say "consecutively."]

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same."

These are times that try men's souls. That doesn't mean these are just difficult times. That means they are times when souls are on trial.

John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, is about politicians who became statesmen and patriots in moments of crisis and importance. We need the material for new chapters, and soon.

Political Football

Lynn Swann couldn't had written a better script for himself, at least so far. The former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver, a star on the mythic Super Bowl teams of the 1970s, announced two weeks ago that he's running for Governor of Pennsylvania as a Republican.

Two weeks ago, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the underdog in the wild card playoff game with Cincinatti. They won. Last week, the Steelers did what had never been done before--they became the first wild card team ranked last among playoff teams to knock off the team ranked first. They defeated the Indianapolis Colts, who'd gone undefeated for most of the season and were heavy favorites to win this year's Super Bowl.

Pennsylvania's current Governor, Democrat Ed Rendell is running for reelection. He's been popular for most of his term. But in a recent poll , Swann was slightly ahead of him.

Months ago, when Swann's possible candidacy was first floated, I saw a blog discussion that generally ridiculed his chances. I entered it to differ. Some of the participants were in Pennsylvania, though mostly in the east, in the Philadelphia end of the state. Though I left western Pennsylvania almost a decade ago, I didn't dismiss the chances of a Steeler legend--especially not this one. I'd met Lynn Swann, and seen his mouth in action. He's smooth, charming and never at a loss for words.

Years after our interview on the Steelers practice field (which had to be ended by the intervention of another player or Swann might still be talking, and I'd still be enjoying it) I was driving through a fashionable Pittsburgh neighborhood, stopping at an intersection when a car came up behind me fast and stopped practically on my bumper. I looked in the rear-view mirror. An attractive woman was driving, and in the seat beside her, with a big smile and talking a mile a minute, was Lynn Swann.

The poll showed that Swann was attracting more Democrats than Rendell was attracting Republicans. Not surprising, and I'll bet they're largely football fans, if not Steeler fans from the western side of the Commonwealth.

I doubt that many people know where Swann stands on the issues, and these numbers probably won't hold up. On the other hand, celebrity politicians---particularly when they seem centrist, and even a little liberal for Republicans---sometimes make their own rules. Of course Swann isn't a movie star, though he had the looks. But he's a living legend in a state where football counts, maybe even more than pretend Terminators.

And where the primary celebrities are athletes. Part of the celebrity mystique is the association with winning. Swann certainly has that.

So, suddenly, do the 2005-06 Steelers.There are only four teams left playing NFL football. The Steelers are the only team in Pennsylvania among them, and if they're getting front sports page treatment in San Francisco, you can bet they're all over the state's media. Western Pennsylvania is typically in a condition between euphoria and hysteria about now.

The Steelers are an underdog again today when they travel to Denver. If they win that game, they will go to the Super Bowl, probably as the favorite. Lynn Swann will really be smiling then.

The Hypocritical Praise for Dr. King: Remembering the Reality

I just read a column on an otherwise right wing editorial page, full of piety for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While my prediction on the first MLK holiday hasn't to my knowledge yet come true---that soon, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, King's likeness would be animated to cheerfully shill for used cars and (as I so intemperately suggested to an audience rather south of the Mason-Dixon Line) perhaps even for MLK Day White Sales. However, his memory is being demeaned in other ways, mostly by this false piety.

People who are the ideological descendants of those who opposed MLK's every move and even vilified him now find him a remote enough figure to pretend to revere him, or at least the few soundbites anybody knows. Though the wisdom of those words has become clearer through the years, their radical nature at the time is conveniently forgotten.

In the early 60s, King was criticized for insisting on moving the cause of African-Americans too fast. In the mid and late 60s, he was criticized by some younger activists for moving too slow.He was a prominent moving target of racism for his public life. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover considered him a dangerous subversive, especially when he called upon America to live up to its own Constitution. King was followed, bugged and wiretapped, in the interests of national security.

When he began by trying to integrate in the deep South, he was called dangerous. When he moved his efforts to the North, he offended some of his former supporters as well as making his Democratic party allies nervous. When he came out strongly against the Vietnam War, some supporters within the Civil Rights movement derided him for straying from the path, while right wingers accused him of being a traitor. When he moved from attempts to strike down bad local laws and get just federal laws passed to addressing economic injustice, he was once again called a Communist.

In short, if he were alive today, his past actions strongly suggest he would be an activist against the war in Iraq. He would be railing against the rapidly increasing economic inequality, and against the fat cats who buy congressional votes for a relative pittance, and write laws for their benefit that mean to other Americans, including future generations.

He would note as he did in the 60s that the burdens of war are borne overwhelmingly by those low on the economic scale, both Americans and the victims of war in Iraqnam.And he would probably be bugged, wiretapped and followed by the FBI, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. His 21st century March on Washington would not include an invitation to the White House, as his 1963 march did, by a President who would be assassinated in a matter of months.

Those of us who revere Dr. King do so for a variety of reasons. But it seems clear to me that certain people now praising him revere him chiefly for the fact that he isn't here dogging them, and telling the truth about how they are destroying the promise of this country, the Constitution and the American Dream.