Truth and Turtles Die in the Gulf

 Kurt Luedtke, who was a helluva newspaperman before he became a helluva screenwriter (Out of Africa, Absence of Malice), invented "Commander Whitehead" to penetrate boundaries of official secrecy during disasters. When he was a reporter for the Detroit Free Press,  "Whitehead" got him past National Guard sentries during the Detroit riot and into a hospital room full of survivors of a Great Lakes ship sinking.

But that was then and the Great BP Oil Catastrophe is now.  There's no "Whitehead" to enable journalists to get at the truth of  what's happening on the Gulf Coast.  The entire operation  is a lesson in corporate power to control government and information.

Even before the Coast Guard adopted its infamous new 65-feet-from-the-boom rule to prevent journalists from seeing actual damage, coverage of oil company crimes was thwarted by badged thuggery.  Turns out BP long ago bought the local police and sheriffs in Gulf Coast  counties whose jobs and economies are dependent on oil drilling or refining. One Louisiana parish has initiated 57 extra police shifts per week devoted exclusively to BP security detail -- and paid for by BP directly to the sheriff's office. These vigilantes detain journalists attempting to photograph BP activities, turn them over to BP's own security thugs for questioning, and censor in the camera photographs that BP doesn't like.

As early as last May, Newsweek reported that local and federal lawmen in cahoots with BP were blocking access to sites where damage resulting from the spill was most visible. Two weeks later the New York Times reported that "journalists struggling to document the impact (of the catastrophe) found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials."

And now comes the tale of Rachel Polish, as disclosed by a blog-journalist named Georgianne Nienaber "with considerable input from residents of the Louisiana Delta."

When Ms. Nienaber posted criticism of the new Coast Guard secrecy rules as a violation of the First Amendment, Rachel Polish put on one of her official hats and, as Petty Officer Rachel Polish of the Deepwater Horizon Response team,  posted a rebuttal.

PO Polish is indeed a Coast Guard reservist, on duty as press liaison for the government agency spearheading the federal role in dealing with the disaster.

But she wears other hats, as well.  A year ago, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide (Ogilvy PR) announced Rachel Polish as Vice President of Digital Strategy of the 360 Digital Influence Group on the West Coast.

And who is Ogilvy's biggest client?  BP Oil.

Get the picture?  The Coast Guard enacts new rules prohibiting journalists from seeing first-hand what's going on.  In effect, it forces journalists "covering" the catastrophe to get their information solely from the Coast Guard press liaison -- who happens to be a well-paid flack for BP's public relations firm.

Don't you just love the way the United States of Corporate America works?

Commander Whtehead, wherever you are, it's time to return to duty. They're hiding biocide behind a badge.

The Gadsden Purchase

Every now and then Gadsden and I get together at The Bean for coffee  and conversation about the declining condition of the country.

"Priests," he declared the other day, "are the answer."

"Priests?," I said.  "You're not Catholic."

"Don't have to be to see what needs to be done.  And that's  to require that all candidates for public office have to be priests."

"What a dumb idea."

"Not al all.  What's the biggest problem with government today?  Graft. Call it what you will -- campaign donations, free speech by corporate persons -- it's still graft.  And priests take vows of poverty.  Et voila!  No more graft.

"The second biggest problem in government is sex.  You got your zipper problems, your foot in the bathroom problems, your page boy problems, your hooker problems, sex for favors problems.  Priests take vows of chastity.  Et voila!  No more sex problems.

"Finally, you got elected officials ignoring the will of the people because of either problem No. 1 or Problem No. 2.  Priests take vows of obedience.  Presto!  No more ignoring the will of the people."

I Said, "Something tells me it wouldn't work, Gadsden."

"Show me a single flaw," he said defensively.

"First of all, take the vow of poverty.  If members of Congress, for example, couldn't accept salaries, how would they live in Washington?  It's a very expensive city?"

"Faith-based initiatives," Gadsden said.

Exasperated, I turned to the sex thing.  "Everyone knows that pedophilia has been rampant in the priesthood for years.  Even the Pope finally admitted it.  So much for the vow of chastity."

"Think Abu Ghraib," Gadsden said.  "A few rotten apples . . ."

"Well then," I said, "consider the obedience vow.  Couldn't that just as well mean that rather than having lobbyists call all the shots, we'd have bishops and cardinals calling them?  Talk about theocracy! "

"Picky, picky, picky," Gadsden said.  "The Supreme Court will handle that."

"A bunch of Catholics," I exclaimed.  "What makes you think they'd control bishops any more than they control lobbyists?"

Now Gadsden was downright annoyed.  "So then, smart guy, what should we do?  Simply abolish government entirely?"

A customer at an adjoining table who had overheard our conversation tapped him on the shoulder with her Barretta 9 mm.  "'Scuse me, sir," she said.  "Care to attend a Tea Party meeting tonight?"

The morning wasn't a total loss.  Gadsden paid for coffee.

Profiles in Discouragement

A friend asked over dinner the other night, "What do you think of President Obama's declining poll numbers?"

"I don't think about them," I replied; "I don't even look at them.  He's near rock-bottom on my personal rating system."

"Is that because he isn't liberal enough for you?"

With a sigh, I replied: "I suppose that's a fair, if not completely accurate, characterization."

In our political climate, espousing solutions  that are self-evident usually is dismissed as being "liberal."

Obama's campaign rhetoric seemed to support many of those self-evident solutions to the horrors of the Bush era.  As president, he failed to act in accord with his rhetoric on the most important of them.

It began with his cabinet and high-level government appointments.  Summers and Geithner on the economy. Key members of the big bank cartel that caused our economic collapse, such appointees aren't likely to push policies needed to bring Too Big to Fail under government control.  And they didn't.  Nor did they seem even to think about the economic needs of people -- jobs, jobs, jobs; relief from toxic mortgages shamelessly marketed by bankers who knew better; better health care for less money.

The Obama team failed on the economy.

The president-to-be campaigned as an anti-war candidate, vowing to bring the troops home with honor.  His appointment of Gates to head DOD wasn't the act of an anti-war president, nor have his policies done anything to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, he is even more committed than Bush to endless war.

The Obama team failed on war policy.

Ken Salazar, who promised to be a "sheriff" in Interior, looked the other way as the cozy oil, gas and coal company relationships with the people who were supposed to regulate them became even more blatant than they were under Bush. To paraphrase A.M. Rosenthal, "If you regulate the circus, you don't fuck the elephants."

The Obama team failed on environmental policy, public health, public lands and public trust.

Candidate Obama promised health care for every American.  President Obama didn't even put single-payer health care on the table, and sold his soul to the pharmaceutical industry for less than a mess of pottage.

The Obama team failed on health care reform.

Candidate Obama decried government secrecy, torture, secret rendition and vowed to close Gitmo.  President Obama fights for more secrecy in government, continues secret rendition, condones black prisons where people are tortured -- and Gitmo is still operating.

The Obama team failed the Bill of Rights.

The candidate of such great promise has been a failure in office.  Not because he isn't "liberal" enough, although he isn't. Not because he didn't deliver on what he promised.  But because he didn't even try.

Caramba! It's the Killer Drones!

A word of caution to my friends in El Paso and the other border towns of the Southwest:  Don't schedule any weddings, wakes or family fiestas within 10 miles or so of the border.

The Feds will soon be flying two Predator drones along the border and, by the measure of our heroic actions in Pakistan, these things have an annoying habit of falling on  civilian men, women and children attending weddings and other celebrations.

For each group of civilians the drones kill, at least five times as many new terrorists are created.  This ratio -- which may be underestimated -- guarantees that Bush's so-called "war on terror" will blossom under Obama into the endless war that keeps our economy going.  The real economy, the one for the super-rich; not the one you and I live in, where working Americans have their homes foreclosed and millions more have no jobs.

The military-industrial complex loves the Predator.  The "pilot" can be thousands of miles away -- in Nebraska, perhaps, or Germany -- and is at no risk.  The drones cost $4.5 million each, so there's plenty of profit for everyone.  Wisconsin, for example, just got $8 million to build a new Predator base.  Next in line for new drone-control facilities are Whitemnan AFB in Missouri, and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota.  The Rapid City Journal is ecstatic: "Ellsworth and its supporters in Congress have done South Dakota proud," it editorialized.

Tell it to the Pakistanis.

How great a folly is the decision to put Predators in the air over the U.S. Mexico border?  All you need to know is this:  It was suggested by Texas Gov. Rick Parry, the wing-nut who, in one of his saner moments, seriously proposed that Texas secede from the Union.

The Feds say these things will help the Border Patrol prevent drug-cartel violence from spilling across the border into the U.S.  London bookies are taking bets on how long it will be before a drunken bodyguard of a Mexican drug lord shoots one down.

This nation desperately needs a new, humane, sane immigration policy.

Instead it's got unconstitutional racial profiling in Arizona, tea-pot crazies stirring up racial hatred everywhere, Republicans sowing fear wherever they can drum up an audience, and now, killer drones buzzing overhead.

Is this a wonderful country or what?

A Pox -- No, Worse! -- on ESPN

I have been outraged many times before by the contempt American mainstream TV channels have for tennis.

But my disgust with ESPN goes beyond outrage.  In the fifth set of perhaps the most remarkable contest in the history of sport -- all sport, not just tennis -- ESPN relegated its Wimbledon broadcast to a remote backwater of its broadcast empire. 

I subscribe to Comcast's premium sports package in my area, but I can't get ESPN-U (whatever that is) and so missed history being made by John Isner of the United States and Nicolas Mahut of France.

Each player had won two sets in their epic first round match when it was suspended because of darkness on Day One.  On Day Two, they played the longest set in the history of tennis -- and it still isn't over. They had tied at 59-all when play was suspended -- again.

Over two days they were on court for 10 hours.  The fifth set alone lasted 7 hours 6 minutes -- longer than the previous record for a complete match, 6 hours 33 minutes at the French Open.

The two men held serve for 118 consecutive games.  Only a tennis player, I suppose, can appreciate just how remarkable a feat that is. And this took place at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tournament in tennis.

Imagine this: 59 consecutive successful goal-line stands in the Super Bowl.

Or 59 consecutive perfect 1-2-3 innings by a baseball pitcher -- in the World Series.

Or 59 consecutive 3-point field goals made -- in  the championship series of the NBA.

Or 59 consecutive birdies by a golfer -- in the Masters.

Now consider TWO teams or players accomplishing any of the above -- in the same competition.

ESPN deemed the historic Isner-Mahut competition unworthy of being shown on either of its main channels, ESPN or ESPN2, so that it might achieve a respectable fraction of the audience it deserved.

Roger Federer, who owns a considerable piece of tennis history in his own right, said:"I have almost no words anymore watching this. It's beyond anything I've ever seen and could imagine. I don't know how their bodies must feel  . . . This is incredible tennis." 

And this incredible tennis will go on for a third day.  "Nothing like this will ever happen again," Isner said after today's play.  "Ever."

But don't expect to see it on ESPN's main channels.  They'll be broadcasting the movie "Heidi."  Or a taped fishing show. Or something.

Death and Near Death in Sport

Rest in peace, Manute. 

Manute Bol was 7 feet, 7 inches tall; the basket is only 10 feet above the court; the hoop is 18 inches in diameter and the ball only 9.39; but for most of his career including 10 seasons as an NBA professional, the league's tallest player had difficulty making the ball go through the hoop.  He is the only player in NBA history who averaged more blocked shots per game (3.3) than points (2.6).

He tied the record for most blocks in a half (11) and twice set the record for blocks in a quarter (8). 

Despite his reputation for futility as a shooter, he once made six of 12 three-point attempts in a single half. 

But none of this is important in considering Manute Bol, who died at 47 last Saturday of acute kidney failure in a hospital in Charlottesville, VA.

This is what's important:

Born in Sudan, the son of a Dinka chief, Manute (it means "special blessing") spent virtually all of the small fortune he earned in the NBA building schools and financing efforts to end poverty and oppression in his homeland.

His goal was to build 164 schools.  He was less than halfway there when he died.

The NBA should finish the job in his memory, as a tribute to a man whose humanitarianism towered far higher than 7 feet, 7 inches.

          * * *
In the opening match at Wimbledon Monday, Falla won the first two sets against someone posing as the defending champion, Roger Federer. (No, silly, not the reincarnation of FDR's dog.  FAH-ya, the Colombian left-hander who is ranked No. 60 in the world).

The scores were 7-5, 6-4.  Falla, like Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals at Paris a few  weeks ago, was eating Federer's second serve for lunch.  Or was it the impostor's? 

The real Federer began making a few token appearances in the third set, which Falla lost, 4-6.  But the impostor returned to action in the fourth, with Falla serving for the match at 5-4.  Then real Roger came back on court, forced a tiebreak, and won it easily.

There was no sign of the impostor in Set Five.  Real Roger won, 6-0.

What doth this bode for Federer's quest to equal Pete Sampras's record of seven Wimbledon championships, and add yet another to his record set of 16 Grand Slam titles?

At 29, Roger seems to have lost something on a second serve that was once one of the strengths of his magnificent all-around game.  And his backhand remains vulnerable against constant pounding.  But the Roger Federer of incomparable grace and skill, the man with the most complete game in the history of tennis, refused to surrender his dignity to the number 60 player on the tour.

He acknowledged afterward that this was a match he probably should have lost. "But then," he added enigmatically, "I've lost some this year that I should have won."

It's a long fortnight, and neither Roger nor his principal adversary, the No. 1 player in the world, Rafael Nadal, has an easy road ahead.

But this is Wimbledon, the courts are grass and the real Roger is still here -- or was, at least, when he needed to be.

Beyond Bleak

"Stay upbeat!" the physical therapists keep telling me. That's why they took away my iPad. Constant monitoring of the news was so depressing me that my rehabilitation was lagging; the muscles that need to be re-educated to operate my new titanium hip were failing kindergarten.

Something like that.

The surgeon assures me I'll "be 100 per cent by November." Great. Just in time for the mid-term elections. Stay upbeat?

Rand Paul? Joe Barton? Sharron Angle? Stay upbeat?

You're risking death by commando attack if you board a ship to bring humanitarian relief to the suffering people of Gaza! Stay upbeat?

The raw petroleum gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and the flood of toxic chemicals being used to disperse it, are lethal to every form of life in the sea, and the marshes that adjoin it. Nobody in government or the extraction industry -- comprising some of the fattest corporate fat cats in the history of money -- has the foggiest notion what to do about it. The top boss of BP, whose well is killing everything, appears before Congress playing the Billy Martin role in the old beer commercial: "I didn't punch that dogie." Then BP ships him off to its executive penal colony on a remote island -- which you can bet is somewhere in the Pacific. Stay upbeat?

Our greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression is met with great gifts of taxpayer cash to the very Too Big to Fail financial institutions whose idiocy caused the crisis. More and more Americans lose their jobs but the band aid of extended unemployment benefits is stricken by a corporate-owned Senate that can't bear to pay for public works by raising corporate taxes almost to the same level that is imposed on working Americans. More and more Americans lose their homes to foreclosure but we let financial industry lobbyists write the new "regulations" on lenders. Stay upbeat?

The insurance industry that has befouled health care in the United States, now among the worst in the industrialized world, writes the foundation of "health care reform" legislation with the result that the one part of the system that worked -- Medicare -- is at risk from the predations of the newly-empowered insurers. Stay upbeat?

Even as apocalypse envelopes the sea, the corporations that own Congress , now sanctified with Constitutional personhood by the Gang of Five on the Supreme Court, are pressing for more drilling, more mining, more mountaintop removal, more gouging, more criminal exploitation of public land, even if it defiles historical, aesthetic and cultural landmarks that can never be replaced or repaired. Stay upbeat?

Video made from a military helicopter shows criminal assassination of unarmed civilians by United States forces in Afghanistan. When it's made public by Wikileaks -- an online journal of truth that deserves a Nobel Prize -- the United States responds not with outrage about the crime, but by jailing the buck private who is alleged to have leaked the thing in an act of conscience. Stay upbeat?

A White House that promised transparency, reform and war on government by Beltway insiders has given us more secrecy, a worsening of the executive abuses of the previous administration, and endless war against people who are guilty only of hating us, with reason. Stay upbeat?

And the current occupant of the White House, Dr. Kidglove, gives us . . . words. There are words and there are words. Words that inspire action and determination (Lincoln, Churchill, King . . .). Words of deceit, denial, duplicity and compromise. Stay upbeat?

I wonder if that Utah firing squad moonlights for the terminally depressed.

Killing the Place Where Life Was Born

What kind of people are we?

Our heavily subsidized puppet ally in the Middle East  makes war on civilians, commits piracy on the high seas and murders humanitarians bent on delivering  aid to suffering people.

And we "regret" the loss of life.

Enormously rich corporations buy public office for their whores, corrupt the agencies that supposedly regulate them under watered-down laws and rape the environment in which we live.

Life on this planet began in the sea. Now the unregulated extraction industry is killing the place where life was born.

And we impose a "moratorium" on oil drilling in the sea.

The highest court in the land has decreed that corporations may use their enormous financial resources to buy control of our government at every level.

And we paste little flags on our trucks  with slogans about our national greatness.

We elect a black man to our highest office -- and condemn even his  modest efforts to reform a broken country.  We heap unprecedented vitriol upon him, even upon his little children, and call ourselves "patriots."

Unsurpassed greed in the highest offices of the nation's greatest financial institutions drive millions of Americans out of their homes and into poverty, shrink lifelong savings of other millions into pittances and precipitate a global economic crisis.

And we say "tsk, tsk" and Congress passes new "regulations" that will ensure that the big banks continue the same practices that wrought disaster.

What kind of people are we? 

Politically rotten and ethically dead.

Surrounding ourselves now with a dead sea.

A Bad Notion and a Bad Nominee

Many of us who voted for him expected more from the one-time teacher of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

But Barack Obama, expert on the Constitution, is the back story.  President Obama is the here and now.  For all of his expertise, his positions on important Constitutional matters are indistinguishable from those of the addle-pated fool who held the office before him.

Some Constitutional scholars, such as Glenn Greenwald, say he's even worse than Bush II.  The conjunction of two recent events tends to support the Greenwald view.

Sunday, his Attorney General, Eric Holder, outlined the administration's view that the Miranda law should be loosened to allow more time for authorities to, er, question a terrorism suspect before the Miranda rights are read to him or her.

Today, the President disclosed that his nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice John Paul Stevens's retirement is Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Holder's view is one only John Ashbrook -- or Torquemada -- could applaud.  The Kagan nomination is more analogous to Bush II's nomination of Harriet Miers than to, say, Dwight Eisenhower's of Earl Warren.

Administration apologists have spent the two days preceding the Kagan announcement assuring the American public that her opposition "on the left" --it's made to sound like a foreign country -- is 100 per cent wrong.

Never mind the transcripts of her arguments as Solicitor General before the Supreme Court, particularly in the infamous Citizens United case, which depicted an inept lawyer who merited only scorn from the questioning Justices.

Never mind her support for the Obama administration's attempts to further broaden the unconstitutional arrogations of power to the presidency that the Bush crowd asserted.

Never mind her lack of a written record of strong views on the Constitution, other than that, well, it's there.

As for Holder's attack on Miranda, it's just another step in the process begun with the passage of the despicable U.S.A. Patriot Act, a process of dismantling the Bill of Rights.  Miranda simply spelled out the procedures law enforcement must follow to assure that all citizens, even those accused of the most serious crimes, will have the protection of the rights enshrined in the first ten Amendments.  To weaken the procedures is to weaken the amendments.

The Obamans have already enshrined as legal precedent the Bush crowd's unconstitutional stance that a "terrorist" is anyone the President calls one.  Now they want to put the Bill of Rights off limits to anyone subjected to such a whim.

Little by little, the rule of law in America is fading away.  Soon all that will be left of the Bill of Rights will be a Cheshire cat's smile.

* * *

With this post, your Pianist shambles off into the wings to meet the surgeon who will replace what's left of his natural hip with a fine piece of titanium hardware. He will return to the bench when he is able to play again.  He has been practicing the final movement to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and hopes to be able to play it again some day.

Keep an Eye on the Brits, Washington

Maybe if we're lucky we'll get another lesson in government from the Mother Country.

Here's the deal:

No party in England's national election won enough seats in Parliament for a majority, which is required to form a government.  David Cameron's Conservative Party won the most seats (and the most popular votes) but not enough to put a Tory in No. 10 Downing Street.  The ruling Labour Party of Prime Minister Gordon Brown finished second in number of seats won and, by a narrow margin over the Liberal Democrats, in the popular vote.  The Lib Dems were thought to be surging, but actually lost seats, yet nevertheless could emerge as kingmakers.

Their seats plus the Tory seats would be enough to form a coalition government.  That, in fact, is what Cameron has proposed to the Liberal Democrats' charismatic leader, Nick Clegg.  Cameron said his "big, open and comprehensive offer" would ensure stability for the British government and would include LibDem cabinet seats.  Clegg seemed receptive, saying the party with the most seats should govern. (He also refers to Brown as a "squatter" on Downing Street.)

If this coalition happens, it would be somewhat like Mitch McConnell and Dennis Kucinich forming a coalition government here -- if we had more than two parties and a system that allowed for coalition governments.

Wouldn't work, would it?

Don't bet against the Brits.  These, after all, are the people who defeated the Luftwaffe using only "blood, sweat , toil and tears."  They know how to make things work, even if they suffer doing so.

And if they succeed, will we, too, learn how to make coalitions work for the betterment of the people?

In the U.S., the Democrats control the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress -- and haven't done a damned thing to fix the god-awful mess Dubyuh left behind.  Took 'em a year to realize that even lacking 60 votes in the Senate, they could still pass some kind of health care bill.  OK, it's a lousy bill.  But it's something.

Meanwhile, getting control of the economy; providing jobs for millions who are out of work; restoring confidence in the marketplace; devising an intelligent and workable immigration policy, restoring Constitutional values, rule of law and the Bill of Rights; ending illegal, costly and demeaning wars; all of these and other pressing needs go unsolved, like the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans simply vote "no" on everything and let the country flounder like oil-soaked pelicans in the bayou.

If Cameron's coalition comes to be, it will need true cooperation between the left-of-center Lib Dems and the Tory right in order to govern effectively.  If our hapless, corporate-owned, sleazy, lying, cheating pols will watch and learn, perhaps we can still muddle our way to becoming a better country.

Then again, we got the very foundation of our legal system from the Brits, and look what a mess we've made of that! We've even given up Habeas Corpus. 

What's next, politically?  Hogamous, higamous, let's go polygamous.  As the Mother Country may yet prove, it's better than what we've got.

Look Who's Not Coming to Dinner

In an age when newspapers are dying, good journalism is more rare than sightings of Yeti and millions of Americans base their political opinions  on misinformation from jugglers and clowns, is it too much to ask for just a gesture of maturity on the part of Washington reporters?

End the high school musical fiasco called the White House Correspondents' Dinner.  It could be the first step toward establishing a professional relationship between Washington journalists and Washington politicians.  A respectfully adversarial relationship.  One that would benefit not just consumers of news, but reporters of it and sources of it.

I don't expect this to happen overnight.  The cozy, inside baseball, old school tie climate of  Washington journalism has been evolving too long, is too deeply entrenched on both sides for instant reform.

But getting rid of the infantile correspondents' dinner would at least be a signal of better intentions.  One of the great benefits of retirement from the newspaper business is not having reason to attend the silly things any more.  They're boring, insipid, the food is mediocre and they demean newsmen who allow themselves to be stuffed into white tie and tails just to rub elbows with the highest and mightiest of people they're supposed to cover.

The thing should have ended several years ago, when Bush II sank to  making a silly skit out of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Rather than walking out, as they should have, the so-called newsmen actually laughed at this. Here was the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, making a joke out of the lie with which he bamboozled Congress and the public into supporting a war that is still going on; that has cost  thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.  Here were the men and women who are supposed to report the truth about our government, chuckling along with good ol' Dubyuh at the bloodiest sick inside joke of all time.

From what I hear, nothing quite as obscene happened at the 2010 White House Correspondents' Association dinner last week.  Someone told me Jay Leno was a dud;  that Obama dutifully poked lame fun at himself and the opposition; that Biden was the butt of lots of jokes about his talent for putting his foot in his mouth. High school pep-rally humor of the sort that would be cause for instant dismissal of a writer for the Stewart or Colbert shows.

How many examples must we have  of supposed "news" reporters allowing themselves to be used as puppets of the politicians in power before some responsible editor or publisher declares, "Enough." He or she could immediately demonstrate bona fides by refusing to  allow his or her journalists to participate in the anachronism of the correspondents' dinner.

No more puerile song parodies.  No more wink-wink insider jokes. No more stenography. Just serious, hard questioning, slogging, dig for the truth, detached reporting of what our government is up to.  It used to be called journalism.

It isn't done by sharing Gratinee de Coquilles St. Jacques and Domaine Gouron Chinon with Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and the rest of Barry's Bosom Buds at a fancy dinner while millions of Americans are still jobless and Washington has not taken a single action in nearly a decade to really fix what's wrong in this country.

The fat cats scarfing canapes last week don't even seem to realize that anything's wrong.

This Was the Week That Was

Sing, it Dinah! Sing, "See the U.S.A. . . . ."

See the offshore drilling platform catch fire, blow up, sink, killing 11 workers and creating the worst oil spill we've ever had. See them call in the Navy, the Coast Guard, the robot subs, the shrimp boats; see them actually set the ocean afire. How's that make you feel about more offshore drilling on the Atlantic Coast, and up in Alaska? Swell idea, eh? Gotta keep those Hummers humming.


"America is asking you to call. . ."

Call on Arizona -- if your skin is very white, and you've got a passport, a driver's license and six other forms of picture ID to verify that you are, by God, a red white and blue-blooded citizen of the Yew-Nited-States of Murrica. If you look the slightest bit Mexican, Guatamalan, Haitian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Chinese, West Indian or such -- maybe even if you look sort of like the President himself -- you'd better be ready for a set of pink drawers and some hard time in Shurf Joe Arpaio's canvas jail, where dawgs get better treatment than prisoners.

"See the U.S.A. . . ."

See the Goldman Sachs guys in the thousand-dollar suits try to explain why Wall Street's "heads I win, tails you lose" way of doing business is really just good old American free enterprise. See the Senate Republicans refuse to allow a vote on legislation that would regulate Goldman and the other banks that are too big to fail, because Republicans believe in free enterprise. See some of the country's richest men struggle to spell F-R-A-U-D.

See two even richer men -- Pete Peterson and Bob Rubin, both former financial policy-makers for the federal government -- tell pensioners that they have to learn to sacrifice more. Everybody's got to pitch in, you know, so the economy can recover from the mistakes of the financial policy-makers for the federal government. At your age, Mort, you don't really need three meals a day.

"America's the greatest land of all . . ."

Yes, the greatest -- if you're Exxon Mobil, the most profitable company in the history of profit, whose first quarter earnings were up 38 per cent over the year before. Drill, baby, drill!

The greatest -- unless you work in a coal mine. Thirty-one miners in West Virginia and Kentucky are dead in mines with long records of safety violations. Even Rush Limbaugh decried unsafe conditions. "Where was the union," he demanded after the West Virginia tragedy that killed 29. "Why didn't their union do something about those conditions?" But there was no union. Workers tried three times to get a certification election, but the mine owners managed to stiff them every time. Legally.

The greatest -- provided you speak English. Tim James, an Alabama gubernatorial candidate vows to put an end to driver’s license tests being conducted in any language but English. “This is Alabama. We speak English,” he tells voters in a campaign ad. (Have you ever tried to translate a pure Alabamian dialect into English?)

The greatest -- unless you're a woman in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Legislature this week overrode Gov. Brad Henry’s veto of two anti-choice bills, one of which gives doctors immunity from being sued if they conceal information about a fetus’s possible birth defects from a pregnant patient.

The greatest -- unless you're one of the six in every ten Americans who live in places where the air you breathe is dangerous to your health, according to new report from the American Lung Association.

All of this in a single week. Sing it again, Dinah!

"America's the greatest land of all . . ."