The recent story about two very young PFC’s being abducted and tortured to death illustrates the exceedingly low regard in which we actually hold the troops, despite all the praise we heap on them and the glowing terms politicians use to praise them in public. Not only have they been imperiled on a whim or for some dark, as yet unstated reason, but they are even further put in jeopardy by being spread too thin, untrained, and logistically unprepared.

The checkpoint these young men and their fellow soldiers were posted to was out in the boondocks where they were so exposed and so isolated that they were absolute sitting ducks. What happened there should not only have been anticipated, it should have been expected. 

Furthermore, the fact that the other two trucks fled and failed to return for the men in the last truck is horrendous! I don’t fault those people for trying to get away from an ambush, but I can’t believe that once they realized people were left behind that they didn’t call for reinforcement, then go back and if at all possible at least attempt to harry the assailants to prevent their getting away before help arrived. 

Perhaps they knew they were marooned and there would be no help coming, so that’s why they made no attempt to save their brothers. Perhaps they were so badly prepared that they just panicked. Either way, all the empty praise in the world can’t make up for the way we’re shortchanging and abusing the military.

And now that the United States of America has an official policy that endorses the practice of torture, how can we be shocked and indignant over what was done to those two poor kids? This stinks.

Before the President of the United States said it, I would never have believed we were addicted to oil. But now it's out, all those cars driving to and from the suburbs sprawled over former farmland make us oil junkies.

Of course, that’s not our only problem. Car giant GM is in dire straights. Largely because of price, GM’s not selling cars, and this in turn is due to the high cost of medical benefits for its workers. Also, 46 million Americans lack medical insurance, a number that is continuously on the rise. Many of these are young people in their twenties, which means a lot of young mothers-to-be are likely to receive poor prenatal care -or none. If all that weren't enough, US farmers have to sell their land because they can no longer make a go of it.

If only there were a solution to even one of these problems! What about ethanol as a substitute for gas? Wait a minute, GM sells lots of cars in Brazil, and those run exclusively on ethanol, so producing cars to run on bio-fuel is really its area of expertise. That's an advantage, and if we had single payer healthcare, that would lower GM's costs, which could pave the way for it to come roaring back! For that matter, wouldn't it help farmers if a new market opened up and they could grow crops to produce ethanol? 

Gee, just switching to ethanol and putting national healthcare in place could solve some big problems. Maybe the politicians in Washington will get right onto it as soon as they clear the decks of what they're working on, extremely important issues like reducing inheritance taxes for the super-rich, pushing for flag burning and gay marriage amendments, constructing a fence along the Rio Grande, and staging phony-baloney debates concocted solely to showcase their ostentatious patriotism.

Meanwhile, we the people will just bide our time by: bulldozing more farmland for development; paying 3, 4, 5, or 6 dollars per gallon for gasoline derived from Middle East oil; hoping to avoid bankruptcy by not getting sick; tending to premature and low birth-weight babies; collecting unemployment wages. Lately, the bread is kind of moldy and the circus is a real letdown.

"Today's" Matt Lauer and his good friend Bill O'Reilly should go together to do a series of in-the-street reports (without the unnecessary military escort, of course) outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Obviously, they would both relish the opportunity to add substance to their concerted, pronounced views on how gloriously effective the Bush Administration continues to be in restoring peace, security, and prosperity to the Iraqi people.

Also, Matt needs to be commended for chastising author Ron Suskind for "emboldening our enemies... talking about some of the weaknesses in policy and procedure" at the Department of Homeland Security, even going so far as to call it "a joke". It takes a deep thinker like Matt to point out the fact that if the Bush Administration's strategy for protecting Americans is to bluff, it is unpatriotic of an investigative reporter to point this out. As Ari Fleischer stated so authoritatively, there are some things you don't say, ever.

Matt's really showing that he doesn't need Katie. In fact, she was holding him back. He seems to be developing a whole new persona as O'Reilly's "Little Buddy".

Big boys don’t cry, but should men? When you stop and think of it, it’s very odd that the only public display of emotion we are comfortable with is anger, so long as it is not directed toward ourselves as bystanders. We will take someone’s righteous indignation in stride, whereas we are more than grateful if they keep their inner sadness bottled up. Likewise, we feel comfortable expressing our rage against a perceived injustice, but never the ache we may feel for the children of the poor.

This is not in any way a post 9-11 phenomenon. Rage-radio was beguiling the angry white male decades before that. Public discourse has been monolithically ugly for as long as I can remember.

Why is only rage acceptable? One reason is that on the surface it is defensible. Somebody is doing wrong to you and your world, and you are just expressing the fact you are outraged and do not intend to take it. Also, it is the one emotion that’s safe from criticism because it’s not sissy. Even impotent rage is tenuously associated with violence, so it is a safe bet. No one these days wants to be penalized with loss of macho points. Everyone’s nightmare is to be branded a "bleeding-heart liberal".

I’m not sure if rage displaced other emotions at some point, like a cuckoo hatchling rolling other eggs out of the nest, or if it was merely the best suited for permeating the traditional reserve we inherited with the country’s "stiff upper lip" British heritage. I think it may be the latter. Emotion in everyday life is verboten, and one should stay either completely unreadable or else be hard-edged. Don’t be sanguine. Don’t let them see you sweat. Be bland or be tough. I guess it all comes down to what people feel comfortable with revealing about themselves, combined with the cost society extracts for self-expression. 

If indignation is your only outlet during the day, then certainly you can allow yourself a broader emotional landscape at home, right? Forget it, we don’t even express emotion at home because we can neither compartmentalize our character that successfully, nor shift gears that adroitly. Any distinction between emotions expressed outside versus inside the home is insignificant. 

Are we such cowards that the only emotion we dare to express is the one that does not show vulnerability, even if it is only empty emotional calories? Do we buckle ourselves in an emotional straightjacket rather than experience a rich existence at a greater risk? Makes me ass-kicking mad thinking about it!

REPUBLICAN PHILOSOPHY: RUN GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS. SPECIFICALLY, ENRON.

War is a conflict between two opposing armies. By this definition, what US Forces are engaged in now in Iraq isn’t war, it’s a police action. Our military there is a beleaguered police force, and has served in this role ever since the fall of Baghdad. In a sense, the administration was accurate when it strung a gargantuan banner claiming "Mission Accomplished", because at the time it marked the end of the actual war. The banner merely omitted that a transition to a much more difficult role for US Forces had begun.

If there had been planning for this more demanding and grueling phase, it wasn’t followed. Pandemonium ensued, and when the chastened press sought official comment, they were satisfied with the fatuous response, "Democracy is messy." In reality, where there had been no active al-Qaeda, it took root. Although our government cites their presence as if it were justification for the initial invasion, it was the occupation that drew them onto the scene, not the other way around. 

The administration inadvertently groomed an insurgency by misguidedly destroying Iraqi institutions, then responding excruciatingly slowly to the miasma that resulted. By failing to direct reconstruction expediently, it fostered more and more frustration, resentment, and opposition. When confronted with this, their defensive response has been: criticism equals treason.

We’ve broken it, now we own it. So goes Collin Powell’s mantra. Unfortunately, as long US Forces are present, we engender more opposition. It’s a Catch 22. That it would be so was a foregone conclusion. Any pragmatic politician could see this, but the present administration is composed of a mix of neo-conservative ideologues and Machiavellian imperialists, not pragmatists. For them, wishing for something will make it so. We forget that the reason President George Herbert Walker Bush did not press on into Baghdad during the Gulf War, as he states in a book he co-authored, was his recognition that sectarian conflict would ensue. He rejected the importuning to conquer Baghdad from the very neo-cons his son later allied with.

So here we are now with a plan based on the same old same old. It might ultimately work, because you can sometimes accomplish a daunting task using inefficient means if you are willing to pour in an inexhaustible supply of the necessary materials. In this case the ingredients are US Forces, the lives of suffering Iraqis, and the wealth and future strength of the US economy.

A better approach would be to agree to milestones in consultation with the Iraqis, draw up a timetable together, and then make every effort to meet it. This supposes that for Iraqis to "take responsibility for their own security" they need the motivation of a deadline, whereas the current approach just invites delay and inaction. Iraqi leadership seems to agree, having stated very recently it wants to talk about when we’ll be pulling out!

Unfortunately, the majority in Washington is unwilling to change anything we’re doing, and has stated its intent to stay until Iraq metamorphosizes into something suitable to becoming the fifty-first state. If I were a cynic, I’d conclude that the powers that be are secretly in no hurry to leave, at least not before the November elections are over with.

Finally, the government has gone on record as having propagandized to accentuate and even inflate the role of al-Zarqawi. This was done to de-emphasize the degree of indigenous Iraqi resistance. By the Pentagon’s own admission, the propaganda was directed to the US citizenry as much as the Iraqis. The indolent US new media has let this fact pass unheralded. 

American Voting in the 21st century: making a wish on a Diebold Smart Card.

Off the coast of Greenland, the formation of ice normally produces cold, extra-salty water that sinks and travels along the bottom of the ocean. This constitutes the pump that drives the ocean’s surface currents, part of which is the Gulf Stream.

These currents mitigate the difference in temperature between the equator and the poles, and right now the ocean currents are changing. Less ice is being produced in the North Atlantic so the pump driving them is weakening.

Ice everywhere is melting. If an ice sheet over land, such as on Greenland or Antarctica, sloughs off into the ocean, sea levels would rise significantly. Given that extensive melt is occurring in these places, this seems inevitable. It will occur precipitously rather than gradually, which means hundreds of millions of refuges will result, nearly overnight.

As the earth continues to heat up, the ocean’s fish stocks will disappear. Also, as we have observed over the last decade, the warmer ocean will produce increasingly violent weather. If this seems a remote or abstract problem to you, just ask a Florida homeowner about the problems they are having obtaining property insurance this year.

Changing climate worldwide will diminish food production. While some locations will see an increase in production due to wetter or warmer conditions, the difficulty in adapting to the changes will result in overall reductions in food availability. Famine will be present on a global scale.

The temperature will increase most drastically at higher latitudes. The effect will be that indigenous species of flora and fauna will perish. While species from warmer climates will tend to replaced them, the repopulation will not be as fast as the depopulation. Temperate zones will therefore experience a net loss of plants and animals.

With warmer temperatures, what were hitherto considered tropical diseases will surge worldwide. For example, Malaria will become ubiquitous. Given problems of displacement and food shortage, governments’ ability to cope with these diseases will be compromised, and humanity will suffer unimaginably.

Yet astoundingly, all the above may turn out to be the least of our problems. At some point the earth will reach an intersection between the solar-fueled heating at the poles and the concomitant weakening of the oceans’ currents to a point where they no long transfer heat from the equator.

When this occurred during earth’s past, the poles began to cool again. This took place rapidly, on the scale of decades, not eons. Thus, a tipping point was reached, such that paradoxically, the earth’s heating triggered an ice age.

The record shows that during seven previous epochs, carbon dioxide rose dramatically, pushing temperature to this tipping point, after which an ice age followed. We are very close to the carbon dioxide/temperature levels that triggered past ice ages. 

There is something different this time though. Carbon dioxide levels are on a course to reach unprecedented levels. It is possible that even if the ocean currents stop, their ceasing will be insufficient to allow the poles to cool. We may go on raising the earth’s temperature, producing all the problems of species extinction, famine, displacement, and disease, but without precipitating the hitherto inescapable ice age.

This isn’t cause for celebration though, because the oceans will then become stagnant, deoxygenated, and lifeless, a global swamp producing only horrendously violent weather.

The worst might be avoided if we were to act now and reduce carbon emissions, but that would require foresight and responsibility on our part. It would take an immediate, dedicated effort to preserve the planet for the sake of future generations. Al Gore believes we are up to the task. Steven Hawking, on the other hand, thinks we’re completely screwed and need to think about just getting off the planet. And of course, President Bush and his goodtime energy cronies think the whole thing is a big joke.

Whatever we do or fail to do, Mother Earth will eventually restore herself to normal, with or without us.

Apparently, though Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press, he has been exonerated on the charge of perjury, and never will face any challenge regarding the actual leak. Now the newly invigorated Rove has come out swinging. He stated the Democrats, whom he incessantly calls weak on terrorism, would rather not have killed al-Zarqawi. Republicans alone are suited for dealing with terrorists. This proposition flies in the face of the record, however.

Prior to invading Iraq, the Bush administration, knowing that al-Zarqawi was producing chemical weapons that employed ricin and cyanide poisons, nonetheless refused several opportunities to destroy him and his weapons factory. At that time the administration was too concerned with ousting Saddam Hussein to dedicate resources to killing al-Zarqawi.

The modus operandi of the administration Rove represents is to flub things repeatedly, then when they finally manage to accomplish a task despite their Keystone Cops bungling, to shamelessly tout themselves as a paragon of toughness and efficiency. In reality, their track record reveals them to be inherently incapable of anything except a neo-con-cluster-funk.

Our civil liberties have bled away rapidly in the last few years. There is little complaint from the populace, and when there is, the political machine pooh-poohs it as ridiculous nitpicking of leftist ultra-liberals and Neanderthal militias. The Supreme Court just ruled that police no longer have to knock before entering your house, as long as they have a warrant. Big deal, right? You don’t mind that your home is no longer your castle, that's so pre 9-11.

Picture this: your neighbor is a suspect in some sort of criminal activity, the police obtain a legal warrant, but unfortunately go to the wrong door in the process of exercising it. Your door. It happens. It’s three-thirty in the morning, and you are startled awake by the explosive crash of someone battering down your front door. There is yelling, but because you were frightened out of a deep sleep, you don’t comprehend what’s being said.

Here’s where the story can fork into either of two directions. In one scenario, you are too shocked to move, the cops bust into your bedroom, and after pulling you and your wife out of bed and a bit of man-handling, the mistake is discovered and they evaporate. You are left shaken, with immediate feelings of violation and embarrassment. Later you will feel anger and perhaps shame over your demonstrated inability to protect your family.

Alternatively, you may have prepared yourself for a possible intrusion. You have a gun in your bedside table. You have seen news stories about home invasions, and you became intent on not being victimized by criminals. You have mentally rehearsed what to do if you are ever put in this situation.

This time, when you hear the crash you follow the drill. You swing your legs out of bed, retrieve the gun, and get to your feet. You are still barely awake, and can’t process what the invaders are yelling, but when they burst into the bedroom, you start squeezing off shots. Next, you feel the pain of multiple wounds. Your wife is shot dead as she tries to roll out of bed. Life will never be the same again.

Of course, the preceding supposes local police accidentally invade your house with a warrant, and that you are not a criminal. It could be otherwise.

It might be that you are opposed to this sort of thing and have been vocal in your opinion. Your neighbor, who already has a dislike for you, decides to report you to the Department of Homeland Security as a subversive and possible terrorist. The people who violently enter your home unannounced are not local cops, they are federal agents. They don’t have a warrant, because they don’t need one anymore, at least in practice. It’s you they want, and there’s no question of innocence, because there’s no charge.

There’s an old song entitled "The Knock on the Door" about creeping totalitarianism. With the no-knock judgment and waning civil liberties, the meaning of the title has been reduced to a mere metaphor. Sleep tight.

Contrary to the assertion of our addled Commander in Chief that "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" it is the cornerstone of the United States of America. It is not a white board for talking points and right wing wedge issues. It is the essential law of our country, and tacking on superfluous amendments will deflate its value and further jeopardize the Great Experiment.

The proposed amendment to ban flag burning might as well include replacing each of the fifty stars with a tiny red herring.

Headline: House Republican Cosa Nostra Nixes Net Neutrality!