Opinion-Columns.com

Vaudeville and the Great White Way Comes to Washington

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
                    -Will Rogers

Step right up folks, reach in your pockets, check out your loose change and fasten your seatbelts, it’s time for your favorite reality show, Integrity Politics. Your individually selected member of Congress (fill in appropriate name) is going to assuage all concerns, batten your hatches, fulfill your most earnest desires, keep you from remembering his near indictment and scratch your kitty just behind its left ear.

It’s not Sweeps Week, but its nearest living relative, Mid-Term Elections, is just over the hill on the other side of the meadow.

Integrity, that’s what we’re talkin’ about. Keep your eye on the pea. You think existing disclosure rules are too lenient? Holier than a Swiss cheese, loose around the couplings, stranger than a cur dog on a rich man’s farm? Don’t give it a thought. We’re gonna crank ‘em down tighter than a bull’s ass in fly time.

The Ethics Committee is meeting at this very moment.

A recent newspaper article claimed that the best idea so far was legislation proposed by Chris Shays and Marty Meehan. Shays and Meehan, sounds like an Irish vaudeville act and well it might be, their offering to a restive audience something called the Office of Public Integrity.

Hang up your tap-shoes, boys, we don’t need another ‘office’ of anything. Second thing you got wrong is naming it for ‘public integrity.’ We have run-of-the-mill integrity amongst the run-of-the-mill public, it’s our sorry-assed elected officials who’ve crossed the Rubicon.

“Oh, Mr. Shays, oh Mr. Shays, will you ever go down that road again a ways?”
“No, Mr. Meehan, no Mr. Meehan, not ‘till we can get the voters in a daze.”
"I'm not in it for the gain, can't stand a moment more of pain"
"In the Congress, Mr. Meehan?"
"No, the jailhouse, Mr. Shays."

Deliver me from ‘best ideas’ that would legislate ethics. You either have ethics or you don’t. I have some, but then I didn’t run for office by promising anyone I’d keep my sticky little fingers out of the till.

Anyway, these two erstwhile vaudevillians’ official creation would serve as a repository of filings (tap, tap, tappety, tap) with independent staff (a little soft-shoe), empowered to review documents, accept outside complaints, refer matters to the Justice Department (roll the straw-hat down your arm), conduct investigations and make recommendations to the House and Senate ethics committees (big finish, bounce cane off floor, close curtain).

The article continues, this would (not only) keep members of Congress involved, as they need to be, in setting and enforcing the rules for their own conduct, but it would help energize the ethics committees.

Well, Pard, the members of this 109th Congress have been too damned intimately involved already, if Jacky the Lackey Abramoff is any test of moral high-ground. The last unindicted co-conspirator to run the House Ethics Committee has lost the un and become indicted, a guy nicknamed The Hammer.

Somehow it just doesn’t lull me to dreamless sleep to know that Tom DeLay is, or was and would again if he had a chance, watching over the ethical behavior of our congressional beggar-poets.

Teddy slipping in the fix to keep all those windmills off Cape Cod? Scores of the selected-elected tripping over themselves to give back a Tribal donation here or reimburse a sight-seeing trip to the Northern Mariana Islands there? You’re gonna fix that by making recommendations to the House and Senate Ethics Committees?

Oh, my. Mr. Shays and Mr. Meehan, you made me laugh and you made me cry, but the only thing you didn't make was sense.

If the likes of Bernie Ebbers, John Rigas and Dennis Kozlowski need to get shipped off to Sing-Sing for long sentences in order to send a chill through the executive suites of our corporate giants, Congress deserves no less.

Dan Rostenkowski, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was indicted in 1994 on 17 felony charges, including the embezzlement of $695,000 in taxpayer and campaign funds.

He went to the pokey, but Dan was an old-timey pol and the dawn of K-Street hadn’t yet begun to rouge-up congressional morning-after cheeks. Abramoff is going to nail some Washington indiscretions of the felony type. Congress is not beyond the law, but they are unable to discipline themselves sufficiently to keep fingers out of various cookie-jars.

Send ‘em to jail, it’s where they belong, a place to study the nature of public trust.

America is a bigger public trust than Enron or World-Com.
________________________________________________________

For more comments on Washington at work, see my personal web site.

Something Way Out of Whack (and I Just Patented Whack)

The way you wear your hat
The way you sip your tea
The memory of all that
No, no they can’t take that away from me
      -George and Ira Gershwin

Unless of course George and Ira's lyrics are made meaningless in a patents dispute and the particular 'way you wear your hat' has been secured, nailed-down and salted away to lie in wait until you walk out the door.

Okay, so I exaggerate, but not by much. A how-you-wear-your-hat patent isn’t all that far from what we euphemistically call a ‘business-method’ patent. Business method? You mean like knocking on doors or soliciting on the phone? C’mon. Not funny.

Maybe not all that funny, but true enough to put a chill in the air of commerce and raise goose-bumps of avarice among the collectors of such arcane dreck. Dreck, no doubt (with appropriate disclaimers and apologies to Messrs Gershwin), but protectable and (sometimes immensely) profitable dreck.

There are no concrete definitions of patentable business-methods, but that didn’t stop U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411. That particular piece of lunacy gave Amazon.com a patent to the ‘1-click’ method of processing a payment. I understand protection for the process, the actual code Amazon wrote to fulfill a sale, but the name? And the right of restriction against other companies wanting to develop a different code to tally-up a sale in a single click?

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and the Gershwin of e-commerce, suggests “that business method and software patents should have a much shorter lifespan than the current 17 years -- I would propose 3 to 5 years. This isn't like drug companies, which need long patent windows because of clinical testing, or like complicated physical processes, where you might have to tool up and build factories. Especially in the age of the Internet, a good software innovation can catch a lot of wind in 3 or 5 years.”

The recent Blackberry flap is a case in point. Distinct from blackberry flapjacks, the tech code dither involves wireless mail-delivery technology an outfit called NTP claims they patented. The Blackberry (in case you’ve been on another planet) is a much-loved hand-held device that lets you write and receive e-mail from the airport VIP Lounge.

NTP is made up of one inventor and a bunch of lawyers. That’s almost a definition of the classic "patent troll" firm that acquires file-cabinets full of patents, only to extort settlements from companies on doubtful infringement claims.

Complicatedly simple, Judge James Spencer has criticized Blackberry for not settling a jury award in NTP’s favor that they are appealing. A jury of 12 men and women found Blackberry guilty of willfully infringing patents and awarded $240 million.

The stickler is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is reviewing the patents and so far has rejected two of five relevant patents that underlie the dispute. A slippery slope, indeed.

Speed-skating into an era of nano-tech, bio-tech and just everyday ordinary tech-tech, it looks like the Patent Office may be way over its head. If they haven’t the expertise or the tools to identify the patentable aspects of increasingly arcane cutting-edge technology, should they be awarding patents or declaring a moratorium while they holler for help?

Patents were developed during the birthing of our nation, to protect the honest, hard working, smart person, whoever and wherever he might be. But a reaper, a mouse-trap or a power-steering pump are all products probably more understandable within the bowels of the Patent Office.

You can’t get much harder-working or smarter than a modern scientist or software geek, but their product is often as opaque as its uses.

Einstein patenting relativity? Doppler patenting his understanding of why a train sounds different going than coming? Interesting possibilities.

Patents were meant to protect ideas so rare and great that the person who thought of it was abled by patent to make some dough without a big company grabbing his idea and producing it faster and cheaper. The current ‘trolling’ farms turn that on its ear. Like comedy-writers for sitcoms, the fashion is to dream a new way to wear your hat, then sit back like a spider at the corner of the web.

No, no they can’t take that away from me.
__________________________________________________

For more comments on Washington at work, see my personal web site.

If You Hold a Shell to Your Ear, You Can Hear Ted Kennedy

It's all about views (and whose make news). The latest not-in-my-backyard brouhaha has been stewing longer than a Cape-Cod clambake and Teddy has found someone else to do the heavy lifting.

Rep. Don Young, a Cap’n Ahab look-alike from the seacoastering state of Alaska sneaked an amendment into the $8.7 billion Coast Guard bill on Teddy's behalf. Don, when not otherwise occupied in Abramoff-denial, is the chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Institution web site,

Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are national tourist havens. Many summer homes have outstanding views of the nearby sounds, where the sailing is superb, the stripers and blues run thick, and fishing for lobster, scallops, and squid has been a popular livelihood for ages. If the wind farm is built on Nantucket Shoals, these views, and quite possibly the established pattern of ocean activities, could be altered permanently. Consequently, many Cape Codders and Islanders who otherwise support the idea of renewable energy—just not on Horseshoe Shoals—have become opponents to the wind farmers.

The lineup of those opposed to wind-farming off the romantic coasts of Cape Cod is hotter than the White-Sox infield and growing. That would smack of consensus politics and the way things ought to be done, if it weren’t for the fact that all these concerned legislative heavies own Cape property

• Senator John Warner
• Senator Lamar Alexander
• Rep. William Delahunt (representing the Cape in the House)
• And, of course, Teddy, most senatorial of all

John Kerry, who also owns property on the Cape is mute as well as moot, ‘cause this isn’t a smart fight for him to get into. One can only wonder what the quid-pro-quo with Don Young is for this neat hand-off in the backfield.

Young’s amendment neatly bans turbines within 1.5 miles of shipping and ferry lanes on the preposterous notion that those big (and some think beautiful) blades screw up shipboard radar. He ‘singled out’ the Cape as ‘particularly unsafe’ in case anyone should miss his sledge-hammered point.

Don says the ban is based on research in Britain concerning the radar issue, although wind farms are being developed off the coast of Britain, so I guess Tony Blair must have lost the data in the sofa.

Ever wonder why vague references to radar can kill environmentally friendly wind farms and yet the Navy keeps on killing whales with their sonar without a problem? Whales don’t have a constituency in Congress with names like Kennedy, Warner and Alexander.

Again, according to Woods Hole,

Utilities in Europe have been generating power from ocean wind for more than a decade, ever since the Vindeby facility off Denmark became operational in 1991. Wind farms are being developed off the coasts of Denmark, Great Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, creating 246 MW of power generating capacity—including 160 MW at the Horns Rev wind farm that came online in 2003 along Denmark’s west coast. An additional 5,000 MW of capacity is planned for northern Europe.

Public opposition to wind farms on the Cape claims to be based mainly on worries that they will spoil seascapes and have detrimental effects on birds, marine animals, and their habitats. Other groups have expressed concerns about the potential impact on sailors and important commercial fisheries.

What a laugh. It’s all about fat-cats and their right to be fat, unfettered, arrogant as hell, with tailored environmental concerns that devastate Wyoming and leave the Cape alone.

The greatest threat to lobster-fishermen along the Maine Coast at the moment isn't pollution or disappearing fish-stock, but the influx of Condo-bunnies from Boston and New York. They don’t like to be awakened by those nasty old smelly lobster-boat diesels cranking up at dawn. The quaint little seaports smell fishy as well, an embarrassing problem when entertaining.

Quaint is always someone else’s idea of working America.
______________________________________________________

A bunch more environmental issues muddying the waters on my personal web site.

The Bureau of Land Damagment

Westerners know the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) far better than our brothers on the Atlantic coast. 

Their web site says they are ‘an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, (that) administers 261 million surface acres of America's public lands, located primarily in 12 Western States. The BLM sustains the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for  the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.’

Huge cattle, farming, mining and drilling operations operate on BLM leases from the federal government.

But there’s an ebb and a flow to management integrity in this imperfect world.

What constitutes even-handed and economic handling of those public resources is defined differently by Dick Cheney (resident of Wyoming) and Dave Freudenthal (its Governor).

Wyoming is ebbing at the moment, big-time.

Talk to different people, hear different things. An anonymous senior official at the BLM claims it’s become cultural practice to spend money that’s assigned one purpose for quite another, a sort of prioritizing by the whim of whoever’s in charge.

What would we do without these anonymous tellers of tales and (better question yet) how do we make or change national policy on the basis of some guy who’s afraid for his job? Maybe he’s a crackpot, maybe a true servant of the people. But name withheld by request has become the normal request.

What we have going for us, we who have no intimate access, is a feel for the purity of argument. Some things sound logical, some things don’t.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005, an act orchestrated in secret within the darkest recesses of Dick Cheney’s office and modeled on industry wish-lists, updated something called the BLM and Forest Service Gold Book. Gold Book. It trills off the tongue, sends shivers of delight down the backs of  oil and gas industry executives. According to the Energy Policy Act

This new Gold Book introduces improved practices for expediting the processing of Applications for Permits to Drill (APDs) and environmental Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce the environmental effect of energy exploration and production. The revised Gold Book includes updated drawings, photographs, tables, and references to updated policy, Orders, and regulations.

Call me a party-pooper, but improved practices for expediting applications to drill, doesn’t sound much like sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for  the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. It sounds more like a resources grab by guys close to Cheney, maybe even guys privy to the deals from his darkest recesses.

Bob Bennett, the go-to guy at the Wyoming BLM says (with a straight-face and no apparent irony) "If a wildlife biologist is working on an application for a permit to drill, that doesn't mean he is not doing wildlife work. The wildlife job is a broad job, and it does involve energy."

Sounds like wildlife-work to me, Bob. 13,000 permits in two years keeps keeps those biologists pushing the paper, no matter it’s twice the rate that industry has the resources to drill.

There’s no way this administration’s zeal for giving away the West can continue under a newly elected President, no matter the party. So, it’s push permits until the music stops.

Governor Freudenthal, along with some oil industry executives, is shaken as scientific studies show steady, consistent and steep declines in wildlife around gas fields. Obviously, environmentalists and career-biologists agree, but it’s stunning to hear murmurs from the energy execs. Stunning and worrisome.

For his part, Bennett would like to "take it slow and easy." But he claims the bureau is under "a lot of national pressure, from industry and from Congress. The demand for gas is a real issue to people."

It just makes you wonder, which people?
__________________________________________________________

A bunch more environmental issues muddying the waters on my personal web site.

Secretary of State Rice, a Surgeon in Galoshes

Condi Rice staggered into the operating room where American Israeli-Palestinian credibility lay on the table, fighting for its life. She knocked over an IV stand, bumped surgical instruments onto the floor and made a snap-judgment as to the clinical procedure required. "Hold all liquids." Galosh, galosh.

“Dr. Mubarak will take over,” she blurted, “assisted, if necessary, by that Saudi guy, Prince something-or-another.” Galosh, galosh.

Unsure of precedent, fired off like a rocket by a president who has suddenly remembered Palestine and Israel, insecure in this new job that actually has responsibilities for what one says, Condi is knocking down hornet’s nests again.

Can’t someone put this woman on the no-fly list?

Fortunately, calmer heads are prevailing in the steady, unchangeable, dictatorial capitals she visits, hoping to whip up interest in doing the wrong thing. She and the cabal back home that tops up her fuel-tank, hope to cut the legs out from under the newly elected Palestinian Hamas majority before it gets a chance to prove them wrong.

Which it might not. It might, in fact, be terrorist-driven and hell-bent on the destruction of the Jewish homeland.

But funny things happen on the road from disenfranchised despair to governing majorities. Statesmanship occasionally raises its ugly head above the partisan maneuverings of hopelessness, misery and anger. Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader who was named Prime Minister and asked to form a government, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in 1962. He lives there today, on a street still stinking of open-sewage and poverty, after forty-four years. The dog has finally caught the rabbit.

In the real world, a place different than Disney-World and Bush-World, there is much to celebrate since Yasser Arafat finally cashed in his chips. The first free and unfettered election ever in Palestine has been held and it was hugely attended as well as peaceful. No shock to unprejudiced Palestine-Israel-watchers that Hamas did well. A voter gets tired of open-sewers and poverty.

Condi and George still can’t believe it and are stamping their (collective) little foot. Neither of them has ever seen an open-sewer, much less poverty. They're not sure what the complaint is.

Instructing Condi in international affairs, Egypt’s (foreign minister) Aboul Gheit pointed out the differences between a Hamas-led cabinet and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.

One has a beard, Madam Secretary, the other merely a moustache.

Further, Egyptian aid can continue indefinitely because Abbas wants to negotiate peace with Israel. "It is called the authority," he said. "And we support the authority," adding that Abbas "is the head of the authority, and his powers are still there."

Rice’s eyes widened. No one had ever explained it so simply. George would be furious.

But it’s tough to go back where you’ve done-a-dump in the nest and it’s no surprise that Rice appeared with Gheit instead of Hosni Mubarak. The big guy is still smarting from Washington’s (well founded) sniping about Egyptian elections fraudulently held (with an open-fire order here and there), not held at all and/or the jailing of the only other viable candidate.

But 70% of the world’s Arabs are Egyptian, so if Mubarak decides to stiff-arm Condi down to minister-level, so be it.

Next visit (occurring as I write this) is in Saudi Arabia, another ally Rice has subjected to foot-in-mouth diplomacy. No more Prince Bandar, dropping in to have tea with George and Rummy, maybe do a little quail-shoot with dead-eye Dick. Those chummy days are gone and a chillier ambassador represents the Saudis in Washington. So, look for something equally low-key but negative from Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal in Condi’s stretch-drive to castrate the newly-elected Palestinians.

The last of her stops on this total waste of airliner-fuel is Dubai, a screw-up in process back on the home-front. Seems the Congress has gone nuts over Georgie-boy’s approval of an Arab company running most of the major American ports. It’s a Dubai Arab company and Bush, blustered at reporters the other day that “he’s trying to do some statesmanship here” and the Congress is in his way.

Just like they should have been but weren’t, when the cabal statesmanshipped Saddam Hussein.

It was so much easier at Berkeley.
__________________________________________________________

More at my personal web site about what interests me in International Affairs.

Re-defining Exclusive

I get sloppy with meaning sometimes, maybe you as well. Advertising makes me inaccurate and we're drowning in advertising. Exclusive, through over-use by Madison Avenue in defining almost anything they want to sell by that term, has the scent of desire built into it. Cars and perfumes, clothes and even coffees carry that dewy-eyed, full-red-lipped, youthful image of exclusivity.

Google exclusive and you get 444 million pages for that one single word and nearly all are product.

But this present administration, indeed this entire government of both political parties, has come to be exclusive in the most elemental definition of the word. It ain’t pretty.

A casual brush with the dictionary describes the word as “not divided or shared with others,” going on to elaborate, “excluding much or all; especially all but a particular group or minority.” It bugs me when definitions use exclude to define exclusive, but even so, it’s pretty easy to catch the drift that dewy-eyes and red-lips aren’t as close to the mark as being the last chosen when kids make up sides for a game of pickup basketball.

It hurts as a kid to deal with that, but it wrecks representative government.

Excluding in the daily pursuit of the people's business, which is meant to be inclusive, isn't what we're about as a nation. ‘Especially all but a particular minority’ becomes downright scary when the minority is the opposition party within representative government. Exclusive is the business, not of the people, but of dictators.

Exclusive majority rule brought us a climate of secrecy that hustled the nation off to the wrong war with a deadly underestimation of consequences. Blaming Bush and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice and Cheney is technically correct, but practically inaccurate. The practical failure was exclusion. Closing themselves off from dissent, listening only to the supportive case, the decision-makers pushed on from a position of almost total isolation.

This administration values credit above credibility, appearance above substance. That’s exactly and overwhelmingly the opposite of Harry Truman’s dictum that “it’s amazing how much you can get accomplished (in a contrary Congress) if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Bill Clinton is excoriated today for the supposed sins of inclusion. Possessing a sharp intellect and a fascinating political mind, he actually was what Bush claims to be, ‘a uniter rather than a divider.’ In a political climate gone awry, his own party hated (and hates) him for that willingness to include and Democrats have suffered for that hatred ever since.

A lesson from which they have not yet recovered and, apparently, learned little.

This country thirsts for inclusive government. Republicans have used exclusion as a sledge hammer, manhandling lobbyists and manipulating legislation. Democrats, too weak to wield any kind of hammer, settled on exclusion to sow disunity within their own party.

Outside Washington, the country, both Republicans and Democrats are sick to death of

• Majority leaders (or anyone in authority) nicknamed ‘The Hammer”
• Secret White House meetings to determine (and then pass, in a virtual cloak of silence) energy and strategic policy
• Middle-of-the-night majority meetings in Congress, locked-out to the elected minority
• Political hack appointments to federal agencies for the sole purpose of enforcing a conservative agenda
• Exclusionary blacklists (enemies lists) across the broad landscape of government
• Elective office (Senate and House) made so exclusive to moneyed membership as to be no longer even close to representing  the people

We are not a democracy and never have been, but a republic.

Political decisions are made by representatives in a republic, who “take the place of or are parallel or equivalent to” those who have elected them for that purpose. The millionaire’s club they call the United States Senate doesn’t even approximate parallel equivalency to anything but other millionaires. The Senate has always been an elegant (dare I say exclusive?) club, but the entry fee is currently beyond all but the super-rich. Average cost, $4.7 million  for an annual salary just short of 150K

The House side is marginally closer economically to their constituents, but only marginally. At the House level, even exterminators can pee with the big dogs, but they have to be as aggressive as rats. Average election costs $636,000 which will get you a salary of $162,100.

Exclusions for a seat at the Congressional table include

• Anyone unable to cough up a half to four and a half million bucks
• Anyone unwilling to ‘attach’ their votes to those fronting the dough in their behalf
• Anyone unendorsed by the party under whose banner they hope to march
• Anyone fascinated by government, eager to serve, but without connection

Which is a lot of anyones and makes anyone just about everyone. No more Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, if indeed there ever was a chance for Mr. Smith.

But we need him back. Mr. Smith, where are you? Inclusion's time is ripe, but Smith will have to be very nimble not to be shut out, taking the majority of us along with him, yet again.

Shut out is my own, simplified,  two-word definition for exclusion.
_________________________________________________________

For more comments on Washington at work, see my personal web site.

The Intellect Elects Not to Connect All the Dots

One of the most amazing things to me about the human animal is its ability to compartmentalize. We are different from the other animals of the earth, because of our intellect.

It’s a fact! Our big brain, our ability to intellectualize in place of mere instinct, is what provides us with pencils in ten-packs for 29 cents, Audi sedans for $29 thousand, nuclear submarines for $29 million and a month of world trade at (negative, sorry ‘bout that) $29 billion. Admittedly, of all the above choices, the #2 common school pencil is the best deal, but that’s another story.

So, here we are, at the end of 10,000 or so years of pretty decent progress, makin' our way, able to split atoms and able to play poker for money on our computers, but somehow unable to deal with reality. Okay, I grant you that reality has always been a little hard for the brain-cells.

Reality-wise, an appliance, long out of warrantee, still comes as a shock when it stops making coffee and leaks all over the kitchen counter. A marriage, long sliding inexorably downhill, seems okay as long as the house is painted, the lawn mowed and the TV works. Flooded kitchen counters and a wife’s demand of divorce, each of them incomprehensible, are always a shock to the distracted, but big-brained husband.

Thus it is that (shhhh, I have to whisper this) global warming has come like a thief in the night and stolen the silverware. It's gone, the metaphoric silverware. Warming, on the other hand, is still with us. Your exploding heating-bill is not an accurate measure of what's happening on the other side of the window, it's merely an economic happenstance. How did this happen? The Prez promised it wouldn't.

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed and it was previously believed that they were going pretty fast. Damned Vikings again, will their mischief never stop? Buried under all that perma-frost and glacial ice, we may finally find out the answer to the pressing question of whether Greenland is really green, so it’s not all bad news.

What is bad news is that we’re probably long past any ability to stop a significant rise (probably 20 feet) in ocean levels world-wide by the end of the century. Whew, that’s a relief. Plenty of time to sell the condo in Sea Island and move to Vail. Better get out of Naples and Palm Beach before the realtors catch on. Florida’s coastline will shrink like a $2 sweater and Key West be only a memory of Hemingway.

No longer a question of if, but only how much. It’s not George Bush’s fault, although he’s not been much help. The Polar Ice Cap went into irreversible decline well before Jack Abramoff. If George and the Congress continue to be negligent, it’s only by recommending $70 billion to rehab a Gulf Coast that will not exist in the relatively near future.

In the useless statistics department, scientists said in 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Well, that certainly clears it up for me. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually. Don’t panic. A pipeline to LA is the answer. Except LA will be as gone as New Orleans by 2100. Like I said, it’s not all bad news.

It’s not only Polar. One glacier that provided Bolivia with its only ski slope five years ago has splintered into three and cannot be used for skiing. That’s the last straw! Selling the Sea Island condo is bad enough, but not being able to ski in Bolivia is intolerable.

Oceans rising is only part of it. The equatorial band around the earth will become increasingly uninhabitable to man, including great swaths of the Middle East and the African continent. The haves will have less and the have-nots will have nothing. Immigration to a smaller and smaller list of inhabitable countries will slow, then stop, then be enforced at the business end of a machine-gun.

But it’s not too late is no longer an option. That time passed us by while we were wondering who would be this years American Idol and whether a second-mortgage would be necessary to send the kid to college.

Sorry ‘bout that. Blame our compartmented intellect, the finest Darwinian achievement the world (as yet) has ever known.

_____________________________________________________

A bunch more environmental issues muddying the waters on my personal web site.

So Much for Democratic Elections

The trick is not only to be careful of what you wish for, but to be guarded in telling the world. The West wished to get rid of the old Palestinian terrorist and PLO President, Yasser Arafat and he’s gone, first sidelined and made irrelevant, now dead.

Following that, the well-publicized hope was for free and honest elections among the Palestinians. But Bush and the EU and the UN failed to tell us that they really meant elections to produce, was another Fatah leader who would not be Hamas (although they were welcome on the ballot) to replace the intransigent Arafat. Then, maybe some progress could be made.

Well, although it’s inconceivable that Bush and Rice didn’t consider it, wasn't even on their horizon, Hamas took the day. Hamas had three things going for it;

• It didn’t represent the 40 years of stalemate and extreme corruption of Arafat
• It was extensively focused during all those years on providing services and financial support to Palestinians
• Its militancy appealed to a continually oppressed and displaced population

All of which made the Hamas candidates pretty attractive on the ballot. The Israelis saw it coming, but Bush, Rice and the EU were flummoxed.

So, it may be war and it may not, depending on whether cool heads prevail. Karl Kraus’s thoughts on that must be in the minds of Israel as well as Hamas. Kraus (1874-1936) said

“War, at first is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.”

The wiggle-room among fixed points-of-view between Hamas militants and Israel is there, but like a flickering candle, it needs protective hands cupped around it. It won’t take much of a dissenting breath to blow it out. Bush, Condi Rice, the EU and Israel are all talking about cutting off funds to a Hamas-controlled Palestine and that may be just the blow that snuffs the area into darkness and chaos.

In May of last year, President Bush pledged $50 million in direct aid to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during the first White House talks in five years between a U.S. and Palestinian leader.

Withdrawing that, because we don’t like the outcome of their democratic election, gives the lie to our support for all democratic movements in the Middle East. It’s a terrible message. An estimated 1 million Palestinians depend on paychecks issued by the Palestinian Authority for their livelihoods.

Repeating an endless error, we in the West use sanctions or cutoff of funds to punish governments we don’t approve of. In reality, the governments do just fine and the people suffer in our name. A sure way to throw Palestine, giddy with its first democratic experiment, into chaos, is to cut off money to an already deprived population.

For their part, some Hamas leaders suggested that a long-term truce with Israel is possible if it withdraws from all territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, including East Jerusalem. There’s not a chance of that, but is possible still means is possible and there’s wiggle-room in that. Hamas’ "Change and Reform” platform emphasized the need for change in government after years of corrupt and inept administration by the former ruling party. Change and reform, like is possible, are wiggle-room declarations.

Hamas, like the dog that catches a rabbit and has never caught one before, now must decide what to do with it. Increased tension, confrontation, bombing and hate-talk against Israel isn’t going to fulfill the promise of change and reform. Having elected, Palestinians can un-elect the next time around, a concept all parties should keep in mind.

Military historian Victor Hanson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (Condi’s old stamping-grounds), warned a year ago

"As a rule of thumb in matters of the Middle East, be very skeptical of anything that Europe (fearful of terrorists, eager for profits, tired of Jews, scared of their own growing Islamic minorities) and the Arab League (a synonym for the autocratic rule of Sunni Muslim grandees and secular despots) cook up together.

If an EU president, a Saudi royal, and a Middle East specialist in the State Department or a professor in an endowed Middle Eastern Studies chair agree that the United States is woefully naïve, unnecessarily provocative or acting unilaterally, then assume that we are pretty much on the right side of history and promoting democratic reform. Sobriety and working with Arab moderates is diplo-speak for supporting or abetting an illiberal hierarchy. "

In that context, it’s interesting that Bush and Hosni Mubarak had their heads together immediately after the election. You couldn’t possibly find a more illiberal hierarchy than Mubarak's Egypt.

Ira Sharkansky, an Israeli  professor of political science, told Aljazeera.net that while he recognized the importance of holding elections, he was not sure they would produce the right people - whoever they might be. Any leadership was unlikely to meet with the Israeli definition of the right people.

American sincerity in calling for democratic elections in the Middle East will not be helped by reneging financial support at a critical time in Palestine. Failing to hold Hosni Mubarak’s feet to the fire in promised Egyptian elections is also the wrong message in what may prove to be a week of wrong-messaging.

Fortunately, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas remains in charge of Palestinian peace policy. At least, for the time being.
____________________________________________________

More at my personal web site about what interests me in International Affairs.

It’s Always Canada and the U.S. in the Final . . Or is It?

U.S. Women on a Cold Spell at Olympics, is the headline and the sub-text reads Hockey Team's Shocking Loss to Sweden Is Latest Disappointment. That’s a bit harsh of Barry Svrluga at the Washington Post.

Can you imagine being an American woman on that team, having played your heart out and losing, waking the next morning to that headline. Guess my country sent me to Turin for the Gold or else.

A 3-2 loss in a shootout and that’s the way shootouts are, unpredictable. The big load the U.S. women carried was that they’ve never been out of the finals in a world competition. They sat there on the bench, shaking their heads as if to clear this impossibility. Canada will play Sweden for the Gold. The U.S., if they can get themselves up for it, play on Monday for the Bronze.

They’ll be up, just need a day or two to get over that Washington Post headline about shocking losses and cold spells.

"I don't think anyone will ever understand," a tearful Swede, Erika Holst told CBC Sports. "We worked so hard for so long and finally we're here." Yeah well, more people understand than you think. You all played way above expectation and you deserve it.

Same day, different scenario, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis embarrassed her way into a Silver. Victory in the Snowboard Cross Race, assured by such a margin that she couldn’t resist a little grandstanding. Grabbing her snowboard in the midst of a jump, just short of the finish line and 50 yards in the lead, she did a twist that didn’t quite twist correctly and wrecked. On her back, Lindsey watched Switzerland's Tanja Frieden move on by and finesse the Gold.

What would sports be without the unexpected, the unbelievable, the that-couldn't-happen moment?

Snowboard is an exuberant sport, fairly new to the Winter Games and a welcome addition to sports that no longer carry a huge following—curling comes to mind. It’s built around pushing edges instead of sliding stones, trying the impossible and making it, showing off and cheering, a sort of brotherhood and sisterhood of charismatic show-offs. It was an oops moment for Lindsey, sports are full of oops-moments.

Another Lindsey, Lindsey Kildow, who figured to be one of the our best hopes for a medal in Alpine skiing, wrecked in a training run and hurt herself. Unlike Michelle Kwan, Lindsey performed through her pain and finished eighth in the Women’s Downhill. 1.29 seconds separated Lindsey from Gold, injured as she was, and plunked her in 8th place. Friday (what is it with Fridays?) she wiped-out again in the combined event, so it's not been a great Olympics, but she's an outstanding competitor.

The sporting life, from Michael Jordan’s stuck-out tongue to Dick Cheney’s shooting, is a matter of milliseconds, with all the disparate variables coming into play at a precise moment and the win or the loss on the table. Not any old moment of our choosing, this moment, right now. We all have our own personal most-thrilling-moment as a spectator and mine came in the ’76 Winter Olympics the Austrian, Franz Klammer’s Downhill victory. For me, it was a stunning minute and a half of balance on a razor’s edge of disaster.

It’s typical of sportswriters to look at a moment from among the blur of moments that make up a botched play at third base, a triple axel landed badly or a jockey’s use of the whip in a narrow loss. But sportswriters don’t play baseball, skate or ride racehorses. Cold spells and shocking losses are easy to assess from the sidelines.

Every athlete does their best, each moment the fates throw the cards and someone comes up a winner. To be there is enough, representing your country, grinning into the camera and stunned by the circumstances. The World Series, NBA Finals and Kentucky Derby all rolled into one ought to be exempt from someone’s opinion about cold spells or shocking loss.

These athletes bring me to the edge of my seat and, if there’s a little showboating in there, there’s wrecks and pulled groin muscles and concussions enough to make it even.

The celebration is the coming together in a world coming apart.
________________________________________________________

More at my personal web site about what interests me in International Affairs.

Condi Rice's Diplomacy of Ever-Increasing Pressure

Sometimes, Condi, the work of the Secretary of State is to lessen pressures throughout the world. Your boss’s ‘bring ‘em on’ mentality has us stretched to the breaking-point militarily.

What better way to take the political heat off a litany of failures and reversals than to take on another war? If Karl’s timing is right, the invasion of Iran will occur a month or so before the November elections.

That would be September of this year. Good weather for desert warfare. A reminder to the electorate not to change political horses in the middle of a stream, no matter that it’s a stream of errors, duplicities, mismanagement, tactical blunders, buck-passing, corporate greed, profiteering and chaos.

A case can be made, Madam Secretary, that pressure outside America is already at a maximum, what with

• Egypt canceling promised elections
• Hamas winning the national election in Palestine
• Sharon on his death-bed and the opportunists sharpening knives
• Saddam running his own trial in Iraq
• Muslim rage inflamed by a series of cartoons
• Iraqi militants keeping up the carnage

Not to say that we’re out of harm’s way in our own country, what with the pressure of

• An industrial base on its knees
• Congress in the midst of national disgrace
• Constant edginess about another possible terrorist attack
• Our own national trauma on our hurricane-damaged Gulf Coast
• An administration that has no viable base of popular support

So, what was in your mind when you asked Congress yesterday to provide $75 million in emergency funding to step up pressure on the Iranian government. Expanding radio and television broadcasts into Iran? Promoting internal opposition to the rule of religious leaders?

What have you and the Prez been smoking?

A Secretary of State is supposed to be stateswomanlike. Staggering around the world, slashing at hornet’s nests is not stateswomanlike.

Take a breath. Sit down and get your feet up. We tried this ‘support of dissidents’ in both Iraq and Afghanistan and then, when some more immediately important political whim caught our eye, we left them, exposed, vulnerable, hung our to dry. Talk to the Kurds. A lot of people died. People who believed what America told them, put their lives on the line and watched as their families were chopped up into little pieces before their eyes, their towns obliterated, the earth covered over.

You were at Berkeley, the expert on Russia. This is not Berkeley and it's not Russia, a country we're not handling all that well either.

Our present mistaken adventure has Iraqis and Afghanis once again with their lives on the line, their families blown up in the markets, their towns obliterated, the earth covered over and it’s not Saddam this time, it’s us. Saddam is busy dominating the Iraqi court, running his trial. We will leave as soon as we can leave. Sooner, if it serves the politics. And, when we’re gone, we will have left behind a lesson in what happens to countries who are powerless to overthrow their oppressors.

And they are all powerless.

Think about that, Condi, before you take your $75 million and conduct another anthropological experiment. This is not Berkeley. Iran is an undamaged country, with a substantial middle class and a working infrastructure. Like so many other misguided countries with inferiority complexes, they’re working toward a nuclear capability to make themselves proud. Thereby squandering resources that could be better used in advancing their commercial interests. A poor choice, but theirs.

They’re a Muslim country, Madam Secretary, held down and smothered by a Mullocracy (a coining of the word for control by Mullahs). Over 75% of Iranians are under the age of twenty-five. Their society is already tottering and poised for change, conversant with and attracted to Western culture and ideology.

Leave them to it.

The last thing Iran or the Middle East (or America) needs at the moment is a politically insecure president, desperate to recover his image and frantic over his legacy, attempting to effect ‘regime change’ yet again.

I have yet to understand why Iran, a country three-quarters of whom love everything Western, is such a devastating nuclear threat, while Pakistan, a country 99% of whom hate our guts, has an acceptable nuclear capability.

Your and his world-views are simply astounding.

Iran, left to its own devices, is an unraveling Mullocracy, moving inexorably in a direction away from the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. The Rice ‘slashing at hornet’s nests’ foreign policy will coalesce every last evil influence in Iran against the United States. A war, while not inevitable, is highly likely in these circumstances and here-we-go-again; an American blitzkrieg, destroyed infrastructure, civil collapse, insurgent guerilla warfare and yet another country we can’t begin to repair.

All under a presidency that claims itself to be answerable to no one in time of war.
________________________________________________________

More at my personal web site about what interests me in International Affairs.