Who Was Betrayed? Let Us Count the People . . .

Whatever the outcome of the debacle in Washington, President Obama and his spineless fellow Democrats in Congress have already betrayed the nation's elder citizens, and the sick, the poor, the jobless.

The ransom the Republicans extort from the people in exchange for what has historically been the routine act of raising the debt ceiling will be taken from these, the people who can least afford it.

Oil and gas companies will continue to record the highest corporate profits in the history of money.  Profits of private insurance companies will continue to rise even as they exclude more and more needy people from coverage.  Wall Street banks will swell with cash and CEO pay and bonuses will soar.  Corporations sitting on piles of cash -- Apple right now has more money on hand than the federal government -- will continue to ship jobs overseas to places where even children have to work, and workers earn pennies a day.

Meanwhile:

--45.25 million American retirees will have their Social Security income cut, their Medicare premiums increased and benefits slashed, their private pensions -- if any -- cut off because of failed or stolen funding.

--The number of unemployed Americans, now roughly 57.28 million, will continue to rise, while the nation's roads, bridges and water systems, already outdated and in disrepair, will continue to be neglected and deteriorate.

--More than 40 million Americans will remain without health insurance; some 20,000 unnecessary deaths will occur each year because of this.  The nation's overall health care system, now 13th best among industrialized countries, will decline even more.

--The number of Americans living below the poverty level -- now almost 40 million -- will increase as older retirees by the millions lose the benefits they live on.

--The 6 million Americans whose only income is food stamps will lose that assistance.  Presumably they will starve to death.  Triage, GOP style.

This is America as designed by The Audacious Hoper, the Tea Party and the Republicans.

Don't complain, though.  As Dr. Kidglove recently scolded, he's offering a glass half-full and we only see one half empty.

And this was before he siphoned still more out of that glass to appease the puppets of the corporations that rule us.



When will we ever learn?

If a Thing Is Wrong, It Is Wrong

Things must be really bad out there.  Today I found not one, but two things to agree with on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal.

First: an editorial today concluded, "The debt-limit hobbits (in the House) should . . . realize that at this point the Washington fracas they are prolonging is harming the Republican image.  The GOP is not coming off as adults to whom voters might entrust the government."

Next, this observation by the normally vacuous Peggy Noonan: "(Obama) is losing a battle in which he had superior forces -- the presidency, the U.S. Senate.  In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique.  He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist.  He is a loser.  And this is America, where nobody loves a loser."

Robert Reich, former top aide to Democratic presidents, makes the point in a slightly different way:

"Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he's too embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy making in Washington, or too intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message. He may also disdain the repetition necessary to break through the noise and drive home the larger purpose of his presidency. I have known (and worked for) presidents who succumbed to all these, at least for a time.

"A more disturbing explanation is that he simply lacks the courage to tell the truth. He wants most of all to be seen as a responsible adult rather than a fighter. As such, he allows himself to be trapped by situations -- the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently -- within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start.

"Obama cannot mobilize America around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. This is not leadership."

Compromise has  been useful to U.S. governments in times when reasonable arguments could be made on both sides of an issue.  But as Lincoln put it:

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

President Obama has failed to part with those who have "gone wrong:"  Republicans who have allowed Tea Party fools to drag them rightward in the extreme; Wall Street; big oil and gas; pharmaceutical and health insurance companies; CIA torturers; advocates of excessive secrecy in government and excessive power for the executive; those who abrogate the Bill of Rights . . .

These are matters of moral and constitutional law.  If a thing is wrong, it is wrong.  Compromise does not mitigate its wrongness.

What's been happening lately in Washington is wrong.  Everyone who has been part of it is wrong.

For those who, deep in their private beliefs, know that it is wrong -- and there are such -- it is time to "live by the light that they have."

One day, if the nation survives, it will thank them.

Speak Not Truth, Lest Ye Be Fired (Part IV)

Attention scientists: Don't mess with Wall Street or Big Oil.  Their puppet President, Dr. Kidglove, will gitcha.

Latest example (from the Guardian, UK, not one of our lap-puppy media): the scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for scientific misconduct.

Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. His misconduct: writing the truth.

"You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas," said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic."

After accidentally discovering the bodies of four dead polar bears seven years ago, Monnet did further research.  He and a colleague wrote in the scientific journal Polar Biology, "Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."

Planet-raping oil companies, which want to drill in the pristine environment of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, have been bitching to their Oval Office puppet about delays caused by environmental reviews. This month Obama issued an order to speed up Arctic drilling permits.

Monnett's wife, Lisa Rotterman, a fellow scientist who worked with Monnett for years, said the effort to silence him came as no surprise.  The government has bedeviled him before for speaking the truth about what his science showed. She said his 2006 article wasn't framed in the context of climate change but was relevant to the topic."I don't believe the timing is coincidental," she said.

Earlier this year, other truth-tellers got the axe:

Carlos Pascual, a veteran diplomat who had been U.S. ambassador to Mexico since 2009, was forced to resign recently because of leaked embassy cables that bluntly described the shortcomings of Mexico's efforts to control its drug cartels.

His criticism was absolutely true, as anyone who lives close to the border can attest. The cables were in the trove of material passed by WikiLeaks to certain news media.

 P.J. Crowley, the State Department media spokesman, told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the military treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid." This is absolutely true.

 Manning, who is accused of giving documents to WikiLeaks, suffered torture and naked humiliation at a military brig before being transferred to a civilian federal prison.

President Obama fired Crowley.

Vivian Schiller was forced out  as CEO of National Public Radio -- one of the last bastions of occasional truth in American media today -- because some slimeball wing nut came up with another entrapment video. This one captured Ron Schiller -- an NPR executive who is not related to Vivian Schiller -- describing the so-called Tea Party movement as "racist" and "xenophobic."  Anyone who is not utterly deluded by Frank Luntz-Heritage Foundation bovine excrement knows that these terms are perfectly apt descriptors.

Oh, what the hell.  Once the Republicans plunge the country into default there won't BE any scientific research to stifle.

There Are Negotiations, and There is Dr. Kidglove

Remember John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, George Meany . . . ?  Picture any one of them, before even the first meeting on contract negotiations, declaring, "We'll give up $2 an hour in pay, forgo company paid vacations and health care benefits, and expand the work week to 48 hours."

That essentially is how Dr. Kidglove, whom we elected to be our leader, deals with the Republicans in Congress.  I presume he thinks this is how to get elected to a second term.

As a governing tactic, it enabled him to achieve his crowning moment: passage of a milksop health care bill whose defenders assure us that it's a little better than what we had before. (Duh, why have pharmaceutical and private insurance stock prices soared so high?)

Some of his supporters might argue that he saved the country from another Great Depression by his decisions about an economy that was a shambles when he took office.  But for Americans who are not Wall Street bankers or mega-corporate CEOs, the economy is no better now that it was then.  One in six of us common folk of working age are still jobless.

Soon, things will get worse.  Having drawn a line in the sand at 95% of what Republicans were demanding, Kidglove is insisting that maybe, if paying down the deficit is so damned important, we should increase revenue a teensy bit in addition to taking away Grandma's arthritis medicine and Tiny Tim's crutch.  John Boeher, who has spent so much time on the golf course and in the tanning salon that his brain is fried, was much affronted by this, so he went on TV and told a bunch of whopping lies.  American voters love to be lied to.

Meanwhile, the government is fast running out of money to meet its financial obligations.  "We don't want to default," the Republicans say.  "But Obama is forcing us to."

Yes, my fellow Americans, things are bad enough already, but soon they'll get worse.

         * * *

So there's Walter Reuther, in  the negotiating room with Engine Charlie Wilson, who is thundering, "Your Grand Bargain isn't grand enough, Walter. What's good for GM is good for the country.   You must work for GM without pay."  Reuther rolls his eyes, winces, and says, "I hate to do this, but everyone has to share the sacrifice.  OK.  No pay."

"Not enough!" declares Engine Charlie.  "Building cars for GM is a privilege, not an entitlement!  You must pay us for the privilege.  Five dollars per man per day. What  was good enough for Henry Ford is good enough for me!"

      * * *

This silly world is confusing me, Alice.  Take me through the looking glass.  Take me to the Tea Party.

Oops!  You already have.

Reflections on a Bicycling Competition in France

Everything I think I know about the sport of cycling I learned from my son David, who has occasionally accompanied the likes of George Hincapie on training rides.  (Hincapie has been one of the more prominent American contestants in the Tour de France over recent years.)

So when Dave and George said on Day One that their pick to win the most important cycling race in the world was Cadel Evans, I gave it great currency.

Today, Evans, a 34-year-old Australian,  rode in triumph down the Champs Elysees to claim the yellow jersey of the champion.

I found much to applaud.  It had been a most thrilling race to watch on television: exciting plot twists and turns, great performances by elder statesmen like Thor Hushovd of Norway, and strong young riders like the Schleck brothers of Luxembourg, capped by Evans's charge to the top in the penultimate stage, an individual time trial.  This may be the most difficult discipline of all in cycling, more difficult, in its way, than the climbs up the steep mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees.  The top competitors know their rivals well in the climbs up the mountains; it becomes man against man, a test of will and strength.  In the time trial, a cyclist rides alone, with no teammates to "mark" his rivals, man against the time clock.  There is no rival on your wheel, or leading an attack up the hill, no measure of your standing except the clock.  A special discipline, indeed.

I was first attracted to the Tour on TV because of the gorgeous images of the French countryside. But in this year's race, especially, the cyclists stole the show from the scenery. And Evans was the best scene-stealer of all.  He has a compelling personal story as well: conquest of childhood illnesses and injuries,  victor over repeated misfortunes not of his own making, able to mount his greatest effort despite the death of a coach who "believed in me even more than I sometimes believed in myself."  And an Ozzie, a species that shows the world how to be a gracious winner.

I asked Dave, when he told me his prediction, if Evans was strong enough to match the Schlenks in the high climbs.  "He's a mountain man," Dave said.  Then , aware of all the doping scandals in the sport, including a positive drug test of the defending champion, Alberto Contador of Spain, I asked: "Is Evans 'clean'?"  "I like to think so," Dave replied.

Now comes a new argument for the importance of the 2011 Tour de France: two experts say that the performances this year offer evidence that the sport may have turned a corner in its efforts to curb the use of performance-enhancing, banned substances.

In an article in the Sunday New York Times opinion section, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas, exercise physiologists and sport science specialists, wrote as follows:

Some battles are still being lost — a Russian rider was forced out of this year’s Tour after a blood test — but the war on doping is slowly being won.
Most telling has been the noticeable slowing down in performances in the crucial mountain stages. Taken in isolation, a single performance tells little about the state of doping — there are simply too many factors, like wind, race situation, rider preparation and injury, that influence performance to prove that the sport is cleaner based on one climb alone. But the trend toward slower performances has, to date, been universal, so much so that the finishing climbs in the 2010 and 2011 Tours de France have been substantially slower than those of the 1990s and the 2000s, some by many minutes.
For example, the fastest riders on three of the last climbs in the Tour, including the famed Alpe d’Huez, were still three minutes slower — a lifetime in cycling — than many of the fastest riders on the same climbs during the 1990s and 2000s.
Linked to this are the physiological aspects of performance. In the same way that a motor vehicle requires certain components to travel at 200 m.p.h. — a huge engine, fuel and aerodynamics — a cyclist requires certain physiological characteristics to produce the power output necessary to win the Tour de France. Those characteristics, which include a high maximal capacity to use oxygen and efficiency of converting metabolic energy into power, are identifiable and measurable.
It is possible to use these physiological characteristics to estimate the maximal sustainable power output for a cyclist. It requires some assumptions, but if they are consistent and made in favor of the cyclist, then they reveal that in the 1990s and 2000s, Tour performances routinely exceeded the predicted physiological capacity of humans. In contrast, 2010 and 2011 Tour riders have been beneath this ceiling on every climb of the race. The slowing in times thus brings physiology back in line with what are believed to be limits of performance.


This of course is not conclusive evidence that the race is "clean" again.  But I like to think so.

Doing All the Wrong Things to End the Dive

All the top athletes were in  the armed forces during World War II, so that boys growing up in those years had only the military to hero-worship.

One of my heroes was a family friend who was an Army Air Force test pilot.  When he had leave to visit his father, a retired career officer himself, there would be a big picnic at his parents' home in northern Kentucky.  My hero seldom talked about his work, but one evening, under prodding by his Dad, he began talking about the maneuvers he had to perform when testing aircraft.  He drifted into talking about a power dive in an experimental plane that failed to respond to any of the controls.  Mere seconds away from a deadly crash, he remembered something an aircraft engineer told him never, ever to do.  He did it.  The plane pulled out of its dive. He said he never mentioned the episode to his fellow pilots.  "You could try that 50 times," he said, "and you'd crash every time."

Our country's economy is in a suicide dive right now and our so-called leaders are doing all the wrong things. Presumably they're expecting a lucky miracle like my boyhood hero's.  What they're heading for, though, is a deadly crash.  The problem is, their metaphoric test plane has passengers: the American public.

Dr. Kidglove, who "governs" by giving the minority party everything it wants, has sought to persuade them to raise the nation's debt ceiling -- a routine practice that Congress has performed countless times before -- by sacrificing the nation's sick, poor, aged, military veterans, jobless and helpless.  That's a lot of common folk.

In return, he got . . . nothing.  No revenue increase.  Zero.

The deficit bogeyman is the result of two things: our endless wars and the Bush-Obama tax cuts for  the rich in 2001, 2003 and 2009.  Extending them will add $612 billion to the deficit over the next ten years.   Simply letting those cuts expire (restoring  tax rates to the level of the prosperous 1990s) would wipe out the deficit in ten years.  Ending all our wars and cutting the military budget accordingly would wipe it out in 18 months.  None of the "deals" kicking around Washington considers these possibilities. 

The tax-cut puppets of Big Business say they want to pare the size of government.  But if they force default, the size of government necessarily would increase.  Default would destroy the nation's entire credit system, toss government bonds into the high-risk pool, wipe out billions in "safe"worker and retiree savings, send unemployment soaring above 20%, and immediately make "big" government more, not less important.  It would become the employer of last resort.  The American default would send ripples around the world, toppling markets abroad as well.

A recent government audit of the Federal Reserve disclosed that the government made $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst recession in 80 years -- caused by those same banks. And now we're going to pay down the deficit  by cutting out the social safety net that should, in fact, be strengthened as part of a massive government bailout of people, not banks.

Instead, Dr. Kidglove offered Speaker Boehner the entire candy store.  Boehner surveyed the merchandise and walked out. Some guys can't stand the sight of no blood.

What an ugly spectacle is Washington: a bad president, desperate to be re-elected, embracing a worse Congress in a danse macabre.

And it's our lives they're gambolling away.

A Deal Was Made, Neither New Nor Fair

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the deal was made to assign a prominent speaking role to an obscure Illinois state legislator at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

There had to be a deal. Whoever made it, wherever it was made, there must have been enormous amounts of money involved, and a most cleverly constructed conspiracy.  That boy Barry was being groomed for the presidency.  He spoke (and wrote) good Democrat. Deeds, it turns out, were another matter.

The plot worked to perfection. "Democrat" Obama achieved the presidency, but from the outset his administration was very . . . Republican.  Rightward Republican, right of Eisenhower, almost Reaganesque.

If we knew when that deal was made, and who made it, we'd know why.

As a candidate, he said more than once that single payer was the best solution to America's sad health care mess.  But as president he immediately sold his soul to the pharmaceutical industry, whose "Harry and Louise" TV ads had torpedoed the Clinton efforts at health care reform. Half a loaf, we were told, is better than none, but the health care bill he finally nudged through a Democratic-controlled Congress was barely a slice, moldy and sans butter.

His war posture is closer to the neocon hawk than to Ike; he has continued the worst policies of the Bush administration on civil liberties at home, human rights abroad, torture, detention and secret black hole prisons. Even some moderates on the left consider Obama to be impeachable for 1) ordering military attacks on sovereign nations without Congressional authorization; 2) issuing Executive Orders for the extra-judicial assassination of U.S. citizens in violation of the constitutional guarantee of due process; 3) presiding over military, paramilitary and intelligence service use of torture in violation of prohibitions against cruel and unusual treatment; 4) ordering attempts to assassinate foreign heads of state; 5) obstructing justice by failing or refusing to investigate credible allegations of torture brought against the previous administration.

As a candidate he promised relief for over-mortgaged home buyers but as president he bailed out the bankers who brought the economy down and didn't lift a finger to stop foreclosures, which continued at  record rates.

He has done nothing to solve the nation's greatest economic problem  -- unemployment -- while watching CEO and executive pay and bankers' bonuses soar into the stratosphere.

In public he can still talk good Democrat but in private he folds to every right-wing Republican whim and folly.  Trickle-down economics?  Do the voodoo, baby!  Extend tax cuts for the super-rich? My pleasure, sirs. 

Every time Republicans say "Boo!" he pulls in his horns still further. This week he decided not to nominate the obvious best choice to head the new Consumer Protection Agency, Elizabeth Warren, because Republicans and their corporate masters hate and fear her.  His nominee, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, actually has a fairly good record of pro-consumer litigation, and already Republicans are crying "Boo!" again: emasculate the agency or we'll block this nominee, too.  The stage is set for a double cave-in: stripping the agency of power and dumping Cordray in favor one of Timmy Titmouse's Goldman Sachs pals.

Of course a deal was made.  Perhaps we'll never know the particulars: who, when, where.  But we can guess.  Just consider who has profited most from the Obama presidency so far.

'Tweren't us common folk.

The Unlikeable Barrenness of a White House Milquetoast

Dr. Kidglove strikes again.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor with impeccable credentials, is every reasonable person's choice to head the new Consumer Protection Bureau.  In her previous government service, she has demonstrated a shrewd understanding of finance and an even better understanding of the problems a corrupt system imposes on American consumers.

Of course Republicans hate her.  Their corporate masters hate her even more.

And so, according to Bloomberg news, our alleged president, Obama, is about to name someone else to head the bureau.

That someone, according to Bloomberg, is a former banker.

Just what we need.

Next: finding a former kleptomaniac to guard Fort Knox. 

Murdoch, Mea Culpas and Unremarked Crimes

It's fun watching the rich and powerful squirm in their own pudding, and in the case of Rupert Murdoch, it's downright delicious.

It also reinforces my theory that the decline of modern civilization began the day that politicians, propagandists and press lords realized that emotion is far more useful in manipulating the masses than Reason.  This explains today's obscene transmogrification of the United States Constitution, one of the sublime fruits of the Age of Reason.

I've just read a report that Murdoch has had a meeting with the family of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old murder victim, whose phones were hacked when police were searching for the missing girl in 2002.  Clearly he will go to any lengths to control the damage from what's now being called "the hacking scandal."

Earlier today, a highly placed head rolled:  Rebekah Brooks, editor of Murdoch's tabloid News of the World when the Dowler phone taps took place, resigned.  A favorite of Rupert's, she had ascended to head all of his U.K. newspaper operations.  After closing News of the World, he's buying space in other British newspapers to publish an apology.

There are rumblings  in the United States Congress about investigating Murdoch's holdings in this country -- the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox "News" television -- to see if they've committed crimes against journalism and the public interest.  They're thinking of electronic hacking and police payoffs.

The intercepts of a grief-stricken family's private conversations after the murder of a child reeks of villainy, of course.  The emotional reaction of the public has so damaged Murdoch's empire that he personally is conducting the mea culpa propaganda.

It requires more than emotion, however, to recognize the crimes of Rupert's U.S. empire, particularly Fox Fiction.  Yet the deliberate lies, distortions, salacious rumor mongering and sleazy innuendo that Fox Fiction garbs as "news", arguably, has done more harm to more people than the intercepted phone messages in the U.K.

But for the most part it's only a handful of souls on the American political left who have pointed accusatory fingers at the Murdoch minions for these transgressions against truth.  The public, obviously, is charmed by them and keeps electing the wingnuts, teapot windbags and Christofascist fruitcakes Fox endorses and beatifies.

But isn't Fox's proud alliance with Andrew Breitbart and his boy-toy with the hidden cameras, James O'Keefe, just as wretched as NOTW's telephone spying on grief-stricken families?  Like the pols, performers and royals who previously were spied upon by Murdoch's so-called journalists, the victims of the Fox pals' hidden-camera scams lacked the emotional socko of a murdered 13-year-old.

I really don't expect much more than self-serving noise from American politicians in the calls for an "investigation" of Murdoch's U.S. companies.

But wouldn't it be fun if some of the top Foxies were made to squirm just a little bit, like their Big Boss?

To Eli and His Ilk: Let's Draft a Progressive

Perhaps because it's my ox they're goring, propriety requires me to remain silent on Dr. Kidglove's obscene plan to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Fuck propriety.

The crowning glories of the New Deal and the Great Society, these social programs have done more to improve the quality of life for more people than any other act of government in United States history.

What kind of buffoon cannot see the difference between tax money spent to improve the quality of life for American citizens,  and tax money spent to kill imaginary enemies abroad, at the cost of thousands of young American lives as well?

Ans.: virtually every damned buffoon we've elected to office in Washington.

The corporations who profit from this buffoonery, thanks to the Supreme Court Gang of Five, will lavish filthy lucre on the same buffoons, and worse ones, to perpetuate our endless war on innocents, including the American poor and middle classes.

The media buffoons will lie and distort to equate the madness with patriotism; they will continue to refer to the money spent making illegal wars as "defense spending;" they will continue to "report" that our national deficit must be reduced by taking away Grandma's meals on wheels, arthritis medication and government-subsidized hip replacement surgery.

Kidglove/Obama has betrayed millions of people who voted for him.  His campaign statements cautioning against too much executive power to make war without consulting Congress were outright lies.  He scuttled true health care improvement behind our backs before legislation had even been drafted.  He has redoubled his predecessor's worst transgressions against civil liberties and human rights.  He is a disaster.

The spineless "leaders" of his party, and its members of Congress, are incapable of standing up to the corporatocracy that pulls his strings because they, too, are owned by the planet rapers, the makers of deadly weapons, the profit-gorged masters of greed on Wall Street and the compliant ignoramuses of Main Street.

"Liberals" have become pariahs in our oligarchy.  The progressive intelligentsia surveys the political scene and, with a resigned sigh, says there's no choice in sight in 2012 so we just won't vote.

Yet it was far-sighted young people like Eli Pariser of MoveOn who realized the potential of the internet as a political force.  They were highly instrumental in forging Kidglove's successful presidential campaign.  Now they can, if they choose, give progressives an alternative: a Draft-a-Progressive campaign on the internet.

Even without the internet, Eisenhower backers were able to conduct a successful write-in campaign for Ike in the Republican primaries of 1952.

The savvy tekkies of today surely could devise a successful internet campaign to Draft a Progressive.  Then, assuming the draftees consented, they could wage a write-in campaign in the 2012 general election for president and vice-president.

The progressive draftees wouldn't win.  But it would give progressive voters a voice.  Hawaii and eight other states, mostly in the south and west, prohibit write-in votes for President.  Most of the others require some paperwork, often including a list of electors who would represent a winning write-in candidate in the electoral college.  States like Iowa, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont make it relatively easy to run a write-in campaign.

What have we got to lose?  An election?  Hell, we lost the last one, but didn't realize it until after Kidglove had already been sworn in.

Oh, rueful day.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

A California couple reserved a campsite months ago for a three-week stay in Kodachrome Basin State Park, one of the crown jewels of Utah's red rock country.

They pulled out after two days. "We've got welts from head to toe," they said.  A great swatch of southern Utah, including virtually all of the Grand Staircase/Escalante national monument, and much of Dixie national forest, is infested with biting midges -- also called "no-see-ums -- and they're making life miserable for early summer visitors.
Long-time residents can't remember anything equal to this infestation of the blood-sucking parasites.

"I don't know why they're so numerous, and so vicious, this year," said a ranger at the multi-agency visitor center in Escalante.

Short-term studies elsewhere in the world, in both the beach and mountain habitats the pests prefer, suggest that global climate change is the culprit.  The changes in climate seem to favor  parasites.

Shifts in climate alter the landscape.  When wildlife populations have to cope with changes in their habitat, their range and behavior often shift dramatically.  The timing of annual events such as migrations, mating seasons and hibernation are disrupted.  Not just individual species are so affected; the entire web of life, dependent upon seasonal rhythms to survive, is upset.

Thus a campground in Wyoming has suddenly been invaded by a horde of massasauga pygmy rattlesnakes -- hundreds of miles north of their normal range. Warning signs are posted at the entrance to the Firehole site, and the campground manager makes special trips to reiterate the warning for newcomers.

Human behavior is changing the planet that sustains us -- and not for the better.

Visitors to Green River and Rock springs, WY, are urged to travel a scenic loop through the foot of the Uinta Mountains.  Wildlife abounds for much of the route.  Then you enter the Clay Basin.  All you can see for miles is brown desert scrubland pockmarked with the  barren circles surrounding gas wells.  When the area had been sucked dry midway in the first decade of this century, Questar turned it into a massive gas storage operation: 89,000 feet of pipe, 29 field dehydration units and 44 injection and storage wells.  Not a creature stirs.  Barren and ugly.

There's a similar wasteland south of Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado.  The Worst Congressman, Stevan Pearce of New Mexico, wants to do this to a place called Otero Mesa.  It's not as spectacularly beautiful as the despoiled parts of Utah and Colorado, but it's a haven  for wildlife including several protected species.  If Pearce has his way, their habitat will be replaced by lifeless circles around gas wells.  The extraction procedures will threaten with poisons a vast underground water table,t he potential partial solution to a sere region's ongoing water shortages.

What fools these mortals be.

Wildfires, stoked by strong winds far beyond the normal windy season, are destroying swaths of trees and brush in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Tornadoes in record numbers and severity savaged other parts of the country.  In areas where water is abundant, swollen rivers flood cities and threaten  nuclear plants.    Atlantic coastal communities await with  trepidation the coming of the next hurricane season, and the biological fate of the Gulf of Mexico remains uncertain in  the wake of the BP oil disaster.

The profits of Questar and BP -- like those of their fellow corporate rapists Exxon, Chevron, et al -- soar and their CEO's bonuses soar with them.  Yet nearly one in ten Americans is jobless and those who are employed see no increase in their paychecks even as food costs skyrocket.

Happy Independence Day, America.