Don't Buy Dubai?

Why Dubai? journalists are asking. Why are the Bushites so intent on this deal to turn over significant elements of key U.S. ports to a Dubai corporation owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates?

Meanwhile, Bushites and even some on the left are hinting---or coming right out and saying---that the opposition to this deal is not only misguided but racist, or at least xenophobic.

Are they right? Sure, some of it is racist and xenophobic. And some of it is just wanting to take care of your own. For there are distinctions to be made here. Seeing the world as Us versus Them is often destructive, self-destructive and perhaps above all, inaccurate. It's most dangerous when unconscious, but also when irrational. It leads to hate, fear and violence, and the fevers of war.

But there is something real here. First of all, the impulse to protect American ports in a time of supposed particular danger by keeping them under American control is common sense---the sense of the commons. While the practical effects of such a deal can be debated, this impulse leads to another.

In discussing this the other day, a friend told me how he had just gotten a new American Express card and had a question about one of its benefits. He called American Express to ask about it, and was answered from India. It made him angry.

Is this irrational? Not exactly. Because the export of jobs to other countries is having a big effect on Americans, particularly young people just graduating from college with loads of loan debt, who can't find the kind of entry level tech world jobs that have gone to India and elsewhere. New statistics show that the U.S. average family income declined 2.3% from 2001 to 2004; even though the already rich did better, the lower 40% brought the average down. Wages went down an average of 6% in the period. From 1998-2001 income went up 17.5%.

Certainly the export of jobs is not solely responsible. But neither is it irrelevant. So is Dubai a symbolic expression of this kind of dissatisfaction? Maybe, maybe not, but at least one analyst believes it is related in the real world.

David Sirota says the Dubai deal is part of a Bushite attempt to establish free trade agreements with UAE---in talks ongoing right now-- like they have with China. Sirota points out that the government pushed for a loan to allow Brits to sell nuclear technology to China, despite security concerns, with help from Congressional free traders who "made sure the loan went through so as to preserve the US-China free trade relationship that is allowing lawmakers' corporate campaign contributors export so many US jobs."

Others who may or may not support so-called free trade recognize that Dubya hearts Dubai because they're his kind of people--super-rich global corporations, that is--and that trumps national security any old time. But it is worth everyone considering that others are connecting the dots a little differently, and however the Beltway crowd rationalizes it, they're dealing with more and more people living elsewhere with the jobs that used to go to their children, spouses, neighbors and friends. And themselves.

Fearing unreal threats, and reacting irrationally and unconsciously to difference is one thing. But taking care of your own is another. It's the survival reason, and it's powerful. So powerful that it can get out of control and become xenophobia and racism. But let's not confuse them.

UPDATE: Rassmussen's poll shows overwhelming opposition to the Dubai deal. All of 17% of those surveyed thought the deal should be completed.

The Brink (U.S.)

I recall a lot of paranoid conversations in 1967 and early 1968: about how the FBI and CIA were spying on dissidents, antiwar demonstrators were being bugged, and even that LBJ was preparing to declare martial law in the U.S. and cancel the 1968 elections.

Some of it turned out to be true---the FBI and police not only spying on antiwar and other dissident groups but becoming undercover members and even provocateurs urging these groups to commit violent acts.

But as hard-headed as LBJ was, and as willing to lie and twist arms, he wasn't going to turn the U.S. into a totalitarian dictatorship. When Eugene McCarthy started getting votes in primaries, and RFK got into the race, he didn't send tanks into the streets. He even got out of the way of what was to come, which unfortunately was Nixon.

And even though Nixon subverted the Constitution and was reportedly willing to have his political enemies killed, when his back was against the wall he didn't arrest Congress and send out the troops; he resigned.

Now it all seems like paranoia, although it can also be argued that at least in Nixon's case, if he'd thought the military would follow his orders anymore, he might have done it. But with the Bushites now in power, none of this seems beyond the pale. There are just too many signs that the Bushites are gearing up for a real assault on constitutional government, and the cancellation of the 2008 elections fits right into the apparent timetable. So much of what they've done was unthinkable that this seems just the next unthinkable step.

So far they have gotten away with their pilot project in Guantanamo without getting burned in Congress or at or in the polls. They've taken away basic civil and human rights, and developed their techniques for torture and isolation. Hitler did this as well with early concentration camps, and nobody protested very much. Later they were afraid to. But even the extermination camps for the Jews were partly a test of the technologies involved; the ultimate goal was to eradicate all the races that Hitlerites declared undesirable--the Slovaks were next.

We're seeing signs. Nat Parry reminds us of these news stories that escaped wide notice:

...there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the US, or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]

Later, the New York Times reported that "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space." [Feb. 4, 2006]

Parry points out that nobody, including the Times, asked what those "new programs" could possibly be. Read the rest of his report, and decide how much is paranoia, and how much possibility.

He also points out that Senator Lindsay Graham has been talking about the President's powers to hunt down "Fifth Columnists," a designation almost as arcane as "sedition," which was heard last week when the Bureau of Veteran's Affairs accused one of its employees of it when she wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper critical of Bush.

Readers here may recall posts noting that Smirk was talking an awful lot about new uses for the military within the U.S. It was his answer to hurricane relief (echoed today in response to Congressional criticism of Katrina response. FEMA is fine and Homeland Security is dandy--what we need are troops and mercenaries.) It was his answer to a possible pandemic. (Instead of a better, or just less neglected and politicized public health system.)

And as big a stink as has been raised about at least three programs that spy on American citizens, two of them through the White House, it hasn't done real damage. The clamor has been inconsistent and unfocused. The Bushites still act as if no one can stop them--they are the Smirk's smirk writ large. And so far, they may well be right.

Paranoids are good at patterns. And there are patterns to be made of how the Bushites are transforming the government and its relationship to corporations, media, etc. that leads logically to the final step of dictatorship. Maybe that's why none of the Bushites seems to care who the 2008 nominee will be. Maybe that's why Karl Rove no longer cowers from subpoena from Fitzgerald, or why the White House doesn't fear more revelations of corruption. Because they've got a plan to make all that irrelevant?

There's plenty that's different today than in 1968, or in other more apparent great crises in the U.S. past. A lot of it favors the ability to impose a dictatorship and smother dissent. Some of it doesn't. We got through the last few crises without a single leader emerging, like FDR or Lincoln, but with notable leadership in the Congress (Watergate) or in the streets (Vietnam.) Where's it going to come from now? That is not at all clear.

Has the luck of this Republic run out? I would have said it will be tested, along with the luck and plunk of the human race, over the next decade as the Climate Crisis becomes unignorable. But the fateful point may be coming sooner. Much sooner. This may be the Big Brink of 2006-08.

The Brink (Iraq)

The destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra may well have signalled an all-out civil war in Iraq. It is the kind of act that not only enrages a large segment of the population but it unsettles everyone in the region---it severs a connection to history and culture. It creates a sense of chaos, of tremendous anxiety, of panic.

Events are moving fast, but as of this report more than a hundred Iraqis and 7 American soldiers have been killed in the aftermath, and the Sunni representatives have left the Iraqi government, which may doom the formation of any central government.

If the Bushites were holding on until the government was formed and U.S. forces could be drawn down (though it seems likely their plan was to maintain a military base in Iraq), their plan may be swiftly overtaken by events now. The civil war that many said would erupt as soon as U.S. forces left---and that others say has been ongoing in the guise of "insurgency" for some time---may become a very obvious wildfire that consumes the country. Then what happens?

That's one brink that may affect the other.

N44 Superbubble Complex

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"... the primary commitment of politicians is not to religion, but the use of religion for political purposes."

Huston Smith

Court V. Women

It didn't take long. Yesterday the Supreme Court jumped at the chance to review the federal law banning late term abortions that was struck down by lower courts because it provides no exception for endangering the woman's life or health.

Anti-choice forces were jubilant, literally smelling blood--the blood of women who could be permanently damaged or have their lives threatened by this law. And with good reason, because it's unlikely the court would have jumped at the first chance it got unless there were enough votes to overturn lower court rulings.

The difference the last time was Sandra Day O'Connor. Replaced about five minutes ago by Scalito the Silent, and with a new chief justice in John Roberts (whose bio was mistitled "Bob Roberts" when Tim Robbins made it into a movie), the bloodthirsty rabid right can't wait for the raw meat to be thrown their way at last.

Congress V. Bush

Wow---the Bushite contempt for any opposition whatever has finally made enemies of its own Repub leaders in Congress, on the issue of the Dubai takeover of key U.S. ports. Both the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are questioning the deal, and threatening legislation to at least delay it. The Big Smirk promptly threatened to veto such a bill, proposed by his congressional allies. It would be his very first veto.

According to the NY Times, the White House was shocked by the outcry, partly because 30% of U.S. ports are already run by companies in other countries, including China. But do people know that?

The deal stinks. It's the Bushite version of globalism at its worst--corporations transcend all else. The Bush family's cozy relationship with Saudi state officials and related corporations is well known. Now apparently the person Bush nominated to oversee the ports just left his job with the same Dubai company that is taking over the ports' management.

Is this where even conservatives finally get it?--That what Bush and Cheney are about is rampant cronyism and corporate greed---creating threats and wars to make money for their favored businesses? If the Bushites really believe there is a substantial terrorist threat, why would they let any port out of complete U.S. control?

Andy Everson "Metamorphosis" at inuit.com.

The Late News---Very Late


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

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

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

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

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

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

All of these crucial purchases -- and many more like them -- were paid for with homeland security grants. Doesn't it make you feel more secure that $100,000 in such money went to fund the federal Child Pornography Tipline? That $38 million went to cover fire claims related to the April 2001 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico?

Their conclusion:

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

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

But the stupidity is even more widespread than the pork:

When Congress isn't doling out cash indiscriminately, it's overreacting to yesterday's attacks instead of concentrating on cost-effective defenses against the most likely current threats.


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

Or as Ben Friedman put it:

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

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

The fact that Insight put this page together is laudable. (I say this with the pride of a contributor, to a similiar Insight thematic section on the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima.) But that this might still be considered a daring act is ultimately very depressing.

There is nothing about the terrorist threat said here that could not have been said in late 2001--and essentially it was said in blogs like this one. There is nothing about the forms of threats and the scandal of homeland security spending that couldn't have been said three years ago.

To decide on the right course of action to protect America required a correct assessment of the threat, not to mention some glimmer of an idea of the causes of terrorism, a bit more to the point than "they hate our freedom." But we were steered into blind fear, and like trembling sheep we followed, uttering pieties for our brave leaders.

By diverting us from understanding the real problems and devising and implementing real solutions, with real scrutiny of the results, while addressing other problems with the proportionate seriousness they deserve, panic has made us far less safe. Not just from terrorism. From every conceivable threat--from a Climate Crisis storm, from a flu epidemic, from dying because we don't have health insurance, you name it.

And so for nearly five years our media has apparently been paralyzed by the same gutlessness with which we as a society faced an unfamiliar (but hardly new) threat to our denial more than our lives. Or maybe it was because at least some in the media knew what would not be heard. We said it here then; no one listened. Maybe no one could hear, until now. And the sad thing is, how many even now can hear it?

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

Cheney shooting quail at a Texas ranch---we've got the picture in our minds: Dead-Eye Dickhead Cheney is clear, but what about that ranch? And the ranch owner, Katharine Armstrong, the person who told a member of the local press about Cheney shooting somebody. How do we picture her? Annie Oakley of the 21st century? Or one of the old Dallas babes on horseback? Or maybe just a hard-working Texas businesswoman making a go of her big old ranch, seeing that the old farts from the city get a good lunch before she rides off to supervise the new fences on the north forty?

Well, not exactly. Sidney Blumethal in Salon described her and her powerful family(emphasis added):

Both the vice president and the deputy chief of staff[Karl Rove], as it happens, owed their previous, lucrative jobs in the private sector to their relationships with the Armstrong family. Anne Armstrong, Katharine's mother, was on the board of Halliburton that made Dick Cheney its chief executive officer. Tobin Armstrong, Katharine's father, had financed Karl Rove & Co., Rove's political consulting firm. Katharine herself is a lobbyist for Houston law firm Baker Botts, a major Texas power broker since it was founded in the 19th century by the family of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and close associate of George H.W. Bush's.

Katharine Armstrong took up lobbying after her recent divorce. Her contracts include Parsons, a construction firm that has done work in Iraq, among others. Her business partner, Karen Johnson, a close friend of Rove's, does extensive business with the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and defense contractors.

So Katharine Armstrong, universally described as the ranch owner, is a lobbyist. So her calling a local acquaintance to tell the story wasn't just the account of an innocent and untutored semi-witness. Especially since, Blumenthal surmises, her story was crafted with the help of Karl "Blame the Victim" Rove.

In all the subsequent hoo-haw, which apparently continues in the major media, I missed these most pertinent facts. Maybe you did, too.

Weep not for me...

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Are we to be one of those bizarre civilizations that is on the way to its downfall without ever reaching its zenith?"

Edward Albee

Call It Treason

The Bushite administration has committed numerous crimes against humanity, by torturing and bombing. It is in the process of committing murder on the largest scale imaginable: it is murdering the planet with its obstinate refusal to act on, or even recognize the reality of the Climate Crisis which unchecked will likely mean the end of the living earth as we know it.

It has committed numerous crimes against many if not most Americans, in deference to the uber-wealthy few. It has shown its non-election-year contempt for the least powerful in its blithe ignoring of New Orleans during Katrina.

It lied the nation into a war, spilling blood and bleeding treasure, transforming the largest federal surplus into the largest federal debt, which turns over the fate of present and future generations to foreign powers to whom the nation now owes incredible sums. In the process it has given away taxpayers' money to a select group of cronies and crony corporations, while failing to deliver the results promised for the American people.

It has shown no mercy or even decency, Christian or otherwise, in attacks on opponents, using vicious lies even on people who were allies a blink of an eye before.

It has defied the Constitution and the laws of the land with impunity in ways both large and small. It has attempted to justify or at least worm out of every evil it has perpetrated, large and small, including the illegal outing of a CIA agent.

Now it is becoming clearer that the consequences of this particular act, the outing of agent Valerie Plame for a pique of sheer political revenge, has endangered national security and a region of the world long the most likely place where major warfare would begin that could engulf the globe.

It's well known now that Valerie Plame was working for the CIA on investigating nuclear weapons proliferation. It is now being reported that she and her team were looking into the nuclear program in Iran, and that her outing seriously disrupted the ability of American intelligence to learn what Iran is actually up to. This is being reported just as crisis is approaching, and the Bushites seem incredibly to be pushing for another war.

At the moment it is the alternative Raw Story that carries this story, but if it erupts into the pages of a major newspaper---either through investigative reporting or because, as some have been saying, Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation has led him to this finding---it becomes no longer a technical violation of statutes, but a measurable act of treason, with real world consequences.

This act of treason could wind up costing many lives. This act implicates many people in the Bushite White House, up to and including vice president Cheney, with the culpability of the president unknown at this time.

For all of their crimes and errors, and despite the very low standing the Big Smirk and Dead-Eye Dickhead have in the polls, the Bushites have survived by dint of congressional majorities and news media more interested in maintaining their profit margins from huge campaign spending (which Republicans support) than anything else. They may even survive the Fitzgerald investigation---Karl Rove for one is acting increasingly like he knows he is not going to be indicted.

But there may yet be a reckoning, and it could come as swiftly as lightning. But it must be a legitimate and legal fall, for cause. If there is not, the future doesn't have a chance. Not even the slim one it has if the Bushites are stopped before they do further damage.

MONDAY UPDATE: Celebrate President's Day with this post from Jane Smiley, on the next step in the Bushite dictatorship: going naked.

And for a cogent update on the unfolding NSA spy story, and efforts in Congress to investigate/justify it.

"Sea Monster" by Robert Davidson. From spiritwrestler.com.

The Daily Babble

Of Blogospheres and Atmospheres, Subtract Water

Although there's expectation that good bloggers post every day on topics of the moment, to feed their readers, this doesn't turn out to be how people use blogs, at least not exclusively.

Or not mine anyway. Although a discouraging number of hits come from people who seem to be surfing the most recent entries in the blogosphere at that moment, and judging from the blogs they've just come from, don't stay around to read much more than a line or two, there are also people who arrive with a purpose. And because they've shown up as the result of a search on some specific topic, they are often directed to the archives. The posts of past days, weeks or months.

Sometimes they've been directed errantly (Somebody asked "what does dreaming of a funeral mean?" and got sent here. ) But often enough they've come to the right place, even if all they're looking for is the true history of the Terrible Towel (archived on Blue Voice.)

It's true I don't get many comments, but (as Spencer Tracy said of Katharine Hepburn's anatomy in "Pat and Mike") what's there is cherse (choice.) Like a Bush's brain joke from Portugal. But I also get comments on old posts, including (for instance) a correction on a character's name in a Jane Austen movie. Or even on a post more than a year old, concerning the celebration marking Eureka's return of some land to the Wiyot.

So I try not to feel guilty when I'm not really in the mood to post yet another depressing proof of global heating--and today's is deeply frightening--or even when I berate myself for spending the time I do on writing that's maybe read by such a small number of daily visitors. Because what I've put out there in cyberspace is out there, and when people want it, they'll find it.

Now I feel like I have to say why that story is so depressing. Greenland's glaciers are melting far faster than predicted, which seems to indicate that heating is happening faster and the estimates of the future temperature rise are way low. It also means, as the story says, that sea levels are rising faster, which will add to storm damage on the coasts, and since the seas are hotter, the storms themselves will be more severe.

But that's not all. What the story doesn't dwell on is that the earth's supply of fresh water is rapidly diminishing, because a whole lot of it is in those glaciers. 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. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually.

Nobody knows how the climate crisis will play out in terms of the rain cycles, but it seems a safe bet that diminishing the fresh water supply is a very bad thing, not just for now but for a long time. And for all the vaunted advances of sciences, you can take all the gene technology and neuroscience and quantum computers combined, and it won't mean a thing because science has no idea of how to make H2O. Except of course by adding water.

The Daily Quote

"I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

click to enlarge. from San Francisco Chronicle.

Guantanamo Rising

The American facility is back in the news. After recent weeks of increasing charges of cruel and unusual punishment, of the majority of prisoners never charged and many captured in random sweeps:

Today, the AP : The United States must close its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay because it is effectively a torture camp where prisoners have no access to justice, a U.N. report released Thursday concluded.

The 54-page report summarizing an investigation by five U.N. experts accused the United States of practices that "amount to torture" and demanded detainees be allowed a fair trial or freed. The investigators did not visit the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Those people should be released or brought before an independent court," Manfred Nowak, the U.N. investigator for torture, told The Associated Press. "That should not be done in Guantanamo Bay, but before ordinary U.S. courts, or courts in their countries of origin or perhaps an international tribunal."

The U.N. investigators said photographic evidence — corroborated by testimony of former prisoners — showed detainees shackled, chained and hooded. Prisoners were beaten, stripped and shaved if they resisted, they said.

The White House rejected the recommendation.

The American shame is not only Guantanamo Bay Prison but the fact that Americans have allowed it to continue. Where was the outcry saying precisely what the UN does, but years ago, before all this suffering? Even if Guantanamo were to be closed tomorrow, that Americans permitted it to exist has brought us closer to the possibility of a totalitarian police state for all of us in our near future.

This North Coast Place

Two Takes On Place

What does "this place" really mean, in real life?

It can mean lots of things. A couple of them were suggested to me by two letters to the editor, on the very same page of the North Coast Journal a couple of weeks ago.

Continued here at This North Coast Place.

Can't Prescribe This

The latest health news:a study found that calcium pills and Vitamin D don't help to prevent broken bones in women over 50, nor do they help prevent cancers. This study, released by the federal Women's Initiative, the same outfit that earlier announced that low fat diets don't do anything to prevent colon cancer or heart disease.

In between there was yet another study saying that saw palmetto doesn't help prevent older men from needing to relieve themselves so often in the middle of the night.

So what gives? Are we entering the era when Woody Allen's Sleeper future comes true, and the road to health is paved with chunks of fat and heavy smoking?

Well, as usual the studies don't entirely support the conclusions in the headlines, and some nitpickers maintain they are flawed. But there is another possibility, which one might intuit by quoting one of the doctors quoted by the Times in their story on calcium:

As a therapy to protect against osteoporosis, Dr. Finkelstein said, supplements are "pretty weak." Women who have the condition should consider taking one of the seven prescription drugs on the market that have been shown in rigorous clinical trials and approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent fractures, he advised. Six of the drugs inhibit bone breakdown and one spurs the growth of new bone.

While calcium supplements and saw palmetto are part of a multi-billion dollar business supported by advertsing, they're nothing compared to the profits possible with prescription drugs, particular patented ones. You can't patent calcium.

Does this have anything to do with this assault on cheaper and more natural contributions to health, especially for those over 50, an age group which now includes the leading edge of the enormous baby boom generation? Perish the thought.

"Raven's New World" by Kenojuak Ashevak at Inuit.com

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote"

"It is on the whole probable that we continually dream, but that consciousness makes such a noise that we do not hear it."

Carl Jung

President Cheney

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

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Future's Log

"Only you can predict global heating"

--a new slogan perhaps for climateprediction.net which uses distributed computing to test models of climate change against real climate changes. According to World Changing, they're about to get a big boost from the BBC in their latest effort.

But the big news is for you. Just download their software and you get your very own Earth! You run a climate model and you can see the results: What makes this version of the software particularly fun is that the "screensaver" mode shows your current Earth model in action, and has shortcuts for looking at current temperatures, cloud cover, and rainfall, among other bits of info. Since the software runs in the background, that's the extent of the interactivity -- but still, you do get to see "your" planet evolve.

So get your Smokey the Computer into earth-saving mode, go to World Changing and download the future.

In another positive development, there's more evidence of increasing investment energy going into alternative sustainable energy systems. The New York Times has noticed that wind power is catching more than a breeze of interest. This article also indicates that General Electric is about to kick all its sustainable energy programs into higher gear.

"Join":painting by Elizabeth Murray

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

If each day falls
inside each night
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.

Pablo Neruda

(Thanks to Karin; Happy V-Day to Margaret and all my Dear Readers...)

Not Funny Anymore

It turns out that the man Cheney shot has pellets near his heart, and suffered a heart attack this morning. Doctors told AP that they had always known of the pellets, which means the seriousness of this 78 year old man's wounds were not accurately reported, even after a day's delay.

It's one thing for comedians and commentators to joke about this incident when they believed the man's wounds weren't serious. It's quite another for the White House and The Big Smirk to joke about it---as they have been doing today--when they have or should have access to the full medical report. And minimizing the condition of Cheney's shotgun victim goes beyond the bounds of spin, to despicable lying.

UPDATE: According to Think Progress, the White House had learned of the victims heart attack hours before Press Secretary McClellan's noon briefing--but he not only didn't mention it, he denied that there was anything "new" to report.

Cheney Gang-Banging

A roundup of some of the journalistic commentary on Dead-Eye Dickhead Cheney's madman + shotgun malfunction...

[thanks to fbihop at dkos for the TV stuff, and to Crooks & Liars which has the Jon Stewart video:]

Jon Stewart pointed out that Whittington was the first man since Alexander Hamliton to be shot by a sitting Vice President. "Hamilton, of course, shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington? Mistaken for a bird."

In a public service mood, Stewart cautioned parents :"Don't let your kids go hunting with the Vice President. I don't care what kind of lucrative contracts they're trying to land , or energy regulations they're trying to get lifted. He'll shoot them in the face."

Stewart in turn solicited analysis from Rob Corddry, his vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst:

Tonight, the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year old man, even knowing that today, Mr Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr Whittington in the face.[...]He believes the world is a beter place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Whittington's face.

In a post-9/11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.

David Letterman's best pot-shots:

Good news, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction - it's Dick Cheney.

We couldn't get bin Laden, but we nailed a 78 year old attorney!

And the inevitable Top Ten List:

Top Ten Dick Cheney Excuses
10.Heart palpitation caused trigger finger to spasm.
9. Wanted to get the Iraq mess off the front page.
8. Not enough Jim Beam.
7. Trying to stop the spread of the bird flu.
6. I love to shoot people.
5. The guy was making cracks about my lesbian daughter.
4. I thought the guy was trying to go gay cowboy on me.
3. Excuses? I hit him didn't I?
2.Until democrats approve medicare reform we have to make some tough choices for the elderly.
1. Made a Bet With Gretsky's Wife.

Earlier in the day, the print commentators fired away. There were several shooting their mouths off on the Huffington Post, for example.

Bill Maher:

"Keep going, we'll come back for him later, he's fine."

"Um. Sir. Mr. Vice President, he's kinda just laying there."

"Shhhhhh!!!! He's a lawyer. You want him to sue?...Harry? You OK? Harry? See? He's fine. This is just part of the administration's new tort reform package."

I think he's hurt sir. He's bleeding."

"You think he's hurt. Are you a doctor?"

"Yes. I'm your doctor. I travel with you all the time."

"Ah yes. The Jew. I didn't recognize you without the rib spreader."

"I think we need to call one of your ambulances."

"Aw, now why do you want to go and do something like that? If Antonin hears about this he won't come duck hunting next time there's an important case before the Supreme Court that I need him to rule on." ..." Well, do your best."

"I'm stanching the blood flow."

"No you idiot. I meant do your best to make it look self-inflicted."

Christopher Durang:

And if a fellow hunter gets shot, well that's "collateral damage," just like the women and children in Iraq when Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld try to shock and awe them. The collateral damage is a side effect, it's not the intention. Bush-Cheney intend to kill the terrorists, and the quails. And if other people get shot, well you have to accept that as a necessary price since they're protecting us from terrorists. And quails.

At first I thought Cheney had been hunting Dan Quayle, in a delayed reaction to his misspelling of potato years ago. Potatoe as opposed to potato. Early reports of the incident supported this supposition, and claimed Cheney had been shouting, "No e, no e!" as he aimed his gun at his startled hunting partner Harry Wittington.

Later reports indicated that the "No e!" report was an error, and that Cheney instead has a habit of yelling "Ho, hee, ho, hee!" whenever he kills something. "It's sort of a parody of Santa Claus on a rampage," said Cindy Sheehan, Cheney's recently hired new spokesperson.

"Quails are not the only fowl Dick Cheney likes to kill," Ms. Sheehan said. "He also likes to kill owls as well as to wound his grandchildren in the kneecaps."

When you write this up, can you remind your readers that the Cheneys' daughter is a lesbian?" Ms. Sheehan added. "And that they are very proud of her and support her right to exist, though Mr. Cheney has accidentally shot their daughter's partner 7 times."

"But she, unlike the troops, has full protective armor, and so Cheney's accidental attempts to kill her have not yet succeeded."

Al Franken:

Over the weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney shot a man in Texas. Asked why he shot the man, the Vice President said, "Just to watch him die."

You know who's doing a "there but for the grace of God go I?" Scalia.

Now, I imagine that Cheney and the President have hunted together. What would have happened if Cheney had shot the President? I think if he shot Bush this way, Bush isn't 78 and he's in pretty good shape, and he's kinda macho. I think he would've gotten up and shot Cheney back. And I think they would've started blasting each other like in a Tarrantino movie."

The Big Smirk to the Dickhead: "You're sure you left your gun back at the ranch?"