The agony of Paris Hilton

Paris, in a happier moment.

I honestly think I'm in danger of taking things a little too seriously. I blog, and sometimes bloog, about the Iraq war, Bush's non-species-specific intelligence quotient, global warming, while leaving alone those issues that strike closer to home, that define who we are as a people. I speak, of course, of Paris Hilton. There is something pretentious about refusing to engage with her crisis, I see that now. I think I'm too good for all that. Clearly this is an illusion. I'm no better than anyone else; refusing to devote blog space to Paris Hilton, and her ongoing agony, is an act of arrogance. The Sheriff's Department, in transporting Paris from court to jail, from jail to West Hollywood home, from home to court, from court back to jail...the law men can barely do their job because of the crush of paparazzi and reporters. There's a reason for that. People want to know what's going on with Paris Hilton, and they want to know because of who Paris Hilton is. She's Paris Hilton. She's famous for being Paris Hilton, and has been for quite some time.

I've gone to Google and put Paris's name in the browser, then hit Images. I did this because I kept hearing the name, the name "Paris Hilton." There are some amazing pictures of Paris Hilton. Some might make good plates in an obstetrics and gynecology textbook. In the above photo, Paris is dancing in Miami Beach on New Year's Eve. A continent away from the Lynnwood lockup, of course, and I would surmise Paris had two or three hundred of her closest friends at the disco with her. Including someone named Nicole, who may be Paris's sister. If I weren't such an insufferable intellectual snob, I would know for sure. There are millions of Americans, in other words, who know more about Paris's life than I do. At the lockup, Paris is in solitary confinement. She apparently freaked out right away. This is not an uncommon reaction in anyone who is confined. If I had a chance to talk to Paris, and I really wish I did, I would tell her that the first two or three days of her stretch will be traumatic, then she'll settle into the routine and it won't be so bad. Then she can make another fortune giving interviews about the ordeal of being in stir, but first she has to endure that initiation.

It's odd, to say the least, that the Sheriff's Department suddenly took Paris out of a court-ordered jail stretch and drove her to her house in West Hollywood. From what I've been able to gather, however, Paris is actually quite charming, and even though the pundits who take themselves way too seriously (the way I used to be before I loosened up and became a regular guy) talk about how "scrawny" she is, and horsey-faced, I think she's kind of cute, and I'll bet the Sheriffs do too. Plus, I have a feeling Paris really raised a ruckus in that jail. Once that nervous breakdown started to come on, when she realized there would be no sushi or Dom Perignon in her "room," and she was actually supposed to sleep on that mattress and pee in that toilet...I'll bet things got just a little shrill. But what am I doing now? See, I'm slipping into that arch, above-it-all tone, just like all the cable news guys who pretend they're not fascinated by the life and times of Paris Hilton. Do they think Paris Hilton became famous for no reason? That's silly; she became famous, a celebrity, because she's Paris Hilton.

Claustrophobia, which Paris is enduring again right now, as I write this (I can barely stand to think about it - when will it end?), must be especially acute for her. (Paris, reading this, thinks I just called her cute again.) Paris is used to having lunch in the West End, continuing by Gulfstream to Milan to pick up a skirt (total square inches: 14), and then finishing up at a disco in her namesake city. Given the contrast between life before and after incarceration, maybe Paris has already done enough time, in terms of relative deprivation of freedom. See, that's why Paris Hilton is such a staple of People magazine and dinner-hour cable news. Paris is a very privileged young woman who uses all those privileges. We can identify with her, because secretly we know that most of us would behave the same way with all that money, glamor and access. We wouldn't spend our time like Princess Diana, making the rounds of all the land mine victims and disease hotspots. We're just as frivolous as Paris Hilton. Go ahead and call her a disco-dancing, jet-setting, coke-snorting, magnum-swilling, bed-hopping airhead celebutard. She's got a quick riposte for you (it's like "put-down," Paris): I'm Paris Hilton and you're not.

I'll probably write a lot more about Paris Hilton, now that I'm into it. Maybe a legal analysis of the fairness of her sentence. Too lenient? Too heavy, as the judge sought to make a point about equal justice? Or maybe this blog is it. It took about 15 minutes to write. That's all the fame Paris should have had, logically and according to Andy Warhol, but there appears to be no end in sight. This jail stretch is just what Entertainment Tonight was praying for.

Bush in Germany with the Adults

Let me say at the outset that I am generally sympathetic to Americans when they mix it up with the Eurodogs. The patronizing condescension of those descendants of barbarians who gave us the Inquisition, the Holocaust, both World Wars, and even slavery can be difficult to bear at times. They regard us as uncouth, unsophisticated, uncultured. To which I always reply: what's your point? Still, the idea of Bush at Heiligendamm...how many more of these things will he attend? It's excruciating to observe and listen to the reports of his "participation" at these confabs. I think we tend to judge his performance, at this point, by the avoidance of truly humiliating gaffes. E.g., will he grope Angela Merkel? Will he try to walk through a locked door, as he did in Asia? Will he run down and injure a cop while riding his bicycle, as he did in Scotland? Will he barf all over a prime minister, as his father did? The current fear is that he might get into a fist fight with Vladimir Putin.

As I say, there can be something heartwarming about an American proving his mettle against European snobs. Take "Casablanca," for example, where Rick Blaine, dismissed as a "bumbler" by Nazi Major Strasser, outwits everyone and proves himself more noble than any of his presumptuous Continental betters, earning the ultimate accolade from the leader of the Resistance, Victor Laszlo: "Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win." Yep, there was an American who snapped out of his alcoholic stupor and rose to the occasion. Bush, meanwhile, didn't even wait till he got to Germany before he started screwing up.

Consider his "position" on global warming. Angela Merkel, bless her heart, wanted to use the G-8 to hammer out an agreement in principle that the industrialized countries would reduce CO2 emissions by 50% by the year 2050. So that No President Is Left Behind, let me do the math for L'il Georgie, our "special" President. That's 43 years from now. You'll be dead by then, George, and so will I. What terrible thing would happen if we agreed to this framework? We've got 43 years to work with. At least 10 presidential election cycles, at least 20 congressional elections. 43 years. 43 years ago, how many people were blogging from their dens using the internet? How many hybrid cars were on the road? How many cell phones were in operation worldwide? Do you think the world might be radically different 43 years from now? Do you imagine that unheard-of technologies will exist to deal with carbon emissions 43 years from now? Bush says that he can't agree to "binding" caps on CO2 because India and China are not on board. First of all, is it just me or does anyone else think that there is no connection whatsoever between Bush's counterproposal for "aspirational" CO2 goals to be set someday out there in the future at some other meeting and his problem with India and China? How are the two logically connected? How is a meeting someday in 2008 to discuss aspirational goals with the same people who are already in Germany, ready to talk now, a solution to the problem of India and China's noncompliance?

Sometimes I'm tempted to think Bush is an idiot, to tell you the truth. If Rick Blaine were in Heiligendamm, I think he would finesse the matter this way. Go ahead and agree in principle to the carbon reductions Angela Merkel proposes. Some way or other, between now and 2050, we'll get there. We have to get there. This agreement is itself aspirational. We don't know for certain whether it will be met or exceeded. We might arrive in a world of 2050 where the only CO2 emissions are from natural oxidative processes. But it does provide this leverage: if India and China don't agree to the same mandatory restrictions, then the G-8 nations, operating as a bloc, have leverage to enforce their compliance. Because their compliance is essential to a viable ecosphere. Such leverage is completely absent from a purely "aspirational" bullshit session in which Bush runs out the clock on his Presidency while proving only that no one, ever, in Germany or in Crawford, Texas, can ever make him do something smart he doesn't want to do.

Oh hell, George. Go ahead and walk into a wall.

Grand Unified Theory of American Politics

Or: It's my blogsite and I'll rant if I want to.

But admit it. Down deep (if not at the surface, where it drives everyone else nuts), you've got it all figured out. The proliferation of personal blogs is testament to this tendency. I believe it's healthy, for it was obvious to me that the Establishment was not getting the job done. Indeed, that is my thesis. The Establishment has become irrelevant to the actual human condition. It is no longer ameliorative, it is not responsive, it is not anything but a money-making racket. Do I overstate my case? Actually, I think I understate the case. Everyone writing a blog, for the most part (not the ones dedicated to different ways of making zabaglione - maybe), are figuratively that character in "Network," the TV executive who realizes (in Paddy Chayevsky's brilliant formulation) that everything is corrupt and are shouting out their (virtual) windows, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

The country is at that brink. Something like 3 or 4 people in the nation "approve of the job the Congress is doing." In effect, everyone hates all of them, all the time. This represents sound judgment. For example, if we were to schematically represent the "range" of viewpoints of all these tiresome people "running" for President (at a point some 17 months before the actual election), we might do it this way: Suppose using the x-axis only we were to group all the "plans" and "initiatives" along this horizontal line, with the "liberal" ideas toward the left and the "conservative" ideas toward the right. Let us confine all the data points which these "ideas" represent to the ordinates 0 through 10. A dark cluster of points, I submit, would be found around the 7.5 mark. You would find nothing to the left of 5, and nothing to the right of 9. This squashing of "acceptable" ideas is what Noam Chomsky termed "manufacturing consent." It is a bias toward the conservative, the "reasonable," the usual, the already-done-that.

In this world, a proposal by a Presidential candidate to actually cut the military budget, by any amount, would be considered radical. The debate is about how much to increase the budget; a "liberal" might say, "Well, how about 3%?" The conservative, after branding the liberal a seditious insurgent, would decry this "starving" of the defense establishment which will make America "less safe." The medical care system is broken. If one-sixth of the populace has no medical insurance now, about 50 million, it is a matter of time (and not much) before the diverging lines of cost (upward) and people who can afford insurance (downward) will double this number, so that 100 million people, a full third, will be uninsured and effectively shut out of all but emergency care. The United States, at the federal level, is doing absolutely nothing about global warming. All it does is talk. The candidates offer tepid ideas about how to "approach" it. No one has the guts to discuss how draconian, how radical the adjustments in American life really have to be to deal with the problem. The nation is bankrupt. The federal government is simply printing money and issuing phony statistics to hide the resulting inflation (it doesn't include "food" or "fuel" in the calculation - do you ever need those?) and devaluation of the dollar. It borrows money like your drug addict relative with the get-rich-quick scheme. It borrows money to continue a stupid war that both parties lack the courage to simply shut down, $100 billion the last go-round, all of it made possible by money the Chinese recycle to us to keep us afloat.

While the government spends $8 billion per day for all its farflung operations (literally: $2.9 trillion/365 days) and never says no to a call to "support the troops," it has let Amtrak die a slow death by refusing, a few years ago, to appropriate the $2 billion its new and enthusiastic director said was essential to revitalize the railroad. Not $2 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, as with Iraq, but on a one-time basis. No, let's drive cars. Big cars with shitty mileage, in fact. The Republocrats run a kind of "guided democracy" of the kind we thought was so laughable in Mexico when the PRI could not be dislodged. Or when the Politburo held sway in the Soviet Union. Options within a narrow bandwidth are considered "reasonable," even if they cannot possibly get the job done, because they satisfy vested interests and are consistent with the psychology of previous investment.

The blogosphere has already produced some "Establishment" sites, such as the Huffington Post, which are mainly propaganda organs for the Democratic Party. Arianna Huffington has produced, in fact, an on-line 'Zine, and its commercial trappings are now smothering its once daring and subversive fire. She must have figured out how to make money, a lot of it, with the site. Once that happens, of course, the radicalism is scaled back. One must not disturb the other passengers on the Titanic. The Democrats, who are doing nothing, are the temporary beneficiaries of Republican revulsion. The Republicans, unchecked, were so bad that the nation mistook the Democrats for avenging heroes. They're not at all. They never make any real noise about the Constitutional atrocities committed by George W. Bush. A few hearings, a speech now and then at a Congressional session. Impeachment is too "radical." Restoration of habeas corpus or the Bill of Rights is too "radical." Ending a dumb and ruinous war is too "precipitous." National healthcare is too "socialistic." Joining the rest of the civilized world in dealing with carbon dioxide emissions is too "green."

Legislators in Washington, D.C. live in an insulated world where they make a decent living, receive the best medical care, have large staffs to do the work, and can flaunt power in feckless ways. They are most drawn to issues which have no impact on the real life of Americans. The "immigration" bill is a clear case in point. Discussing how and when to grant citizenship to millions and millions of illegal immigrants sounds important, but it isn't. The bill will have no economic impact on the United States. It will deal neither with our huge environmental problems nor with our looming financial meltdown. That is why the solons like the issue: they can engage in bombast and oratory about our "nation of immigrants" and tell stories about their granddads, or alternatively can indulge in jingoistic soliloquies about America losing its Americanness. Either way, they can take another few months to produce a "landmark" bill which will have nothing to do with anything. The illegal aliens among us will go on living here, working, paying sales and property taxes if not income taxes, having children and ignoring the law. The Congressfolks will then appear before a bank of microphones and smile like idiots about their important accomplishment, and hope that no one notices that this bill is the direct result of failing to enforce an identical bill passed twenty years ago.

I think the system is beyond redemption, and in fact is no longer even designed to solve problems. Usually, I quit about here, about 350 words in. However, this is my Grand Unified Theory, and an abnormal expatiation may be necessary, if not necessarily in order. It is pretentious, of course, to use terms like "unified theory," which is a term borrowed from physics. It has something to do with Einstein's attempts to consolidate quantum theory with relativity. Or maybe the modern attempt to reconcile gravity within a quantum framework. I don't really know. Writers in the social "sciences" like to lace their writing with references to "rigorous" stuff. Christopher Hitchens, for example, likes to pretend he has a detailed appreciation of concepts such as "punctuated evolution" and cosmology in his "god is not great" book. He doesn't, of course, but it's enough to fool the general reader, and that's all that counts. You should not take my "grand unified theory" seriously for the same reason, because it's all bullshit from the get-go. So what? It's my blog. But theories have theorems, or propositions. I know that much. For example, Einstein's Special Theory dealt with equations for mass under acceleration: dilation of time, increase of mass, decrease of length, etc. So I have them too, because I want to be rigorous, just like Christopher Hitchens.

Theorem #1: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a dangerous myth. Mark Twain once referred to "Congressional idiots," then said: "but I repeat myself." At this point in history, a career in legislation is like a career in car sales or real estate brokerage, and the entry requirements are about comparable. As a lawyer who has spent his professional life trying to decipher the crap these people write, trust me on this. Think about it: what other line of work can you get into without real credentials, talent or personal capital, solely on the basis of bullshit, and yet acquire a good salary, a staff, and apparent power? The mediocrities in Congress, above all, do not want to give these sinecures up. As C. Wright Mills explained, the first impulse of those in power is to remain in power. This disinclines members of Congress from taking any kind of risky action.

Theorem #2: The Scared-of-their-Shadows-Solons cannot react to uncomfortable impulses from the real world. Global warming is an excellent example of this principle. The real solutions are "radical," in the classical etymology of the word, meaning "root." One must go to the "root" of the issue, the way we produce energy for manufacture, transport and production of electricity and heat. To undertake a real solution, the solons would need to upset vested interests who are more interested in remaining vested than in long-term consequences. Upsetting such interests would violate Theorem #1. Thus, Congress would prefer to tinker and to propose timelines which are politically acceptable but irrelevant to atmospheric science. George W. Bush does not care because he plans to resume drinking on January 20, 2009, at about 3 pm.

Theorem #3: Since Congress cannot react to conditions in the real world, it exists solely to perpetuate itself and to give the appearance of crucial importance. Congress is not important; indeed, it is an impediment. As I said in another post, any cashier could have written George W. Bush a check to continue his stupid war. I will detail in another post the truly revolting game which Nancy Pelosi played in order to pretend to oppose the war. It was her attempt to finesse both Theorems #1 and #2.

Please bear these theories in mind as you go about your quotidian, outside-the-Beltway life. The first principle is to protect yourself from the effects of the U.S. Congress, although, as demonstrated by the draft legislation which Nancy Pelosi's Democrats just unveiled which will invalidate California's global warming initiative (under the "Preeemption Clause" - don't you love it?), this is not always so easy.
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Liberal CO2

Certain events in your life, like the last of your parents to die, bring home inevitable feelings of fatalism. You're reminded that no matter what happens, this is all temporary anyway. We're a temporary species on a temporary planet. If Ernst Mayr was right about the usual survival period for a species, we're already on borrowed time. The Earth, no matter what we do, is going to be consumed along with the rest of the solar system when the sun goes red giant in 4 or 5 billion years. If the human race were still on the surface of the Earth when that amazing convulsion begins to be felt (we won't be), all talk of "global warming" would seem like pretty tame stuff. The oceans will boil and Earth will be consumed in heat death, along with all planetary co-passengers. That will happen with or without, or despite, human contribution.

In this pleasant suburban enclave where I live, where the air is redolent of California laurel and redwood trees, and the usually cool marine air is never too heavy with humidity, everyone carries on their lives much as they do everywhere in this country. On a political map, this region is deep blue. Liberal, concerned, progressive. Because the county is relatively affluent, the houses are big and often sparsely occupied. In the parking lot of the overpriced but charming grocery store a short distance from here, it's difficult sometimes to maneuver your car down the lanes between cars, not because the lot attempts to allocate too many spaces in too small a space (if anything, every space is larger than normal), but because of the size of the suburban transport machines used by the shoppers. Row upon row of Range Rovers, Land Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers, BMW SUVs, GMC Yukons, Lincoln Navigators and all the rest of the elephantine class of internal combustion vehicles. I suppose on a given day the "fleet average" for the parking lot, if full, might be around 15 mpg. Most of the "cars" are driven by one woman weighing on average (this is a muscle-toned enclave) 130 pounds and traveling a distance of less than 5 miles, round trip. This is unscientific, somewhat anecdotal, yet perhaps telling. Many of these cars display progressive bumper stickers. There are, of course, Priuses and high-mileage compacts hidden in among the Brobdinagian land-crawlers with their high performance AWD for negotiating those tricky dry, suburban streets. But overall...

One reads that the world is beginning to take seriously the issue of CO2 concentrations in the troposphere. Nancy Pelosi, parka encircling her concerned face, has been to Greenland, flying by jet of course, "to see for herself" what was going on, perhaps not trusting the world's finest climatologists to figure it out without her presence. Although in so doing she laid down another gasp of CO2 directly at that level of the troposphere where it does the most harm. La Diva saw that Greenland's glaciers are now running into the sea at the rate of 75 feet per year, about a 12-fold increase over about six years ago. She was, naturally, worried. She is a progressive, however, and her concern is more concerned than the norm. By the same token, I think liberals in general, when they drive their behemoths and heat their oversized houses, believe that their CO2 emissions are entitled to a different regard from that of the unaware. One cap-and-trade system that Nancy might suggest is a greater allocation to rich liberals, who form such an important part of her constituency, under a "Liberal CO2" program. The idea being that Liberal CO2 is different from the CO2 of the unaware and unenlightened. As a reward for their concern, liberals should be allowed twice the amount per capita as opposed to those who do not take the idea of global warming seriously.

The scientists may argue that the real issue is how much fucking CO2 is in the troposphere capturing infrared radiation and heating the Earth's atmosphere. They might go on to point out that while all this palaver among the political class has been occurring over the last few years, since global warming was "discovered," the actual, gross amount of CO2 released worldwide has continued to increase over previous levels. But perhaps this additional CO2 is entitled to a special dispensation; after all, it was released to do its devilish work after we became aware of its deadly potential. So maybe, just like Liberal CO2, it doesn't count.

Actually, we better hope so.

Things will now become very interesting in the good ol' USA

And on the economic front:

WASHINGTON — "The economy nearly stalled in the first quarter with growth slowing to a pace of just 0.6 percent. That was the worst three-month showing in over four years.

"The new reading on the gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department Thursday, showed that economic growth in the January-through-March quarter was much weaker. Government statisticians slashed by more than half their first estimate of a 1.3 percent growth rate for the quarter." (Source: the real world.)

The economy has not sputtered like this since 2002, when the United States was emerging from a recession caused by the hallucination, and inevitable collapse, of the status quo ante, namely, the Internet IPO craze. Americans, who long ago gave up the idea we could build wealth by manufacturing durable goods or high technology and selling such stuff to the rest of the world in order to raise cash, replaced one racket with another. We began cannibalizing our capital wealth, more or less in the style of an English baron, now gone to seed, who is forced to open up the family castle to tourists, add a gift shop and install a carousel just to make ends meet. For a while, until he's ultimately faced with the necessity of subdividing his heritage, selling the place and moving to a condo in the West End, where he'll still be Sir Somethingorother, but no more liveried footmen answering the front door.

One stat I don't see referenced too much in the mainstream media is an astonishing fact revealed in the pages of Kevin Phillips's book American Theocracy. To wit, between 2000 and 2005 Americans derived over half of their "income" through refinancing of their principal residences. It's not income at all, of course; even an amateur economist like myself knows that. It adds to cash flow, but on a balance sheet it dumps a debit to match the influx of created cash. When Ben Bernanke or Alan Greenspan talks about the economy, I never hear them refer to this ominous development. Add to this disturbing datum the widely-acknowledged reality that the U.S. gross domestic product relies, to the extent of 70%, on consumer spending and you have the macrocosmic picture in focus. Get it? The good years of the Bush Administration, insofar as the economy was concerned, depended to a phenomenal degree on the availability of cheap, not to say promiscuous, credit. All of this was pimped by the Fed, who made cheap money (furnished by China, Japan and other net exporters selling in the U.S. market with fistfuls of dollars at their disposal) available to banks and other lenders, who then used various artful tricks and strategems, such as negative amortization, to "qualify" just about anyone who could fog a mirror. Thus, money from China and Japan flowed through the Fed to the lenders to the consumers to Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target.

Until everyone hit the upper limit on available "equity," which was itself based on inflated housing prices (in turn based upon easy credit, in a kind of upward death spiral). With re-fi money drying up, the consumers became nervous and edgy and stopped buying so many Chinese electric nose clippers at Wal-Mart, which reported its biggest sales drop in 28 years (which gives you an idea of my sheltered life: I had no idea Wal-Mart had been around that long). When consumer spending dies, a percentage of the U.S. economy equal to the volume of water in the human body begins to expire. Which means recession.

If Bush thought he had problems before, he ain't seen nothin' yet. 72% of Americans thought we were on the "wrong track" when the economy was "booming." I suspect that everyone was a little uneasy about how all of this was being accomplished. Intuitively, it simply made no sense. No one was really doing anything to create wealth in a traditional sense, yet all this money was flowing through the system. It is reassuring, if somewhat terrifying in its prospects, to see common sense vindicated. We were in the process of mortgaging our patrimony, the one built up by generations who actually did a lot of hard work. I think I've got room in my back yard, however, for a Bumper Car Ride.

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Cindy Sheehan and Cognitive Dissonance

One of the country's foremost anti-war activists, Cindy Sheehan, has retired from the field. Her parting remarks were bitter and disillusioned. She concluded that her son Casey died in Iraq for "nothing." I think it is understandable that a grieving mother whose son died in an ambiguous war became an activist. Most parents can understand this impulse; for one thing, it allows one to seek meaning in an otherwise unmitigated tragedy. Then, too, one might hold away, at least for a while, the full impact of the grief a parent would otherwise feel. One can, at least in part, immerse those feelings in a cause associated with the loss. Maybe Cindy Sheehan finally reached the point where that strategy was no longer working. It should not be for us to guess. If the country had any emotional decency, it would afford a compassionate respect for her decision; since this is, however, the United States, her choice will be subject to the usual partisan bloviating.

As to the merits of what she said - I don't think her son died for "nothing." I think he died as part of a military force executing a phase of America's modern business plan. Whatever high-minded rationales have been offered for the invasion of Iraq, I think almost all of us instinctively recognize that Iraq's oil was always the essential cause. The spreading of democracy, the toppling of an "evil dictator:" these rationales can be refuted by noting the selective nature of the battle we fought. Brutal dictators are in abundance in the world; humanitarian crises are everywhere. Any Middle Eastern Arab country could have been invaded if the criterion was our opposition to authoritarian rule. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria would have worked as well. But Egypt and Syria do not have significant oil, and the Saudis already cooperate. That left Iraq, with the second largest known reserves of light sweet crude in the world. So a PR campaign was mounted to justify the invasion on grounds that were more reminiscent of John Wayne-type illusions. Iraq was a "threat." They would attack us with nuclear weapons if we didn't act right away. It was all a huge and intentional lie. Those who told the lie knew it was untrue.

But they also knew that Americans, at base, were not well-situated to contest that falsehood effectively. The reason for that disability is deeply psychological. Almost all of us, everyday, make conscious choices that necessitate foreign, adventurist wars in order to keep the oil pipelines flowing. We were candid about the rationale for Operation Desert Storm back in 1991. We made no bones about invading Kuwait in order to secure a steady and affordable supply of Mideast Oil. But Iraq II involved a "war of choice," and there is something about a premeditated invasion of another sovereign country which has done nothing to provoke an attack which does not sit well with our conscious image of ourselves. So the various, specious rationales were conflated with the 9/11 attacks, and the Bush Administration had a product it could sell.

Congress is now loath to disengage from Iraq; both the Republicans and the Vichy Democrats under occupation by the Bush Administration are avoiding obvious steps they could take to end the war. I doubt that it is a coincidence that the lingering goodbye is contemporaneous with Iraq's "hydrocarbon law" deliberations, and it's probably part of the same gambit that the Iraqi parliament is dragging its feet to see if American domestic politics make it possible to deliberate without Big Brother looking over its shoulder. The production sharing agreements which form the core of the hydrocarbon law are under construction by an American corporate lawyer (a graduate of my own legal alma mater) and will return a Middle Eastern country to the kind of colonial vassalage, in terms of oil revenue, not seen since the days of Aramco and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the vehicles for American and British exploitation of Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively. It is too sweet a plum to leave behind, especially after America's ruinously costly war. If Bush caves on the demand for withdrawal, he will have to add this loss to the fiasco which preceded it, and America's supply of future petroleum will also be in jeopardy.

There is no longer any essential division between America's private and public sectors; the federal government is an extension of corporate interests. The inability of the electorate to influence this "complex" relates to the monopoly over politics held by the only two significant parties. The remaining means of influence is individual lifestyle, and it is here that Americans are deeply ambivalent. We import about 14 millions barrels of oil a day against a total usage of 20 million barrels per day, out of worldwide consumption of 80 million barrels; thus, with 5% of the world's population, we use about 25% of the world's petroleum. We have not increased fuel efficiency standards for cars since 1986, and the overall efficiency of vehicles in America is approximately the same as in 1981. All Middle Eastern imports could be eliminated by switching to cars which are currently available in the American market. If we added to this a true commitment to mass transportation with a better passenger-mile efficiency than cars (such as trains), we could probably eliminate the necessity of any foreign imports of oil. Since these are consumer choices and the solutions are already here, no reliance on the federal government to implement the change is necessary.

The blame game, however, is practically irresistible to Americans, who would rather look anywhere other than at themselves, where the problem lies. The "Iraq War Debate" is a kind of industry which services this distraction. Huge blogsites, such as the Huffington Post on the Left and Powerline on the Right, have built their reputations on taking sides. Being a "Democrat" or a "Republican" is largely defined by being for or against this war, at least in this day and age. Yet we ignore the obvious solution, both to corporatism and a dangerous involvement in Middle Eastern politics. Change the way we live. Stop believing that unbridled consumerism can be sustained.

I think we're all aware of this, at a limbic-brain level at least. But how do you profess your superiority if you acknowledge you're part of the problem? Without the assistance of the government, we could win the Iraq War here at home simply by reordering our priorities.

Cindy Sheehan, at last, saw through the emptiness of the official rationales for the Iraq War. The war is simply an exercise in servicing America's tendency to indulge itself endlessly in the things it wants, its toys and the energy to run them. Bush and his crew would have no power if we corrected these tendencies in ourselves. I think Cindy Sheehan probably came to see that; it's a shame she did not see it in time to save her son.

The New Adventures of Pancho & Frisco

Scene: Outskirts of a town out West. Frisco, a pretty lady buttoned tightly into her black Armani suit, rides a silver charger. Her little sling-back heels are thrust into diamond-crusted stirrups. A pair of bandoleras cross, and tastefully conceal, her decolletage. A broad pink sombrero shields her eyes from the blazing sun. At her side is Pancho Feingold, her diminutive sidekick. They dismount and seek cover behind some granite boulders, pulling their shiny revolvers from holsters. Frisco breaks a heel as she clambers across the rocky terrain.

Frisco: Damn!
Pancho: Oh Frisco!
Frisco: Oh Pancho, shut up.
Pancho: What we doing here, Frisco?
Frisco: El Malo is holed up in that town over there, holding everyone hostage. We're here to get them out.
Pancho: Oh Frisco! We going to be heroes?
Frisco: Maybe. But El Malo must be held accountable for his hostage taking.
Pancho: What hell that mean, Frisco?
Frisco: I'm not sure. I just like the sound of it.
Pancho: How long El Malo hold people hostage?
Frisco: Four years or so.
Pancho: Oh Frisco! So now we free them?
Frisco: Maybe. I don't want to endanger the hostages. (looks at her shoe...) This damn broken heel! This might not be the time.
Pancho: Hostages in danger now, Frisco?
Frisco: Yes. Every day 5 or 6 get shot because El Malo won't let them leave.
Pancho: Ay caramba! And this go on for four years?
Frisco: (defensively) I'm not responsible for that!
Pancho: So we attack, guns blazing, huh? Ay-yi-yi, arriba!
Frisco: It's not that simple, Pancho. There's more to it than you understand.
Pancho: Your heel again?
Frisco: No. El Malo refuses to cooperate. He says we can't free the hostages.
Pancho: Huh? You expect him to co-op-er-ate?
Frisco: It was his decision to take the town hostage. He should be held accountable for that and not expect us to make the decision to free his hostages.
Pancho: Oy vey, Frisco. You losing me.
Frisco: That's only because you don't pay attention to the politics of the situation.
Pancho: What you want to do, compadre?
Frisco: Well, it will be too hot this summer. We can take another run at this in September. Meanwhile, I can get this heel fixed.
Pancho: Hostages keep dying this summer?
Frisco: Probably more than ever, now that El Malo knows we want to free them.
Pancho: So if we free them, they die, if we don't free them, they die. But one big difference...
Frisco: We live. Saddle up, Pancho.
Pancho: Oh Frisco, this sucks. Heroes not like old days, verdad?
Frisco: Oh Pancho, shut up and ride.

Cheney-Satan '08

Turgidson:
Mr. President, there are one or two points I'd like to make, if I may.

Muffley:
Go ahead, General.

Turgidson:
One, our hopes for recalling the 843rd bomb wing are quickly being reduced to a very low order of probability. Two, in less than fifteen minutes from now the Russkies will be making radar contact with the planes. Three, when they do, they are going to go absolutely ape, and they're gonna strike back with everything they've got. Four, if prior to this time, we have done nothing further to suppress their retaliatory capabilities, we will suffer virtual annihilation. Now, five, if on the other hand, we were to immediately launch an all out and coordinated attack on all their airfields and missile bases we'd stand a damn good chance of catching 'em with their pants down. Hell, we got a five to one missile superiority as it is. We could easily assign three missiles to every target, and still have a very effective reserve force for any other contingency. Now, six, an unofficial study which we undertook of this eventuality, indicated that we would destroy ninety percent of their nuclear capabilities. We would therefore prevail, and suffer only modest and acceptable civilian casualties from their remaining force which would be badly damaged and uncoordinated.

Muffley:
General, it is the avowed policy of our country never to strike first with nuclear weapons.

Turgidson:
Well, Mr. President, I would say that General Ripper has already invalidated that policy. (laughs)

Maybe, at this point, we're going about this all wrong. Reports are that Dick Cheney is running an alt-presidency of a kind that General Turgidson, as depicted in George C. Scott's peerless performance in "Dr. Strangelove," could have understood and gotten behind. Cheney is trying to provoke an attack against Iran, and anyone else who looks at us funny, in order to narrow George W. Muffley's range of choices. So the rumors have it. W has gotten soft in the autumn of his presidency. He's gone all diplomatic, coddling these psycho nut cases in Iran and North Korea with international "sanctions" and the rest of it. What crap. "Dick" Cheney, like "Buck" Turgidson, knows there comes a time when you've done so much damage, provoked so much ill will, stirred up so much resentment, when the gale force winds of blowback flatten all other possibilities -- when that moment arrives, you have but one option left. Total war.

Let's face it. There is no effective opposition to our warmongering leadership. The world hates our guts, anyway. Long ago the Congress, in its weakness, gave away its war power under the Constitution. The Go Code was assigned to the President, while Congress took a backseat, demoting its Constitutional prerogatives to a statutory War Powers Act. They didn't have to; they wanted to. It was a recognition that since December 8, 1941, Congress has been afraid to declare a war of its own. And once you're in, you can't get out. The money has to keep flowing to the "troops." Or you "abandon" them.

So why do we even need a Congress? Wouldn't a cashier work as well? One guy or gal with a green eye shade and a check book. And one collection agency for taxes - how's that for privatizing? Everything else could be military. 100% of the budget. We'll need it, once we start going to war with everyone. We can't back down now. They'll follow us home, and attack my children, yours, and David Gregory's.

In 2008 Cheney could finally have a running mate worthy of his noble purpose. Read Milton's "Paradise Lost" or "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant" if you think I'm kidding. Ol' Scratch is a charming, seductive character, and God knew it. He sent him to Hell probably because Beelzebub threatened his mastery over the Heavens. Satan is devilishly clever, funny, and sharp as the tines on that pitch fork. He would be a huge improvement over the dead weight Cheney currently lugs around. Then with a declaration of martial law under the Insurrection Act (thanks to the foresight of Sen. John Warner's amendment snuck into the military appropriations act last year) and we can finally get rid of all this tiresome dissent. This "blogging" from the Left Wing Blogistan, this Fifth Column for the terrorists. When those in power are right, when they have the perspective of eternity (thanks to the added insights which the Devil will bring to the West Wing), we don't need free speech. By definition you only need free speech when policy correctives are necessary. And we all know how America loves a comeback story. Could anyone top this one? Arising from the darkest depths of the Inferno, from being the most reviled character in history, to a position of supreme power? (I'm referring to Satan.)

Dick Cheney and Satan in 2008. Let's give Hell a chance.

Wake me when it's over

The clear signs are now that the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will give Bush his war money with no strings attached, unless you count waivable, non-binding, precatory suggestions that Bush pretty please tell Congress how things are going in his vanity war. Is the Iraqi parliament passing stuff? The Iraqi army, are they still training to take over? How many people are getting blown to smithereens on a daily basis over there?

One must wonder what Frisco Nancy had in mind in her "negotiations" with Bush over funding. As I suggested in my poker game jape, Nancy has a rather obvious tell in her poker playing. She kept saying the troops would get funded, that we would "support our troops." She kept using the word "accountable" in myriad and bewildering ways, until there was no accounting for how she was using it. In truth, against a president whose veto cannot be overridden, Congress has but one real power, and that is the power not to appropriate the money for the war. Bush cannot compel Congress to do so, and without money his war is over. Frisco Nancy and Harry Mumbles could have announced that Bush would receive, e.g., $20 billion with which to extract the troops, period. If he vetoed such an appropriation, then he could extract the troops with money from the White House groundskeeping budget. However he chose to do it, but Congress was not going to give him any money to continue, let alone escalate, the Iraq war. At the same time they announced this strategy, they would have hammered home the elementary point that Bush, as Commander in Chief, is responsible for the safety of the American military in a theatre of war; as such, he must operate with the available resources to ensure their security. Even Bush, The Great Maroon, would have figured that one out. Indeed, it's the way Bugs Bunny would have played it (after making Bush first set fire to himself, shoot himself out of a cannon, and fall down a manhole, of course).

These points are fundamental. Let us then follow the deductive principle of another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, who said that when one had eliminated all other possibilities, whatever was left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Ah, what a fine, rigorous, disciplined mind! So unlike...everyone in public office today. Holmes would tell us, of course, that Frisco Nancy and Harry Mumbles do not want the war to end, at least not because of anything they do. This becomes obvious, when you think about it. It is a delicate, exquisitely daunting balancing act. Frisco Nancy must appear to righteously vindicate the anti-war left, a large bloc in the Democratic Party while at the same time taking no effective action to end the war. Thus: waivable timelines, incomprehensible benchmarks, "reporting" duties and the rest of the gobbledegook. Bush has his eye on the prize: gimme the money. Why? Why ask why anymore? At a secondary level of reality, one hidden from the view of the public, behind closed doors at the Capitol, the Democrats want the carnage and destruction to proceed ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Bush is sending more and more troops into his abattoir arabesque. About three a day are blown up, which means in the remaining seven months of 2007, the total dead will top 4,000. And the Iraqi dead, raped and mutilated? The number is literally uncounted. The middle class is heading for the exits while the parliament dithers over giving the Bush administration the oil confiscation law Cheney & Co. so desperately want.

One is reminded, as de Toqueville told us, we live in a republic, not a democracy. The elected officials have their own agendas, their own set of priorities, the first of which is job security. They get elected not on the basis of their ideas, but because of name recognition purchased through advertising, like deodorant and toothpaste. Or through preexisting notoriety, such as the President of the United States or the Governor of California. They see their jobs as placating an unruly, mostly irrelevant electorate while feathering their own nests. Sometimes, just because the stakes can get so high, it is more obvious than at other times. The Democrats recognize there was a shift in 2006 from Republican to Democrat. And if the voters become frustrated with the Democrats, the Democrats also recognize, there is nowhere left to go.

Poker Night at the White House

Scene: Conference room off the Oval Office. Around a walnut table topped with green baize are seated Texas W, his sidekick Dubai Dick, Utah Karl, and two new players, Harry Mumbles and Frisco Nancy.

W: One more hand? I gotta get a pot to break even, or there'll be hell to pay with Laurie. I'm down 90 bucks, I think. (He takes a swig of single malt Scotch from a 12-ounce glass and puffs away on a half-chewed stogie.)

Dubai Dick (sitting behind an immense pile of chips): That's cause you keep folding your hands. Still 5 card draw?

W: I like Texas Hold 'em better, but we got home field advantage as it is.

Utah Karl deals, mostly from the top of the deck.

W: (to Dubai Dick, gesturing at his chips): Where'd you get that stake, anyhow?

Dubai Dick: (out of the corner of his mouth) That's confidential.

W: I bet. Everbody ante?

Frisco Nancy and Harry Mumbles stare down at their cards, which are face up on the table in front of them. They each throw a chip into the pot, then look up. W, Dubai Dick and Utah Karl look for awhile at their own hands, then over at the cards lying on the table in front of the other two. W throws twenty bucks into the pot. Dubai and Utah do likewise.

Harry Mumbles: See your twenty, raise you ten.

Frisco Nancy (matching Harry's bet): Right back atcha.

W: Whoa! You must really have a hand. (He stares some more at their cards, in fact.) We're at $120, thirty more than I need!

Utah Karl: Cards?

Frisco Nancy (tapping her cards, which consist of a jack, eight, two fours, and a deuce): I'm good.

Harry Mumbles (who holds a six, three, queen, and two fives): Me too.

W: Play 'em like they lay, then.

Dubai Dick (flipping his cards to the center): I'm out.

Utah Karl: Me too.

With a flourish, W spreads his hand face-up on the table, three eights, a king and a ten.

W: Read 'em and weep. (He pulls all the chips toward him.) And to think, Nancy, you coulda knocked me outta the game before it got started!

Frisco Nancy: I've said from the beginning that option was off the table.

W: So you did. So we'll meet, say, again in a year?

Frisco Nancy: That sounds fine.

Harry Mumbles: (mumbles inaudibly.)

George Bush and the problem of climate change

George W. Bush is a tricky and sneaky guy, and routinely overrates his ability to get away with various evasions and shortcuts which have characterized his private and public life. When faced with a challenge, his first instinct is to find some way not to meet it. For example, when summoned to jury duty for a drunk driving case (in 1996 in Texas), he thought it was a better approach to beg off his civic responsibility with a specious objection that he might be called on to "pardon" or "commute" the sentence of the defendant in his role as governor. This laughable "conflict of interest" gave him a way to avoid disclosing his own conviction for drunk driving twenty years before. When he engaged in insider trading at Harken Energy, he omitted the SEC's required disclosure forms. When caught and exposed, he explained that he thought his "lawyer took care of that."

So it goes. As proof the tiger does not change its stripes (or, maybe more appropriate, the ass his donkey ears), Bush has blown the dust off his "20 in 10" idea to deal with global warming. This is his "radical" proposal to reduce the use of gasoline by 20% by 2017, as measured against the sum of current use + projected growth by such date. Catchy. Since even his handpicked weirdoes at the Supreme Court could not bail him out, Bush and the EPA are under High Court order to comply with the Clean Air Act, which has determined that CO2 is a pollutant under Nixon's landmark legislation. You see how far we've fallen: Nixon was a comparative progressive. Nothing can be done, the Smirking Chimp contends, until the end of 2008. In other words, the end of his term. Thus and always, Bush does everything he can to ensure disaster. There is simply no bottom to the evil this man does.

I'm beginning to think it's very late in the game to deal with global warming anyway. As I've posted before, my first thought when it became apparent Bush would be appointed to the presidency in 2000 was that his idiotic obstructionism came at exactly the wrong time in human history. We had to get going on this problem of climate change, and America had to take the lead. Instead - we got him. What does that mean? Maybe the gaia-as-organism people are on to something, satirists like the late great Kurt Vonnegut. Mother Earth herself gave us Bush simply to finish us off. I recall too the haunting words of Inez Fung, researcher and climate scientist extraordinaire at last year's China-U.S. Climate Change conference at Berkeley. The first thing she wanted us to know, as she stood at the podium in a plenary session at Wheeler Auditorium, was that the scientists who studied this matter closely, as their life's work, "were very, very scared." I think it's remarkable that so many of the manifestations of global warming have already arrived. The accelerating loss of the Arctic polar ice pack, the vortex winds in Antarctica and the six-year drought in Australia, the melting of 75% of the world's glaciers, the extreme weather events, the unprecedented off-season wildfires. I would surmise that these events were within the horizon of probability of scientists like Inez Fung and Steven Chu at Berkeley, and James Hansen at NASA. Yet because they have constantly been pushed to the wall by the "skeptics" and their corrupt political accomplices, such as Bush and Joe Barton, the execrable Republican from Texas, and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Grand Dragon of Apocalyptic Obscurantism, they have been forced to couch their scientific forecasts in moderate terms, conceding minor points and ranges of "error," so as not to lose their credibility. Or their funding. And thus diluting the full impact of the predictions they would really like to make, as intimated by Inez Fung's opening comment.

But as for me, and as for nearly everyone else -- I'm not a scientist, and I'm not seeking funding. I'm a member of homo sapiens with a sensory apparatus who looks around at the world, and I realize that as tricky and devious as Bush tries to be, he is not going to be able to fool the troposphere or the oceans. The ecosphere is not the SEC or the Texas court system, or the compliant Washington press. The atmosphere moves and changes according to its own chemical and physical laws. It is not impressed by numbers games, by the idea that 2017's CO2 concentrations could have been worse. CO2 levels rise, the troposphere traps infrared radiation from the Earth, the oceans acidify, the world warms up. And all hell breaks loose, as an incomprehensibly complicated interplay of weather patterns, albedo loss and solar absorption, pest migration and infestation, torrential rain and nonending drought, descend upon human life. Shuck and jive all you want, Mr. Bush. Yours won't be the last smirk.

HypoxiaMan Weighs in on The Central Front

"We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. "The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again." Dick Cheney, Vice President, speaking in Baghdad on May 10, 2007.

Just as a stylistic note, to which I'm perhaps more sensitive than the general population, have you ever noticed Cheney's habit of inserting throat-clearing phrases in the middle of his sentences? "Above all." "If you will." I think it's his way of adding gravitas to his sententious utterances. I doubt that anyone ever born takes himself as seriously as Dick Cheney takes himself. He loves mumbling dreadful, spooky things, and it doesn't matter how often history proves him absolutely dead wrong about everything he says, he just comes back with another ominous declaration about the way it all is. I don't know if Guinness maintains a category for Most Consecutive Times Wrong About Matters of Foreign Policy, but if they do, they should retire the trophy in Cheney's honor. If Cheney had flipped a coin, I think he would have had results at least 49% better than his actual track record, being generous and allowing him a 1% chance of being right about anything.

Possibly this is all related to the fossilized state of Cheney's vascular system. He spends about half his time in the hospital getting thrombi Roto-Rooted out, and I really wonder why he puts himself through the ardors of international travel in order to growl out another dumb-ass comment on world affairs. Such as the above. What the hell does it mean? If it's true that George W. Bush, with his philtrumless face and donkey ears, is a Fetal Alcohol experiment gone horribly wrong, and Cheney is HypoxiaMan, with maybe 10% of the required oxygen actually getting through to the cerebrum - then maybe America's foreign policy woes (and looming financial catastrophe) are easier to understand.

But back to a parsing of Cheney's trenchant insight: I think the terrorists who "declared war on America" are bin Laden and his gang, who were and are Wahhabist Muslims from an extremist sect originating in Saudi Arabia. From what I have read about bin Laden's operation, he ran a kind of terrorist grant committee, assessing various promising proposals for murder and mayhem and funding those he thought especially devilish and creative. The Brain, the oft-dunked Khallid Sheik Mohammed, brought an idea to Osama for finishing off the World Trade Center, a job KSM and his nephew began in 1993 but were unable to complete to their satisfaction. KSM was a Kuwaiti national. As has been said many times, no one who attacked America on 9/11, and no one who worked in the back room to make it happen, came from Iraq. I've never read anything which indicates Osama bin Laden has ever been in Iraq. Since al Qaeda is not confined to any particular nation, and since it's mainly just a name for a group of outlaws who conduct business primarily by burro, I don't know that the "Al Qaeda in Iraq" formulation popular in White House press releases means these jihadis have anything to do with the 9/11 plot. The "al Qaeda in Iraq" moniker, in fact, sounds suspiciously like the sort of name given to upscale hotel chains: the Ritz-Carlton on Maui, or Four Seasons in Grosvenor Square.

So of course jihadis have made Iraq a "central front" in a war against the United States. Like Willy Sutton's logical answer for robbing banks ("that's where the money is"), there are a lot of Americans in Iraq, and the U.S. soldiers are required by their "mission" to expose themselves daily to bombs and ambushes. If we weren't in Iraq, they'd have to find somewhere else for the "central front." (Hint: it won't be the World Trade Center.)

The part about the "United States as the prime target in a global war against terror" [sic] I prefer to chalk up, if you will, to oxygen deprivation rather than to the more sinister imputation of a Freudian slip.

An unfortunate historical precedent

I'm a little surprised that the learned commentators so abundant in the national press and blogosphere do not make more of the rather obvious historical parallels between the American situation in Iraq and the German catastrophe in Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. See if any of this sounds familiar: "The German high command urged Hitler to allow Paulus and his forces to break out of the encirclement and rejoin the main German forces west of the city, but Hitler would not contemplate a retreat from the Volga River and ordered Paulus to 'stand and fight.' With winter setting in and food and medical supplies dwindling, Paulus' forces grew weaker. In mid-December Hitler allowed one of the most talented German commanders, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, to form a special army corps to rescue Paulus' forces by fighting its way eastward, but Hitler refused to let Paulus fight his way westward at the same time in order to link up with Manstein. This fatal decision doomed Paulus' forces, since the main German forces now simply lacked the reserves needed to break through the Soviet encirclement singlehandedly. Hitler exhorted the trapped German forces to fight to the death, but on Jan. 31, 1943, Paulus surrendered; 91,000 frozen, starving men (all that was left of the 6th and 4th armies) and 24 generals surrendered with him."
[from the Enclyopedia Brittanica article on the Battle of Stalingrad.]

The invasion of the Soviet Union, of course, was Hitler's original fatal decision. He compounded his mistake through obstinate refusal to come to terms with the extent of the catastrophe. The 91,000 Wehrmacht soldiers which Paulus delivered into captivity were the remnants of a 250,000 man army which undertook the siege of Stalingrad. During the bitter winter of 1942-43, most died of disease and cold. Of those who became POWs, only a small fraction ever made it back to Germany after the war.

Hitler had his own "surge" led by Field Marshal von Manstein, as a last-ditch effort to rescue Petraeus from annihilation. Excuse me, General Paulus. Hitler would not countenance, let alone permit, the more obvious solution of Paulus's "fighting retreat," the favored approach of "generals on the ground," you could say. Paulus wanted to save the men under his command; Hitler was interested only in his self image. The surge failed because the Soviets had been allowed to establish tactical and numerical superiority by the time Hitler reacted, as Der Fuhrer committed error upon error. And underlying it all was his inability to deal psychologically with the devastation he had wrought with his terrible miscalculation. With the destruction of the Wehrmacht in the Eastern Theatre, World War II was effectively over, and so were Hitler's dreams of a thousand year Reich.

As Justin Frank, M.D., Bush's unsolicited psychoanalyst, has diagnosed, Bush's psychological profile is that of a megalomaniac with elements of paranoid ideation. No doubt much of this same profile could be attached to the former German leader, or to Napoleon, or to Louis XIV and his "l'etat c'est moi" perspective. These are extremely dangerous qualities in a national leader, particularly one armed to the teeth with thermonuclear weapons. We can rest assured that Bush will never change course in Iraq because he is psychologically incapable of doing so. The Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, are afraid to impeach him, and most of them lack Bush's unconscionable willingness to leave the military on the field of battle whether or not the funds are there to support them.

My own sense is that we'll be lucky to get to January 20, 2009, without Bush committing one of two horrendous acts. The initiation of a nuclear war, using Iran as the starting point and justification; or the invocation of martial law under the recently revised Insurrection Act, another gift from a complacent Congress. I hope we get lucky and he leaves quietly. Leaving Iraq for another President to clean up is not the worst thing that could happen to us.

Bush @ 28%

It's still mysterious to me: who are these people who still support Bush? If he is at 28% approval, as the latest Newsweek poll reports, then maybe Bush is now down to his ineradicable base, the evangelical wingnuts who have flicked it in where life on Earth is concerned. Commander Guy still pulls about 70% approval ratings from Republicans, which strongly suggests that political and religious affiliations have entered into some sort of unholy matrimony in the reptilian brains of a large swath of the American population. I leave out the 1% or so of America's plutocratic class who like Bush simply because he doesn't get in the way of their unbridled acquisition of money. Team Bush, for example, is still researching global warming, while the rest of the civilized world has moved on to one of two positions: (1) frantically trying to deal with it, or (2) admitting that it's too late.

When I look at the photos above, I get the strong sense that Bush simply plays at being President. Long ago he figured out that the presidency was simply another in a long line of jobs for which he had no aptitude. It's always seemed ludicrous to me that politicians debate Bush's "policies," as if they were dealing with a coherent set of principles based on thorough analysis. They're nothing of the kind. Take the current tactic du jour of his Democratic opposition. They're talking of "de-authorizing" the Iraq War. Someone in the Democratic Caucus should read the original damned Authorization for Use of Military Force, October, 2002. It is, as almost all Congressional enactments are, an incomprehensible pile of bullshit. Nevertheless, the "authorization" for invading Iraq, for each and every point, depends on Saddam Hussein being in power. Nothing in the Authorization in the least grants Bush permission to engage in the endless "nation-building" exercise we've been enmeshed in since the Mission Accomplished speech. It's not a matter of "de-authorizing" the war; it's a question of pointing out there is no authority for what we're doing. None whatsoever. It is a full-blown Constitutional crisis (though no one ever talks about it) that the "President" continues prosecuting a war for which there is no legal basis, and if Congress were serious about stopping him, they could initiate litigation in the Supreme Court, hoping to slip it by the pervert/psycho wing of the Court.

So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we've got about 8 years to deal decisively with global warming, or the most extreme consequences will become unavoidable. The United States, of course, sits at the very center of the action plan, and the simian pretender pictured above sits at the very center of the U.S. We can't figure out how to stop a war which the vast majority of the American populace wants over right now. Which we don't need to fight. For which there is no legal authority. Which is bleeding us dry. And the same Congress is supposed to come up with an integrated, highly technical, comprehensive plan for averting disaster for the world?

Bush's Iraq Strategy Revealed

..."But slowly but surely, the truth will be known. Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve."

So there you have it at last: Bush's Iraq Strategy. Certain elements of the strategy seem incontrovertible; for example, the dichotomy between succeed/won't succeed. I would concede that one or the other will happen. To succeed, but slowly but surely, involves sectarian violence down, although not to zero. Bush points out that "parts" of our own country have got a certain level of violence to "it" [sic]. Antecedents, along with the rest of the English language, are not Bush's long suit. I would concede this as well. He probably means urban areas, in general, but let's not forget Dick & Perry in Kansas. The reference to the United States is not elaborated, but I think I can help. Bush suggests here that no one would quibble with America as a successful country despite the violence, since Americans feel comfortable, he contends, living their daily lives. The precise level of violence which is consistent with success in Iraq is where Iraqis feel comfortable living their daily lives as well. Thus, summing up the various elements, and placing them in some kind of cogent relationship, success in Iraq will be achieved when Iraqis feel comfortable the way we do.

This is a far cry from the original rationales for the war, which dealt with mushroom clouds and Saddam's support for al-Qaeda. A million men or so have rotated in and out of Iraq (mostly in) and the country has spent $500 billion over more than a four year period so the Iraqis could feel comfortable living their daily lives. Thus, the war has been about the affective well-being of the ordinary Iraqi going about his/her daily life.

This does not seem to me an unfair oversimplification. On the broader front, the idea of "stabilizing" the Middle East, or the democracy-domino theory, or Bush's claim that so long as we fight in Iraq we'll never endure another terrorist attack in the U.S. - to all this, I would counter that these are merely conjectural theories. No matter how strenuously, or loudly, anyone says these things, they remain notions which are not amenable to empirical proof. Maybe yes, maybe no, but there is no way to know for sure at the present time.

What "metric" will we use to determine when Iraqi violence has subsided to the point where Iraqis feel comfortable about living their daily lives? A poll taken based upon a scientific sample? Given Bush's reaction to the Lancet study of Iraqi civilian deaths, he doesn't seem to give much credence to the results of such inquiries. The President's own "gut" feeling about how comfortable the Iraqis are living their daily lives? He could exhort this country, I suppose, with a thundering oration to a joint session of Congress wherein he exclaims, "the Iraqis are almost comfortable enough now! We're making steady progress!" That seems tepid and unconvincing. A soldier dying for Iraqi comfort might question his mission or the meaning of his sacrifice.

I notice that Bush does not require a fully-functioning democracy in Iraq as a condition of success; thus, Iraqi comfort in a theocracy or military junta might also make the grade, although Bush might have assumed that we all knew he meant it must be a democratically-based comfort. Or maybe not. He sometimes refers simply to a "functioning" government able to "defend" itself, and a theocratic system under Sharia law might actually manage this better than a democracy rivened by sectarian conflict. The overall good news is that with a successful mission so vaguely defined, we might get there tomorrow, especially since most polls show about 80% of the Iraqi people want the American occupation to end now or very soon. "It's peaceful enough," they'll say. "We're comfortable, we're comfortable. Now please get the hell out of here."

Bush Declares Complete Success for Surge

from New York Times, May 30, 2007
(Washington, D.C.) -

President Bush declared today that the Iraqi surge strategy had succeeded completely, and again called on the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to send him a clean bill free of any restraints whatsoever on his authority to conduct the war as he sees fit. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney both expressed increasing impatience with an intractable Democratic leadership which insists on tying any further funding for the war to timelines and benchmarks.

"There's no reasons at all at these junctures to just go on with benchmarking and timelining," the President said to the press corps gathered in the Rose Garden. "Our troops is not a contingent which can be, or will, holding hostage as part of politics, and believe me, I know about politicking in this town, but wherever there's indications our strategies has leaped our mission forward, folks see these suiciders with their fabulous exploding cars and then sort of lose the vision."

In later comments at the Capitol rotunda following a meeting with Republican Congressional leaders, the Vice President summarized the Administration's position with typical concision: "These treasonous rats in the Democratic leadership need to hand over the dough pronto. The mission is a complete success."

Reports from Baghdad in fact have demonstrated a remarkable turnaround since the introduction of additional troops in the early part of this year. The numbers for sectarian fatalities caused by death squads and militias, deaths by exploding car bombs, overall Iraqi civilian deaths and the casualty figures for American troops are all significantly reduced. Indeed, the latest reports indicate the same metric for each category, namely, zero.

"We've really turned the corner," a jubilant General David Petraeus exulted in a press conference held in the Green Zone. "No one is dying here anymore, even from natural causes. The surge has brought what some had called a 'civil war' completely under control."

Congressman Henry Waxman (Dem., Los Angeles) pointed out that the rosy reports were in large part due to a change in recording fatalities and acts of violence in and around Baghdad. "The Bush Administration has instituted a policy of not counting any fatalities at all," a clearly exasperated Waxman complained at a hastily called conference outside his office. "It started by not counting deaths from car bombs, and then the Iraqi government stopped reporting civilian deaths, and when the press let them get away with that, they stopped counting all the bodies picked up on the street every morning, then anyone else found dead, and then Defense stopped reporting any American casualties. So of course it looks good, but it doesn't bear any resemblance to reality."

Congressman Waxman, a persistent administration critic, has often taken positions contrary to Bush policies, and it was not immediately clear whether his criticism represented the consensus view of the Democratic caucus. It was clear, however, that the strong improvement in conditions in Baghdad would increase pressure on the Democratic leadership to pass a funding bill with no strings attached.

Out of fairness to Karl Rove

I know what you're thinking: the resemblance is uncanny. However, I prefer to adopt Karl Rove's own approach to his political opponents, which is not to question their patriotism, but simply to publicly humiliate them for their judgment. I have heard Karl do this in characterizing the response of Democrats (en bloc, apparently) to 9/11, where he contemptuously dismissed their feeble retaliation as "therapy and lawsuits." Whereas manly men (like Karl, I guess) decided to go to war.

Thus, if Karl Rove is to be criticized, insofar as Heinrich Himmler, former head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) is concerned, it is only to question his judgment in allowing himself to look so much like this infamous Nazi. I have seen Photoshop jobs done on Karl's head in which he's dressed up in the Totenkopf cap of a real SS officer, and you might as well be transported back to the bunker in 1945. I decline, nay, refuse, to reproduce such a photo here, because I'm like Karl on that score: fairness above all. So what if he looks like Heinrich Himmler, one of the truly evil men of the 20th century? That doesn't prove anything at all. It's a cheap shot of the kind Karl Rove abjures. Karl's retention of that "K" spelling of his name, instead of the friendlier, Nordic "C" is proof he doesn't care about meaningless similarities.

Other coincidences are equally unconvincing. Toward the end of the war, Himmler got very nervous about the likelihood he would be captured, tried and executed as a war criminal. He fled Berlin as the Russians approached, altered his appearance (whether he looked more or less like Karl Rove as a result, I don't know), but he was apprehended nonetheless. He tried to make deals with the Allies, but Eisenhower was unmoved. The official version is that he killed himself with cyanide shortly after his capture in order to cheat the hangman's noose. The more likely story, favored by many historians, is that Himmler was beaten to death by British interrogators, which is certainly more emotionally satisfying.

Just because "K"arl has demonstrated some of these same qualities, as the anti-Bush forces have encircled the Administration and the White House has retreated inside its Bunker, doesn't mean that Karl Rove is Himmler. Sure, Karl let his "friend" Scooter Libby take the fall for the Plame matter, even though it was obvious Karl was as involved in this (arguably) treasonous activity as the Vice President's Chief of Staff. And there was that unedifying sight of Karl scuttling off to the grand jury four or five times to "update" his story after he "discovered" one of his missing e-mails, working tirelessly to save his own chubby ass while his colleague went down the tubes. I grant you, it's a similarity in approach, but then rats deserting sinking ships probably all look somewhat alike: frantic, snivelly, selfish. Like some people say Karl is, but I'm determined to be fair. And it's not nice to let Alberto Gonzales twist in the wind up there at the Senate Judiciary Committee, all by himself, when Karl knows full well that it was his idea, part of the vertical monopoly he's installed over the American electoral process, to can those recalcitrant (that is, honest) U.S. Attorneys. Karl won't "testify" himself unless it's on his terms, even if it would take some of the heat off Alberto. Does it matter that Libby was Jewish and Gonzales Hispanic, "races" which Himmler would have considered Untermenschen? To repeat, and I hope for the last time: that's a canard unworthy even of refutation.

You see, Himmler was born in 1900 and died in 1945. Even if, as the conspiracy theorists have it (mainly novelists looking for that old Nazi-in-South-America story line), Himmler survived, he would be 107 years old now. Does Karl Rove look 107? Of course not. And yeah, Himmler was a lousy athlete and always struggled in his relations with women and you immediately start thinking about that video of Karl doing the hip-hop (trying to keep lunch down as you do it) and his creepy epicene appearance, which you know is equally creepy to any woman looking at him, and you start building your case. There is no case. I'm taking a page from Karl's book and elevating my political criticism. Heinrich Himmler, thank God, is dead. Karl Rove, God help us, is alive. Deal with it.

Bees in the trees seem to whisper disease

Joe DeRisi, a biochemist at the University of California's Mission Bay lab, has set the entomological world buzzing with a possible breakthrough in the mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder, that apian plague which is threatening to wipe out (a) the bee, and then (bee) us. DeRisi won a MacArthur Genius Award for his work in discovering the role of coronavirus in SARS. Naturally, the work of this too-smart interloper has gotten under the skin of the "government 'scientists'" at the Department of Agriculture, including the leading light in the Dept. of Ag's Plant Sciences Institute, entomologist Jeffrey Pettis. Taking a break from another PowerPoint presentation by a Karl Rove aide on ways to distort apiculture to assist Republican Congressional candidates (a standard agenda item, apparently, for all government agencies operating under Bush's control), Pettis had this to sniff about DeRisi's work, according to today's SF Chronicle: "Pettis said the parasite could simply be taking advantage of a newly developed weakness in the insects' immune systems. 'Mostly we think of Nosema as a stress disorder of honeybees,'' he said. It is possible that a more virulent strain of Nosema ceranae has evolved in the United States, but Pettis doubts it. 'We can't rule it out completely,'' he said.

DeRisi used a "shotgun sequencing" technique to analyze samples provided by the government, one of the genomic approaches he used in his SARS work. Irritatingly, DeRisi has become known as a "rapid identifier" of killer germs, even though he's not a real entomologist like the government "scientists," which makes him almost impossible to put up with. He could give the real apiary guys...hives. Okay, let that go. Yet his genetic work found that the dead bees were loaded up with sequences of microbe which matched Nosema ceranae. Which sounds promising, but Pettis pointed out that Nosema has been around "since the mid-1990's," predating the mass die-off. So it can't be the Nosema...unless it has evolved. Now how in the world would a microbe evolve in as little as 10 or 12 years? What's the gestation period for a germ like that...9 months, right? And since they're not supposed to have sex with another microbe, or with themselves, or however the hell they do it, until they're married (God, I hope they're clear about the sex of the other microbe they're doing it with), it's going to take a helluva lot longer than that.

Pettis can't rule it out "completely" because his ultimate boss, the incomparable George W. Bush, admits that the jury is still out on evolution. (As Lewis Black said in a Black on Black segment: "What jury? Where are they out?") So it's possible the microbes "evolved" into a form that is killing bees, which might account for the heavy presence of Nosema ceranae in all those dead bees Joe DeRisi was analyzing. An alternative theory, proposed by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, in a press release coordinated with the Department of Agriculture (as ghost-written by the Karl Rove aide finishing up the PowerPoint presentation on ways to use Colony Collapse Disorder to elect Republican congressmen [particularly in Utah, the "Beehive State"]), is the waning influence of Christianity among bee populations. "These godless insects have invited the wrath of the Almighty," Robertson warbled during a prayer breakfast at the Maryland office of the Dept. of Ag, where Honey Bunches O' Oats were served. Large numbers of Muslim and Jewish bees have apparently infiltrated many hives, leading to Divine intemperance and retribution (at least in America). The Muslim-infected hives are distinctive for the breaks taken five times a day by the worker bees. In the Jewish hives, there is an overabundance of queens and way too many princesses, and, in addition, a strange sub-species, Apis mellifera shabbos goyim, which apparently work only on Friday night into Saturday, when the usual bees have the day off.

Or this alternative theory may be wrong, and DeRisi is on to something. It would depend on "facts," which may or may not be relevant between now and at least January 21, 2009. I don't know where DeRisi's work leads if he's right, but I hope he shakes off the resentment and turf-warfare and makes a beeline for the answer.

The Ant in the Sand Box

Reading political "science" books was pretty dreary, back in the Jurassic Period when I was "studying" this stuff at the University of California at Berkeley, which is to say, when Berkeley was Berkeley. There was one exception - the works of Herbert Simon, the polymath who made the same sort of mistake in choosing a major as I did and then discovered that his true inclinations were more rigorous and scientific. While he knew it was hopeless to construct an actual science of human behavior, he came as close as he could with his work in companion fields such as group psychology and economic behavior. He even won the Nobel Prize in economics.

He was keen on artificial intelligence and human logical processes: how do we decide to do what we do? An arresting image that he presented as analogy was that of an insect with a simple brain, an ant, crossing a sand box. The ant gets from one side to the other. When he's finished with his journey, the resulting trail in the sand looks complicated indeed; it looks like the design of an ingenious mind. In fact, the ant simply chose, at hundreds of junctures where he confronted undulations or depressions in the sand, to go over, down, to the left, or to the right. The overall process (the general direction) was guided by some navigation-orientation we don't completely understand (although it can be interrupted, as Richard Feynman found in a clever boyhood experiment where he looked for a means of non-toxic ant interdiction). But the simple binary decisions add up and appear, in retrospect, to have been the work of higher intelligence. Simon thought humans live their lives in much the same way. We impose a narrative on our lives as we go, or at the end, but that narrative was not the guiding principle in real time. It's a fiction imposed on a pattern of binary decisions made to overcome obstacles directly in our path.

I thought about this old stuff while watching L'il Georgie in a recent interview with Charlie Rose. Bush was attempting to explain what the hell we're doing in Iraq at this point. We're trying to restore peace, he says, so a political reconciliation will be possible and Iraq will become a modern bulwark against terror. I thought about how far all of this seems removed from his initial declaration of the War on Terror following 9/11. Leaving aside the machinations and influence of the Neocons, upon whom Bush probably had very little influence, how does Bush see the journey from the World Trade Center to this war of attrition in Iraq which has been going on, and getting worse, for four years? It is mystifying. Bush probably comes closer to the binary decision-making processes of an ant than most national leaders, I would say that first. His natural impulsiveness, his impatience with deliberative processes, and the intellectual vacuum in which he makes "decisions," make it more likely that his path will double back, find a high spot against the wood planks, and carry him completely out of the sand box. It is difficult at this point to remember at all what this war was originally about, even at the level of official rationale. Bush simply slogs on, as the ant gamely struggles through a clumpy terrain in search of a final destination. The mission, as he describes it, is preposterous on its face. The American military is not going to achieve a "reconciliation" between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds by patrolling the streets of Iraq in armored vehicles. If the goal is to achieve peace by killing all insurgents, which is what would appear necessary to entice the Iraqi Parliament to emerge from hiding in the Green Zone, the task will never be finished.

But what, after all, does this have to do with the war on terror? To understand Bush's journey, it isn't enough to follow the trail that led him to this point of impasse. The ant's journey seems logical and consistent by comparison. I can't tell what sand box Bush is even playing in anymore.

Upstairs in L'il Georgie's Room

After considering disparate sources of information, including the books Fiasco, The End of Iraq and Operation Madhouse...and consulting my own inner psychic workings as a man similarly placed in the space-time continuum...I offer a brief Pondside analysis of how L'il George got to the sorry state of paralytic incompetence in which he today finds himself entangled.

Now that the huckleberries and sand cherries are all in bloom, or would be if the bees weren't dead, and unseasonably, not to say eerily, warm weather blesses Walden, and even the most in-the-now habitues can see that L'il Georgie's only got about 21 months to remake his legacy, I think we can look back and see how George Bush arrived where he is, which is to say, upstairs in his bedroom with his fingers stuck in his ears humming his favorite Saturday morning cartoon jingle at the top of his lungs. This is not an edifying sight, even for Bush-bashers. It's scary, because when he comes downstairs, his tear-streaked face and reddened eyes glaring, somethin's...got...to...give.

The presidency of the United States, bequeathed by the usual anti-democratic processes which control electoral politics in the U.S., was one last nepotistic gift which the former drunk and coke-addled George had to accept in order to launch his vindication. So about 97,000 black men were removed from the Florida voting rolls by George's brother Jeb. Karl Rove, the electoral vote-counter extraordinaire, knew that the Grapefruit State would control the outcome, and Karl lusted after a L'il George presidency with the passion and ardor of the love-struck. Ever since he saw George get off that train in Washington, with his cracked leather jacket and tin of Skoal in his jeans back pocket, Karl, saddled himself with a squishy body and a nimbus of doll-hair, appealing to neither set of chromosome pairs common to homo sapiens...knew he had to get George in the White House, where he could be near him and adore him. Thus it happened, aided and abetted by advantages found along the way, such as those voters in the Jewish Riviera who had to figure out the butterfly ballot or risk voting for Pat Buchanan, and then the huge tactical error by everybody's favorite legal genius, David Boies, in not demanding a state-wide recount, as he could have...it seems almost as if it were meant to be.

So George, admittedly, had to accept a presidency handed to him by a Supreme Court willing to overlook enormous conflicts of interest, principally those of Antonin ("Antonio," as Bush calls him) Scalia and Coke-Can Thomas. But that was it. From then on, powered by the first really secure income in his life (a cool $400 K a year as prez...suh-weet!), he would do it on his own. And the first order of business was to demonstrate that those faded Levis, and the worn circle in the back pocket from his snuff tin (which had brought Karl to a state of permanent priapism), were not just stage props. L'il Georgie, unlike that wussy Poppy, was a real Texan, and real Texans fight to the death in the Alamo and win wars. They don't quit at the Iraq-Kuwait border and leave their nemesis Saddam free to fight another day. Okay, the symbols and totems are mixed up, but then so is GWB. The point is, he was gonna show 'em. Show 'em all, all the doubters, all those who called him a career fuck-up who had to be bailed out every single time out. His Iraqi plan, the one Rumsfeld and Cheney always wanted but Poppy was too girly to handle, would topple Saddam, seize the Iraqi oil fields, neutralize Iran, neuter OPEC, ensure cheap gasoline for the U.S. for as far as the eye could see, placate Israeli hawks...and make George into the most heroic and providential president in history. It was a bold gamble, but you don't achieve great things through timidity. George had never achieved anything great, but he read that somewhere. If it was necessary to lie like hell to get the Congress and the stupid American public to go along with this visionary project, so be it. George knew what was good for us.

L'il George did topple Saddam, and later the Shiite theocrats hung him. Check that box off. For the rest of it, the oil fields went to hell, the cost of the war went through the roof, American soldiers died in droves, Iraq descended into a hellish internecine war, Iran became the dominant colossus in the Persian Gulf, the Israeli hawks reached the conclusion they would have to deal with Iran their own way, just as they'd feared, the price of gasoline doubled, the American military was broken, Republican dominance was destroyed, and America's international reputation was obliterated. An amazing set of accomplishments in only four bungling years of running the war. Into the ground. Things got so bad that Poppy finally put together a rescue team headed by James Baker, The Fixer, to bail Junior out. It had come to that. Where it always came to.

L'il Georgie ran upstairs and threw himself face down on his bed, stuck his fingers in his ears and began humming the "Mighty Mouse" theme as loud as he could. Why, why, why? he sobbed. Why does all of this keep happening to me? I'm not a fuck-up, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!

Well, George....how can we put this?
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