Required Reading

An amazing report on the costs of our our country's oil addiction from the Chicago Tribune.

Dumb and Summer

Josh Marshall this morning puts into words what I've been thinking about over the past few days. The war bastards have their backs to the wall now. Anyone with a brain sees a Republican catastrophe at the polls this fall and with time running out, the creeps' only instinct will be to double down.

I've been thinking a lot lately about stupidity as a political statement; the Paris Hilton proposition, if you will, that if you are rich and beautiful, and thereby powerful, not only don't you have to be smart, it is cooler if you are stupid. For what implies a greater confidence in the power of the system than the assumption that it will protect and reward idiots?

This notion has run through our history like a brook since at least the Grant administration. And let me say right now that intellegence is a vastly overrated commodity. But there is such a thing as emotional intellegence too, and if you are lacking in the brains department and offer nothing from the vault of the heart, then you are a danger to yourself and the world.

Our Moron-in-Chief will do as much damage as he can in the time he has left. And when he is done, I predict that stupidity as a lifestyle choice and political point of view will go out of style. In fact, long-term prospects on our hot and stormy Earth will very shortly depend very much on heart and smarts, and people lacking both will pass away in swarms.

As an exercise in the nature and shape of the kind of stupidity I am thinking of, that blind trust and blissful lack of foresight behind so much of what America now stands for, stop and consider what would happen if Las Vegas were to suffer a summer power outage on the scale of the one that hit St. Louis two weeks ago.

Can't happen? Don't be stupid.

Sports Dusk

It's been a commonplace for years that the sports section is the best ground glass with which to examine our stupid society and times. Not, I submit, because athletes are culled from nearly every corner of the world, or that businessmen and crime figures exert measures of influence, or that sports provide historical continuity and attachment to a rootless people. All that is certainly true. But sports writers, unique to their wider profession, are also able to write freely about morality, or the lack thereof.

From this morning's Washington Pest, errr... Post

In the winter of Barry Bonds's career, there is unease throughout [the Giants organization]. The delicate dance that often occurs between a fading star and his franchise over the future of their relationship is even more complicated in this case, because he is Barry Bonds, and everyone here must grapple with a Faustian equation -- how much money he has made for them vs. how much of their souls it has cost them.

The palimpsest of official Washington, the Post stood by as breathlessly as the rest of its mates as the local team fucked up Iraq and put the long term health of our country, and security of the world, in mortal peril. The Post is, in fact, currently in the midst of running a prolonged correction of its efforts at "reporting" the Iraq mess on its front page this week; an institutional correction not unlike that of the Titanic's, as it swerved only enough to allow the berg to make its long fatal gash. A better blogger than I has pointed out their nearly criminal shortcomings in this regard.

But we'll leave the Post team to the bugs they will never itch away. And let us wonder instead how much better we might be as a people if the non-sporting press gave even glancing attention to the nature of our leaders' souls as they persist in failed campaigns and corroded agendas that have cost the lives tens of thousands of human beings. Of course then any attention paid to the dead eyes and waxy mugs of the maniacs in charge would alert most voters to the fact that the souls in question rotted away long ago.

Monopoly? No, Risk.

As Israel is poised to enter Lebanon, let's pause to consider a few salient points.

For years, the main regional check on Iran was Saddam's Iraq, The United States invaded Iraq because it thought it could do a better job as local tough guy. That fantasy now well-curdled, Iran may well have moved to help Hammas with materials. I know in my very Sicilian heart that I would have.

Israel is invading because their air war didn't work. Anyone looking for a replay of '67 or '73 (are you listening N.Y. Daily News?) is going to be bitterly disappointed. American hawks are beside themselves with gladness as they expect the Israelis not only to redress the Islamic infamy on their borders, but somehow free up the man-trap the U.S. fell into in old Babylon. Indeed the attention of the war press turned with astounding speed away from the Iraqi quagmire, grateful no doubt to cover atrocities that are not under the lights of the Stars and Stripes.

It is peculiar that in the wake of 9/11, the United Sates, a huge country with no enemies in this hemisphere, reacted very much like Israel, a tiny nation surrounded by neighbors which do not wish it well. The U.S. redefined what would prompt military action, and took several chapters from the Mossad play book regarding operations and treatment of prisoners.

Now Israel is reacting like the U.S., using it should be noted all the war technology we have sold them in the last few years, hoping air power would do the trick, and obliged to follow in with armor.

Some would see the actions of certain steadfast Washington Likudniks in the similarity of the two nations' martial designs, but bear in mind that weaponry has a logic of its own, in both its procurement and use. I would submit that our shared follies are the result of a reliance on a shared technology; one, I might add, that has yet to be proved successful in any war against guerilla/tribal forces.

Iraq in Translation

Though the Chicago Tribune has had consistently outstanding coverage in Iraq by their Mid-East bureau reporters, in the first couple years of the war its main news and feature stories always ran under a full-cap bold title banner across the top of the page, reading: IRAQ IN TRANSITION.

Now no one would of course argue that Iraq was not in transition, but the nature of the phrase implied that Iraq was going from someplace Bad (a brutal dictatorship) to someplace Good (democracy, an ally of new U.S. hegemony - whatever), however painful and fraught with difficulty that transition was.

This is a fine example of the reassuring frame in which all news is handed out by the mainstream media; that considered balance which the status quo uses to maintain its own equilibrium in the world. The Tribune's newest title banner for the latest fucking nightmare is CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, as if one country invading another is somehow not an act of WAR anymore.

Again, I can't fault the Trib's coverage one whit, only its presentation. Usually such niceties in nomenclature mask a severe moral disconnect between actions and high ideals (i.e. The War Between the States), or enable outright lying, like the various "clear air" and "conservation" bills cobbled together by industry lobbyists and sent for passage in the Republican congress.

Today the Trib ran a big story on the utter failure of the six-week-old crackdown Iraqi security forces were going to make in Baghdad. It did not run under an IRAQ IN TRANSITION banner and, for that matter, I can't remember seeing one for quite some time.

Train to the Drain

Anyone paying attention with anything like an open mind might reach the conclusion that any last illusion of control the shitheads "in power" in "Washington" had has just slipped down the drain with a wet glug.

Power is in quotes above because it is unclear how much force they can muster any more. The wheels are off in Iraq (Gen. Pace began weeping in front of a senate committee on Monday, testifying - it's true - about his Italian immigrant father and certain Vietnam war buddies who were not born in the U.S.A.; but still, I'm sure all the tough nuts at the 'gon are looking at General Peace - for that is what Pace, pronounced "pah-che", means in Italian - sideways now, wondering what is really wrong.) Afghanistan is reverting to its classic dimensions as Theater of Blood, after fading years ago from the minds of a "Washington" with other fish to flail. The fruits of "Washington's" five-year disengagement from the mess in Israel/Palestine are now falling rotten from the tree. Iran, recognizing it is now, thanks to "Washington", the de facto regional power, is behaving as such, with only Russia and China to worry about. And Venezuela this week announced it would no longer sell gas to the U.S. at the expiration of current contracts, apparently planning to shutter all its wholly-owned Citgo stations here. (They own Citgo -- who knew?) India/Pakistan? Stay tuned...

And Washington is in quotes above because it is just a common noun that has come to stand for a consortium of politcal classes and state institutions found everywhere, and are now everywhere found wanting.

Oil could well be at $80 a barrel by this time next week. (Its cost when we sailed into Iraq? About $25) There is no slowdown in demand because we can't slow down. Your faithful correspondent does not own a car. Consequently, I pay close attention to the driving habits of my neighbors, since any one of them could run me down like a dog while accelerating towards the next red light, where, arriving, they slam on the brakes.

So, yeah, judging by the behavioral reality, no slowdown to come, just a quick stop.

And as the rest of the mindmap comes apart, the Midwest drought continues; except in those spots that get six inches of rain in the space of an afternoon. Climate denial is the last refuge of simpletons, allowing the inadequate to feel like they are balanced, scientific, true skeptics. I say simpletons need refuges, and they won't be around to trouble the rest of us much longer anyway. Because now the weather has become metaphor. People are getting the feeling that the sky god is pissed, for whatever reasons. And what happens when the sky god is angry? Traditionally, unless those in control can make the sky god happy, they lose their spots at the top, sometimes in abrupt ways.

The Big Snit

In all it's YouTubed glory...

On Flooded Tunnels and Dry Wells

I have a hard time deciding what is more dismaying, the arrest of new nitwits accused of plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel, or the need the New York Daily News felt to run an associated story explaining how water rushing into a ruined Holland would NOT flood lower Manhattan, "because it would have to defy the laws of physics".

And here I thought the fight against terrorism was all about defying laws...

At any rate, the News' day-two story now says the plotters were intent on "Hudson River tunnels", which puts the plan just a bit closer to the Wishing rather than Doing side of things. Others see plots of a political, election-year variety, and since the Dept. of Homeland Security seems to function as little more than the patronage wing of the War Party, I see no reason to reject this interpretation immediately as lacking merit.

Your correspondent is a brainy cuss, and his reading list has lately been stacked with works by Goethe, Marcus Aurelius and de Tocqueville. And as observant, wise and thoughtful as those very great men were (and that de Tocqueville was one broadly perspicacious motherfucker, lemmie tell you...) they all shared a certain European disdain for the reasoning ability of the common man. And while this attitude is not unknown among American thinkers (Henry Adams and Mencken spring immediately to mind) what characterizes the great rhetoriticians of our history - Whitman, Lincoln, Twain, Dreiser, W.C. Williams, Eric Hoffer, even Edmund Wilson - is the notion that the great mass of people can be expected to reasonably decide and act on what is best for themselves. This, broadly, is something that has always distinguished American politics from the rest of the world's.

Funny enough, our professional political class disdains this idea - and bases its income on thwarting it. Indeed, we do not advance easily along broad, well-lit avenues as a nation. The tyranny of the majority remains our biggest threat, and that people are weak, venal and led easily by the flag is also a given. However, there always comes a time of put up or shut up, and another election year cycle floated on illustrations of dire threats thwarted may instead serve to remind people of what has NOT been done in their service since the last time they were encouraged to panic on the way to the polls.

Like a House Afire...

A friend last week reported being recently stung by a scorpion -- in his bedroom!! Now those of you who might know him could say it is his own damn fault for buying a lovely home among the mesquite and scrub pines south of San Antonio. Adding to the situation, though, is an ongoing drought in Texas which, according to the stingee's wife, is killing the mesquite, and forcing otherwise proud, self-sufficient stinging arachnids indoors in quest of moisture.

In wider news, the price of a barrel of oil finished at a new high yesterday, just pocket change over $75. This should come as no surprise to anyone who'd read a June 30 story from the Bloomberg news service, which began:

The number of Americans traveling during the July 4th holiday weekend will increase 1.2 percent from a year ago, the smallest rise since 2000, as high pump prices cause people to cut back, AAA said in an annual forecast.

A record 40.7 million Americans will take trips during the long weekend, the summer's biggest travel holiday, up from 40.2 million last year, according to AAA, the nation's largest motoring club. About 34.3 million people will travel by car, up 1.3 percent from last year, the report said.

It is a peculiarity of the financial press that an increase in numbers can be considered, in some cases, the moral equivalent of a decrease, as it is here. The story is supposed to be about how people are changing their travel plans, when in fact they, in a macro economic sense, are doing no such thing. To this simple financial thinker, then, if demand is up 1.3% after an average 19% price increase then that ol' supply/demand equation indicates only one thing.

But this dispatch is not about gas prices or the enervating weather across the U.S.A., other than to point to them as persistent, structural on-the-ground realities that are still being considered as temporary, short term conditions by a political class, and its media handmaidens, which has never had to consider them at great length before.

This stasis is the background then for the inane partisan bitching now underway. And here I want to ask my fellow Democrats: If you and someone you don't like so much are arguing in a house on fire, how long do you stay inside for the purpose of winning the debate?

Here's a quick guide to sensible behavior in this case: point out the house is on fire and, since you care about the guy's family, consider ways the both of you can get out safely. If he still wants to stay, call you names and, in fact, deny the dire nature of the situation, you wish him well, make him as comfortable as possible, and then relinquish the hall for a safer, if less exalted, view of the blaze.

I offer this parable to my fellow liberal bloggers (whoever they are and whatever that means) who have been snookered into bickering with a political class which is in the process of killing itself. Rather than engaging them in exchanges for valueless debate points, the time has come to ignore them altogether and use our limited communication skills to offer a sense of order to people who have been knocked silly, and know it, by Republican misrule.

Red Sales in the Sunset

Yesterday while sorting through a few years' worth of photos I've saved off the Net. I happened upon this fairly appalling exhibit which I clipped in August, '03 - back in the days of "Mission Accomplished".



'Twas a banner ad somewhere, and surely meant to appeal to all those boys and girls of a certain age who were not about to put on uniforms. Of course it looks even more disgusting three years and thousands dead later; but as an artifact of the wishful thinking of a certain era - and what defines an era better than what it wishes for? - it is wonderful.

And by that I mean "full of wonder"; for some entrepreneur felt he understood what was going on in the country, a kind of Army-meets-Party thing. I wonder how many hats he ordered? How many were sold? Ever see anyone show their support of the troops by wearing the camo-sombrero? Yeah, me neither.

And, yes, this is only evidence of one numbskull's bid for bucks, and unindicative of the high moral purpose of those assholes who started this stinking war. But our salesman revealed more than he knew by outlining this tiny dream of victory. Because now those soldiers floating in the background appear as the shades of the dead, and the appalling grins of the buff and beautiful offer nothing but the varied states of hysterical incomprehension.