Effing Friday ALREADY???

What Goes On Here?

Supposedly the President is a Very Important Person, continually pressed by the kind of choices and events that just can't wait. But now, suddenly, everything is on hold. We're just going to drift until the next President is in office.

That is baloney, and if it works, it will be a miracle. The Congress needs to accept its responsibility, impeach Bush and Cheney, and put somebody in office who can do the work.

And if that doesn't happen, it won't be the fault of our Constitution, or of the voters. It will be the failure of the best management team money can buy. Of course, we've already seen how well that scheme works, on Wall Street, in arranged marriages, or in managing our public universities.

We can't change everything. But at least we can stop pretending the President is some kind of essential person, now that we're so obviously hoping he's not.

Criminal Gangs

The original business of criminal gangs was stealing- still an entry-level raison d'etre. The Roman latifundia in Sicily, through labor-racketeering, became the birthplace of the Mafia. As the world economy matured criminal gangs coalesced around every center of money or power.

In the 20th Century, oil was the center of power. The gang structure was surprisingly similar in all the oil-exporting countries- a local oligarchy in league with world oil-buyers, using a portion of the proceeds to subsidize the workers who pumped the oil, the workers being used when necessary as Brownshirts in defense of the regime. The PRI in Mexico is a prototype example and the fall of the PRI with the maturation of the Mexican economy a lesson in how such gangs fall.

This story has no moral. This story has no end. This story just goes to show that there ain't no good in men.

Has This Ever Happened Before?

Don Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, is in prison on trumped-up charges brought in an obvious political prosecution by Republicans- so obvious that CBS has reported the case nationally.

But not in Alabama, where the CBS broadcast stream was blacked out for the segment on Siegelman by the owner of the local affiliate- a Republican.

I thought I'd seen just about everything, but this is like watching a movie about a dictatorship- and realizing it's not a movie, it's not a dream, you can't wake up- because you're already awake.

Too bad the same can't be said for the people around you.

Spread The News

Nick Davies has written a book called The Flat Earth News. He says he chose that title because "for hundreds of years everyone knew the Earth was flat".

The irony here would be that people knew the Earth was round two thousand years before Davies thinks they did.

Yes, there were "hundreds of years" when people thought the Earth was flat - but that was in XCXLM B.C.- a loooong time ago.

We Are So Screwed

If you want to know how screwed we are, consider this- for about 20 years Europeans have been making modern cars that get around 60 mpg. The American auto industry has hid behind "safety regulations".

Now there is vague talk of maybe getting 40 mpg with American cars, or even (be still, my heart!) raising the CAFE to 30 mpg. Well, while we're doing that, the Europeans will be going for 70 or 80 or 90 mpg.

Americans are saying, well, maybe automatic guideway systems in the road will substitute for mass transit, because the cars will move ever so much faster.

But if there's any rational place for cars in the modern economy, the Europeans will be cleaning our clock with gas mileage double ours per capita. And it's not like they lose this advantage by the amount our population exceeds theirs- on the contrary, if we have more people, we have more marginal expense.

If we can't wake up and smell the coffee, it's not going to be pretty.