Dear Senator Kyl and Senator McCain:

Please explain to me why the United States Congress, under both parties, has refused to protect our nation's coastline aggressively, and to treat our coastline, wildlife, habitat, marshes, sea food, related industries, coastal economies, and seas as critical to national security.

Please explain to me why the United States Congress, under both parties, limits the liability of corporations involved in the despoilation of our land, sea, and air to any arbitrary sum, and why such corporations should not be liable for the full extent of costs associated with restoring our land, sea, and air to their pre-catastrophe condition.

Finally, having failed in these most fundamental responsibilities, please explain why should you not be impeached and imprisoned.

Sincerely,

(Your name)

Rhinestone Curtains

What to make of the nearly two-week media extravaganza since Michael Jackson's death on June 26? I'm looking for balance relative to other global events, proportion relative to their gravity, fidelity to the American public, and seemliness--quaint concept, I know--with respect to death, grief, sorrow, and loss.

I'm not finding them.

I don't begrudge the late entertainer the attention he's getting. What I resent is the blanket it has thrown over every other issue on the planet. The near 24/7 fixation on nuances of nuances to do with his childhood, family, career, mentors, tormentors, oddities, brilliance, influence, drug use, and death is just one of many instances in which CNN and MSNBC especially have abandoned the interests of the country in favor of making a quick and easy buck.

Unless you're of a certain age, you might not remember how it was back when there was news on TV and American media supported the quaint notion that a democracy depends on an informed public. But I do.

There's stuff going on out there. I want to hear about it without having to dig up the Jerusalem Post or the London Times. I want to know what Congress is up to, how the healthcare issue is coming along, what's doing on global warming, whether N. Korea is as dangerous as it seems, who's behind the attack on 35 federal websites, what's going on in post-Katrina New Orleans, what Obama is going to do about immigration, and whether the stimulus is expected to work or isn't. For starters. I don't want or need to know whether Catherine has control of Michael's estate, or that 7 was Michael's lucky number. Give me a break.

I want the information that I need in order to be an informed citizen and a competent voter. I want a diet that's 60% brain food, not 95% National Enquirer.

But I don't know how to get it. Do you?

One Question, Maybe Two

How is it that with eight years of Bush flim-flams, lies, and theft, the US Congress didn't get it that the Wall Street "bail out" was just another raid on our tax dollars to enrich Bush's already super-rich cronies?

Where's the FBI?

"The Democratically Controlled Congress"? Puh-Leeze!

The "Democratically controlled Congress." How often do we hear that as an indictment of this failure or that over the last four years? What isn't said, ever, by media whores like Wolf Blitzer and Alan Greenspan's wife, Andrea Mitchell, or by GOP hacks like that genius of corporate management, Carly Fiorina, is this: While the Democrats were in power in both the Senate and the House, (1) there was not a veto-proof majority. No matter who controlled what, the Democrats could not -- repeat, could not -- overcome the will of the GOP. (2) Senator Lieberman, who voted WITH the GOP 90% of the time, simply weakened the power of the Democrats, and did so consistently from the time Bush took power.

Do NOT confuse a stalemate with capitulation on the part of the Democrats. When I see capitulation--as now, with Pelosi-Reed's craven support for a modified offshore drilling bill, and earlier, with Obama's refusal to stand up to the telecoms who enabled Bush's ILLEGAL domestic spying, I'll say so. I'm not operating under any illusions that Democrats are perfect.

Whatever they are, they aren't the originators of Neocon deregulation. That began with Uncle Ronnie, and has hit a banana peel under W. That's core Republican ideology, and the past and the coming administrations will sustain deregulation because investment bankers are part of their base.

What we've seen with Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros., Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and AIG, the underlying wave of predatory lending practices and the resulting home foreclosure crisis; what we've seen with the plunging value of the dollar; what we've seen with 600,000 job losses just since January; what we've seen with eroded wages and busted unionization efforts (e.g., Wal-Mart); exploited miners and deregulated mines; what we've seen with tax breaks for oil and for corporations that export American jobs--ALL THIS IS CORE REPUBLICAN NEO-CON IDEOLOGY APPLIED TO REAL LIFE.

Did I make that up?

So: Given THAT evidence, anyone who still votes for McCain--the Savings and Loan senator who has consistently supported all this, who still, today, says he thinks the economy is "sound"; who takes his economics advice from the catastrophic Neo-Con Senator Phil Gramm; who has confessed to knowing nothing about economics and therefore has promised to continue Bush economics, is an idiot. An unquestionable, certifiable, Bush Davidian, Kool-Aid drinking, way below Zero moron.

If Americans want a better world, here at home and abroad, we'd better elect Obama and give Democrats a majority in both houses of Congress.

Here's What Arrogance Looks Like

Here are attorneys for the VP and the President testifying before Congress on when the President can torture, and what kinds of torture he can engage in--you know, trivia like that.

Did you think that, in the USA, Congress had the constitutional right to hold the Executive Branch accountable to the laws of the land? Well, think again.

Invertibrate Watch

This piece on The Muckraker reminds me still yet again one more time why I hate this entire Congress and slime-slurping fambly-values GOP crooks, liars, wife-collectors, and child molestors.

Florida's top police agency said Wednesday its investigation into former [Republican] U.S. Rep. Mark Foley's lurid Internet communications with teenage boys has been hindered because neither Foley nor the House will let investigators examine his congressional computers.

Given a choice between protecting a pageboy gawker's House computers and standing up to a full-scale White House assault on Congress' constitutional authorities, where does this assemblage of invertibrates draw the line?

Why does this sound so familiar? Hold on, it's coming. Ah, right. The Catholic bishops!

Why would anybody think we have no moral values?