Lemmings Over The Cliff

If one were to be getting their news about the “fiscal cliff” from any news outlet – and Lord have mercy on them if they are – you’d swear the debate is simply about one side (republicans) wanting to protect their rich friends and the other side (democrats) trying to protect the poor from mean-spirited budget cuts. Can I say poppycock in my blog?

For the past five years we have been building up debt in this country at an unprecedented and unsustainable way. Both parties are to blame for this because elected politicians of any stripe would much rather give than walk away from the revenue trough. The reasons for our debt, now 105% of our annual gross domestic product (which is the total output of our entire national economy), are very complex. But to simplify as much as possible: it’s too much going out the door and not enough coming in.

As would be the case in your own finances, imagine that your paycheck has been cut, your bills have gone up and you’ve had to max out your credit cards just to stay afloat. To make matters worse, the interest you’re paying for borrowing all that money on your credit cards is so high that making the minimum payment barely cuts into your overall credit debt. In a nutshell, that is how our government works. The U.S. economy has the lowest percentage of people in the workforce since the Great depression (let’s call it a pay cut since fewer workers means less tax revenue), Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is at an all time high (let’s call that an increase in your bills) and 45 cents out of every dollar the Federal government spends goes to pay interest on the debt (let’s call that the credit card problem).

Assuming you have the lower pay, higher bills, and higher interest problem in your own household, what would you do? I suspect you’d get a second job to offset the loss of pay and then use that money to pay down the principal on your debt, getting it more under control. That would be a common sense approach. However, that’s not the general thinking among those we elect and trust to look after the public purse. Their plan – minus all the details, of course – is to increase costs on the wealthiest taxpayers, many of them employers, and expect higher revenue. While this may have a short term gain, it will ultimately lead job producers to either pass along those higher costs to consumers (difficult to do in a global economy) or to cut jobs to save costs, leaving more taxpayers out of work and unable to contribute to the overall economy.

As to cutting the debt, Congress and the president, with three trained economists among them, believe they can solve the problem of spending beyond their means by spending more money. They also do something we all wish we could by printing more money to pay the bills. Politicians seem to ignore the economic reality that printing money cheapens the dollar (meaning consumers can buy less with the money they have), will eventually lead to high rates of inflation, and has to be paid back with interest to whomever is dumb enough to buy our crashed debt-rated bonds.

But we are all told this is just about the rich not paying their fair share and the poor getting stepped on because of budget cuts.

Let’s get real. The amount of money that could be raised by increasing taxes on households earning more than $250,000 per year, as first proposed by President Obama, would run the current annual budget for just eight days. The republican’s version of taxing earners with more than $1 million in annual income would run the government for half that time. If this is a revenue problem, the only revenue solution is to tax everyone regardless of income. But do any of us who pay taxes really believe we’re not giving enough of our income to provide needed revenue to the government?

Which brings us to cutting the Federal family budget. All proposed spending cuts are for merely cutting the planned increase, not cutting any amount currently being spent except in one place; the defense budget. So when you hear about harsh budget cuts, the fact is that the Federal budget will still increase under anyone’s proposal. Under Obama, it increases at a faster pace and even includes more stimulus spending to build the infrastructure that was supposed to be built under Stimulus I and II.

Which brings us to the harshest of harsh budget pain: the Fiscal Cliff (cue horror music). The fiscal cliff was a designed time bomb set to go off on January 1 because Congress and the president couldn’t decide how to fix the problem 11 months ago. So they did what Washington does best and decided to kick the can down the road and fix it later. But before they kicked the last can, Congress and the president decided to create an incentive to do their job and put tax increases and spending cuts on autopilot in the event they couldn’t come up with a plan that everyone liked. It’s now later and the problem isn’t fixed and both sides are acting like a college student cramming for a final at the last moment and hoping to do just enough not to flunk.

The headlines talk about trillions of dollars every time the fiscal cliff is mentioned. In one of the latest bits of political trickery, all plans are added up over 10 years to make them look more serious by using the magic word: trillions. The Soviets had a five-year plan, our current government seems to prefer the 10-year plan. Of course the only actual effect on these 10-year plans is for the first year since one Congress can’t bind a future Congress on spending. For honesty’s sake, we can only look at one year. On January 1, taxes will go up for all taxpayers back to Clinton-era rates. It will raise enough revenue (assuming no job losses) to run the current budget for 21 days. Then the automatic cuts would be $130 billion on defense (40% of its budget) and $109 billion on social programs. That’s all on a budget of $3.8 trillion. That would be the same as you owing $38,000 on credit cards and paying $2,300 to reduce your overall debt and thinking you solved your credit card problem.

To make matters worse, we’re adding $1.2 trillion to that $16 trillion deficit every year. Using the government’s 10-year plan, we will add $12 trillion to our deficit in ten years, only cutting that to $10 trillion under proposed budget cuts and an additional $1 trillion under the rosiest of revenue plans. The problem is, the cost of borrowing even at current historic low interest rates will consume nearly 100% of the budget, which will overwhelm any spending priorities.

So with such a miniscule divot in the Federal purse and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans (now agreed by the president to be only household incomes more than $400,000), why can’t the two sides agree? The answer is pure politics. Unless one side can gain a political advantage over the other, the automatic spending cuts and tax increases are a certainty. If this happens, both sides win because both sides can be seen reducing taxes by peeling them back to their current rate for all but the wealthiest. Taking away and then giving back, the perfect dream of a politician! We’ll build statues to them for their kindness. To make that deal work best, there will be bipartisan support to “save” certain programs and restore the already planned increases. Medals for everyone, I say!

Back to the beginning, however, and how our ignorant media has portrayed this. Since this is a true partisan battle, I will put it in partisan terms. President Obama is either an idiot or he hopes to go over the cliff just so he can save us all from the rascally republicans and “cut” taxes, despite raising them through laziness and wanton political gamesmanship. Obama’s latest ask isn’t just for tax increases on incomes over $400,000. He’s also asking for an extension of unemployment benefits, an extension of a cut in social security taxes, larger cuts to defense among most of a very general plan for non-specific budget cuts, $50 billion in new “stimulus” spending, and the kicker, to give a two-year reprieve on the debt ceiling (the only real stopgap to increased spending) and the ability to veto any attempts to block future increases, a constitutionally protected responsibility of Congress. That’s an offer even Don Corleone would blush to make.

Random Thinking....

Obama gets to play with his military toys: Due to the ever-changing situation in Libya, this thought may have a shelf-life of a few hours, but I find it humorous that our Nobel Peace Prize winning president decided to lob Trident missiles into Libya to save the Libyan people. It made me turn to me DVD library to watch a few clips of Team America: World Police when they destroyed Paris to save the city.

Most presidents who take us into war (what else can you call it – certainly not a “kinetic military action"?) give Americans a bit of a pep talk before the bombing begins. They’ll make a case to the American people about why we’re blowing up things, the goals and who is supposed to die for messing with us, or our “vital national security interests,” before they give it a mission name like Operation Wag The Dog. The Libyan attacks by a coalition of the unwilling seems more like letting a few Europeans show off their new combined EU defense industry products, ready for sale. Although it’s a sad day indeed when you throw a war with European countries and the Germans decide to sit it out.

Our historic president decided to be historic once again, giving his unwatched speech to America in what, in the end, seemed more like a justification than a call to arms, and did so nine days after the first missiles were launched. Perhaps future presidents will take the 20/20 hindsight approach in addresses to the nation on all sorts of matters. A president is more apt to appear he made all the right moves when you get to back into your remarks rather than try to back out later, as George W. Bush discovered in declaring Mission Accomplished about eight years too early in Iraq.

The president even took the opportunity to slap himself on the back a few times, comparing how long it took him to order the missiles compared to the time that passed for President Clinton to kill civilians to stop the killing in the Balkans – either a slap in Ms. Clinton’s face for getting him into this mess, or he somehow thought the press forgot where the Balkans are (most did, likely). In all fairness, President Clinton was hiding under his Oval Office desk while Madeline Albright got the Balkan War up to a fever pitch, and it appears President Obama was also cornered by his Secretary of State to stir up some desert dust – so much for feminist talk that only men create wars.

While he was given less of a pass by the press than normal on his tardy talk, I don’t think anyone with the courage to watch his non-fireside chat found a greater understanding of our mission in Libya. Key questions left unanswered: Are we out to kill Gaddafi, or just trying to send a message by blowing up his palace? Who are the rebels and why were they only mentioned in passing? Are we arming the rebels with Stinger missiles so they can take out Libyan air force jets and the occasional commercial 747? Why did we hand off command and control to NATO when the top two commanders of NATO are American, we are the major funder, and they still need our advanced weaponry to enforce a no-fly zone and to make big holes in the ground where once strategic targets were? And, finally, it’s quite worldly of us to jump into such a fray to spare innocents, it’s just sort of puzzling why innocents in South Sudan, Congo, Syria, Ivory Coast, Bahrain and the protestors in Iran in 2009 don’t warrant the same compassion. Look, the president is just too damn smart for us regular folk to understand such nuance – even with 20/20 hindsight. Let’s just hope he picks his battles better than he does his Final Four picks.

The facts are in: California sucks. There was an interesting article by Forbes naming the Top 15 cities where things are getting worse. The major criteria were unemployment rate, the expectation for future job growth, and percentage of homes in foreclosure. Of the top seven cities, six are in California. This little tidbit coupled with a $26 billion deficit and bond rating that just slipped below Louisiana to come in at number 50, can lead one to wonder about the effectiveness of our elected leaders.

While we’ve had our boneheaded governors in the Golden State, there have been two constants in California politics since 1995: a huge left-wing democrat majority in the legislature beholden to special interest and a small and right wing minority of republicans beholden to the voices in their heads. The theory of “never the twain shall meet” is alive and kicking among our politicians and no amount of gunplay is apt to change things.

There was a day in California when the majority of legislators were lawyers prior to entry into public service. Say what you will about lawyers, but they know how to draft laws, take their one-third, and get out of town. Now the majority of legislators’ previous employment was the staff of former legislators, thanks in no small part to term limits and the idiots who put it on the ballot (me!). As a result, the main form of legislating is towing the company line and, presto, all problems over the past 15 years have been kicked down the road so far that we’ve finally found the dead end. I say give them all a year’s paid vacation just so they’ll leave us alone for a year and maybe things won’t get any worse. We’ve tried everything else, let’s get innovative.

Why one shouldn’t fly with Russian passengers: You’ve all heard that flight attendant’s speech prior to take off; that one that mentions 30 times to shut off all electronic devices, check to make sure your seat belt is fastened, and how much the various meats on a stick will cost. There are certain sounds only dogs can hear, but I’m guessing there are other sounds that only Russians can’t hear. One of them is to shut off all electronic devices.

I was on a flight to Moscow the other day and all Americans dutifully turned off everything they were required to, including the flight attendants. I kept my phone on a bit longer than normal because AT&T’s service is so incredibly awful, I had to wait five minutes for an e-mail to clear my outbox. I was reminded three times to shut off my phone and, with a feeling of lawlessness, I even chose to hide my phone to avoid further scolding. The Russians sitting in the row across from me? One woman had two mobile phones switched on and was showing her seatmate something on her computer while we were taking off. She also wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Not a single flight attendant said anything to her – likely because they knew it would do no good.

There is an old joke about an America, a Frenchman, and a Russian. The task is to get each one to jump off a bridge into the river. To the American, he’s told he’s lost all his money and, with nothing to live for, he jumps off the bridge. To get the Frenchman to jump, he’s told he’s lost all his lovers. To convince the Russian, a sign is placed on the bridge that reads, It’s forbidden to jump off the bridge. Now I’ve been on a lot of flights inside Russia and I can’t recall a single instance of a Russian turning off anything electrical, which makes one believe there’s nothing to this canard of electronic interference in the first place. But on the remote chance there is, my suggestion is flight attendants change their pre-flight announcements to say, It is forbidden to keep your electrical devices turned on.

Where Have You Gone Woodward and Bernstein?

My friend who goes by the moniker Agent 69 thinks I’m an interesting person. If anyone thinks I’m interesting I tend to want to hang out a bit more with them because, well, I don’t get that reaction very often. Although I must say it does bring to mind the Groucho Marx line of not wanting to be part of any club that would have him as a member. Nevertheless, I had a lunch with him today and, as often is the case, we grumbled about various political banalities. To our mutual credit, very few swear words were used in this session.

The subject came up about the political class and the media that write about them. Specifically, about the strange relationship of media and how it is billed as our guardians of truth and yet have a cozy relationship with the people we need guarding from. It was in evidence this weekend when President Obama was having a going-away party for administration hatchet man David Axelrod who was leaving to run the reelection campaign for the president. First, let me state my bias and pray that Mr. Axelrod is a complete and utter failure in his revised role. At any rate, as Egypt and much of the Middle East was burning, our tirelessly-working president was goofing off with his staff and a number of invited elite journalists.

It makes one scratch the balding side of the head to get around the idea that supposedly objective journalists could maintain that objectivity and still make the A List for future parties and sleepovers at the White House. If a reporter were to write a slightly critical story about the president, would he or she be taken off the invite list? The worry of losing the status – and the access – in this manner could make any reporter give pause about what they’d write.

When I was a lowly paid sportswriter, there was a definite dividing line about consorting with the athletes we were writing about. It was almost a point of professional pride that we could care less about hanging out with the athletes, invited or not. And, the bigger the name, the less we wanted to seem star-struck. The reporters who cover the White House these days seem to feel just the opposite and can’t wait to write in their diary about how the president remembered their name. In fact, there is a big snit going on from the reporters who weren’t invited to the White House soiree.

Back when it was cool to be an aloof sportswriter, I had a story lead that went, “The Texas Rangers stink, and Mike Hargrove was the stinkee.” I was proud of that line and proud that I had called out the Rangers’ only all-star player. With my chest puffed up, I proudly went to the Rangers’ practice field the next day and was talking to manager Bobby Valentine. As we were discussing what Valentine might do when he became a former manager, a baseball whizzed by my head and I could feel the wind of the ball as it missed my nose by an inch. Valentine looked down and tried to hold off a chuckle. I looked around and couldn’t tell who had thrown the ball, although my great deductive skills had narrowed the field to Hargrove, who was about 50 yards away. A moment later another ball zipped by my head and, putting two and two together, I figured Hargove was throwing the ball at me. So I said, “Skip, I think Hargrove is trying to hit me on the head with a baseball!” Valentine said, “Naw, if he was trying to hit you, he would have.” The next day, Hargrove went 0-4 in an 8-0 loss and I wrote of the Ranger’s star player, “Hargrove looked about as sharp as white sox and a black tuxedo, but he sure can throw the ball with great accuracy.” The 6'-4" Hargrove grabbed me in the clubhouse the next day and asked me to autograph my article. So much seems to have changed in the relationship with reporters and the people they report on. It’s also true that much has changed in the expectations placed on the reporters by those they’re covering. And that’s sad.

Years ago, I was traveling with a few old political hands and they were having fun telling me about all the dirty little secrets of California’s elected legislators. Republicans and democrats both had skeletons that needed to be nailed shut in the closet. One maintained a collection of child pornography in his office and another once punched his wife in the nose because she met the pizza guy half naked. Another was found in a hammock with a 16-year-old babysitter, another was considered the cocaine dealer for the Senate and its staff. Most were alcoholics and few had anything resembling scruples. But they had one thing in common: they were protected from any of this information coming out by the Capitol dome.

While we are led to believe that republicans hate democrats and vice versa, the simple truth is that they don’t hate each other enough to engage in mutually assured destruction. So the details of the frailties of our elected mortals stays in the family; in part because they are aware of their own frailties and in part because they are protecting the image of our elected officials as servants of the public and the essence of truth and justice. The real story couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And this is where we have to give the stink-eye to the media. If I know these stories, imagine what the seasoned journalists know. I once asked undoubtedly the most important political reporter why he didn’t write about the dirty secrets in the Capitol. He told me if he did, it would be the last story he’d write and he’d be out of job. While I know politicians have stirred us into a rough employment environment, I wonder what happened to the days when an editor would give a reporter the boot for sitting on a story that was far more in the interest of the public than remaining on the A list for party invites. Woodward and Bernstein, where are you when we need you?

Blago v Royko

Please don’t interpret this post as me backsliding on my earlier pledge to tone down the political commentary. This is more about missing a good newspaper columnist than it is about politics.

The abuse of power in Illinois by its governor Rod Blagojevich – and I’m having fun learning how to pronounce his name, Bla-goi-ya-vich – brings up some of the better Illinois political thieves of days gone by. Most notably this brings up former Mayor Richard Daley and, by extension, Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko. I don’t miss Daley so much, but I do miss Royko who died in 1997. His column always appeared in my local newspaper on Wednesdays and gave me something to look forward to. After he died, I stop reading the editorial page altogether.

Royko dogged Mayor Daley, calling him on every misstep, misdeed and overt illegal act he ever did. He even wrote a book called “Boss” about the mayor, perhaps the best book ever written about local politics. As antagonistic to the mayor as Royko was, when Daley died in 1983, Royko wrote what you would call an appreciative column detailing the mayor’s immigrant beginnings and how that played into the Machine Politics still practiced today in Chicago. In that column Royko wrote: “The people who came here in Daley's lifetime were accustomed to someone wielding power like a club, be it a czar, emperor, king, or rural sheriff. The niceties of the democratic process weren't part of the immigrant experiences. So if the Machine muscle offended some, it seemed like old times to many more.”

One could only wish Royko was around today writing about the new Machine in Illinois led by Governor Blagojevich and in Chicago by Daley’s son. He’d be having a field day and would have likely known more about the governor’s offenses than the special prosecutor. It’s also a safe bet that Royko’s writings would have been so devastating that Blagojevich would have already resigned.

If anyone has an interest in reading some old columns by Royko, if for no other reason than to understand there is no journalist like him today, you can buy a collection of his columns. R.I.P Mike, we still miss your steely eye, sharp wit and dogged determination.

Sinking Low

For a while I have been laboring on a post to explain the Georgia/Russia situation. At least as I see it, anyway. However, I am taking a brief break to speak out about something that has lowered the national discourse to a sad place. I wish I could say we have hit an all time low, but that is a bar set very, very low indeed.

There is little known about John McCain’s VP pick Sarah Palin. I heard her name mentioned a few months back as a potential selection but I soon forgot about it. My only opinion back then was that a woman could attract some democrats to McCain; particularly after so many were drawn to Hillary Clinton based on the fact that, as Palin said, she had poked 18 million holes in the Glass Ceiling.

Palin was introduced to the public (outside of Alaska and a few politically-obsessed shut-ins) last Friday. Her honeymoon with the left-wing blogosphere and the major media lasted approximately 30 seconds. A story was immediately put out that Palin’s fifth child, the one born with Down Syndrome, was not really her baby, but the baby of her own daughter. There was no explanation in the various blogs and follow-up news reports as to why someone would make up such a story. What would Palin have to gain from lying about something that has no consequence to anyone but her own family? It makes no sense to anyone with sense.

In order to calm the media that was predictably feeding at the left-wing blogs, the McCain campaign put out the statement that Palin’s daughter couldn’t have been the mother of the four-month own child as she was five months pregnant herself. And, the capper, her daughter was pregnant out of wedlock and only 17 years old. Wow, what a revelation! But what does it have to do with the overall Electoral process? Nothing revealing, at least nothing more revealing or interesting than the very likeable Juno, a movie this year about a 17-year-old getting pregnant and putting the baby up for adoption.

As long as a 17-year-old has been brought into the political discussion, let’s examine behavior from other 17-year-olds. Let’s particularly discuss what the people we are actually voting for were up to at that age – and not their young daughter. John McCain at 17 had just taken an oath to defend his country by enlisting in the U.S. Navy and embarking on a storied and difficult military career. What was Sen. Obama, an actual presidential candidate, doing at age 17? By his own admission in one of his two autobiographies, he was using marijuana and cocaine and explaining that his drug use was a way to get through tough times while he was young.

On the one hand, the media and some on the Left want to examine the choices made by the 17-year-old daughter of the vice presidential candidate, but seem less interested in illegal choices made by the democrat’s presidential candidate at the same age. And, of course, no mention on the choice McCain made at the same age. If it’s fair game to go after choices made by young people, then let’s have a broader discussion that contrasts the choices made before the actual candidates were adults.

To his credit, Obama has said the candidate’s children should be off limits to such scrutiny and certainly the media held to this standard while Chelsea Clinton was in the White House and her entire family life turned into a soap opera. Having said that, Obama should speak louder and more directly about the press coverage of Palin’s daughter and throw a little cold water on his supporters in the blogs. If he doesn’t, one has to assume he is letting them do his dirty work and damaging the life of a teenage girl to score cheap political points.

The NY Times Chooses Treason Again

Sad to say but the New York Times continues to engage in treason. Tonight they exposed the names of three Swiss atomic scientists who were working as CIA moles to uncover rogue nuclear programs in Libya and Iran. The very paper that endlessly scolded the Bush Administration for “outing” CIA employee Valerie Plame, revealed the names of the three scientists helping the U.S. in diminishing a nuclear threat. Now this father and two-son team has to worry about retribution from sources slightly more dangerous than sharp editorial writers from The Times.

The story began with a trial in Switzerland in which the three scientists were accused of dealing with nuclear terrorists. The scientists did not defend their actions by saying they were working for the CIA, keeping intact an agreement they reached. They were willing to pay the price for their work, believing it to be for the common good. The Times, however, found unnamed CIA sources to tell them about the secret dealings and exposing the scientists to danger and an end to their professional lives – oddly what The Times claimed happened to Ms. Plame.

It has been written in this space before, but it bears repeating: Anyone working at the CIA signs a security document ensuring they will not share classified information with anyone, least of all The NY Times. All employees are well aware of the stiff penalties for violating the security oath.

It is unknown what the reasons were for these unnamed sources to bring out this information, but let’s assess the damage done to our national and international security that goes beyond the personal troubles it causes for the Swiss scientists. It tells our enemies – and we have them, contrary to what The Times thinks – that we have planted moles in their innermost secret programs and suspicions will be raised about others working for the CIA, lessening the chances of information getting to our sources or putting them at outright risk. It will reduce the number of sources we can recruit because, let’s face it, the CIA has a leak problem, and who wants to have their names end up on the front page of The Times?

The exposing of these names to the world has far longer-term implications than the mentioning of Plame’s name to a reporter by Richard Armitage, a State Department official with little affinity for the President and his staff. Plame was not working undercover, contrary to the way the media played it, and took full advantage of her new infamy by posing for the cover of Vanity Fair Magazine and writing a book about her ordeal. Movies are even planned to enrich the lives of Plame and her know-nothing husband, Joe Wilson. I’m afraid these scientists will not be rewarded in such a way. I suspect they will need to spend their money continuing to defend themselves in a Swiss court and, if they have any money left over, have to spend it on body guards for the rest of their lives.

It’s difficult to comprehend the editorial judgment at The Times and it’s puzzling to understand why so many “agency sources” are willing to talk to its reporters. But, in the end, maybe it’s not too difficult to identify the motives of the people willing to continue to leak and report on our national security secrets. Maybe they just really don’t care one bit about security in the country and keeping us a bit safer.

Yes, I know the CIA doesn’t and hasn’t always behaved well as an institution and I am well aware that great challenges to our personal freedoms have been exchanged in the name of national security. However, the leaking of names does nothing to protect those freedoms and does nothing but damage lives and reduces our effectiveness to keep tabs on those who wish us ill. Shame on The New York Times and shame on the unnamed sources, may you get caught and have to answer for your own actions.

Bad Taste

So this is what now passes for journalistic excellence. This “cartoon ,” drawn by Lee Judge of the Kansas City Star, a formally well-respected newspaper, is in such poor taste that it is amazing it made it to print. While the media frets about what Don Imus meant about two-bit loser Pac Man Jones, this special editorial comment slips by all of them.

There can be no mistake in the cartoonist’s message: if God was being fair, Rush Limbaugh would have died of a sudden heart attack instead of Tim Russert.

Why is it such fashion to attack right-wing pundits with such elementary school taunts? It seems if someone wants to say something about a conservative, they can get away with whatever they want. Say something like this about a liberal and wait for the riots to start.

When Al Franken wrote a book bemoaning Limbaugh, he entitled it “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.” Limbaugh has 20 million listeners and Franken couldn’t keep his show on the air and ended up owing a huge amount in back payroll taxes to his employees. Really now, who’s the idiot?

Politics and punditry are messy affairs, but it sure would be nice if the discourse could at least reach junior high school level. Just disgraceful.

Bill O'Reilly Is A Big Fat Idiot!

I just need to get this off my chest: the supposedly conservative Bill O’Reilly is nothing but a loud-mouthed, self-important windbag. He’s also more of a Socialist than a conservative.
Yes, I know, I shouldn’t be listening to talk radio, but his show happened to be on and I was caught up in a debate he was having over the high price of gas at the pump. He was complaining that oil companies were raping the world’s users of their product by making an obscene profit of nine percent of sales. He suggested that oil companies’ profits should be limited to three percent, a number he just happened to pull out of thin air.

This isn’t to say that raping by the oil companies isn’t going on and affecting all of our pocketbooks, but O’Reilly’s solution is naïve, moronic and far too simplistic. I am sure he shed few tears when a barrel of oil was $12 back in the 1980s and oil company executives’ largest use of gas cans was to torch their own homes because they couldn’t afford to live in them anymore. There have been, of course, cycles in the oil industry and there will be another downturn coming.

O'Reilly said he supports Hillary Clinton’s position on a “windfall profits” tax. For those who remember, we got a windfall profits tax in the 1970s and it was tacked on to the price we consumers pay at the pump and is still there to this day. Another tax will not affect the profits of the oil companies, it will just be passed along and add more cost to consumers and be a profit center, if one can look at government as an appropriate place for a profit center, to the federal slush fund.

Think about it, the largest windfall to the increase in gas prices is at all levels of government, not the oil companies. First, there is a state sales tax on fuel of about 8 percent. When gas was at $2.00 per gallon, the state of California took in about $.16 per gallon. At $4, the intake is doubled. This does not include the 18 percent excise tax charged by the state and all the taxes that California used to charge the refineries in California, only they don’t charge the refineries anymore because refiners left the state due to over-regulation and higher costs. The price you pay at the pump also does not include an additional 18.3 percent federal excise tax. All added up, you are paying various governments 44.3 percent of the price of each gallon of gas you purchase. In the last two years, this means revenue to the state and federal government has doubled.

If government cared more about consumers paying high prices at the pump, why don’t our elected officials suggest cutting the cost of taxes in half and cuttings their windfall? Why wouldn’t that be fair as they are getting twice the revenue? Government does not take any of the risk in brining gas to your car. They don’t drill for it, they don’t build and maintain the pipelines for it, they don’t refine it, they don’t ship it, they don’t insure it, and they don’t truck it to the filling station. They just sit back and let the cash roll in and then have the unmitigated arrogance to suggest, like O’Reilly does, that oil companies are making too much money.

O’Reilly further showed his ignorance by saying the price of gas is only set by commodity brokers speculating on oil futures and has nothing to do with supply and demand. Absolute rubbish. Oil prices have everything to do with supply and demand. Emerging economies in India and China are more than doubling the demand for oil, which necessarily means there is a bidding war for a finite amount of oil. Further, unrest in the Middle East – caused by our government’s actions, not the actions of the oil companies – has damaged supply as has unrest in oil producing countries like Nigeria, Angola and many places in Latin America.

Policy established by the Fed, and supported by our government, lowering interest rates to such a degree is also having a real impact on the cost of fuel and all other products. The decision by the Fed to keep interests low and hope to inflate our way out of economic stagnation is, to borrow a line from our favorite reverend, like having our chickens coming home to roost. We shouldn’t be shocked when their plan is working, we should simply just ask, “What the hell are you doing to us?”

Finally, all those enviros who want us in a Prius must share in the responsibility of the high cost of fuel. There is ample oil deposits off the Gulf Coast, the coast of California and in the Alaska wilderness to have the U.S. be a net exporter of oil, not the largest importer. All attempts to drill in these areas have been halted by various governments to appease environmentalists. Yes, I know , this is a sensitive subject as we must maintain the delicate balance as stewards of nature, but why don’t we hear any howls of complaints when the drilling is done in the Iranian desert? Could our problem with drilling for oil be more about “not-in-my-backyard” than protecting the global environment? What about nuclear power? The beloved Europeans use it extensively as a means to light up the grid that powers the continent’s homes and businesses. Why not fire up a few nuke plants here? Add to the supply and the cost will go down.

This is all simple Adam Smith economics. Perhaps O’Reilly could pick up a copy of Wealth of Nations and read a chapter or two and, as 441 loves to say, then he can pop off.

Saying Something Stupid

I hate to be writing too often but there is a certain craziness in the air these days. The latest nut case is the former news mogul Ted Turner who created CNN for the Clintons and 1,000 of their best friends – at least based on recent Nielsen Ratings.

Turner was a guest on Charlie Rose the other night and was rambling on about global warming. I know global warming deserves a decent debate but I am not sure it ends up where Turner was taking it. He appeared to guarantee that the world will be “eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow.” He said most people will have died by then and those who hadn’t would be cannibals, and then said the world would be one giant failed state like Sudan and Somalia.

OK, Sudan and Somalia are failed states but not because of global warming but because of greed and racism of its class of warlords. Maybe we will be eight degrees warmer in 30-40 years, but perhaps Turner would be willing to put some of his energy into suggesting ways to improve conditions in Sudan and Somalia and do it now. CNN has cameras in both spots. Why not use the money they are spending on keeping reporters alive and on the ground in these places on a few thousand pounds of rice and dried milk? Instead of filming the starving victims, feed them!

He went on to add, "We're too many people; that's why we have global warming…. Too many people are using too much stuff." He then pointed out he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth before saying, “I've gotten a lot better, though. It's been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid." Consider yourself caught, Ted. After all the stupid things he said leading up to that, he lasted only moments between stupid statements by suggesting all countries of the world have just one or two children; voluntarily, of course. Turner’s three marriages have produced five children so, taking his suggestion, we’re sorry to inform him he has to toss a few back.

Finally he railed on about the war in Iraq, calling the insurgents “patriots.” His reasoning is they are patriots because their country has been invaded. Think about that for a moment. If they are “insurgents,” it means they are from somewhere else and not Iraq. Therefore, the “insurgent's” countries have not been invaded, they lose patriot status and are merely invaders themselves joining in on the killing of Iraqis and Americans.

It would be best for Ted Turner to carry a tape recorder around all day and listen to the things he says. He may find that very helpful. And, yes, I am watching too much Arrested Development.

A Tragedy In Search of a Stereotype

When the dust settles and the TV cameras go to film another tragedy, all that will be remembered will be the young lives cut short, a handful of professors who died by their sides and the image of a lunatic who brought on this unspeakable carnage. And this is the way it should be.

For now, though, there is a human need to package this senseless bloody morning into something we can all understand. We do this because deep down inside all of us there is a need to put our normal thought process into the mind of a lunatic. We should all just stop because there is nothing normal and nothing sane about what the gunman did, and all the TV experts and resident psychologists getting airtime can just spare us their opinions. This was a kid consumed by evil who carried out the most despicable act of turning his evil on innocents.

Naturally it is difficult for the news media to come to grips with a simple and practical explanation. They want to say we live in a culture of guns; we do. They want to tell us our gun laws are too lax; they are. They want us to know he was a loner, a freak; and he was. They want us to examine the fact he was a South Korean immigrant; of course he was. They feel the need to question the administration and the campus police for their lack of premonition; but nobody could have predicted what would happen. They can’t understand why this kid wasn’t watched more closely based on his past behavior; there are hundreds like him on every campus.

What can be done to prevent this kind of sick event from happening again? Probably nothing, but we can learn from the things that aren’t so apparent and stop searching for the perfect stereotype to fit our preconceived biases. We’re much better off leaving this crazed kid in the same category as all mass murderers and mourn those who died. We’ll all sleep better knowing this particular mass murderer is a genetic mutant and in no way resembles 99.99 percent of the rest of us. Rest in peace to the victims.

A Nation Of Whores

I’m real sorry about the content of this post. The words are not mine; I don’t even know what half of them mean. These are the lyrics of three different rap artists and what they have in common is they are all produced under CBS’s Columbia Record label. As we all now know, this is the same CBS which fired the always less-than-polite Don Imus from his radio show for boorishly referring to the Rutgers woman’s basketball team as “Nappy-headed hoes.” If you want to skip past the lyrics, I don’t blame you. But, for those who want to hear what passes for music – at least to CBS executives – please feel free to read on:

The words of Three 6-Mafia:
Yeah, run bitch. Run hoe! Ya nice motherfuckas!
Y'all jealous ass bitches!
You know what I'ma call y'all? Some Jello niggas.
Cuz y'all jealous of us, bitch.
Every motherfucker in our camp ridin clean, nigga.
Y'all know the motherfuckin score.
And this one right here is dedicated to you [censor beep].
It's dedicated to you, nigga.

More from Three Six Mafia:
Well all them hoes that used to be down with me
I signed a deal, made some money, now you bitches downin me?
Bitches tryin ta blast at me,
or am I dreamin the motherfuckers be after me?
Why you tryin ta be like me? You labelled as a wanna-be.
You ghetto hoes, you need to read a bonus Gangsta Boo
Cuz you might find a tip, bitch, that can help you.
I'm a down chick
Niggas be wantin ta crown chick
Stay around chick
Whenever, however, it's goin down, bitch.

Pearls from Lyfe Jennings:
Im from a place where them niggas dont talk a lot
License suspended so we walk a lot Always been a thug since i was a young cat
Breast fed by Godzilla mix my Similac with cognac whoa
Now i cant even pray no more
Cuz i done did so much dirt and smoked so much dro
Im afraid God will be like what you calling here for
Dont be tying my line up asking me for shit no more, whoa.

DMX at their best:
Song titled What These Bitches Want
Aiyyo!! Dog, I meet bitches, discrete bitches
Street bitches, slash, Cocoa Puff sweet bitches (WHAT?)
Make you wanna eat bitches, but not me
Y'all niggaz eat off the plate all you want but not D (UHH)
I fuck with these hoes from a distance
The instant they start to catch feelings
I start to stealin they shit
then I'm out just like a thief in the night
I sink my teeth in to bite
You thinkin life, I'm thinkin more like - whassup tonight?
Come on ma, you know I got a wife
and even though that pussy tight I'm not gon' jeapordize my life (aight?)

Now, back to something resembling normalcy by comparison. Over the years I have listened to Don Imus. He’s sometimes pretty funny, sometimes not. After a few years and several fruitless searches on my local radio dial for his show, I gave up on him. I never thought of him until the recent flap and predictable hypocrisy pushed him into the limelight.

It didn’t take long for those in the race trade to inject themselves into the middle of this show of bad taste, and the cameras followed. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who each have uttered enough racial slurs to begin their own rap group, demanded Imus and any other white bigot pay a price; cash in a suitcase preferred. Sharpton even got Imus to make a trip to kiss his ring in the hope of absolution that wouldn’t come.

What has our sense of perspective in this country come to? CBS throws a fading radio talent under the bus in the name of racial sensitivity and then rakes in millions off the misogynistic rap artists it produces. Jackson and Sharpton have been working off the same tired script for years, setting themselves up as the racial arbiters of our time and yet don’t have an ounce of the moral authority to lead a congregation, little alone a nation.

These two men are the real whores in this story, doing anything to move their own agenda forward. It just so happens that their agenda is the same as their plantation owners, the democrats. The debate will surely shift to the coarseness of words on talk radio and it won't be long before the Fairness Doctrine will be invoked and a movement started to put an end to talk radio (or at least conservative talk radio). Words don't usually scare the average person, but it can scare a democrat if the words cost them an election. Sure, Imus is nominally a liberal, but he can be sacrificed if he serves a larger purpose.

Rather than helping salve the wounds of racial tension, the hypocrisy and hidden agenda are so overwhelming and obvious that it will have the opposite effect. And that will end up being the sad ending of this story.

No Doubting Thomas

While flying to our Virginia estates, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Helen Thomas, the first lady of the first row in the White House press corps for the last several decades. While I am not a huge fan of her recent bout of negativity toward this president in particular and life around her in general, she is still an impressive woman who has seen so much over her career and remains quite sharp at age 86.

Those who know me are aware I strike up conversations with any poor soul sitting next to me on airplanes unless they give me that “don’t bother me” look. If I am want to engage with mere mortals, obviously there would be nothing to stop me from bending Helen’s ear for a two-hour flight. To my surprise, there was mutual ear-bending and we had a great conversation about a whole host of things.

I found out a few things about her. One, she drinks Scotch. Perhaps at a volume most would consider excessive. Two, when I asked her who her two most interesting interviews were she quickly answered JFK for his intellect and charisma and LBJ for his paranoia.

We also share the same notion of the modern journalist – that they are pack-like, following the lead of their colleagues only when it’s safe to echo the thoughts of the others. Ms Thomas is just the opposite; speaking her mind, perhaps too often for most, and is very critical of her colleagues for failing to keep the public informed. She even wrote a book about it and called out many of her peers by name (Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public).

Something I didn’t need to learn – mainly because it is obvious to anyone – is she hates our president and this war with the passion of the converted. Not sure if it’s because of her Lebanese upbringing or jaded opposition to authority and brazen power. It was difficult to have a conversation without her making a negative comment about GW and the war. Even if her facts were suspect (dwelling on the myth that 650,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003 – or 13,000 per month), her passion was real and it was difficult to argue with many of her points on American standing around the world.

We did agree on one point about journalists, however. It was obvious that Ms. Thomas has been paying attention throughout her years and knows more about most things than most journalists. We talked about a range of subjects that I know simply because of where my own work has taken me. I mentioned I was working in the Balkans and she instantly asked me if certain Serbian war criminals would be caught and knew their names. Outside of Serbia there are only a handful of people who know that kind of detail. She even told me she once interviewed Tito who told her when he died the Balkans would explode into ethnic war; which, of course is what happened.

Most journalists coming out of school these days have no historical reference point beyond their own years. While it is encouraged, they are not required to study the Humanities and rarely know much about the subjects they cover. This lack of intellectual curiosity can be a real danger when journalists utilize the lessons of history to compare to current events and often make bold observations that assume we are living in the worst of times. Many younger journalists also come to the job as an advocate rather than an observer. They follow the words of famed journalist I.F. Stone who once wrote “It is the job of the journalist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I thought the job of the journalist was to tell us the truth, at least as they see it, and let us make our own decisions. Ms Thomas’ opinions may be contrary to most, but she will never be accused of not trying to bring us the truth as she sees it. It was a great ride sitting next to her and far better than the guy picking his nose and reading over my shoulder on this flight. How do you like those apples, Mr. Nosey Pants?

Media Hysteria

There seems to be a passion among journalists to label things. Lately there have been two mantras coming from the chattering class.

For the past year, there has been one story or another about one scientists or organization proclaiming there is global warming. Lately there has been a slight modification and the word “manmade” has been added to the headline.

The other has been a year-long discussion about whether or not there is a “civil war” in Iraq, as if this definition changes anything for the average Iraqi or affects our forces in the battlefield.

For the sake of greater economy for future headline writers, let’s stipulate two points to the media so it can move on to other hysterias: there is global warming and it is a civil war in Iraq. Now there is no more need for breathless headlines and interviews to support the media’s new cause celeb. Anymore stories or headlines trying to further define these issues will seem like beating a dead horse (although speaking of beating dead horses, they could write more on Barbaro and give us more intimate details beyond what his last meal was – grass, as the shocking truth turns out).

Having offered permission for the media to move on it should now be a bit scary for them. Now they can’t offer the opinion of others to manufacture a story. They should write about the solutions and the impact of those solutions on their subscriber base. And this is where it gets tricky.

If we sign on to Kyoto or even go so far as to all agree that we are in the midst of manmade global warming, what are we to do? Ride our bikes to work? Stop using air conditioning? Shut down all carbon burning power plants (i.e. most power plants), plant a billion new trees or close down most manufacturing facilities and re-deploy the displaced workforce? At the same time, give China and India a free pass because, you know, they are developing and need to engage in a little bit of global warming to take their people out of poverty, right?

In Iraq, so what if there is a civil war? This is a distinction without a difference. There was one going on before W. was out of high school and, as it happens, it pitted the Sunnis against the Shiites. This really shouldn’t surprise anyone in the media because they were covering this story back then, too. The difference this time is the Sunnis are in the minority and don’t have control of as many guns. They do seem to have a strong willingness to blow themselves up, so they have that going for them.

Let the media discuss the solution on this one, too. We could leave Iraq and Afgahnistan (where is the body count on Afghanistan, by the way) and just let them kill each other, and then the media could write headlines discussing the humanitarian and genocidal problems in the region. We could stay and put our men and women in harm’s way and have more stories about supporting the troops but not the mission. We could also take the gloves off and put a quicker end to the violence, but that would smell like victory and there is already too much vested in defeat.

Of course the main thing the media can do is stop listening to the democrats who believe they have an anti-war mandate from November’s elections (despite having to win with pro-war candidates) and ignore their enabling republicans who say the war is lost and we need our troops home in six months. First, if the war is really lost, why wait six months? Bring them home now and don’t allow another troop to die or be injured.

Absent that, do the media and those who seek their coverage have any understanding that the rise in sectarian violence – sorry, civil war – has much to do with their call to get the U.S. out the Viet Nam “quagmire?” Really, if you were a terrorits and wanted the Americans out of Iraq and understood the whim of the American public that no longer has the stomach for a body bag on television, what would you do to turn up the pressure? Increase the violence and cause gasps among the body politic, or take a nap while the U.S. undergoes this debate? The hundreds killed in recent weeks has given us the answer to this question. Perhaps those in the media could check their hands to see if they can find any blood on them.

Plameing Out

(Ed-duh-tor's note: This is the best writing I have seen on the recent developments in the Valerie Plame story. It's written by Christopher Hitchens and posted on Slate.com. For those who like insider politics stuff -- especially those who assume that everyone in the Administration is lockstep behind the president -- this is worth the read.)


I had a feeling that I might slightly regret the title ("Case Closed") of my July 25 column on the Niger uranium story. I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer to the Joseph Wilson fantasy. Easy enough as it was to prove that he had completely missed the West African evidence that was staring him in the face, there remained the charge that his nonreport on a real threat had led to a government-sponsored vendetta against him and his wife, Valerie Plame.

In his July 12 column in the Washington Post, Robert Novak had already partly exposed this paranoid myth by stating plainly that nobody had leaked anything, or outed anyone, to him. On the contrary, it was he who approached sources within the administration and the CIA and not the other way around. But now we have the final word on who did disclose the name and occupation of Valerie Plame, and it turns out to be someone whose opposition to the Bush policy in Iraq has—like Robert Novak's—long been a byword in Washington. It is particularly satisfying that this admission comes from two of the journalists—Michael Isikoff and David Corn—who did the most to get the story wrong in the first place and the most to keep it going long beyond the span of its natural life.

As most of us have long suspected, the man who told Novak about Valerie Plame was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's deputy at the State Department and, with his boss, an assiduous underminer of the president's war policy. (His and Powell's—and George Tenet's—fingerprints are all over Bob Woodward's "insider" accounts of post-9/11 policy planning, which helps clear up another nonmystery: Woodward's revelation several months ago that he had known all along about the Wilson-Plame connection and considered it to be no big deal.) The Isikoff-Corn book, which is amusingly titled Hubris, solves this impossible problem of its authors' original "theory" by restating it in a passive voice:

The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.

In the stylistic world where disclosures are gleaned and ironies underscored, the nullity of the prose obscures the fact that any irony here is only at the authors' expense. It was Corn in particular who asserted—in a July 16, 2003, blog post credited with starting the entire distraction—that:

The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.

After you have noted that the Niger uranium connection was in fact based on intelligence that has turned out to be sound, you may also note that this heated moral tone ("thuggish," "gang") is now quite absent from the story. It turns out that the person who put Valerie Plame's identity into circulation was a staunch foe of regime change in Iraq. Oh, that's all right, then. But you have to laugh at the way Corn now so neutrally describes his own initial delusion as one that was "seized on by administration critics."

What does emerge from Hubris is further confirmation of what we knew all along: the extraordinary venom of the interdepartmental rivalry that has characterized this administration. In particular, the bureaucracy at the State Department and the CIA appear to have used the indiscretion of Armitage to revenge themselves on the "neoconservatives" who had been advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein. Armitage identified himself to Colin Powell as Novak's source before the Fitzgerald inquiry had even been set on foot. The whole thing could—and should—have ended right there.

But now read this and rub your eyes: William Howard Taft, the State Department's lawyer who had been told about Armitage (and who had passed on the name to the Justice Department) also felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's source—possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more.

"[P]laying the case by the book" is, to phrase it mildly, not the way in which Isikoff and Corn customarily describe the conduct of the White House. In this instance, however, the evidence allows them no other choice. But there is more than one way in which a case can be played by the book. Under the terms of the appalling and unconstitutional Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see "A Nutty Little Law," my Slate column of July 26, 2005), the CIA can, in theory, "refer" any mention of itself to the Justice Department to see if the statute—denounced by The Nation and the New York Times when it was passed—has been broken. The bar here is quite high. Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken.

The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself? The man who kept the knowledge of the Minnesota flight schools to himself and who was facing every kind of investigation and obloquy finally saw a chance to change the subject. If there is any "irony" in the absurd and expensive and pointless brouhaha that followed, it is that he was abetted in this by so many who consider themselves "radical."

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

Too Much Hot Air

The truth isn’t the only inconvenient matter in the debate about global warming. In no other field of science are facts and methods debated so fervently. Science requires a uniform approch to solve the unknown, not supposition and certainly not blind faith. But that’s exactly what we seem to be witnessing in the issues surrounding global warming and its suggested causes. Science and faith have not been in such a grudge match since the Scopes Monkey trial.

Now I’m not a climatologist and I don’t purport to take any side in this debate. That may sound a bit like sticking my head in the sand, but I don’t remember waking up in 1984 believing the world was going to end, and the time has long since come and gone when Paul Ehrlich’s bit of pop science in The Population Bomb suggested that the people of the world would starve to death by the mid-Eigthies because, simply, there were too many people.

In other words, every generation has its own version of the End of Days and global warming has become this generation’s Armegeddon. And, as all the other preaching about Judgement day, this one will come and go in the same, quiet fashion.

Global warming is front page news the past few days because the National Academy of Sciences released a report of 155 pages of hysteria and hyperbole, suggesting that the Earth is running a fever and "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." The scientists tell us that Earth hasn't been this hot in 400 years, and maybe longer.

However, they gave no hint that they understood how they had undermined their practiced hysteria. If the Earth was this hot 400 years ago, or even 4,000 years ago, then the recent warming could not have been caused by the madness of man's machines, the flatulence of cows, or even hot air from professors hot to get their names in the paper.

Their presentation was studded with "likely," "maybe," "could be," and "very close to being right," with assurances that their findings were gleaned from tree rings, coral, glaciers, cave deposits (from bulls?), ocean and lake sediments, bore holes and ice cores.

The panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed temperatures over hundreds and thousands of years. Some of it was educated guessing, since there were few scientific instruments back in that day, and a lot of it was to be taken on faith. Scientists are generally not very hot on faith, but they embrace the global-warming doctrine with the enthusiasm of a backwoods Bible salesman.

The panelists said the warming over the past 50 years was something no one had seen in a millennium, but conceded that well, umm, OK, it is true that the Earth suffered a "Little Ice Age" for about 350 years after 1500. But hey, who's counting?

Between the year A.D. 1 and the year 1850, volcanos and fluctuations in the heat from the sun were responsible for temperature changes, but these changes were much less pronounced than the warming caused by man-made pollution in the years since the mid-19th century.

This gets to the point of the hysteria. Scientific Man in all his manufactured glory can't bear the thought that he might not, after all, be as powerful as a volcano or a solar flare. How many learned degrees does a volcano have, after all? The idea that forces of the universe greater even than Scientific Man may be responsible for the cyclical changes is unbearable.

In the end, this is the conceit of Man; that somehow humans are capable of destroying what Mother Nature has produced. And if you remember, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature, less she gives us a few centuries of ice age to prove her point.

Not All News Is Fit To Print

Is the Pulitzer Prize becoming the journalistic version of the Nobel Peace Prize? To win either honor, you must do two things: embarrass a republican administration, and be the approximate cause of trouble in the world.

How else can you explain the two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists potentially facing an investigation by the Justice Department for printing leaked classified information? One reporter for the Washington Post wrote about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and another for the New York Times reported on the government listening in on suspected terrorists’ conversations without warrants. Both stories were leaked to the reporters by government officials who had their own personal reasons for doing so. The reasons may have been valid, but each leak is still damaging to the U.S. and each is illegal.

The reporters and editors may have their own reasons or personal bias for printing the leaks, but they have a slightly different legal -- and ethical -- standard than the leakers. Before deciding to go to print, they had to weigh national interest, the potential to be criminally liable for printing the leaks, and their own self-interest to report a juicy story. The juicy story won out in both cases.

But the fan occasionally hits something that doesn’t smell all that good and consequences have to be paid. One suspected leaker has just been fired from the CIA after failing a polygraph test about contact with a Washington Post reporter named Dana Priest. Mary McCarthy, the now fired CIA employee, once worked for Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (he of leaking things out his Jockey shorts fame) and is an admitted Kerry supporter. It's only worth mentioning her affiliations because it's important to know that not everyone working at the CIA is friendly with the Administration. McCarthy allegedly told Priest about the existence and general location of secret CIA interrogation prisons in Eastern Europe. In doing so, she violated an oath she signed the day she began working for the CIA that forbids her to pass along classified information. Her alleged loose lips carry a stiff penalty for failing to uphold that oath.

Priest and her editors decided to run the story, presumably without regard to potential costs (even if they didn’t care about their own country, they could have spiked the story out of concern for the countries terrorists might have targeted for housing the prisons), won a Pulitzer Prize and now McCarthy is looking at a likely jail sentence.

The facts of the story are true, I have been assured by my former drunk Irish partner who is heading up the European Union investigation, but was the printing of the story necessary? Are we really better off knowing the President made an attempt to shelter prisons where interrogations may lead to saving American lives but at the cost for the report are damaged relationships with our allies?

Compare the statements of CIA Director Porter Goss and that of the Washington Post story reporting on the firing of the employee. Goss said, "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission.” The Post, after acknowledging that “the story caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies,” still felt compelled to quote its editor Leonard Downie, "The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror," Downie said. "Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone's civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs."

Really. It must be comforting for some to know the Post has made itself the arbiter of what’s really, really important to print and that they care so much about the civil rights of others, including terrorists who are plotting to kill their subscriber base. I suppose if the truth is the all-important factor in the job of a journalist, why didn’t the Post force Priest to subject herself to an interview to the general press or even her own newspaper? Has the cat got her tongue all of a sudden?

Leaking to the press is as old as leaky faucets and an integral part of ensuring that government officials are behaving as they should. But the recent leaks of classified information are a new paradigm in reporting and journalists need to apply some form of restraint. Can you imagine the consequences of a reporter running a story on the plans for the Normandy invasion in 1944 or plastered the drawings for the first Atomic Bomb on the front pages of the New York Times? It’s not that far of a slippery slope to get there from where we are now.

Journalists like to hide behind the false curtain of the right to protect their sources. However, the right doesn’t exist and the protection is fantasy. Oh, journalists will howl as they did in the Valerie Plame case, but it’s a safe bet they will have to reveal their sources or face a jail sentence. Since I believe there is an applicable movie quote for every story, I will include this line spoken by Wilford Brimley in the movie Absence of Malice: “We can't have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain't legal. And worse than that, by God it ain't right.” Sooner or later the reporters and editors will learn that it just ain’t right.

Noah and Leaks

There was a great line in the movie Absence of Malice in which Wilford Brimley says, “You had a leak? You call what's goin' on around here a leak? Boy, the last time there was a leak like this, Noah built hisself a boat.’ Here was a guy who knew what a leak was.

We just spent two years investigating whether or not anyone illegally leaked the name of one former covert CIA operative who was likely never going to be given a foreign assignment again, despite what you may have heard about her live being in danger. Since that time, leaks have become the favorite pastime for all those who don’t see the world beyond the Beltway.

There were so many leaks of grand jury testimony during Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, that leaks about who was leaking sprung up in the press. Grand Jury testimony is not supposed to be leaked. In fact, publicly discussing the testimony brings a prison term with it. If there was so much outrage over the initial leak of Vanity Fair’s pinup girl, Valerie Plame’s name (oops, I just endangered her life again), then where has the outrage vanished to about the Grand Jury leaks?

Today, reporting on several leaks from within the CIA and others, the Washington Post has a story that claims the U.S. has several secret prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe. Per the report, these prisons are housing captured insurgents and, to get around U.S. laws regarding the treatment of enemy combatants, the U.S. has placed them there so they can be tortured to reveal information about future attacks, etc. Further leaks and educated guesses have suggested the prisons, if they exist, are located in Poland and Romania. The European Union, better known as the House of the Timid, has declared these prisons as inconsistent with EU human rights treaties among the member nations and has ordered an investigation. The good news is; the war will be over before they decide which country will lead the investigation.

But what does this say about the press, the leakers, and the way the Valerie Plame investigation played out? I guess it suggests the press will place a news scoop over national security any day, even if it endangers lives (less we forget it was the press that made the decision to use Valerie Plame’s name in the first place). As for the leakers, the public has to wonder about their agenda as it rightfully did with Scooter Libby. I suspect the leaks coming from the CIA shows a deeper fissure between the Administration and the intelligence community, perhaps over the fact the CIA got the brunt of the blame over faulty Iraq intelligence. And I suppose the Valerie Plame case is another example of lost perspective, in this case looking for the villains who were merely defending a political attack, but letting the media off the hook on the actual printing of her name. It’s the same perspective that sent G. Gordon Liddy to jail for five years for having one FBI file in his possession and ignoring the Clinton apparatus for taking – and never returning – nearly 1,000 raw FBI files on political opponents. One is a crime, and the other a “bureaucratic snafu.”

Of the leaks, the one most damaging is the report on the prisons. Why would anyone at CIA want to leak this information? Not only should the leaker(s) have expected the public outcry, but they also must have known the leaks would put all of their colleagues operating in those countries in danger. This news may also make it more likely for terrorist attacks inside the named countries. There may end up being plenty of blood on the hands of the leakers and those who decided to run with this story.

A few years back, a former CIA operative named Philip Agee wrote a book naming undercover CIA agents in various countries. This led to several executions and the destruction of years of asset-building around the world. I believe in a free press and even revel in it when I can. But when should their desire to sell books and newspapers override the public interest and our national security? Apparently, it seems, only when it affects critics of the White House.

Gate Gate

There needs to be a cooling off period in which elected officials can enact laws following tragic or seminal events. In almost every instance, overreaction by those we elect to run our lives has ruled the day. During times of turmoil, Congress has not been the deliberative body as designed by our Fore Fathers.

Witness the law that created the independent prosecutor that sprang out of Watergate. That’s one ineffective piece of legislation.

If you’re over 30, you’ve been through a number of gates: Pardongate, Billygate, Iran/Contragate (twice), Travelgate, Whitewatergate, Monicagate, Electiongate, and now Leakgate. The Canadian Mounties, who always got their man, would find little to be proud of with the investigations that followed. A lot of investigating and very little getting of anyone. At least for the underlying crimes, that is.

Today Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald handed down a five-count indictment for lying to investigators on I. “Scooter” Libby, the Vice President’s chief of staff. First off, anyone named Scooter should be indicted for bad taste in nicknames. But is that what Fitzgerald was asked to do, catch someone for lying to the Feds? I thought the greater national interest was finding out who supposedly leaked the name of a poorly-covered undercover CIA agent. On that score, we don’t know. The only people who know are the reporters who wrote about it and they’re too busy lecturing on journalistic integrity to take the time to fill us in.

The history on this is bizarre. Robert Novak writes a column in which he unknowingly identifies the name of former NOC (non-official cover), Valerie Plame. Novak, apparently, was told her identity by someone who he says was not high up in the White House – which leaves all of those under fire out of the picture. Now Novak knows who told him about Plame, but as far as we know, he has never told the Grand Jury who outed her. Presumably the same is true for the other reporters who carried the story, including New York Times reporter Judith Miller who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to tell the Grand Jury what she knew and when she stopped knowing it. It's difficult to believe she stayed there to protect Libby.

One thing is certain, Novak and the others didn’t have to go far to learn about Valerie Plame and her secret agent past. Her husband, Joe Wilson, was so proud of her that he wrote in his official State Department biography, years before the outing, that he was married to the former “Valerie Plame who works at the Central Intelligence Agency.” Even French intelligence could have connected the dots on that one.

I don’t know if Scooter Libby or others are guilty of anything, or if this will hurt the president, or even if it will hurt the war effort. I do know a lot of sound and fury was wasted to find out nothing that we wanted to know. While it’s certainly a rough day for the Libby family, it should be a day of shame for the reporters who have eagerly covered a story that only they know the truth about. And they’re not telling.

On the Subject of Fishwrapping

Watch any television show and count the seconds between each different camera shot. If you’re counting right, it should be about seven seconds. This isn’t happenstance, it’s science. Studies have been conducted to determine the attention span of the average television viewer and seven seconds seems to be the limit.

No study has ever been done, that I know of, on the average attention span of the way Americans view their news. The way news is sold to the average right/left/undecided/other, the seven-second test would seem to hold.

How else can we explain the way the media treats us as viewers and readers? They give us the surface of bits and pieces, little seven-second snapshots of passing news that, for reasons only they can tell us, doesn’t merit more reporting. For example, are you aware of the slaughter of innocents in southern Sudan? Some are, I know. Who among us knows the reason, or the story behind it? Too much depth required for the average news reporter to believe we’re worthy of that information, apparently.

How about Zimbabwe? Zimbabwe was once a thriving island surrounded by countries governed by the rule of mistake. For decades it was a net exporter of food and fed much of southern Africa. Then a reverse-apartheid happened and ownership of all the farms – 90-percent owned by whites – was taken from them. The white farmers left, the land turned to rot and now the country is starving. Just to add confusion to a necessary and more informative story – but far from a full one – Zimbabwe’s brand of dictatorship led by crazy narcissist Robert Mugabe has resorted to bulldozing what he calls the slums. But people have lived in these homes and huts for a generation and now they are forced to live in temporary shelters 100 miles deeper into the bush where they struggle to find food. The reasons behind this must be too much for CNN or Reuters to discover or you think they’d tell us, right?

We hear a lot about the struggles in Iraq to draft a constitution and how it reflects on the success or failure of U.S. foreign policy, never mind what it means to the Iraqi people who only seem to matter to the media when strapped to a bomb. There is a deeper untold truth to reasons a constitution is unneeded and unworkable: Iraq is too fractured along sectarian lines, too socially ruined by 30 years of totalitarianism, too new to the habits of democracy to be able to record in stone the kind of great cosmic compromises that are the essence of constitutions. That story seems to escape the punditry. Even America, which had a century of self-government before independence, needed 13 years before it could draft a workable and durable constitution. And even that one ultimately floundered (albeit, threescore and 11 years later) over the then-insoluble problem of slavery. Yes, I know Bush said this at a press conference, but he had to simply because the media should have, but didn't.

What you may not have heard or read, perhaps because reporters don’t know, is that among several successful Western countries without a constitution is Britain. Not so overly-reported was the failure for 25 countries in the European Union to ratify their multi-nation constitution which had been given five years of negotiation before being put to the voters, who ultimately rejected it. So why is all the ink going to the process in Iraq instead of Europe? Sure, the U.S. and Bush foreign policy have made the constitution a key issue to measure success in Iraq, but a little perspective from the press would be more helpful to those who care enough to pay attention.

Just the opposite is true when the media gets a hold of a story they can milk. Who heard enough of the Scott Peterson\and Michael Jackson trials? And so much on the missing teen in Aruba who, in not exactly a news flash, is not the only missing teen in the world. Then there is Cindy Sheehan and the media onslaught to cover her mid-life meltdown. Thank God a hurricane hit and all the reporters had to put on the hip boots to cover the real-life drama and tragedy of a Level 5 hurricane hitting the coast. Does anyone know that nearly 500 people have died in monsoon flooding in India? Does any news reporter or talking head know the policy specifics of the Government of India that caused such a disaster? Come to mind, perhaps reporters are best off in hip boots. It’s their best hope to step out of the mess they leave for the rest of us.

The main problem facing the press, as I see it, is that they usually only study Journalism in college. Sure, they take the odd history and humanities classes along with the required journalism coursework of Pagination and First Amendment law and how to misunderstand its meaning so you end up doing some white collar time in New York. If a reporter is going to cover a story on a hurricane, is it too much to ask that they know a little about meteorology before telling us it’s windy?

Too often reporters come to the job with the notion of “making a difference” rather than reporting what happens around them. Later, they just become lazy. During both coup attempts in Russia during the Nineties, most reporters sat in the bar at the Odessa Hotel and counted on daily news from the Ministry of Information on what to report back to us. Heaven help us if a story happened outside of Moscow. Then we watchers of news had to rely on press releases filtered by the local cleansers and then washed again by the same Ministry of Information just so we got the news they wanted us to have.

During this past year’s great Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Western media never once interviewed Victor Yanukovich, the man who had the election stolen from him by populous whim. The story was set and the sheer beauty of a Sixties-style protest was too much for the gray-haired members of the Fourth Estate to keep them from finding out the truth. The press, which loves to equate Bush and Cheney as an evil cabal set on world domination, missed their chance to catch them in the act in Ukraine. They also missed it in the Republic of Georgia, Serbia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Imagine if the Russians were helping elect a government they could dominate in Canada and Mexico. I suspect, but can’t be sure, this would be a lead story on Nightline, which not coincidentally, was created for the sole purpose of over-covering the Iranian hostage story.

My apologies to all that this story took longer than seven seconds to read; I did my best to cut it down to size.